So I want to make this post because I don’t know why instances, mine specifically, choose to block others. Now, don’t get me wrong that blocking instances that are CP related and anything illegal is something that should and needs to be blocked and/or removed. but if its something like Threads, let me choose to block a user myself, give me the freedom to do so. I’ve seen Brodie Robertson’s video talking about this, and I whole heartily agree with his stance on this where letting the user have the freedom to block a user or instance themselves.
I just feel that some lemmy instances are turning into big tech companies where they are controlling everything, and don’t get me wrong, its their server space, do what you want to do, but at least since you are using foss to run your lemmy server, at least be different then Reddit or YouTube etc. I created a lemmy account just to have a more private experience from Reddit without being tracked all the time. guess I was wrong.
not trying to get on the wrong foot here, I am just a fan of internet freedom, and I think you should have the right to do anything you want online, that’s within legal waters.
Thoughts…
lemmy.ml (formerly dev.lemmy.ml) was centralized by Cloudflare (after the renaming iirc). It was an embarrassment that the flagship instance was so antithetical to Fedi philosophy. Perhaps due to that well-placed criticism, lemmy.ml eventually dropped CF. But lemmy.ml is still today centralized by disproportionate size. There is also copious political baggage with those admins which has helped drive people off (thus beneficial shrinkage) but which ultimately enabled/led lemmy.world to become the biggest most centralized instance (which is centralized by both factors: Cloudflare and disproportionate size).
In the big scheme of things, AFAICT beehaw is federated and reachable from other Fedi-principles-respecting instances. I can reach it from other non-walled-garden instances I listed. Grouping beehaw with the walled garden instances is a weird place to draw a line. I’ve only heard about beehaw defederating from instances that are antithetical to the fediverse spirit. But I only know w.r.t the big instances… feel free to point out counter examples. There probably wouldn’t be much chatter about defederation from small instances.
I was one of the main people who called against it, and asked to develop an indigenous captcha. And I do not think the CF association happened for that long, as opposed to instances like LW.
Beehaw is somewhere in the middle between federation loving instances and federation hating instances. Beehaw does not hate federation, but says it has a different “vision”, one I did not like since I prefer federation with minimal censorship (CP, fascism, basic universally hated elements).