Having a federated system like Mastodon guarantees that no voices can be completely suppressed. Intolerant people can still try to silence others within their sphere, though, and some have wider influence than others. There are blocklists that many Mastodon sites use, and certainly some sites deserve to be blocked. They spew intentional falsehoods, advocate violence, or dump pornography on those who don’t want it. But once the lists get acceptance, their managers can start adding sites which they simply don’t like.

My personal Mastodon account is on Liberdon, a libertarian-oriented server. Its policy says:

Liberdon’s community adopts a “good neighbor” policy, as one of our goals is outreach to the other communities. As such, “ostracizable” (non-tolerated) behavior includes spamming, scamming, nudity* / pornographic / sexual / graphic / NSFW content, advocacy of the initiation of violence, ethnic/racial/homophobic slurs, harassment, or other content/activity that could get this site shut down by state agents with guns. Offending content will need to be removed by the user, and repeat offenders will be banned from the community.

Even with these limits, much of what is posted on Liberdon (including my own posts) will outrage many on both the right and the left. That’s why I like it. However, some people express their outrage in blocklists. At some point, Liberdon got put on a “Tier 0 blocklist” which seems to be widely used. As I’m typing this, it includes 417 servers. There’s no explanation of why they’re listed, only a claim that the list is “a combined blocklist of only the worst actors, and it exists to provide one blocklist to which surely no one can object as a baseline for others.”

No one can object? That implies that even the people who run or use the sites can’t object, or maybe that we’re “no one,” unpersons. Or perhaps it means there are no factual assertions to object to. We’re “worst actors” without knowing what real or invented actions we’re denounced for.

I first noticed the problem when I spotted a post from my other Mastodon account, Filk News, and tried to reply to it from my personal account. I couldn’t view it from Liberdon. After working my way through various strange behavior, none of which told me that my server was being blocked, I submitted a report to the IndieWeb admin and got a reply saying that a recent update from the “Tier 0 blocklist” might be connected with my problem. That led me to the information I cited above.

At this point I have no reason to think IndieWeb acted maliciously, and the issue could be fixed. The admin just put trust in an opaquely compiled blocklist. Given the circumstances, though, I have to be prepared for the possibility of having to move Filk News quickly. I can’t stay on a site that blocks my personal account.

This is just one instance of Mastodon blocklisting for unspecified, probably politically motivated, reasons. I seriously doubt it’s the only one. Mastodon administrators have a problem. They can’t all research the sites that genuinely need blocking; even if they had the time, it would be the equivalent of wading through a sewer. They have to put their trust in someone to do most of the work for them, but that gives power to the people who compile the blocklists. It’s power that can be, and evidently has been, abused.