Post #3454682

I've joined fediverse in November 2022. Which means you have already existed for quite a few years, you have created the community and the lore. You have experienced some dangers, and you needed to tackle them. I have not seen them. But there are traces of them in the server blocklist you want to install on your server, if you want to have a reasonably peaceful time. You have experienced some transformation, when the sudden influx of new people has appeared. And I am part of this wave, and this transformation. I've learnt everything about the fediverse from you. I was lucky enough to find and start following folks who were on the fediverse from the very beginning. And my impression, and the lore I strongly believe, is that you, as people who has created early fediverse, has aimed to create a space with is safe and inclusive for minorities. As a digress, and a disclamer, we have apparently failed the PoC, particularly Black community, but that's another story. I have some thoughts about that. Maybe I will pour them our one day. But for now, please keep that in mind whenever I mention the whole fediverse. Anyway. ActivityPub is not a technically perfect protocol. This is not my discovery. It has been said by those working on and with it. But regardless of that you have developed a kind of social contract to protect the community. And it mostly works. Of course, particular rules differs between the instances. But regardless of that there are some common values we, as a community, try to follow. But the problem with social contract is, it works as long as there are no malicious and/or irresponsible players in the game. And here is the problem. Some folks, prominent in developing technical aspects of the network, care more about the growth, than the safety. To be honest, indirectly, I care about the growth as well. Why indirectly? I care more about people leaving the walled gardens of other social networks. But I care even more about not compromising the space I am in, the space I have found as safe for myself. So, I have my priorities well established there. But, apparently, for some people growth is a value for itself. Unfortunately, those people are responsible for developing the most popular - so far - software of the fediverse. I do not experience many of the issues below, as I am on a small, invite only instance, where the majority of users know each other in person for years. But I've heard from you about long standing issues and feature requests regarding widely understood moderation, which are not being picked up by the development team. There was this guy from steering committee, complaining that we aren't welcoming enough for AI folks. Hell, we aren't! And let it better stay this way! And then there is this tags.pub, made by another well known person, which was intended to solve a technical issue of the federated network, but it ended in the way breaking the social contract. The thing is, such changes need to be communicated clearly before, to be discussed, and consequences to be well understood. So, yeah, that's it. I am not tagging anyone from the mastodon development team. But I hope it will reach them, and they will rethink their approach to the community, and their priorities, and values. Because I would like fediverse to be the safe space. And all development - understood as technical as well as personal - being directed into increasing the safety, not decreasing it in the name of the growth.