EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.
First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.
Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.
Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.
Now on to the meat:
I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn't follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.
When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn't take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.
It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.
Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don't fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn't seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.
Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?
Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.
tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?
federating with lemmygrad means opening your communities up to the same behaviour displayed there, such as active calls for political violence, suggesting users kill themselves, ableist slurs etc
having personal convictions against this sort of behaviour seems entirely reasonable
So then block people instead of trying to shovel your personal feed curation onto everyone
alternatively, dont go on an explicitly curated instance
That would be perfectly reasonable. It might also be perfectly reasonable if @TheDude's grandmother was killed by communists. It might also be perfectly reasonable that he and the main admin at lemmygrad.ml have known and disliked each other for years.
My concern is that I don't know which one of those things that it is or if it is none of them. Before I settle down here, I would like to have a better idea of what here is.
Let me pill out an analogy:
Right now, I am sitting in a comfortable lounge with pretty chill people and all along one wall are a bunch of doors with windows in them, but for some reason two of the doors are locked and have their windows covered. One has a little note near it that says, "beware pedos beyond this door" which is all I want to know. The other door has a note that says, "beware politics beyond this door" which leaves me with a couple curiosities. After asking around all I hear is that it goes against the hosts personal convictions. Is it really so wrong to go ask the host what is going on?
I am not arguing the door should be unlocked or telling anyone that they are wrong. I am just asking what are the odds that he is going to lock more doors, and if so, what kind of doors should I expect to get locked in the future? Oh and as a side note if he is interested in engaging my personal curiosity, "what made this particular political door so bad in his eyes?"
thats fair
Sounds perfectly normal. :)