I don’t usually self promo but I was interested in the concept of a social archipelago facilitated by closed federation/allowlisting, in response to a lot of the bigotry and spam that’s on the Fediverse and how difficult it can be to moderate. I was also curious about how Beehaw/Lemmy users feel about allowlisting and closed federation especially since Beehaw’s on the cusp of switching to an allowlist. What are y’all’s thoughts on the concept of a social archipelago?
While writing, I consulted these two essays which introduce this idea, so I’ll leave them here as “further reading”:
Not so concerned on that–people being able to establish their tolerances for whom they want to talk to is fine with me. But if the system goes towards allowlists, it becomes more cliquish and finding a way in is more difficult. It would tend towards centralisation just because of the popularity of certain posters/instances and how scale-free networks behave when they’re not handled another way.
I run my instance and that’s definitely not my experience. Which is of course not to say it can’t be someone else’s. But something, in my opinion not unimportant, is lost when it becomes harder to find a way in.
Ah, I get you. That’s true.