Note: this is a repost from my outdated blog over at disarray.sh. I'd like to start blogging again, so maybe using this platform will make me get back into it.
I want to start off by saying I’ve been on fedi for quite a while.
I first joined in March of 2016 on mastodon.social, but after a few months I migrated to niu.moe. While I haven’t been around as long as some others (like the ones who’ve been here since the early days of gnu social) I think eight years is enough time to call myself an “OG” user. At the very least, I think my perspective has some weight.
Fedi’s always been a niche place. It’s also never been all sunshine and rainbows either, and I’m well aware that a lot of my feelings about the early days are likely tinted with nostalgia. Even so, over the years, I’ve noticed a very clear shift. The vibe feels hostile, toxic, and less welcoming than it used to. You could argue that’s true for most social platforms now. People fight, argue, and disagree. But I think there’s something unique about how these dynamics play out on fedi. It’s not just “the way things are everywhere.” It’s different here.
In my mind a big turning point came around 2020. That’s also around when I took my first real break from fedi, which lasted about a year. Leading up to that there was a noticeable influx of users migrating over from tumblr and twitter. They brought their own cultures, norms, and expectations with them, which is fair enough. But they also brought (or maybe created) a mindset that’s fundamentally reshaped fedi: the idea that instances are not just a tool that lets you interact with fedi, but are community spaces in of itself. That shift, in my opinion, is at the root of a lot of the hostility we see today.
The issue with the “castle” mentality.
These days instances aren’t just places that host your account, they’re treated like fortresses for tightly defined communities. Administrators aren’t just service providers - they’re rulers. If you don’t fit neatly into the culture of a given instance, you will likely feel out of place there. If someone on your instance makes a mistake, the entire instance risks being cut off. It’s not just about blocking individuals anymore, it’s about blocking entire instances, with all the collateral damage that entails. Nobody’s allowed to screw up or learn and correct their mistakes. The margin for error has become razor-thin.
In a way, this “castle” approach to instance management makes sense. It’s not that different from running a forum for a specific community. Instead of discussion threads, you’ve got microblogging! But the problem with this model is how easy it becomes to sever ties with other communities. If one community decides it doesn’t like the other, they can just cut off contact completely. And when that happens, it’s not just the “problematic” users who get walled off; it’s everyone else, too. It feels like we’ve lost the ability to give people the benefit of the doubt - or to see individuals as separate from the instances they’re on.
Fediblock also goes against what makes fedi great in the first place.
Fediblock is a good example of how this mindset plays out. It started gaining traction around 2021 and on paper, it sounds useful: a shared blocklist of known bad actors. But in practice, it is often abused as a way for instance administrators (who maybe aren’t fit to run instances) to air out their own personal problem. People often end up on these lists not because they’re genuinely harmful, but because they upset someone else or got caught up in the wrong conversation. Once you’re on the list, it’s hard to get rid of that label. The result is that fediblock ends up centralizing moderation, which goes against the whole point of decentralization in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why people lean on tools like this. Moderation is hard and no one wants to deal with bad actors alone. But when these tools get misused, which they often do, it becomes a repeating cycle. It becomes harder for people to speak freely or take risks, knowning that one mistake could get the ostracized, not only as individuals, but also as a part of an entire instance. Your mistake can end up killing communities.
What do we do from here?
I don’t have all the answers. Honestly, I’m not even sure if I have any at all. What I do know is that the culture on fedi has shifted in ways that makes it harder for people to connect and feel welcome. Instances are not just places to host accounts anymore, they’re ideological battlegrounds, and the lines feel more entrenched every day.
Maybe we need to find a way back to treating instances as a portal to fedi, and not as communities. Maybe we need to rethink things like fediblock and focus on individual accountability instead of collective punishment! Either way, I think it’s worth saying the quiet part out loud finally: fedi sucks, and you all suck.
That is all.