mastodon.ar.al is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
This is my personal fediverse server.

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Interesting: I just tried following someone on mastodon.ie with an unlocked account and it got turned into a follow request.

Has mastodon.ie silenced me?

If so, I’d like to know why.

CC @mastodonie

PS. This won’t affect you if you’re already following me. It will mean my posts would get hidden from the public timeline and wouldn’t show up in trending posts, etc., on your instance. Hence “silenced.”

@aral this was/is one of the things about social media that we don't have a good or really any solution to yet.

I had to stop myself on twitter from wanting to know why people had blocked me, I think I'm mostly harmless, if a bit sweary.

It would be nice if one could see _why_ a block occurs or has occurred.

But then 🤷‍♂️

@jonoabroad @aral Yeah, imagine the kind of people who very vocally would demand to know why they have been blocked. Nobody wants to be that guy :D

More specifically, for @aral I would normally assume it's just a user that has set "request to follow" in their prefs.

If so, I am sure they have their reasons, and odds are it has nothing to do with you specifically.

@androcat @aral This! I caught myself about to be that guy.

Makes you sit down and have a long hard look at yourself.

Aral Balkan

@jonoabroad @androcat Are either of you vocally opposing the genocide in Gaza on here and have people reporting you to instances to get you silenced/blocked to get you to shut up about it? If not, maybe cut out the “I’m so happy I’m not that guy” crap.

@jonoabroad @androcat I don’t give a shit if any specific account blocks me. While instances doing so for political reasons so their members won’t see certain viewpoints? Yes, I care about that. At the very least, I care that it is publicly-known so people can avoid them if that’s the case.

@aral I block instances for political reasons quite often, but I only have a membership of one. Since I wrote the software I also know which instances block me. And that's ok, because it's just the nature of being in a federated network. I suspect that most of the instances blocking me are doing it because I may occasionally post left/anarcho viewpoints or am critical of despotic/genocidal regimes.

@bob If an instance is going to silence/block someone for their political posts, it should make that information public so people can use it when deciding whether to join that server. For people in , for example, it is very relevant information to know if someone is silenced by mastodon.ie for their posts opposing ’s of the people in , should it turn out to be the case. Assuming that wouldn’t sit well with a lot of Irish folks.

@aral @jonoabroad @androcat I don't know whether they have limited you on this instance, but if they have, I very seriously doubt it's due to opposing the genocide in Gaza. (Most people on here take that stance.) If there is something going on, though, I'd also like to know the reasons why.