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@hyphen TBS is shorthand for The Bad Space, one example of a shared blocklist based on a few servers.

To respond to your central point, I completely disagree because you are missing essential context and we are looking at boundaries and abuse in different ways. When I am talking about the abuse I have experienced, I am speaking of not just singular instances of mistreatment. I am speaking of individual examples of a wider system of abuse known as white supremacy. When someone calls me a nigger, it's not just individual mistreatment that is making me upset. It's the fact that this is part of a pattern which is part of a system, all the violence of which is brought to bear against Black folks.

My instance was created on the fediverse in the larger context of rampant antiblackness that rules this network. Within one or two days of me starting BQL, I had multiple people reach out to me to caution me that not too long ago, another instance that centered Black folks was repeatedly targeted by harassment campaigns until it had to be shut down. (Keep in mind that in turn, antiblackness on the fediverse is shaped by white supremacy writ large).

So, when I made this instance, I was fully aware that antiblackness on and offline has already taken a massive toll on the people who I am trying to create a community space for. Because of that, I made an explicit commitment to actively moderate against antiblackness (in addition to other things) on our About page. That is a boundary I set as an administrator for my instance and by extension for my users, and everyone who signs up understands that and agrees to it when they request an account here. They come here because they know we all experience racist abuse by the white supremacist system and therefore we have a shared value in minimizing that as much as possible in our community space.

My instance’s moderation style is therefore a collectivized boundary set up with my users’ consent in order to reduce as much as possible the amount of white supremacy they experience on the fediverse because we understand the power that whiteness holds. We understand the tremendous, dangerous, and violent accumulation of power that is white supremacy, and further we understand that we need to work together in order to redress that imbalance of power.

Shared blocklists are just another layer of collectivization. There is so much white supremacy and fascism present on this network that almost no Black users last long in this environment. Almost no Black instances have lasted long here either. Because I imported a shared blocklist when I started this instance, the amount of racist abuse I would have had to experience personally would have driven me off too, due to the context of the systemic abuse I live under daily. Because I found a group of instance administrators who shared my antiracist values and boundaries and were willing to stick their necks out and share the boundaries they had previously set in the form of blocklists, I was relatively protected. So were my users.

And so we're still here. I can't tell you how many times some Nazi instance will get posted to fediblock complete with receipts of systemic abuse and I'll check and we have had them defederated from the beginning of the server. Because of blocklists.

It's a lot of people out here who claim to be principled because they oppose any kind of centralization/collectivization of moderation/boundary setting due to an ,"unfair accumulation of power". None of these people is ever as concerned about the unfair/violent accumulation of power that is white supremacy or the abuse that Black users experience on and offline as they are about being defederated by someone. It's the same thing with cases of sexual misconduct, a majority of people are more concerned about the rights of the person causing the harm than they are about the person who was harmed. It's the same dynamic. And yes, it is abusive. Systemically abusive.

Hence why I say I don't want to hear it.

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