@Mike Dilger ☑️ you are doing a very commendable job of "Good Cop". But someone has to be "Bad Cop", and I volunteer. What @brugeman is describing here is fine and good for a central server to provide, but it is simply contradictory and antithetical to decentralization. Decentralization and subjective experiences mean controlling what *you yourself* see and very specifically NOT controlling what others see if they didn't ask for this service. If I can dictate what notes other people can see (as replies to my posts, say), in a way that I have chosen and they have not (maybe they're following someone I have blocked and they don't see that person's note now) then I am superceding their desires of their experience and they don't own that experience any longer. Controlling what others see is fine IF they asked for it (either explicitly or implicitly by using an app or protocol or visiting a user-owned website). It's even good, if that's what they want. I have no interest in - or even the ability to - control what clients people use and what content they provide to a group of users who voluntarily choose to allow someone else to control what they see. This concept, as a "norm", goes in the opposite direction of the norms of decentralized, end-user-owned, subjective networked experiences. I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about it, but I am saying we should recognize very clearly what the topic of discussion is: Who controls what you see? You, or a filtering agent? If the latter, did you explicitly ask for the filtering or not? If you didn't, and you can't supercede the filter yourself, you're operating in a controlled environment and you better be aware of it. If that starts to happen transparently and without users' consent, you're headed right back to the hell we've all worked to undo. View quoted note →