Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can't arrest you for what you say. It doesn't mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it. The 1st Amendment doesn't shield you from criticism or consequences. If you're yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren't being violated. It's just that the people listening think you're an asshole, And they're showing you the door. https://xkcd.com/1357/

Relatedly, the people who are the most upset about censorship when no one listens to them never remember the other right that goes along with free speech: Freedom of Association. That means that you can mutually choose to listen, platform support OR NOT with whomever you wish.

People not wanting to engage with other people is not censorship. Nobody is entitled to someone else's attention.

lolno

You can say whatever the fuck you want, but other people aren't obliged to listen to it or pass it on.

Talk to the hand.

The word "censorship" has lost all meaning

A server operator who chooses to federate or not federate another server is well within their rights to do so. Their server, their rules. If you don't like it just browse the defederated server yourself, no one is stopping you.

It's like visiting someone's house and complaining they don't have organic coffee. If they don't have organic coffee they aren't stopping you from getting organic coffee, they just choose not to have it.

After looking through the comments here, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just don't understand what you're saying, because you seem to be under the impression that "defederating" means that noone that isn't subscribed to the defederating instance will have access to the content anymore. (e.g. Instance A cuts ties with Instance B and C so people with accounts on Instance B and C can no longer read what is published on Instance A)

This is not how it works.

You can browse all instances without even having an account on any of them so absolutely noone loses access to anything. The only thing you temporarily(!) lose is the ability to WRITE anything on the defederated instance, but you can just make an account there anytime you want.

So when Instance A cuts ties with Instance B and C, people with accounts on A can no longer WRITE anything in communities on B and C, but everyone can still READ everything, and if you happen to have an account on Instance B and want to write something on Instance A, you can just create an account there.

Spending ten seconds on creating an account is not censorship.

"Boo hoo, people aren't being forced to put up with my stupid shit, waah!"

Not really. These aren't monetized sites, but just individuals inviting guests to use their instance over self hosting their own, and there's other instances people can move to.

Each instance is better seen as individual forums than a reddit type centralized site. Some forums allows cross account logins, and some you have to create another account. And defederation doesn't cause that instance to cease to exist like banning a community or subreddit does.

Yes and no. The people still have the voice, you're not preventing them from talking to other people, you're just preventing them from accessing your instance.

Centralized websites like Facebook, Twitter, whatever. That would be censorship if they remove somebody's voice.

Decentralized instances, are closer to private communities. They're focused, and they create curated viewpoints.

If the federated universe gets dominated by one or two powerful instances, then yes it would be censorship, but if people are using it at a decentralized fashion: it's just communities expressing preferences.

Yes, it is, but I'm not a Libertarian - some censorship is good. Fascists, trolls, and child pornographers deserve to be censored.

Get fucked.

It's our right to live in a safe environment without Nazi fucks.

You have an entitlement to speech, you're not required to be heard or listened to by me.

Get over yourself.

I would say that for an action to be considered censorship in the strictest sense, it would need to be the suppression of information as imposed and enforced by a monopolistic authority.

If the State were to declare a book banned, that would be censorship because the State establishes itself as the single totalising authority over the people in the territory it governs. Should you contravene that ruling and possess the material in question, you're opening yourself up to the threat of violence until you start respecting it. You're not able to opt-out, the single authority imposes itself and its ruling on you.

Meanwhile, on federated social media there are many concurrently operating instances with different rulesets and federations. If the instance you're part of decides to defederate with another, then you can move to another instance which continues to federate with the defederated instance in question if you're unhappy with the decision. You're able to opt-out of that ruling without consequence.

Plus, even if you decide not to move instance, the content hosted by the defederated instance will still be available through the instance itself.

Defederation doesn't meaningfully suppress information, whereas censorship does.

I've been thinking about this at depth. I think the public square, as we would consider the free speech zone in real life, is the closest analog to the activity pub feed itself.

As long as people have access to the activity pub protocol, they have free speech. The instances choosing to subscribe or not subscribe to that activity feed is not censorship

So if somebody received a court order saying they could no longer use activity pub, that's clearly censorship.

In many cases it is simply censorship.