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  • "If there is anyone else in the world who might be able to keep me in check if I do something unreasonable, I can't handle that. I need to be the ultimate authority over the little hapless users in my domain, period, end of story."

    (Edit: Jesus Christ man. I know nothing about this guy other than downvotegate, but he sounds like a nimrod. IDK, I take it back, he seems fine. I talked with him and he just has strong feelings about this one issue and he's making a point. I still think the way he's trying to make the point is going to have trouble getting received, in the way he's doing it, but whatever, he seems well intentioned, I don't think he is any sort of bad way about it having heard him out on it.)

    I keep saying: The whole moderation model where it is moderators setting up a mandatory override over content within "their place," and any users who don't like it are forced to beg for change or complain about the unfairness to others, is simply inferior to the model where it is users deciding which moderators they want to allow to override their content.

    • It's a hard pill as a mod but you have to swallow it. People are going to do things you don't like and say things you don't like. You have to be okay with that. You will not get an echochamber of people who agree with you 100%. The choice is you can either become okay with that and apply some rules that are reasonable - or you can remove everything you disagree with pushing people away.

      Look at me. I run a few communities here (and a few elsewhere), but one of them here is !taylorswift@poptalk.scrubbles.tech . I personally am a swiftie and there are dozens of us here on the fediverse. That being said, if I banned anyone for simply downvoting a post or saying something negative about her then I'd have to defederate every instance there is. Instead, I can let my own users do that for me and let people get downvoted to hell in the community, and sometimes out of those bad comments comes some real good discussion. If anything actually comes out that is against the rules, like true hate or bigotry or personal attacks then sure thing I'll swoop in and remove it, but even for a Swiftie community in the least likely space, that happens extremely infrequently.

    • I keep saying: The whole moderation model where it is moderators setting up a mandatory override over content within “their place,” and any users who don’t like it are forced to beg for change or complain about the unfairness to others, is simply inferior to the model where it is users deciding which moderators they want to allow to override their content.

      What model would you be calling for? How would this work in practice?

      • Bluesky does it by letting people (or automated systems) publish lists of content and users that that publisher is recommending that people block, and then part of your user config is enabling which of those sources you want to apply to your own feed.

        I don't really know how you could apply that to Lemmy since the model is just different. Mostly I am just talking philosophy and stuff that irritates me about Lemmy's model. A simplistic approach though could be just to have each user settings include a "mod ignore" list or something alongside the blocks and etc, the list of moderators whose comment deletion and user ban settings you don't want to respect. So you can still see and interact with content that comes from any users those specific mods have attempted to block.

        It would be a little bit messy, it might be better to take a step back and reengineer things to be more user-centric instead of that, but that would be compatible with existing stuff, just easy harm reduction when specific mods are widely recognized by the community to be bums. I also think just the threat of it (and the corresponding loss of credibility and control for the mod) would be a useful check on people who currently feel that lack of credibility in the community means literally nothing to them, and don't bother to try to maintain it.

        (Hey @jordanlund@lemmy.world -- remember a week ago when people were talking about your moderation on LW and asked you this and this, and then you just fell silent and still like a frozen bunny waiting for the predator to leave, instead of addressing those reasonable questions?)

        • Just focusing on one thing specifically here: Your grievance here (and others grievances with him) aren't really with Jordan at this point, but with the inability or unwillingness of lemmy.world to act. Jordan's behaviour and positions are well known. Him against the world. He won't budge. It really is up to lemmy.world now.

          In theory, lemmy/piefed etc systems are far better for mod accountability on this score because instance owners and admins are far closer to the community than reddit admins. I can tell you also that atomicpoet, for instance, making this decision didn't come out of a vacuum on this point.

          • Yeah, true that. If I had to engage in rampant speculation, I would say there are two possibilities:

            1. There isn't somebody else who's willing to put in the thankless work day after day to keep the big LW communities free of actually-objectionable content for free, and so they're basically stuck with Jordan whether or not he is doing a good job
            2. There are some moderators who want to make quieter but much more explicitly malicious moderation, and it's kind of nice that Jordan can be a lightning-rod for mod criticism and cause a smokescreen of drama while they're doing that, so people heavily advocate for keeping him on behind the scenes in some way

            Either or both might be true. Like people said in the original Jordan complainfest thread, they've known about this for literally years at this point, so I agree it seems a little unlikely that things would change now. Kaplan tried to say that new information has come to light now which is leading them to re-evaluate, but that's honestly not really all that credible to me. I don't really know, but if I had to guess I would guess that they'll keep him on just because whatever structural issues led to them keeping him on in the past just haven't changed that I am aware of.

            I can tell you also that atomicpoet, for instance, making this decision didn’t come out of a vacuum on this point.

            Clearly lol. If anything it is a strong point in piefed.social's favor, is that they're willing to exercise common sense and take action about dumb behavior by their moderators.

            • And also, if this becomes a big enough issue - there should be a groundswell effort to dethrone the communities that Jordan moderates and supplant them, This can happen here.

              • I generally fuck with !politics@beehaw.org and !world@quokk.au, they seem a lot more sensible and enjoyable than the lemmy.world equivalents. Honestly every time I enter into the big-world-event communities on lemmy.world I wind up quickly regretting it just because they are so full of hostile objectionable people who are shouting bad opinions (which of course Jordan does nothing about in the course of his relentless quest to stop people changing headlines or being mean to trolls.)

                • !politics@beehaw.org

                  !politics@sh.itjust.works seems a better fit, Beehaw isn't federated with LW or SJW

                  • !politics@sh.itjust.works is mod posting only though, last I checked. Also the mod seems like they might have some kind of strict opinions about what's allowed (there is a post on YPTB about them right now, I haven't really looked to see if there is anything valid to it but I do remember posting stories there way back when and the mod having requests about my posting that seemed somewhat arbitrary to me. Not really anything wrong or PTB, it was just kind of annoying and eventually I went somewhere else.)

                    To me I think refusing to federate with lemmy.world is a positive, not a negative. I haven't really noticed anything lacking because of the LW users not being involved in the comments aside from a whole bunch of noise and hostility.

                    • LW is still a third of the whole userbase, SJW is in the top 5 instances, for an alternative community to emerge it needs to be accessible from LW and SJW.

                      Maybe there should be a new "uspolitics" community elsewhere

                      • Yeah, makes sense, I was just talking from my own experience which ones I found to be tolerable to interact with.

                        I think when I started looking around for an alternative to Beehaw's politics community the best I arrived at was actually !politics_no_um@lemmy.world. I talked with the Quokk.au people about the idea of making one of my own as an alternative... I do have some ideas about how to make a decent politics community. I have hesitated about the idea just because there are already so many, but finding a good one is actually difficult, I do think creating one that's just good would be a good idea.

          • He won’t budge. It really is up to lemmy.world now.

            Who haven't done anything about it.

        • Sorry I missed the reply, lots of stuff going on.

          For the replacement bot you offered, I did pass it on to the person who coded the MBFC bot, I honestly don't know what happened to it after that.

          The consensus in my communities seemed to be rabidly "anti-bot", they don't want ANY bot, regardless of source. 🤷‍♂️

          So we continue dealing with reported articles case by case.

          For the Canadian thing? I made my position clear multiple times, I'm not re-hashing months old Lemmy drama.

          • For the replacement bot you offered, I did pass it on to the person who coded the MBFC bot, I honestly don’t know what happened to it after that.

            Okay, so when you said:

            Specifically, with the MBFC bot, yeah, I thought, and still think, it's a good idea. Was it perfect? Well, no, but it was the best we could do for free. Or free-ish, TBH I'm not sure if there were fees involved in the API use. I can tell you the alternates I looked at were more money than I personally would pay.

            But when the complaints on the bot came in, I told people honestly "Hey, I'm open, what's an alternative?"

            At best the response was silence, at worst it was angry noises.

            ... did you forget that all of that had happened, or what led you to summarize it in that objectively inaccurate way? It wasn't just me either, the people you summarize as "rabidly anti-bot" actually took a ton of time to explain their reasons in detail and offer alternatives, this is just ridiculous trying to pretend that they were the ones being stubborn and childish about it.

            Honestly I'm not sure even what response I am looking for from this. Just making the point I guess, but it's already been hashed over to the moon and back. Feel free to respond or not, I don't think it will change anyone's mind unless you have some kind of really great explanation or dramatic reason for saying it this way, which seems unlikely.

            For the Canadian thing? I made my position clear multiple times, I’m not re-hashing months old Lemmy drama.

            (For those just joining us, Jordan isn't Canadian and made a mistake about terminology in the Canadian governmental system, which is fine, but then he started taking mod action against the correct terminology as "misinformation," and when many people including Canadians who are obviously familiar with it and lemmy.world admins tried to explain it to him, they all just kind of got this type of response.)

            (Honestly like I say I also see no benefit to me addressing these issues further. As Skavau said, it seems like it's more an issue at this point of, Jordan isn't planning on changing his methods of interaction, and the question is what the rest of Lemmy does about it.)

    • (Edit: Jesus Christ man. I know nothing about this guy other than downvotegate, but he sounds like a nimrod. IDK, I take it back, he seems fine. I talked with him and he just has strong feelings about this one issue and he's making a point. I still think the way he's trying to make the point is going to have trouble getting received, in the way he's doing it, but whatever, he seems well intentioned, I don't think he is any sort of bad way about it having heard him out on it.)

      Nice edit

    • Okay, but here’s the thing: you’re not entitled to every community that exists. People can decide for themselves who they want to associate with. And if an admin is the one footing the bill for the infrastructure, their word is final on who gets through the door.

      If you don’t want mods or admins overruling you, then you need to run your own server. That’s the price of control. I already do this with two Fediverse servers, and I fully intend to do the same with a federated forum server.

      • I am starting to feel sincerely like it would be a good idea for YPTB to adopt a new rule: If you come in with the point of view "THE MODS ARE GODS THEIR DECISIONS MAY NOT BE QUESTIONED", they get banned instantly, with a short reply from the moderator saying "Can do! My decisions may not be questioned."

        (Temp banned obviously. I'm not a monster.)

        Obviously the admins can do what they want with their server, and mods likewise within their communities. What we're set up to discuss in this community is whether or not they've used that control -- which they're obviously able to wield -- in a manner that makes them a twatrocket.

        There's a whole philosophy of cooperative endeavor involved here. I just recently got a temp ban that was 100% justified, I'm fine with that. Lots of mods use their mod powers in a way that's perfectly reasonable and legitimate, and part of a healthy society is that people in whom is vested some level of control over the surroundings, we can talk about whether they're being reasonable with it. Almost everyone is, and sometimes there are reasonable discussions to be had about if they unintentionally stepped over a line or offended someone or something. This whole model where it's little warring fiefdoms, and I'm going to be a screaming unrestrained dickhead if I want to when you're in my fiefdom and if you don't like it, go somewhere else, is one that people are able to adopt. I don't think it is a good one. I feel like ignoring the feedback you get, if you do decide that's your MO, is going to lead to a bad engagement with the rest of the community and a lack of success for your new instance. It's a give and take, people can talk, sometimes when people are telling you you're out of line, they're just kind of looking out for you and letting you know they take offense and probably others do too, you know?

        • I’ll respond to your edit directly.

          My biggest concern isn’t the “general” Lemmy community—I’m focused on building my community. If a group of people on some distant server decide they don’t like me, that’s perfectly fine. I’m not there to serve them.

          But if that dislike turns into dogpiling or harassment—as I’ve already experienced—I’ll use the tools available: blocking, banning, and defederation. Once my server is live, those are exactly the measures I’ll rely on.

          And yes, I know this approach may feel at odds with the broader Lemmy culture. But Lemmy itself is still quite small—around 36,000 users. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the wider Fediverse, and practically invisible next to social media as a whole.

          That’s why I’m confident I can create something federated that doesn’t have to follow Lemmy’s norms or culture.

          • Yeah, I get that. And you're right, you can do whatever you want including deciding "this community is all just wrong and I'm going to make something right," and that's the nice thing about user-hosted networks like this. And I've certainly come down on the side of "the Lemmy community can get lost because the majority is wrong on whatever issue we're talking about" in the past.

            Personally in my judgement I don't really see it as harassment in this case, I just see people disagreeing strongly with your actions and then getting snarky or insulting about it as people are wont to do -- like I said, the only thing I really know about you is that you started banning people for downvotes and "bro" both of which seem ridiculous to me. (And also a tactical error, since rightly or wrongly it'll invite a kind of dogpiling publicity which I don't think you want.) But yeah, everyone has the ability to draw their own distinction and follow through on their own server / own community based on you being right and everyone else being wrong versus the other way around.

            • Well, I can only tell you what actually happened: dogpiling and harassment did occur. I had to lock down !fediversenews, and even after that, people followed me into other communities I moderated to continue harassing me.

              At that point, the intention behind the original post matters less than the outcome. If the purpose of a community is to amplify outrage, it’s not surprising when some people inevitably take it too far.

              • Well but like I say, I think you made kind of a tactical error if you don't want stuff like that to happen. I have plenty of times seen a mod ban for some reason that almost everyone disagrees with. I have never seen a mod snoop on the upvotes for the banned comment and also attempt to ban people from expressing their approval for the banned content, and then send every one of them a snotty DM about it. I think that's very obviously an overreach, and there is sort of a societal immune system that automatically wants to backlash against that kind of thing by marking the person who did it as "enemy" and making sure they hear about it that that behavior is unwanted. And of course the internet being what it is, sometimes that backlash takes on a life of its own and turns into something incredibly toxic and unwarranted. I think though that this idea that you'll set yourself apart from that kind of thing ever happening to you, because you can just run your own server and control everything about how people interact with you, is just a non starter. I think reexamining your own behavior is a lot more positive way to approach making sure you won't get harassed as much in the future.

                IDK man, maybe I'm wrong or I missed finding out about some important details of how it happened. And for all I know some people did harass you in some out-of-pocket way. I'm just saying how I see it, that's all.

                • You know, I only tried the private message approach because someone suggested it was the best way to de-escalate. Before that, I would simply ban—no conversation, no debate.

                  On the servers I run myself, I go even further: I de-federate. No warnings. It’s clean, simple, and fast.

                  Where I misjudged things—and I see this clearly now—was in thinking that private messages would actually reduce conflict. They don’t. If someone shows signs of being toxic, or openly supports toxic behaviour, it’s best to take them at their word. A conversation in that situation won’t lead anywhere productive.

                  So yes, messaging turned out to be a big waste of time. The real takeaway for me is simple: own the space, set clear expectations, and act quickly when problems arise.

                  • I think the issue was banning for giving votes you didn't agree with, not with sending the DMs. I've sent DMs instead of doing admin actions before, just to open a dialogue, or to give people a chance to push back or explain before I take some kind of action, and that part seems fine. I can't even really articulate why it was that this rubbed people so badly the wrong way, but I think sending the DMs and getting in an extended back and forth did somehow make it worse. Definitely doubling down and banning people (and also DMing them) because their reaction and vote on it wasn't the "correct" and permitted one according to you made it worse.

                    People can vote. People can react. Setting yourself up as this lord and arbiter of what's right and wrong is always going to make a backlash. If it was me, I would have made a public reply instead of a DM so that other people can weigh in, I would have framed it in terms of "what I allow here" and made sure to clarify the rules on the sidebar instead of framing your point of view as the one that's objectively the right one (which you're still doing here, when you describe calling someone "bro" as "toxic" instead of saying that you personally think it's rude and don't allow it). And then if they still don't agree, you're still within your rights to just say yes okay fine but that's the rules, sorry, and ban them (and then move on yes).

                    I still think you would have gotten backlash, but framing it in that way would have at least shown you have some awareness that these categories and judgements are just your categories and judgements, and regardless of what the Lemmy software's mod controls have led you to believe, other people are allowed to have their own that are different from yours. If you'd done that I don't think it would have really developed to anything, there might have been one YPTB post about it at worst and then people would have shrugged and moved on with their day.

                    • I’ll say this again: the DM wasn’t about a single vote. It was about endorsing toxic behaviour.

                      Now, about this word “bro.” On the surface, it comes across as casual, even friendly. But in practice, “bro” tends to be shorthand for a culture that excuses arrogance, entitlement, and pack mentality under the banner of camaraderie.

                      A “bro” is the person who laughs at cruelty because it’s entertaining. The one who treats someone else’s discomfort as sport. The one who believes inside jokes and mockery outweigh basic respect. That isn’t just harmless slang—it’s a posture that normalizes being inconsiderate.

                      So when people lean on the word “bro,” they’re not just using a throwaway expression. They’re reinforcing a culture built on lowest-common-denominator bonding, where aggression is rewarded, harm is brushed off, and civility is treated like weakness. That’s not a culture I want to foster in spaces I’m responsible for.

                      Now, you may disagree, and that’s fair. But this is my interpretation. And when everyone doubled down on “bro”—using it in the exact way I find problematic—it only confirmed for me that they were subscribing to bro culture. I don’t do bro, bruh, brah, or dudebro for good reason.

                      What struck me is that nobody asked why. They just assumed it was a quirk. But to me, it’s not a quirk—it’s a principle. Maybe these are simply my categories and judgements, but I believe the world genuinely needs fewer bros. Fewer Andrew Tates. Fewer Donald Trumps.

                      Yes, this is one of my lines in the sand. And the fact that so many people on Lemmy seem comfortable embracing “bro” as an identity—that, to me, is a real problem.

                      • Sure. That's all your opinion. And the rest of Lemmy is letting you know how they plan to react, when instead of trying to convince them of that while respecting their ability to make up their own mind at the end of the day, you ban them for expressing even a hint of any other viewpoint, and insist that they're being bad.

                        I don't even think your viewpoint is crazy or wrong or anything, but bouncing on mod controls and insisting to people implicitly that they're being "toxic" if they think anything different even if they literally didn't mean anything wrong or offensive, and there's a 0% chance that their viewpoint has any validity and 100% that yours is the objectively right viewpoint, isn't going to make progress on turning people around to it.

                        Good luck with your instance I guess.

                      • You don't like "Bro-culture". That's a description of a specific sort of gross social movement. You are extending that dislike to a ubiquitous word that only has that connotation when used as a descriptor of "Bro-culture-Bros".

                        The word itself and it's common usage have nothing to do with that, it's one of the most commonly used, informal, globally-colloquial expressions in our current era.

                        It's like getting mad at the word right cause it's part of right-wing, and people use it all the time to indicate direction which is causing a rise of global fascism. It's not just silly, it's a common reason for you to have an argument with a person.

                        It's not an opinion, it's a little loaded argument gun you always have cocked, it's really silly and obvious you just like to argue and this is a pit trap full of sharpened spikes. Grow up.

        • No, no—moderators aren’t all-powerful. They do important work, but they also have very real limits.

          Administrators, on the other hand, carry much greater authority.

          And just because someone doesn’t get along with another person doesn’t mean they’re automatically entitled to that person’s spaces. What I find appealing about the Fediverse is precisely that ability to manage the whole stack myself—without waiting on a distant company like Meta or X to make those decisions for me.

          Of course, I could be banned for saying this. But since this thread is about me, and about my upcoming plans, I think it’s only fair that I share them openly.

      • I'm not entitled to or interested in a community you run, but this is really cringe and implies a lot of really awful shit about you.

        You get how that looks, right? Wanting 'total control' of a community?

      • That stance becomes problematic when a community really grows & becomes more than the sum is it's parts.
        \ (I mean at bigger sizes than a few thousand active users.)

        It's a complex issue, but at some point "your" infrastructure becomes a community that itself should* be respected.

        (*should isn't the same as needs to, but I think that morally)

        • I appreciate that you’re raising this in good faith because it is a complex issue. But I see real problems with the idea that infrastructure becomes morally owned by the community once it gets big enough.

          Unless that community is actually paying the bills, this so-called moral obligation just shifts the burden onto the one footing the costs. That doesn’t strike me as moral at all.

          And online communities are transient by nature. People show up, feel invested for a while, then disappear. To act as if their fleeting sense of ownership creates a lasting obligation on the admin is unrealistic.

          There’s also what Ortega y Gasset warned about in The Revolt of the Masses. When something is said to be “owned by the community,” it rarely means real stewardship. It means the mass asserts itself and the loudest voices dictate terms. That isn’t democracy. It’s populism built on top of a hierarchy.

          Because if the software itself is hierarchical but claims to be “for the masses,” that isn’t democracy either. It’s a pyramid structure dressed up in populist rhetoric. The admin still has the keys. The mods still enforce. The users still depend on both.

          That’s why I insist on my own server. I’d rather be upfront: I curate and maintain a space I’m willing to take responsibility for. That’s not authoritarian and it’s not populist. It’s just owning what I host instead of pretending the power structure doesn’t exist.

          • Yeah, the bit where the owner of infrastructure 'owns' the community feels super weird (bcs community are the people & what they produce, the space is the infrastructure).
            \ But I understand what you are saying.

            Thx for the reply.

            • Yeah, I get why the word “own” makes people uneasy. There’s a sincere belief that communities should belong to the commons—that no one should control the space, that it should be shared, stewarded, collective.

              I sympathize with that. I really do.

              But that’s not how the software works.

              Lemmy isn’t structured like a commons. Neither is Mastodon. Neither is most federated software. These platforms still rely on admins, moderators, and users. There are hierarchies, permissions, access levels. Someone has root. Someone pays the bills. Someone can click “ban.”

              If you’re building a community on someone else’s server, you are doing so inside their infrastructure. And under the law, they are the legal operator and data controller. That gives them full authority—technical and legal—over the domain, the storage, the moderation tools, and the continued existence of what you built.

              So yes—everything you post on Reddit, Facebook, or Twitter lives behind walls. Even if you retain copyright, you’ve handed over a perpetual license to do whatever they want with it. They own the platform. They control the archive. You’re not publishing. You’re donating.

              The Fediverse is better—but let’s not pretend it’s structurally different. If you build something inside someone else’s instance, they own the keys. If they kick you out, it’s gone. That’s not a glitch. That’s the model.

              If you truly want a commons—a system with no admins, no mods, no hierarchy—you need to build software that works that way. But that’s not Lemmy. Not Mastodon. Not Misskey. Not PeerTube.

              In this system, the only real recourse is to run your own server. That’s where your power begins. That’s where your autonomy lives.

              And that’s why I say: I want to own my community.

              Because if I don’t, someone else will. And I’ve seen what happens when they do.

              • I get where we are, but I think there is a lot of nuance about this - between a policed community and a totally anarchist one (where everyone is the police). The later you prob see as that instantly & whims of the masses guided by populism.

                A bit like irl in a public square. It def depends on the state laws & enforcement (sever & community mods), and the people who frequent the square ("association"?), but most of behaviour is provided by the people. What they talk and agree is theirs.

                I get that server owners "are paying" (that's why I believe such communities/instances should be powered by donations, I think my previous home lemm.ee was), but they don't create content. And curating content (beyond a fixed set of rules everyone has access to upfront) by curating users is a bit like playing with AI (add a bit of this, ups a bit too much of that, etc).

                That's why folk believe (I think rightfully) even a community on Reddit or Twatter is the users, not the mods. Like, you can adopt someone, house then, even ban disown, yet you don't own them & their work isn't yours. You do it bcs you want that in your life or want that for others.

                • I get what you’re saying, and I even sympathize with it. I would love a true public square owned by the commons—something where people’s conversations aren’t at the mercy of whoever happens to run the machine.

                  But that’s not how Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, or any of the current platforms work. These systems are hierarchical by design. They require admins, they require mods, and everyone else becomes “users.” That’s not a public square, that’s tenancy.

                  Even donations don’t change that. If the admin holds the keys, they hold the power. Look at lemm.ee—did the community there want to be wiped out overnight? Of course not. But the admin pulled the plug, and that was the end of it. That’s the architecture working as designed.

                  If we really want a public square, then we have to stop talking about “users.” There should only be peers. And that means each person owning their own node, not donating their content to someone else’s server and hoping they’ll be benevolent forever.

                  That’s the uncomfortable truth: until the design itself changes, we don’t have commons. We have hierarchies dressed up in populist rhetoric, and every user is just one admin’s decision away from disappearing.

                  • I feel like you are arguing two extremes and nothing in between.

                    I'm arguing a community is possible within a prison population. And these communities are moderated yet still not owned by the prison (even if the prisoners might be, or even get executed, or punished, isolated, removed, etc).

                    I don't know who is saying social networks aren't hieratical in nature or where that idea would come from.

                    Or what is wrong with that. Only in a perfect anarchy would peers moderate themselves. And most folk aren't anarchists (in the sense they don't want to police their peers or actively contribute to values & their upkeep & evolution).

                    • I’m not arguing for extremes at all.

                      On one side you’ve got pure authoritarianism—admins as unchecked rulers. On the other side you’ve got utopian anarchy—peers moderating themselves with no hierarchy. I’m not in either camp.

                      What I’m pointing out is the middle: these platforms are hierarchical by design. That means admins do hold systemic power, but it also means admins have responsibility for how that power is exercised. My stance is simply to acknowledge that reality instead of pretending hierarchy doesn’t exist.

                      Selective federation is part of that. It’s not about isolation or domination—it’s about setting clear boundaries for what I’m willing to host and connect with, while still participating in the broader network. Users still have choices. They can join another server or start their own. That’s federation working as intended.

                      So this isn’t an extreme position. It’s the pragmatic one: take responsibility for the space you run, be upfront about the structure, and don’t pretend current software is something it isn’t.

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