It's less escaping the censored and restricted megacorp service to freedom or free speech anarchy and more you're able to build your own service that fulfills your own needs and own preferred blend of moderation vs free speech and that service can interact with others own instances with their own rules.
Same goes for the clients.
This goes to the core of the debate, I am in favor of giving users the ability to block anyone they want, even the ability to subscribe to and distribute block lists
However it is step to far to hardcode or build in unchangeable block lists into the very foundation of the service.
Developers need to empower users to make their own choices, not treat users like they were children
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
"The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0)."
The entire marketing of the fediverse software is freedom from censorship.
if you want to build "Authoritarianverse" and place yourself as emperor for life, then you are free do to do just be open with your marketing so people know to avoid your software
As I understand it, their main goal is escaping corporate control, and any freedom from censorship they provide is incidental.
See too Mastodon’s “server covenant”, which seeks to quarantine instances that allow hateful content: https://joinmastodon.org/covenant
Clearly that is a false statement if they are imposing their view of what "correct" speech is.
They both also license their code under GPL, even though they violate Freedom 0 of the core freedom model the GPL is designed to protect
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
>> escaping corporate control
Which is doubly ironic since they have adopted the same exact policies that many are fleeing Big Tech to avoid. The Silicon Valley Authoritarian left Speech codes
> Publish anything you want: links, pictures, text, video.
You’re misinterpreting the meaning of freedom 0. Tusky and Mastodon comply with both the letter and the spirit:
> The freedom to run the program as you wish means that you are not forbidden or stopped from making it run. This has nothing to do with what functionality the program has, whether it is technically capable of functioning in any given environment, or whether it is useful for any particular computing activity.
> For example, if the code arbitrarily rejects certain meaningful inputs—or even fails unconditionally—that may make the program less useful, perhaps even totally useless, but it does not deny users the freedom to run the program, so it does not conflict with freedom 0. If the program is free, the users can overcome the loss of usefulness, because freedoms 1 and 3 permit users and communities to make and distribute modified versions without the arbitrary nuisance code.
Sure, Tusky complies with the letter of the definition; that doesn't make it moral
This is what Stallman said:
> If a free program has a malicious feature, other developers in the community will take it out, and you can use the corrected version. You can also run free application programs and tools on nonfree operating systems; this falls short of fully giving you freedom, but many users do it.
> This has nothing to do with what functionality the program has, whether it is technically capable of functioning in any given environment, or whether it is useful for any particular computing activity.
What part of your quote does Tusky violate? It's GPL3. Even if you consider that block list a malicious feature (I don't), you are allowed to take it out and distribute a "corrected" version.
When i first got into the IT world many decades ago it was largely libertarian, free culture was rampant and attempts to lock down peoples speech, and freedom was viewed very badly
Today people like you find anything and everything to not only justify your Authoritarianism and desire for control over others, you do so by attempting to gas light people in to thinking you are actually supporting freedom
Sorry I was there, I lived through the rise of the internet, I lived through the crypto wars, I saw the raise of Free Software, and Open source, I saw it all first hand... I know the dangers if the society you desire, but it seems history will need to repeat itself before people will learn
This trend in some circles to limit speech and thought will not turn out good for anyone, never in history has speech codes and thought police been a good thing for society, and I see no reason to believe that the so called "progressives" that are leading this new round of authoritarian policies will turn out any different.
If you can’t convince an expert to give you what you want, yes, you will need to learn to do it yourself.
This is in contrary to the status quo, where the vertical integration makes it practically impossible to choose a differently filtered view.
Over time I'm sure we'll see curation markets for filter lists, think adblock lists but tied to some collaboration, voting, incentive mechanisms and reputation system.
This is like if chrome started blocking websites google disapproves of.
If they start using their own proprietary protocol extensions, or closed their instance to other clients, I'd not be as dismissive.
Not if the app stores have a rule that every such client has to ban the servers that the app store doesn't like.
I am, personally, totally fine with that: I don't wish to have ideas I hold in contempt sneak into my feed. But the key difference with “dictator companies” is that I decide what I don't see and whom I enclose with.
But you don't. The app decides for you and blocks what you shall not see.
Not to count that the protocol and the federation are open.
Once again, “free speech” is not “spoon-feed you a way to reach millions of people in an eyeblink”, it's “don't prevent you from doing it”.
And some of them work in tandem, apparently.
> Not to count that the protocol and the federation are open.
HTTP is open. Would you not consider it problematic if Google blocked accessing websites because some engineer doesn't like the opinions published on those websites?
Yeah, that's called a fork. Now, if you don't like them you can switch to Yuito, Mammut, Ivory, Mastobone, Stegodon, Fedilab, or the web client of your instance, or develop your own.
> Would you not consider it problematic if Google blocked accessing websites because some engineer doesn't like the opinions published on those websites?
They're already doing it, in China for instance; or on Chrome if a website is on their safe browsing list.
And no, I don't find it problematic. Google is a private company, I don't have any say in what they do with their property as long as they follow the law.
The protocol is open, so you could even write your own app, or if you lack the skills or time to do so, commission somebody else to write one and nobody can stop you.
In contrast, the siloed "dictator companies" control API/protocol access so it's almost impossible to develop alternative applications.
The problem is when there's no alternative because the platform owner blocks you.
If power is truly spread out and people there are as heterogeneous as everywhere else it does mean that there will be instances that do not agree on the process on how to handle things. That is by design.
Long term the only one you as a Mastodon user have to agree with is the administrator of your instance. If you are on a mainstream instance where, let's say, zealots push for an ever smaller overton window and isolate the instance you should, ideally, just switch instances as soon as it starts getting in your way.
It is natural that parts of the network will drift in different directions while they iterate on their understanding on how the instance should be governed.
Truly problematic are not instances deciding to go strict but platform providers trying to pressure their vague and intransparent rules onto the network.
... also the ever present risk of software developers adding their own hierarchy to the system, but that problem is inherent to all shared protocols.
Moderation is essential for usable communities. These block lists are a form of moderation to make Mastodon useful. Otherwise it's pushed on to the user, many of whom will just nope out back to Reddit or Facebook, or to the Mastodon server administrators, who are largely unpaid volunteer labor.
The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.Instead, one must access naughty comment through other approved means, such as Chrome or Safari.