Defederating from Universeodon
(This, and all post on this blog, are for the members of mastodon.art. This particular post has received unintended broader audience, but as with all announcements here, they are intended for the mastodon.art community.)
We've decided to defederate from Universeodon. This comes following a pattern of behaviour from the admin that makes us uncomfortable, particularly regarding:
- implementing full text search on the instance without being fully open that this is an opt-out service, or providing information on opting out ( https://blog.universeodon.com/mastodon-advanced-search-is-here) (This point has been edited to provide more clarification)
- operating with a 'growth mindset' (https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110368386104645921) and being more concerned with growing the instance than maintaining a healthy community (https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110159817592715989)
- meeting with Meta (https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110521648872299829)
- voicing thoughts about removing the ability to for users to make reports on posts from the public timelines (paste from the official Mastodon discord:
“would it make sense to potentially remove report post from public/local and public timelines? this could alleviate some policing and focus people towards managing their timeline and the agency they have there not sure if that’s even possible but may be worth experimenting with”
- and embracing Meta moving to the fediverse if it means he can make money from it and run the instance as a 'legitimate business' (https://indiepocalypse.social/@tamitha/110566562683658240)
While obviously any admin can run their instance as they see fit, the undercurrent of these messages and behaviour is at a direct odds with how .art runs our instance and how we'd like our corner of the fediverse to be; where the wellbeing of our community is proritised, in an ad- and corpo- free space. We're defederating from Universeodon to maintain the integrity of the space we occupy in the fediverse; we don't want to be federated with an instance that prefers growth over safety and equates making money, especially from the likes of Meta, with 'legitimacy'.
We're moving to a silence now, and will fully suspend in a week, allowing you time to make plans to preserve any connections you might have there.
Web Archive links to posts: https://web.archive.org/web/20230618212652/https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110062408438864731 https://web.archive.org/web/20230618212845/https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110368386104645921 https://web.archive.org/web/20230618213014/https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110159817592715989 https://web.archive.org/web/20230618193233/https://universeodon.com/@supernovae/110521648872299829