kind of funny to think that many people i know left the fediverse in favor of proprietary social media because at least there they can talk to whoever they want without being caught in the crossfire of admin fiefdoms

@kaniini can't blame them
I'd probably do the same if I couldn't run my own instance

@ivesen yeah, but then you have to change up your domain to get around thundercunt admins who think everyone who does not have the same ideology as them are fascist

@kaniini I don't really care when people block this instance, I just don't me association with smugs to get someone else in trouble

@ivesen you might care if that means you are cut off from interacting with old friends using the platform of your choice.

@kaniini @ivesen if they were friends they would use a better instance

@mewmew @ivesen

they do, it's called twitter

@kaniini @mewmew you're making the assumption that my friends aren't being banned from twitter

@ivesen @mewmew

i would say in almost all cases, twitter's banning is less extreme than what has happened here, albeit flawed in its own way.

@kaniini @ivesen I agree with you. You know I dislike all the instance block drama. But for all of my friends I have brought to this platform, I've given them instances that I know won't join that to sign up on.

@mewmew @ivesen

that's great, if *you* control the onboarding, but if *you* do *not*, then it's a problem. and the largest source of onboarding have been admins who wanted to have their fiefdoms. you know exactly who i am talking about here, too.

@kaniini @ivesen yes, I do. and I agree with you. The Fediverse is currently flawed and currently nowhere near as popular as Twitter. I'm arguing that we shouldn't consider people on those instances as part of the network at all, for purposes of onboarding and network size.

@mewmew @ivesen

yes, but the problem is, when they are already burned by these instance admins, they wind up reverting back to twitter.

*many* people i know have shifted back the majority of their usage to twitter and similar services.

we lost, and it's Gargron's fault for both enabling and encouraging fiefdoms.

@kaniini @ivesen I think you're being fatalist here. If I asked 1000 people on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook about the Fediverse, 999 of them would probably have no idea what it is. We might have lost 0.1% of people, but there are far more who have no heard of the network yet.

@mewmew @ivesen

and why should we advertise something so dreadfully broken, when we could invest in SSB instead?

@kaniini @ivesen that's a different argument. I personally think this network is far superior to SSB.

@mewmew @ivesen

it is not superior, at all. instances are a total liability. you want to really solve decentralized social media, you have to solve the liabilities that instances bring, and the solution is to do away with them.

@mewmew @ivesen

there are dozens of people who have disappeared from my feed over the years, and vice versa. this leads to conversations like "so did you finally leave fedi?" and the other person being "huh?"

and, this is caused by admin actions, because some admins use their admin privilege to enforce their ideology. that's fine, but it means choosing an instance means choosing which fiefdom you want to be part of.

the proprietary services win because there is only one fiefdom.

@kaniini @mewmew @ivesen This is my biggest problem with the #Fediverse; no neutral instances.

Why instances have to be either left or right leaning, I will never understand.

I'd love to try and make a neutral-type instance in the future, but the leftists hate me and it'd just end up being another right-wing instance, and end up getting blocked by half the fedi.

@realcaseyrollins @kaniini @ivesen I think you're wrong here. My instance is pretty neutral. So are Kaniini's, last time I checked.

@mewmew @realcaseyrollins @ivesen

i don't run any public instance anymore.

my own blocking policy is determined based on pain in the ass levels.

@kaniini @ivesen @realcaseyrollins oh yeah, I forgot for a second that you gave up pleroma.site. still, that instance seemed pretty neutral.

@mewmew @kaniini @ivesen @realcaseyrollins Yeah, pleroma.site was really the closest I could think of to the "neutral" instance being posited here. Absent them, maybe blob.cat and fedi.absturztau.be out of public instances (RIP niu)

@allison @mewmew @ivesen @kaniini Free speech instances like this one are very neutral as far as how they're run