Frank Casa

And I have seen block lists where most of the stuff is toxic and should be blocked, but then mixed in there are people who pissed off the person maintaining the block list, usually over some petty dispute or the fact that they voted for the wrong guy in the last election. Unfortunately a lot of these distributed block lists wind up becoming the maintainer’s personal weapon against enemies.

How decentralized is Funkwhale? Does everything go through their website, or do you host your own version and you get the music directly from the artists?

This is what I suspected. I can get behind blocking actual Neo Nazis and hate groups, and illegal content, but when it becomes “blocking anyone who disagrees with me” that can easily be abused, especially if the people running the list can’t tell the difference between Nazis, MAGA, Republicans, Centrists, and Libertarians. Or someone who can’t tell the difference between a tankie, a communist, a socialist, a democratic socialist, or an anarchist. Contrary to some people’s beliefs, all of these things are not the same.

People are welcome to block whomever they wish and have the power to curate their own feeds, but when someone else does it, and there is no way to opt out of that, then it becomes censorship or suppression of information.

And someone who is against Nazis might want to read Mien Kamph, not because they agree with Hitler, but because they want to understand the enemy so they can be better equipped to stop Nazis.

Are they blocking illegal content (such as content that promotes violence or issues threats) and content against the terms of service (like hateful, trolling, or disrespectful content)?

Or are they banning people based on their political beliefs or who they voted for, even if their content is not political in any way whatsoever?

And how are they defining alt right? A literal Neo Nazi? Or someone who voted Republican?