Hi theATL.social (Mastodon) and yall.theATL.social (Lemmy) friends. Your friendly admin, @michael, here.
Currently, theATL.social blocks two domains from federation but does not utilize any block lists. the Lemmy yall.theATL.social does not block any domains.
My general admin philosophy is to let users decide what content they want to see, or not see. However, the Mastodon UI can make the adding/removing of domain block lists a bit tedious. (There are some tech/UI-related options to make this easier.)
On the other hand, I am personally not a free speech absolutist, and there are limits to what content could/should be relayed through theATL.social's servers.
For example, illegal content, instances dedicated solely to hate speech/harassment, etc. To that end, the Oliphant Tier 0 block list offers a "floor" to remove literally the worst instances operating on the Fediverse: https://codeberg.org/oliphant/blocklists/src/branch/main/blocklists
As your admin, I don't want to make any unilateral decisions - rather, I'd prefer a user/stakeholder conversation, with as many Q&As as helpful.
With that intro, let me know your thoughts:
Thank you all for your comments. I will be responding to each point in the next day or so. However, I do see from the comments that there is an immediate need to implement the Tier 0 Oliphant block list, which has now occured.
Information on this block is available here: https://yall.theatl.social/post/55833
Note that there were some domains for which theATL.social users currently engage. I am giving a 2-week grace period for anyone who wants to keep those domains, otherwise the remaining domains will be blocked after that point.
Thank you all for your comments and contributions to making this instance a good place to be.