@csilverman @abackstrom to be absolutely explicit, I think any instance admin should be able to block whatever other instances they want – but they should also be totally transparent about it with new users, so that people know what they're signing up for

@sonya @abackstrom Oy—sounds like a mess. I'll be honest, shitposter and freezepeach do not sound like sources of high-quality people, but blocking communities out of personal spite is not cool at all.

Obviously admins who want to play God will do whatever they like, and their communities will suffer for it. I think the benefit of a clearly stated CoC, though, would be that you can't just ban people you dislike—there's an expectation that you follow your own rules.

@csilverman it depends on your taste — I would be disappointed to miss out on posts like this :) https://shitposter.club/notice/2301547

@sonya ...hahaha what?

(Or maybe this is essentially performance art for the sake of art, and I shouldn't even be attempting to make sense of something on a site called "Shitposter Club".)

@csilverman that user has a Markov bot hooked up to their account, so it's like half auto-generated nonsense and half human-written posts

I love it

@sonya That's hilarious. I love these things.

I'm trying to avoid any mention of Trump these days, but someone did a Trumpbot—powered, apparently, by a neural network—and the results are fascinating; basically what Trump would say if he was a lot more honest/self-aware:

http://bit.ly/2oeWoy4

http://bit.ly/2oOOHwl

http://bit.ly/2oOVRAC

http://bit.ly/2p7aGOh

Honestly, I'm not fully convinced these aren't written by a person. Or maybe I just don't want to admit AI's gotten that smart.

@csilverman it could be that a person curates the Markov output and only posts the best tidbits

I recommend playing around with https://ermarian.net/services/converters/markov/words

it's really fun! song lyrics, article snippets, whatever

@sonya @csilverman @abackstrom

Agree. A simple 'does not federate with' or 'only federates with' (like awoo.space states) on the about would be fine.

What about existing users though? I don't want to have to abandon my account & all its history if, in the future, the admin of my server has a falling out with the admin of another server? (Not that I think that's likely with tchncs.de but if I'd picked another server I might not have been so lucky).

@frankiesaxx @csilverman @abackstrom yeah, I think that's a tough one. multiple admins of new instances have told me "I don't block any other instances right now, but I reserve the right to decide to" — being able to port your identity and bring your social network with you is *the* key missing feature

@sonya @csilverman @abackstrom Agree. I don't think it's unsolveable but it's probably not a priority at this moment. I imagine back end stuff, load management and scalability and other stuff is probably taking precedence.

I think you can export and load follows and blocks at least, but yeah, I'd ultimately like to see the ability to port an entire account history, including toots, boosts, stars etc.

@bob for me it's the "without telling their users" bit that makes it unethical

I do think in general that it's better to empower individuals to tailor their experience