In short i just jumped into the whole Mastodon blocking drama and am somewhat disappointed to see it as childish as reddit’s power mod drama. Accelerated by the fact that a Limit/Mute option exist just fine, i wonder why Block/Defederation is an option at all. It only moves power from the user to admins without anything in return. With just Mute, as far as i can tell, one still wouldn’t have to look on certain instances, but could interact/whitelist certain individuals and we’d get rid of the multi account requirement overnight. So why isn’t it that way?
Edit: For those annoyed by the same siloing issues, look into ATProto. Bluesky may be a big unknown, but the protocol itself looks a lot more promising in terms of user freedom.
How has the user lost any power? The user is always absolutely free to move to another instance. Hell, the user is absolutely free to run their own instance.
A better question would be what power does he have left? Either he’s dependent on instance administrators to be able to interact, or merely follow other users, or he’s dependent on instance administrators to not get blocked before the fun even starts. It’s inherently undemocratic.
He has the power to create his own instance with his own rules; he has the power to leave for an instance run by like-minded people.
And other people have the power to block that instance should it poison their internet experience. :)
I told you what power the user has. Is it not undemocratic to expect instance admins to associate with people or instances that they find repugnant? Seriously, start your own instance. The barrier to entry is lower than you might think, but you may gain some appreciation for the people who run public instances for free.