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@rosey @thor So here's the thing I've learned from experience:

It's not just bad fedi admins who do this, it's much of the modern internet, and it's from two things. The first is that big tech services, in particular Shitcord/Telegram enable this sort of underhanded behavior. When you were kicked from a Skype group or IRC chat, the client would keep the chat open on your screen and usually there'd be a ban reason, so you'd know what you did wrong or what the admins think you did wrong.

Discord/Telegram/similar on the other hand are designed for manipulative people. You can literally ban people from chats, that will disappear from their screen. They will not see what their perceived crime is, and they can even lie to your face that the server was closed or something like one former friend did. Others will just give you vague ass reasons for banning you. Telegram takes it a step further by letting you delete messages from other people in private chats and letting you one click wipe chats and while it's easy to see their rationale for it (privacy), you can see how this can be abused by some dude lying to your face about what you saw with your own two eyes.

Case in point, I've been the target of malicious behavior by so called friends who have thrown me under the bus and spread shit about me, so I know exactly the kinds of people who love this feature. I still remember joining a Discord call, leaving it, nobody said anything about me there, and then they just banned me from the chat. The same person (who I was trying to be in the group of) who had invited me to his cool kids club group months ago then said "nah you wouldn't want to be in there anyway" when I asked him for another invite and gave me an extremely vague reason for being banned.

A few months later he was accusing me of slandering him because of something I mentioned in a chat he wasn't even in (one of his catty drama whoring simps was) and a few months after that he was writing fanfiction about how I'm bullyiciding trans people or some shit.

Now imagine if you will, that person decides to be their own social media network admin, with the ban behaviors from a Discord server, treating you like they treat their own friends (like dogshit). You find yourself getting banned or defederated for no reason, or they'll be really evil and say you host loli or worse cheese pizza. Other instances will just add you to the list and not question shit because why would they want cheese pizza on their computer checking to see if the accusations are real. Or fuck it, they'll just grab a blocklist. Nevermind the fact that Twitter has dealt with the same exact problem, it's so much more obvious on the fediverse because now you can see that the person who is putting on the facade of being accepting and open is lying and full of shit.

This also leads to the problem where people will join instances based on their political alignment, be unable to follow a friend on another instance who is apolitical, and end up going back to Twitter. This is a very real issue that leads to people moving to the next big service, be it BlueSky, Threads, Cohost, or even Nostr (and of course fragmented out over 5 or 6 services). It also highlights the biggest issue with the fedi; the 2000s/early 2010s internet is gone, everyone is divided as shit, and now that the illusion of being on the same site has worn off it is extremely obvious now.

And this goes back to the second reason, which is the people who inhabit the fedi. Thanks to Eugen marketing the fedi as for Twitter's audience (but without the bad people), the fedi is now suffering from their problems. I mean, what do you expect when you invite people who will harass anyone for minuscule reasons (under the guise of "do better") to the fedi? It's even caused chaos in development too as the idea guys have fought Eugen.

Tumblr users were the absolute shitstain of the internet bar none for years, and when the Tumblr porn ban died they filtered out to Twitter and other sites to shit them up. Eugen trying to court the worst of Twitter/Tumblr is predictable as fuck. It's why the Mastodon side has people who walk around screaming at you for alt-text or whatever the current craze of the month is and about some unwritten community customs, because guess what Twitter and Tumblr had those people too. They just moved onto the fedi now.

And these people really, really do not want to face consequences for their behavior online. I'm not talking IRL or anything edgy here (get your mind out of the gutter), just having to deal with e-mails from people asking why you blocked them. So the Mastodon and 🏳️⚧️ side goes as far as possible to hide it, like with Ackoma breaking blockbots and Mastodon letting you hide blocked instances. They don't care who this affects, they're more worried about admins who block people receiving blowback than people having a right to know.

Essentially, the reason the fedi on this side thrives in spite of this is because people use it to shitpost and not try to network and get social media numbers. Anyone trying to get maximum numbers ends up going to Bluesky/Threads to try their luck.
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