I run the Filk News account on Mastodon, providing information about concerts, filksings, and other items of interest for the filk music community. Normally I don’t write much about filk here, but the story has relevance to anyone who uses Mastodon to distribute or gather information or just to connect with friends.

The first part of the story is in my earlier post, “The petty tyrants of Mastodon.” You may want to read it first if you haven’t already. Since then I’ve gotten no satisfaction from indieweb.social and found it necessary to move Filk News to liberal.city, which I think will be a better home for it. (Another post which I made, “The impending strangulation of Mastodon,” reflected a user error on my part, so I’ve removed it from public view.)

As I said in “Petty Tyrants,” my personal account is on Liberdon, which is included on a “Tier 0 Blocklist”. It simply lists domains to block without giving reasons. When I noticed trouble interacting with Indieweb from Liberdon, I reported the issue to Indieweb’s admin, Tim Chambers. He said he had changed Liberdon’s status from “blocked” to the less restrictive “silenced” while looking into the issue.

Most Mastodon administrators run their sites as a hobby, and many have demanding jobs, so I was patient. After a week, I inquired again. He asked me, “Do you have more info on the issues that they were on the list to begin with?”

It’s not just that Liberdon was put up on the list without a chance to defend itself against accusations; there are no accusations, only a verdict of “Guilty.” The Tier 0 Blocklist contains no explanation of why it includes any site. Not only are there no accusations, I’m expected to supply some! It’s right out of Kafka’s Der Prozess, where Josef K. is repeatedly questioned without being told what he’s suspected of.

Chambers seemed to think he was doing me a favor by merely “silencing” rather than “blocking” Liberdon based on no accusations, evidence, or process. Even with mere “silencing,” my personal account was dropped at least twice as a follower of Filk News, and I had to approve the request as Filk News to let it go through. I’m still unable to follow a friend’s account on Indieweb. I’m out of there.

I wrote the following in my now-hidden post, “The impending strangulation of Mastodon.” In spite of my error about the observation that inspired the post, this still stands:

I’ve seen some posts around Mastodon raising a panic about “worst of the worst” servers, and a suggestion that in the near future almost all servers will rely on a single blocklist. That gives vast power to the blocklist’s maintainers. A federated social network is supposed to be impossible for any single party to control, but a universal blocklist could change that. Admins understandably hate the thought of doing their own research to build blocklists. If one entity can control everyone’s blocklists, it controls what people can see on Mastodon.
 

The listing of Liberdon as one of “the worst actors” shows that this power not only can be abused but has been. The semi-blocking of the EFF post was most likely an error, but it suggests that Mastodon may join Facebook and X-Twitter in letting questionable software banish content.
 

If a single list becomes near-universal, any site that it deems a “worst actor” will be virtually banished from the Fediverse. The final step will be blocking any Mastodon instances that don’t use the One Blocklist. By not using it, they’ve proven their untrustworthiness, right?
 

If this happens, it won’t be just because admins want to let someone else do the dirty work. It will be because so many don’t care about free expression or are actively hostile to it. Some lists I’ve seen actually use “free speech” in scare quotes as an explanation for blocking. They would much rather see all viewpoints that disagree with theirs kept from corrupting innocent souls. If more admins cared, the content of the lists and the possibility of errors or ulterior motives would get more attention.

I’m a bit concerned about the comments this post may get if anyone with a wide audience picks it up. Please remember this is a private blog, and my commitment to open discussion on forums such as Mastodon doesn’t mean that I’ll take the same wide-open view in what I consider a personal discussion. Comments that are nasty, dishonest, or off-topic may be deleted at my discretion.

But I’m optimistic about a long run for Filk News in its new home.

Update: A friend told me he can’t see liberal.city from his instance. Mastodon may well end up as a set of walled gardens, each one banning access to all the others for insufficient purity.