Notices by ​:hyperfastparrot:​ nekobit ​:cat_sui_2:​ (neko@rdrama.cc), page 11

@Weeble The idea of a defed is that they won’t really get stuff from the defedded instance, and said instance won’t “follow” your defedded instance, but it doesn’t really “stop interaction”. It’s saying Host A doesn’t want to see Host B at all nor follow it, but it won’t cuck Host B in attempts to see it’s content just to be an asshole.

It makes federation harder in theory and even breaks it. Say, Host B simply wants to say their opinion on what Host A said without Host A having a single clue of what was said. This means Host C or Host D or Host E can pitch in to “your” reply, even if Host A is unaware of what’s happening.

It doesn’t stop “bullying” either, anyone can screenshot Host A’s post. Of course, I can still view the replied status from Host C or even Host A directly (meaning, the content is public), it just introduces this little gap in federation.

Yes, it is technically a “real block”, but a real block is against the idea of federation. All attempts to delete old posts on the Fediverse are theoretically impossible since instances can very simply reject status deletes. Federation is censorship resistant, if something gets censored or deleted, it’s never truly gone.

To add, you might even ask “why do we have deletion requests in the first place if Fedi is about anti-censorship?”. As always, they can be ignored, but most instances accept rejects because rejects can be used in good faith to ban spam accounts, make post edits, etc.

Sorry for the words words words :marseywords: post. At the end of the day it’s completely up to the instance and what they want to do, but it always leads me to ask why they are on the Fediverse to begin with.