cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6853479

mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator. The administrator of firefish.social was found to be boosting posts from a known harasser on another instance. mastodon.art takes a firm stance against racism and suspending full instances in these situations is part of their policy as a safe space. The known harasser has a history of using slurs, harassment, and editing screenshots to spread misinformation. However, the administrator of firefish.social has now forged a screenshot to paint mastodon.art in a negative light.

  • most federations have councils or independent regulators to step in so that members don’t lose out by the actions of others. But not the fediverse.

    There are at least two technological solutions to that at an end-user level:

    • Apps (including webapps) that let people both easily interact with defederated instances, and block instances themselves.
    • User migration between instances, which right now are kind of working on Mastodon, and kind of pending on Lemmy/Kbin/etc.

    And one at a pro-user level:

    • Run your own instance and federate with whoever you wish.

    There are proposals for creating “councils” that could keep blacklists, whitelists, chains of trust, and whatever else, but once analyzed more in depth, they all seem to lead to more knee jerk reactions, not less.