In the last 3 days I’ve been paying attention to r/all, expecting several posts about it and…
Yeah
Wasn’t expecting the website to literally shut down nor to monopolize r/all, because 3rd party users are the minority, but I hoped for more than whatever this was.
At least there’s a silver lining, I discovered new alternatives that have healthier communities
There’s a decent chance it will. The fediverse is—generally speaking—a fairly friendly and welcoming place. That’s in part to it’s decentralized nature and individual moderation tools. Bad actors can be blocked on an individual level (I just blocked /u/donaldtrump last night because I do not want to see stupid parody accounts and just like that he’s gone) as well as on an instance level for anyone not following the rules.
Each instance has their own rules about how to behave, so the bigots and whatnot get booted if they cause problems. Eventually they find an equally terrible server that will have them and once they start up again, that instance can be defederated, which is basically like cutting off the bridge to their island… no way to communicate. Eventually they end up alone or with equally terrible people on other instances.
That’s not to say that the fediverse doesn’t have it’s share of problems or is perfect, but we’re working hard to try and keep this a decent place to be.