I have been looking through a long thread on another instance where a few users have been trying to convince that instance to defederate from Exploding Heads - because they do not want to see the content posted on Exploding Heads.
I have thought long and hard about how to please these people. They do have the option to individually block Exploding Heads communities or users, but they either do not know how to or simply do not want to.
In the end I realized if I ban those specific users requesting defederation from Exploding Heads - they will not see any content from Exploding Heads and therefore will not be offended by it. (Truth be told I am not sure if some of these users have really visited our site or interacted with our users).
So today I have banned those users with the explanation that they have said they do not want to see Exploding Heads content. If any of those users wish to be unbanned in the future, all they have to do is say so and I will happily unban them.
These users are not being banned in order to censor them, but to help them achieve what they have been requesting - to not see Exploding Heads content.
I hope you all find this a fair and reasonable action - if not let me know.
Reasonable, I think. It seems there’s a faction of users going all or nothing across the instances, holding pitchforks and clutching their pearls, screaming, “Defederate or doom is upon us!” Man, I can block something if I don’t want to see it. Or the alternative they chose, personal ban. It’s not the end of times. I want to believe instances are trying to reach a middle ground here to preserve the spirit of federation.
These users will get bored and move back to Reddit eventually. They’ve done so on every other reddit alternative, it’s nothing new.