I just had my first experience blocking an instance, and it made my realize now nice the lemmy content curation experience is vs the centralized model.
Recently I started noticing a lot of posts from that I just found annoying. There was nothing inherently wrong with them, they just came from a culture I don’t understand and so I found them cringey. Since they all came from one community, realized most of them come from the same instance. I just added that instance to my blocklist and the problem is solved!
Now think about in the centralized model. I would be forced to either just accept that these posts are in my timeline, or block each community and user individually. The instance gave me an easy way to manage my content.
I also appreciate that instances can manage the blocking for their users. So the most horrible stuff I don’t even see. But it also preserves free speech, as those users who want to say horrible things can do so in their own instance, and most people will just block it.
Anyway, just impressed again by the fediverse!
I agree. It also works the other way in terms of censorship.
My original account was on an instance that once censored one of my comments. I don’t remember if they deleted my comment or banned me from the community.
On reddit, I had come to just accept that as a fact of life and every few years I would delete my old account and register a new one.
On Lemmy, I just switched to a different instance which is much more tolerant of free speech and I haven’t had issues since.
The irony is, my comments on the old instance can still be deleted, but only for users from that instance.
I don’t know the full details, but Lemmy definitely has the more 2000-2010 type of culture that allows people to speak their mind freely.