This addresses my biggest pain points with the way Mastodon used to "route" people to an instance. It was either "go to mastodon.social and get to know the place, then eventually move" or "here's a bunch of random instances with varyingly different policies".
As to those that'll cry free speech in response to this, let me preemptively say that if a system allows you to be an ass, it still doesn't have to support you beyond existing.
> let me preemptively say that if a system allows you to be an ass, it still doesn't have to support you beyond existing.
The issue is not that, but the old "who defines what's that". I do have an instance of Mastodon. Conservative, liberals, social democrats and a few communists debate about some issues. My promise is that it will be a space where no controversial idea is shut down, but low-effort posts are not welcomed either.
Now two scenarios can be laid out. One, one of my conservative users have issues with laws that affect trans people.
Two, one of my leftist users is against some trans theory because it's contradictory to his feminist worldwiews.
Will it be transphobia? Who says so? Is being against bill C16 in Canada transphobia? Because it can be interpreted as so, as it has been done.
What if the one that comes to my instance to check if we qualify or not doesn't understand the context of the discussion? What if we are talking about something totally out of the US (or somewhere else) newscycle or kulturwars parameters? This a Spanish speaking place. Some of the users are from Venezuela, identify themselves as social democrats yet they're constantly labelled as right-wingers by US users because they are against Maduro. Some of my users may think that US Democrats are right-wingers too, while voting PSOE in Spain.
You know, this way more complex that "muh free speech", which is the standard meme I see in this debates. IMHO people should do the filter themselves. What's the point of being federated if there's a central server that does the filter for you.
Exactly zero people have been prosecuted for misgendering. Zero. Nada. Null. This was literally FUD of a conservative incoherent old rambling idiot.
I am getting really fucking tired of people that are not affected by any of this except their irrational fear a trans person is going to sue them for accidentally not inherently getting their pronouns right.
The same irrational fear that makes you think you can't explain this to Eugen.
As for your last point... joinmastodon has zero obligation to platform you. Relays and other instances have zero obligation to platform you. To pretend no moderation is "neutrality" is asinine.
Regards, someone who would actually be affected by C16, if I lived in Canada.
As to those that'll cry free speech in response to this, let me preemptively say that if a system allows you to be an ass, it still doesn't have to support you beyond existing.