This. Mastodon is a federation in name only. If the protocol is not the policy then you really don't have a federation at all, rhetoric notwithstanding. I note that this is not a problem particular to Mastodon/The Fediverse, though, as its the exact problem that led to people forking their own networks off of FidoNet.
You can run your own and federate with whomever. It’s unlikely that this scenario will be common. It’s more likely that the large instances switch to whitelisting eventually.
Maybe self-hosting could be made more common through selling a (cheap) appliance with self-hosted services pre-installed. It is not clear how to solve the chicken-and-egg problem with such a setup. Also, someone will need to maintain the tunnels these things will need to be accessible. That entity can again be pressured into moderation.
It’s not at all clear if effective freedom of speech is attainable at scale.
> It’s not at all clear if effective freedom of speech is attainable at scale.
It runs into basically the same problem as torrenting: How do you punish people who try to leech? It more or less requires the majority of participants to apply the same policy consistently so that defectors are punished for their defection.
Ultimately, the solution is more or less the same as it was for FidoNet: Defederate and form your own network with stringent requirements so that jackasses that want to ignore the rules when it suits them will be shown the door. Networks then grow to encompass precisely the number of people who can be trusted to keep to the policy and no further. Thus, you wind up with a patchwork of disconnected networks. I for one am fine with this sort of future since it worked just fine before. The only people who'd really not like it are those who prefer centralization in order to easily engage in influence operations... and of course their opinions don't count.
> You can run your own and federate with whomever.
One big problem IIRC (haven't touched it for a year or two):
I'm all in favor of being able to block users or instances.
But many Mastodon instances have a policy of blocking other instances if they don't block certain other instances.
When I realized this it was one of a number of reasons why I just gave it up.
I'm currently hoping that nostr and element/matrix takes off, but in the meanwhile I agree with whoever commented somewhere onnthe Internet the other day that Telegram is a DIY social network.
