Edit: Apparently it is possible to create a blank comment. Here is some content for it:

Weekly instance defederation talk loaded with emotional/psychological manipulation, moral grandstanding, and why not, some bullying.

This is why I log into this instance's account less and less. Every time I come here, there is someone trying to get another instance defederated; usually because they saw a few posts they didn't like from a single community on that instance. Rather than banning that community, they think the whole instance should be defederated.

Also, I think you hit it right on the nose with the bits about McCarthism and the Paradox of Tolerance. It seems the internet has forgot the danger of the Red Scares, and makes me wonder if the left-wing version will be named and taught in classrooms in the future.

Though it would definitely be easy for reddit or alphabet soup agencies to use these kinds of tactics to destabilize competition or hard to control entities, I don't think it is necessary at all. It seems to just be human nature to suppress and dehumanize those we disagree with. It is an easy way to justify what people want to do anyways.

@TheDude

Hello and thank you for taking the time to respond to my post.

I appreciate you clarifying your stance on future blocking for both personal reasons and along the human decency lines. While I may lean fairly deeply into free speech territory, I also recognize the need for certain limits. The balance you've struck seems to be very reasonable, though I admit to being a hair surprised by the community driven approach.

I look forward to seeing which direction the community takes the instance.

Thank you for the suggestion, but their blocked instances list is about the same length as the one from lemmy.world

I hadn't really considered that whole instances would be banned for nothing more than having bots. I may need to look more into what lemmy.world was banning for.

Who are you? A few posts back, when you responded "anything else?", I checked to see if you were a mod of this community or admin of the instance but I don't see you in either list.

Seems like I would save myself sometime by creating a dozen different logins through the various instances. I am up to four now.

I guess using current number of blocked instances was not as useful of an indicator for finding an instance that was free-speech leaning, but not purists, as I thought it was.

Nope, that is it. Though I would have liked to have heard it from the proverbial horse's mouth.

I appreciate the thorough response, but yeah, you kind of did miss my main question. I am just trying to find out if it is @TheDude's intention to block other subs that conflict too strongly with his views.

I really don't care much one way or another if one instance that I am pretty unlikely to interact with is blocked, but I want to find out if it is a single event or if he just hasn't had a chance to ban all the groups that offend him.

That sounds like a good reason to block that idiot or maybe even that community from my own thread, but I would rather make my own choice as to when someone or a community is not acting in good faith. I don't need someone with different values than my own trying to protect me from some words I might find offensive.

On the other hand, blocking burggit so I don't have simulated CP showing up in my feed is not the kind of choice that I need clarification about.

That is quite the interesting thread. Especially that History of Lemmy link. Not sure what I expected but it wasn't that.

And you are repeating my own words back to me in a different order as if it will surprise me into keeping my questions to myself.

Pardon me for trying to find out if I just wandered into an environment that is as chill and welcoming as it seems from the outside or another reddit where many genuine questions will get shouted down.

Thank you. I would be interested to read it.

Seems like you didn't actually read my post.

This is the new parking lot that I am checking out. It seems pretty nice so far, but there is a weird statue in the corner. If it is just a one off that is cool. If it is the first among many then maybe I need to keep driving around.

Edit: Seems like I combined the two posts when responding, but I think I am going to leave it as is.