like it's true that most people who use mastodon aren't part of instances involved in any sort of meta going on, especially smaller instances. but as someone who helps admin an instance, even though we're not involved with the meta1, there's still its looming presence that demands to be addressed, because when an issue occurs involving multiple instances, you're essentially forced to pick a side. because do you keep federating with those instances that all of your sibling instances are defederating from? if you defederate from a particularly large and active instance that your users follow big names on, will your users get upset with your policies and call it power-tripping?2 if you don't defederate from those instances, will you get away with your sibling instances not noticing? will your sibling instance admins notice that your users are still interacting with instances they've defederated from, claim that you're part of the unsavoury bubble of racist/terfy instances, and sever ties with you? if you only act when you get a report about those instances, will you be seen as having slow and/or ineffective moderation? if your users disagree about the actions (or nonactions) you've taken, and are particularly active and vocal about it, but are remaining on your instance, do you stay quiet and hope it simmers down like a coward, or do you spend a weekend arguing with people that have a whole lot more influence than you do?

the ability to federate and defederate and for who-speaks-to-whom to be detectable naturally fosters the formation of cliques, especially because a moderator is taking action on behalf of a large number of people, and inaction itself is an action. it's great being able to blanket ban large groups of bigoted people, but using the same tools for those extreme situations in more nuanced and subtle situations3 is like trying to sew a quilt with a hammer


  1. some of you may types.pl was involved in a lot of meta a few months ago. but not this meta

  2. i'm not salty about it. i'm not salty about it.

  3. i don't actually know if the current meta is nuanced and subtle. shoutout to our other admin for handling it


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