There are other Firefish instances, though, in case one wants to use Firefish and also federate with mastodon.art.

That’s incredibly condescending.

Her primary intent is to create a “safe space” for affected individuals. What is a safe space except a place where one can be protected from that which they fear? Most instances have rules against bigotry and such, but she is much more aggressive than other admins. Defederating an entire instance based on one boost of one fairly innocuous news article, defederating a mainstream news source that folks can still access outside of .art, it all seems like theater designed to make the users feel coddled, but at the expense of stepping on so many others’ toes. Is this style of moderation really effective for these users in protecting them? Well, for their sakes, I hope so. I hope it’s worth all the drama.

Why is it so hard to understand?

Who is the one that’s being closed-minded, here? You keep saying this and make no attempt to understand the answers I am giving you, so this will be my last reply.

Mastodon is a social network that’s designed to be eerily similar to Twitter, and Twitter came first (and definitely pre-dates Musk…please don’t imply that I want Mastodon to turn into Musk’s X or 4chan). The Fediverse is still new to many, if not most, people. If the aim of the mastodon.art instance isn’t close to the average use case for Mastodon, perhaps the domain name is misleading. Administrative actions can hurt people’s feelings, too. We are all human…at least those of us that aren’t bots!

Edit: You are right, my replies were mostly about me and my reaction to the drama she started. I don’t pretend otherwise. I don’t claim to be one of the “good ones”, I only said I am human, have feelings, and did not break any of her rules. Do I have a fragile ego? Perhaps! But you are putting so many words in my mouth that I did not say. I am here responding to your initial statement that you can’t understand why a commenter might be upset by the .art admin’s actions.

There’s Antennas, although they may not be exactly what you’re looking for since they’re in a separate location from your main feed.

Upon further reflection, I may have been harsh with that term. I was angry, and you successfully trolled me. I did not appreciate being called a child, or petulant or entitled, for that matter.

As I said, though, she is free to run her instance how she wants. I do feel bad for the folks that feel they need her protection, as they are living in fear, although I suppose that’s their choice. The fact that she blocked even BBC added a dimension to my understanding of what sort of instance she is after.

I still do not agree with her methods of indiscriminately blocking 2 levels of relationships (if you can even call it that) from one person, though. To me, personally, this approach seems too likely to cause offense. If I were trying to make that type of instance, I’d probably just start with limited federation mode, and federate only approved servers. That way it’s a positive process for including one, and there would be much less reason to call myself a nickname like Tiny Tyrant or Stabby Stabby.

Anyway, I suppose I’m still getting used to the Fediverse and what sorts of interactions that come from it. I’ve accepted the situation now.

Not for you to decide what’s racist and what’s not.

It’s not for you to decide what I can decide. I am just as much within my right to judge as she is. It’s her that made the initial judgment, and it’s her that’s abusing power punishing people 2 layers removed from the party in question (edit), not me.

But accept that not everybody want to share their toys with children from a sandbox that’s misbehaving.

Get outta here. Not everyone in the instance is misbehaving.___

I’m personally a bit upset because, as a user on firefish.social, I am getting punished for doing nothing wrong. Now I won’t be able to interact with mastodon.art users, for what? I spent a bit of time digging, and the evidence this is all based on is weak at best. A person trolled (not even clearly in a racist way, sorry), and the Firefish dev/firefish.social admin happened to boost a news article posted by the once-troll, and now all the rest of the users of the Firefish instance are defederated? What kind of logic is that? It absolutely is offensive.

Plus, how she went about it is just wrong. Rather than reaching out to the Firefish dev, she publicly shames him and announces the defederation. The result was so much drama.

Look, sure, the .art admin can run their instance how they want, and they’re absolutely free to go about that in a way that offends people, but don’t tell me I can’t or shouldn’t be offended.