Had an interesting start to a conversation yesterday about Mastodon servers, and the driving philosophy under them.
And how you're either aiming to create a service or a community, and how these actually have different motivations and requirements.
And I thought that was interesting.
For a community, you *have* to ban early and ban often, and defederate early and often.
As an admin, it's your job to protect the ✨vibes✨ of your space, to promote community, and to remove elements that are toxic or harmful.
A service doesn't work the same way. It isn't attempting to create (or promote) a specific vibe, it's just *there*. You make of it what you will, find what you will, and (as an end user) block what you will.
The admin "just" makes the service available.
Launching an instance is either making a service or making a community.
But critical to this thinking I was having, you have to pick which one you're doing.
You can't be both.
And the corollary here is, when you pick an instance, are you picking to join a service or a community?
A service won't really care if you have a bad time. A community, if you fit with that community, will.
@aurynn I don't necesserily think the "community" option is better than the service option. And I also don't think the "service" option is necesserily synonymous with unmoderated instances.
There is something about the word "community" that makes my skin crawl. I associate it with this two-faced small-town feeling where things might be great on the surface, but you're afraid to show too much of your true self cus *people might talk* >.>
@Owlor At least the community option is making a choice, choosing what and who they want to be, rather than let that choice be made for them by the broader societal racism, homophobia and transphobia.
It may not be the right choice, or implemented well, but at least it's a choice.
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@Owlor ...and that is exactly what most 'communities' on Mastodon are as well—pretentious and two-faced. The real community is only a subset of their whole user base, and they practice a very clinical form of white-gatekeeping, censorship and exclusion, against everything that they deem inappropriate. But what most of them show is that they are only blocking fascists, bigots and bots to keep us safe.
There are plenty of zealots around trying to play big-dick on their little islands.
@aurynn