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.
I don’t see why those two features should be exclusive; both should exist and have their own purposes.
Defederation is for nasty instances whose users violate basic etiquette such as exploding-heads or hexbear. No tolerance for the intolerant.
Instance blocking should IMO be reserved for potentially disagreeable instances that aren’t degenerated shitholes. Places that can behave themselves but are about topics a large portion of users might personally not like or aren’t interested in such as feddit.de/nl/uk/it/…, programming.dev, startrek.website or lemmygrad.
Edit: Grammar.
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.
Nah. That’s getting into arsehole filter territory. The only drama about this you will see will be incited by its users.
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.
our opinions on what constitutes an arsehole might differ.
Then you shift to an instance that mods the way you prefer.
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.
If you’re looking at instances here like supermarket then yeah, it doesn’t make sense. If you start looking at them as communities whose ideals should align to yours (and other users on it), then it makes perfect sense for you to just shift to a different instance.
It’s more like you’re going to the vegan grocery store and you’re upset that you can’t find chicken stock
The problem comes when the vegan store has items you want but they decided that they will not distribute them to stores that also sell chicken stock. And if that happens with multiple other cases you’ll be forced to visit multiple stores to get your groceries.
Which wouldn’t be that weird if it wasn’t because all those stores belong to the same “universal general store” chain that was originally designed so you would only need to visit your closest store to access all products.
i think it’s more like going to a different supermarket.