Think about it; instead of those in charge or the instances deciding who they don’t want to be federated with and thus restricting content for the users, it would be better if users were able to block entire instances instead.
We’d be able to curate our own browsing experience so much better without admin/mod drama influencing the rest of us.
Edit: Alright so maybe not exactly replace defederation, but it should still be an option available to us, and in general should become the default action before defederation IMHO.
hexbear
See that’s where I think we’re getting into admin drama territory
I don’t mind seeing certain instances, but if the almighty mods decree it, we have to cut off all contact.
it shouldn’t be hard to see how that’s a bad solution.
Like a supermarket stops selling yoghurt because the manager doesn’t like it so now they tell you to just have cream cheese for breakfast.
It’s more like you’re going to the vegan grocery store and you’re upset that you can’t find chicken stock
And then you walk next door to one of the near-infinite alternative supermarkets, or indeed a supermarket that you own yourself, and get your yoghurt.
we’re getting into admin drama territory
Nah. That’s getting into arsehole filter territory. The only drama about this you will see will be incited by its users.
I don’t mind seeing certain instances, but if the almighty mods decree it, we have to cut off all contact.
A current issue is that defederation is the only tool for both purposes. The only possible way for a user to not see content from a certain instance is for their admin to defederate from it.
With the features separated, much fewer instances would need to go through instance admins but that doesn’t mean none of them should. There are instances that are just generally disagreeable/unethical. Fortunately only a few but they do exist.
I have deliberately sought out an instance that only defederates illegal content and meta, so that I wouldn’t end up in some admin’s filter bubble.
Naturally this means my instance is also federated with hexbear and lemmygrad, and while I manually blocked some of their more obnoxious propaganda communities I haven’t found either of their instance’s users overly combative or brigading in random comment sections like others here are claiming.
Though I must concede that most news relating to Russia or China usually have a good handful of their tankies defending them in the comments, which can be a bit annoying at times. Having the instance of accounts shown is very helpful in those situations to know if they are someone arguing in good faith or just spewing propaganda.
Overall I much prefer my Lemmy experience this way though. It makes for more varied discussion and points of view and helps to avoid getting stuck in an echo chamber.
