Pretty sure I watched a furry account on mastodon(dot)art get suspended in real time this morning.

Furries, get your accounts off of that server.

Some of us have had the sense to call a spade a spade and criticize MA's sociopathic "everyone that disagrees with us is racist/ableist/queerphobic" moderation, as they have suspended entire servers because of a single take they didn't agree with. They've held a special grudge against furries as a whole ever since.

Most people aren't going to dig that deep and say "...hey, cool big art server where my work I'm proud of will be seen!" While word has kind of gotten around, some furries still don't know that several large furry or furry adjacent servers have been forcefully defederated. This shit isn't just annoying, it drives good artists and people in general off Fedi. The first server I joined pulled similar shit after I recruited three of my best friends onto it, and I'll probably never see them again on here because the server got put on shutdown notice after the admin had a breakdown less than a month after they joined.

So yeah, this stuff is kind of personal for me. I hate being so ugly against people I would agree on most issues with in a bar conversation, but as per above...a cookie's a cookie.

@istences I saw a furry on the engineering instance bullied by them in real time, and that instance come to their defense.

The art instance has just never liked furries after that.

@maddiefuzz @istences anyone who says "we welcome lgbtq+!" but then points at furry and goes "but not THOSE people" really doesnt need to be anywhere near any modicome of power. like we dont know its all purity politics throwing "messy, weird" queers under the bus AGAIN.

@hi_cial @istences uh, I don’t think that has anything to do with what happened.

@maddiefuzz @istences it just always seems to me furry hate is people looking for an "excusable" group to be bigoted towards, because theyre not being gay the "right" way to please the oppressors

@maddiefuzz @istences oh gosh i realize you meant like, in ref to your post abt the engineer >.> yea no i meant to generally reply to op, sorry!!

@hi_cial @maddiefuzz Indeed, I don't think this is usually the case with those people, as maddiefuzz stated, although I certainly wouldn't put it past a lot of their moderators to be purity police that get angry at the sight of artistic depictions of nonhuman genitalia. It comes with the territory of being terminally online and not being able to acknowledge that 1) you're not always right or justified in what you do and 2) people are allowed to make mistakes and learn and grow from them.

Dog knows that I had dangerously skewed views that I eventually overcame once others calmly explained the folly of. But they assumed my good intent as they did so.

@istences @maddiefuzz theyve always been very quick to puff themselves up as morally correct and superior before loudly defederating for any reason. and hey sometimes it is morally right. but lead moderator isnt where someone should be taking their personal center stage to crow abt how good you are. the lack of professionalism in defed announcements leaves users w the impression every blocked instance is bad. instead of some simply being people the mod doesnt like or had personal disagreements with.

@istences Here’s a #feditip for you.

Before you join an instance, always look at its about page (https://mastodon.art/about).

If you unfold the “Moderated servers” list and an absolutely massive blocklist shows up (like on dot art) that means that this server is suffering from extremely toxic censorship and you should not join it! On a typical instance this list is usually only 10 to 20 instances at most.

Also if you can’t see the “Moderated servers” list, that means that the admins have hidden it on purpose. I suggest do not join an instance without this type of moderation transparency either!

@istences And just something worth mentioning mastodon.art has blocked 333 instances (including mine) with the reason “Alt-fedi”.

Their definition for “Alt-fedi” is defined on this page too:

used when an instance federates with, associates with, and shares the culture of, instances that don’t moderate (and in many cases, actively support) things like harassment, bigotry, hate speech, trolling, far-right ideologies, and generally abusive behaviour.

What this literally means is that every instance that does not block the same instances that they do is to be blocked as well…

@SuperDicq @istences On a free instance, there are 0 blocks; https://fba.ryona.agency/?reverse=freesoftwareextremist.com

The biggest blocking instances tend to not even publish the blocklist and even go so far to sabotage the connection.

@Suiseiseki @istences I don’t block any instances either on my instance, I only block individual users instead if they are spamming on posting harmful illegal things. But I do think having a list of 10-20 at most is still acceptable and typical (if they are banned for good reasons).

@istences ugh, after seeing tech dot lgbt on their moderated list I had a feeling,... can you (or any reader) recommend an instance for a furry musician/ DJ?

@LunarAkai I don't think there's anything purpose-built for that off the top of my head running Mastodon, but I checked the "Music" section on Join Mastodon out of curiosity, and I know sunny.garden is very furry friendly if not explicitly furry.

I bet you there is another ActivityPub something with better tools for musicians, but I'm much less familiar with the lot of them compared to Mastodon instances.

@istences @LunarAkai They aren't furry-specific but the two DJ/EDM-focused instances I'm aware of are DJs.social and ravenation.club... Ravenation is the bigger and busier instance by far (27.5k accounts vs ~50) so it likely has much better reach, and pledges to abide by the Mastodon Server Covenant too. I'm not familiar with any music/DJ focused, furry-specific instances unfortunately.

@istences @LunarAkai you don't have to join a specialized instance, you can just join a larger one that's well-moderated

@maddiefuzz Yup, that was the de facto start of this whole mess. A ton of good people in that server that now cannot access the MA server while logged in because their first option is the nuclear option.

I admire servers (like my own) that have verbiage that states "assume good intent." I'm not familiar with the actual exchange in the FE server's case, but most defenses had to have been something like "...wait, I don't think that this is what they meant."

Furries, like any other group of real people, can certainly be racist, ableist, and yes, even queerphobic (speaking as someone who grew with the "gay men only" mentality shockingly pervasive in the late 90s and early 2000s). But even in a blatant case, blocking *everyone* by association just makes you a tool. It's their server and they can do whatever they want, but I for one don't accept bad faith discrimination.

@liquidparasyte @istences @maddiefuzz @palladiumasteroid yikes

@istences mastodon art has been a huge problem for years, i wish people would be more aware of it and chose better their instance.

@istences for a moment I saw "MA's sociopathic 'everyone that disagrees with us is racist/ableist/queerphobic" and genuinely thought for a split second that you were talking about the entire state of massachusetts

@istences If you really want user retention, direct your friends to a fedi server you host. There are some places offering half decent VPSes that will handle Pleroma/Akkoma just fine for a long while.

I'd eventually like to direct some more people onto this server if interest in fedi miraculously rises again.

@SuperDicq @Suiseiseki @istences There have been instances being used in whole for spamming & account generation. That is a legitimate use-case for blocking a full instance.