Totally agreeing. I remember of my BBS and Usenet days and we’re facing a somewhat similar situation: in a distributed architecture we will be dealing with unsavory individuals and communities. We definitely will.

I was talking about this exact situation the other day with a reddit-migrant (net)friend of mine. We were debating on how and where to move the (somewhat important) France subreddit, as for now the most populated French community in the verse is hosted on an instance relaying lemmygrad - which raises some concern.

Well, I talked to him about the UN. Sorry to get a bit pseudo-political here but I think you’ll get the idea.

The comparison I used is that while it is quite irritating (at the moment, but not only) that Russia is sitting at the security council, it is still a good thing that it is still a member of the UN. Because what matters in the end is that we all can discuss issues and overcome conflicts in order to keep on living all together.

And here in the fediverse we don’t even have to deal with a network-wide veto from any unsavory community. Worst case, they’re sitting on their “local security council” - meaning they’re ruling within their own node, but as a federation we don’t have to comply if thing s get really ugly.

However in the end what matters is the federation - the UN. When talking about server-to-server or server-to-federation conflicts defederation must be the last resort, because what really matters in the end is the federation surviving. Without it we’re just powerless and will soon get back to some shady reddit clone à la squabbles.

Now, to get back to these usenet days. If you remember those days we had newsgroups varying from gardening to politics, but wa also had some less civil newsgroups including cp and alike. Most of these “worst contenders” were only relayed by a few major nodes but still they made their way through Usenet because of its very distributed architecture.

People not wanting to have any interaction with those newsgroups could either connect to a node ralaying them while not downloading their headers, or they could connect to a more “safe space” node. And on the other hand people who wished to interact with those newsgroups had to connect to anode relaying them, just as simple as that.

I am convinced we’re heading towards a similar architecture and situation. As the fediverse grows we definitely will encounter bad people and bad communities, and sometimes we will look as bad people or bad communities to others. This is my truth, tell me yours, that’s the way it goes. And it’s not really a big deal.

I’m saying it’s not a big deal because in the end, with a distributed architecture, the only censorship that really matters is yours. Your own filters, your choice of either connecting instance or followed communities and individuals. Due to its very nature, in a distributed architecture you are the one setting up your own barriers. Hardware and network distribution cannot and shall not do this part of the job for you, and server-to-server defed should only be the worst-case scenario in order - for instance not to relay (and mirror) cp, and for openly bot-friendly instances.

Now mind you, am I saying there is no safe space? Well, to a certain extent. Just as in a centralized architecture each of us will make their own “nest” so to speak and will interact with the people and communities we choose. We can board a plane with a nazi without being “tainted” by its naziness and if it really unsettles us we can always ask for a separation curtain - as in, individual defederation. Those are already programmed and will be available in the next versions, allowing any user to just ignore some communities even if they are relayed by their instance.

In a distributed architecture, we must all deal with this double-edged paradigm: We WILL encounter people and communities we don’t like, but we do NOT HAVE TO suffer from them. Individual filters (and soon, individual defed) are here to help us establish our personal way of cherry-picking whatever this network has to offer.

This is usenet on steroids. There is no premade safe space and it shouldn’t be, because what matters in the end is the network and not its junk. In a distributed architecture it’s mostly up to the end user to set their own junk filters.