this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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They could, however...
Mastodon is made of lots of instances, nobody wants to be the instance with ICE on it. If they make their own instance or the government makes their own, they can be defederated by whatever instances wish to.
That's the difference, you can kick Ice out of your federated servers. You can't do that with bsky.
Bluesky is made of lots of instances as well. More people should move off bsky.social.
Check myatproto.social, bsky.global and https://atprotify.me/
In theory yes. In practice? Say ice gets on the big main instance (like 90% of the users does anyway, would be my guess). The admins on this big main instance will allow the ice account to exist. Now what? Everyone defed with the big main instance? It will blow up the entire fediverse or nothing will happen and the last 10% will sit in their small fedi silos being tankies and talk about how America is a pedo nazi state (sorry about that last rant but jesus christ everything turns political on Lemmy from the first comment on nearly every post).
So, not aligning with ICE = tankie? Alrighty!
Sorry if my comment came off like that. No, what I meant is that my experience with the comment sections on Lemmy generally is battle of who is a tankie, nazi, corrupt, pedos. Probably overgeneralization. And that the fediverse is so fragile that defeding with the biggest instances will end in Lemmy will die. I hope that I'm wrong.
i mean ICE can make their own instance,but most fediverse instances will most likely defederate.
Individuals could still block them, no?
At least I don't want to spend much of my brain power deciding what individuals to block. I prefer there's a moderator who thinks roughly the same way about things things as I do. It's better not to be overzealous with the moderation: I am okay with a little bit of manual curating of my feed, but the things most obviously unacceptable to me should be banned by the instance.
Also: If a lot of people see the messages of ICE, I am not really likely to ban them either, because I want to know what is going on in the world around me. But if I know they are being banned by a lot of people because whole largish instances are banning them, they no longer are goin on in my part of the world. At that point it becomes more of a choice to want to hear them.
"echo chamber as a service"
That's why you pay attention when choosing what instance to be on.
Lemmy is an echo chamber as a service. Way less diversity in opinions on there - yes, even across instances
I guess that's where you and I differ. I see it as somewhat of a downside, letting a single or a few individuals dictate what everyone on the instance should or shouldn't see. I much prefer individuals having the choice to block what they don't wish to see.
An instance can be federated over a single unity and then people wouldn't be able to access many other communities that were neutral/okay on that instance.
yes
This is such a virtue signalling to me... "Oh no, instance XYZ has account PQR on it, for shame!" - well, you're still using the app, the platform, you're still seeing the content. Unless you block them, which you can also do on TT/BSky.
It's just weird to me.
Defederation "blocks" that instance for all users. Not really the same thing as monolithic bsky or twitter. You are not even aware of the instances yours has defederated with.
Ye, ye, nothing says "freedom of speech" as much as collective punishment!
Especially now, with Fediverse being barely understood by its own users and those outside the bubble having no clue what any of that means. People signing up to random servers just to be able to get off of Reddit getting slapped with an instance ban will surely boost Fediverse numbers!
Your goals and my goals are very different. I don't personally want millions of fediverse users, I'm happy with strong small communities.
Same, I sure hope Geocities lasts!
This comment is such virtue signalling to me "oh no, I don't understand how federation works and so I'll invent a strawman argument so I can pretend to be clever, for shame!" - well, you're still not understanding the app, the platform, you're still inventing the strawman. Unless you bother to research even slightly them, which you can also do on the internet.
It's just weird to me.
Right, so you just don't want Fediverse to ever replace things like Reddit or Twitter? Remain within a margin of error in their user count? Got it. My bad for assuming we, the early adopters, were trying to get this thing off the ground and become an actual threat to the capitalist pigs.
Big difference here, admins can ban them, for everyone
Ye, ye, nothing says "freedom of speech" as much as collective punishment!
Especially now, with Fediverse being barely understood by its own users and those outside the bubble having no clue what any of that means. People signing up to random servers just to be able to get off of Reddit getting slapped with an instance ban will surely boost Fediverse numbers!
Search for this term "paradox of tolerance", you'll thank me
Paradox of tolerance doesn't include collective punishment, mate. Especially considering the
.worldand.mlinstances are the largest ones, to the point where they're listed on the Wiki article for Lemmy.Just imagine - you seeing that Reddit is going to shit, wanting to change to something better, looking up Lemmy, seeing that one of these two instances being the largest, joining, and immediately being called a Nazi, or some such bullshit by an elitist prick.
You know we're talking about ICE, right? the literal evil paramilitary squad of a crumbling empire. The ones who kidnap children, the ones who break into homes and disappear people.
I could understand your being pissed off if it was some fucker getting cancelled for something unimportant.
But people died, people died. This ain't the same thing.
And no, it literally does. You don't want to turn into a nazi bar, you don't let Nazis in. If the owners let Nazis in, you don't go to the bar and you tell every other fucker to do the same.
No, we're talking about blocking an instance because it "accepted" an ICE account.
I know full well who they are. But they're still - like it or not - a government organisation. There should be tools to help moderation in such situations. Like, if you have your average right-wing nutjob lying non-stop, flag the account, make it only publish posts after a review, or something.
OK, so what do you propose? Say, Johnny Regular signs up in
.blahaj.zone. Then goes insane and starts a mass shooting, killing a hundred people.Do we blow up the instance, blacklist everybody on it because "people died" and "nobody wants to be the instance with ~~ICE~~ Johnny Regular on it"?
So add a mechanism to review accounts before they're created, especially for gov users, instead of nuking an instance because one got let in.
Ain't my government, and blahaj.zone is hosted in Netherlands
Are you just admitting you have no more counterarguments?
Nobody is talking about "one got let in" though, they're talking about officially opening the door wide open, like how Bsky did.
There's a difference
Mate, this discussion is in response to this comment.
We obviously got off that topic ages ago
"We"? I didn't. Everything I'm saying is still 100% in that context. Why in the world would I move away from it?
Well I guess that's the problem then, I assumed you were arguing against systemwide ban of instances that intentionally open the door for them.
Yeah of course, if it's an ICE account that just joins is their own accord, let that instance deal with it, not a problem. I think it's stupid for anyone to argue to ban the instance for something outside their control.
But if they do as bsky.social main instance did; open the door, officially recognise them, and don't kick/ban, then the instance is bad for the ecosystem and should be treated like the virus it is. That's when to defederate it.
Again: saying that you should ban/isolate an instance for allowing an official government entity because you don't agree with the government's policies is just insanity.
Just imagine having to ban any and all instances that allow official accounts of ICE, any Chinese gov entities, anything from Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, anything from India, anything from Israel, anything from Venezuela, anything from russia...
And then you have situations like in Ukraine - imagine having Fediverse since 2010. You have an official UA Ministry of Internal Affairs account, all is good. Then the Maidan Protests happen, over 100 people are shot dead by Berkut (equivalent of US SWAT)... so now you have to ban the account? Ban the instance, even! But then the people of Ukraine prevail, Yanukovych runs to russia, Berkut forces dissolve and disappear into the wind... so you can now un-ban the instance!
It's a mess, mate! It's childish and it undermines any hope for any fediverse services to ever be considered an alternative to established social media sites, because - if nothing else - no sane journalist/reporter/researcher would ever commit to supporting a product where their source of information may get randomly removed because an account on an instance is connected to something heinous.
And you didn't answer my question earlier, so I'm going to post it again:
The thing I'm arguing for is banning instances that open a floodgate.
So using your Johnny Regular example, if he goes postal, they can handle Johnny Regular, not our problem, they had no way to know
But if the server admins are like "🎉 Hey everyone! I know that you will all love to see him, please welcome Mass Murderer Johnny Regular! 🎉", that's when you ban the entire instance.
The SS was a government organisation, are you saying we should welcome them into our servers? Islamic State was a government organisation, are you saying we should welcome them? - No, we shouldn't.
We're not legalists, just cause it's legal and officially supported by a government doesn't magically make it moral. If an org does terrible things, and that's well known, then allowing them to join is always bad. It's implicit support of them.
Did Bsky do this? Or did they just verify an official account of a government entity?
The SS wasn't a government organisation, it was a military unit. It's like having an official account for 101st Airborne. I don't mind these not being around, but ICE is a federal entity, their primary task is to handle immigration and Customs Enforcement (that's literally their name). The fact that they got turned into para-SA/SA by the current administration is kinda' irrelevant here.
Instance admins shouldn't be moral police.
That's an absolutely insane take. Imagine saying: "allowing Nvidia to have an account on the Fediverse implicitly means the Fediverse supports everything Nvidia is doing with AI and chip/RAM supply".
Define Verification: to state that you approve of the user/org and officially recognise it. So they did both.
It does. Implicitly
No, that's ridiculous. Verification in online services means that this particular account is verified to be the actual account of said government identity. You just confirm their identity, not state that you're giddy that they joined, mate.