this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
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Technology
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It's really not difficult to delete a unwanted community. The cost benefit analysis I think still leans towards open for all, as a breakaway success story makes up for it.
It's not just the difficulty, it's that the fediverse runs on reputation.
If you get a reputation for being an instance that has offensive/illegal content, you'll get defederated and your users will get a materially worse experience than the rest of the instances that are federating with each other - and it really only takes one or two things to get that reputation.
sh.itjust.works is a prime example: it didn't take an awful lot to get them down the defederation road, and I suspect most admins would want to maintain their reputation and an easy way to do it (until we get like... moderation tools) is to just gatekeep what communities show up on your instance.
Actually that problem is usually registered users going into established communities of otherwise instances and trolling, not new communities pooping up that nobody knows about.
Except it's still reputational: if I see junk from an instance that has something like a /c/fatpeoplehate, I'm just going to block them and move on because it all paints a picture of what those admins are likely to allow, and that it's probably not worth engaging with them to fix their problems.
You get a very limited number of chances before people decide your little piece of the fediverse is rotten and they don't want anything to do with it.