It seemed like the point was to say they aren’t going to donate money to a project that doesn’t respect their right to free speech.
Sure, an account could be made on a other instance, but that doesn’t change the mindset behind how the instance run by the maintainers is handled, which we can only assume will influence the project as a whole.
Sure, I could see that. I just wanted to clarify that mastodon.social is an instance, not the instance. It’s not a special blessed server. If you turn on your own new server tomorrow, other servers will treat it identically to that one.
Also, moderation policies vary wildly. The instance I run moderates much differently than mastodon.social, which tends to get a lot of criticism for being seen as chronically under-moderated, if anything.
Just to clarify, my account was banned without a reasons mentioned. The „reason“/cause field is empty. I didn’t insult anyone, I didn’t break any laws, I didn’t call to unalive people. I didn’t violate TOS. I just dared to criticize the praise of the former East German regime, called it an „Unrechtsstaat“ which is not a controversial opinion and even part of the school curriculum. They shot their own people ar the border.
I think at least one of their moderators was insulted by that personally.
I believe you. I absolutely would not have suspended your account for that. But in so many other cases, they’re too slow to respond to reports of spammers, scammers, etc.
I reported several spammers impersonating with posts like „click here to verify your account“ phishing links and they disappeared in less than 2 minutes. There is little arguing about malicious content, it‘s about political and „tone“ related moderation. You can‘t be successful by just doing X but with an authorian left point of view. It‘s just the other side of the populistic, hateful spectrum. Some people want it, I get it. I‘m still running several accounts on other instances publishing open data and aggregating news (cycling and chess related) but the content I want to read is not created by people on the Fediverse.
I view these online platforms as the modern town square. If they are silencing people, that’s a problem in my book. Who is deciding what is acceptable? Who put them in change of what people are and aren’t allowed to say?
Provided the person isn’t breaking any laws by saying what they’re saying, leave the post up and they can get their repercussions, positive or negative, based on their post being available.
I know people like to take a hard line view and say a violation of free speech is only happening if the government is arresting you for what you say, but in my opinion it’s everyone’s responsibility. To have the privilege of free speech means one must also be tolerant to hearing things they don’t like from time to time. After all, free speech doesn't exist to protect popular opinion, it exists to protect the unpopular.
And? That's the beauty of it, i'm sure there's more to it to your story, but if truly you were banned for something silly, you can join another server (or even create your own!), there's a lot of alternatives.
