2025-04-29
Fosstodon, a Mastodon instance on the Fediverse known for its focus on FOSS, recently came under fire for having a moderator with fascist and Nazi views. When confronted with this fact, one of the admins reacted quite poorly. They did not condemn the moderator's views, but only emphasized that they were happy with the work the moderator did. This was a grave misstep.
However, what the admin did was completely in line with Fosstodon's Code of Conduct at the time, particularly this line: "There are many important, controversial and political issues; and advocating for what you believe is important. However, Fosstodon is not the place for that advocacy. Even correct views can violate our CoC." This leaves room for interpreting that this is true for wrong views, as well: that even "wrong" (whatever you may believe "wrong" means) views can be well within the CoC. In better words, it points to Fosstodon taking a neutral stance on politics, by simply not tolerating it's presence at all. As long as you behave or do good work, your politics doesn't matter.
A lot of what I just said is just my interpretation. It is not clear why Fosstodon put this in their CoC. You could argue that they just don't want to moderate politics (just like how, for a very long time, Fosstodon did not want to moderate non-English posts). But I think that explanation reeks of privilege. There are people whose lives are greatly impacted by politics, and simply avoiding the topic is a non-negotiable. Of course, people who object to this CoC are well within their rights to not join Fosstodon in the first place. Just like how other Fediverse admins are also free to de-federate from Fosstodon because of their CoC.
That's why, when choosing instance, I think it is best not to just simply look at the conduct that an instance enforces. Values are important too. Sometimes you can suss out an instance's values from the CoC, but it's better if the values are made explicit. Some people may complain that such a list could end up looking like "DNI (do not interact) lists," but I think it's better to make things up front and clear. It also acts as a contract for the instance itself. That the instance will uphold those values and be held accountable for them.
I'm thinking of writing my own code of values for myself, as a person that people interact with, and rewrite the code of conduct of one of the Fediverse instances that I run. I currently don't make it clear what I stand for and what I don't tolerate, and I think that should change.