Thanks for your answer.

I understand, I assume it was during all that backlash against Lemmy and the devs, when even r/LemmyMigration mods created r/KbinMigration and closed that one due to the devs political affiliation and moderation policy.

Lemmygrad doesn't seem to be a very friendly instance unless you have those specific political loyalties, and it seems self-isolating as well to an extent, I just want to foster a culture of not letting anyone control what you see or what you can say, and also a culture of accountability and feedback. I just think thats what makes communities alive and good.

I understand (and it's something kind of ingrained in the Lemmy logic itself) this idea that you have to just join an instance taking into account things like politics. But I like the idea of having more neutral spaces, for example if you see why some users like your instance, they perceive it as an "apolitical", "chill" place with a good technical leadership.

As you say it's a personal conviction, maybe you thought your own instance should reflect your values and not federate with those that you don't like. But right now, don't you think that essentially mean limiting the access to the information? It's not "big deal", yes, they can create another account, but why? Why is it so needed?

I think you could perfectly run the instance and let everybody block what they don't want to see, and moderate on individual basis until circumstances require otherwise.

Honestly, owning up to it being a selfish decision deserves some respect. I'm a big proponent of free expression and avoiding censorship, but I took a gander at the kinda stuff they got over there and...

It's not even the views they hold that's my main problem. It's really that they're just so needlessly rude and aggressive, and as you pointed out, they seem to be a lot more censorship happy than here anyway. I would be more sympathetic to them if they were less censorship happy themselves, and if they were less mean.

I do want to stress that I hope you keep the number of blocked instances to a minimum, since I feel that it would be better if the Lemmy software had better tools for users to control what they block for themselves better, and also maybe just having "default" blocklists that users can disable, to keep the new-user experience nice, but yeah for that particular instance, I can't be too mad about it.

Yes I surely know it's not "a big deal" and I already said I will leave on my post.

But I won't be silent about it. This is about the culture of the platform itself.

This instance has been receiving a lot of newcomers like me, and to me this is not OK. It is not OK to let the admins decide the content you'll receive.

If instances keep defederating from each other, you're fostering a culture of censorship and isolation where admins decide over users.

Enjoy your echo chamber / tyranny as any other subreddit where mods did what they wanted with you.

Culture is more important than software.

So tldr "stfu and gtfo"? I can get outta here and, been saying it from the beginning, I probably will, but I won't be silent about it.

I think part of the reaction your getting has been your attitude.

You linked a great example, they wanted to know information on why things where happening and asked about it in a neutral way.

Nobody is censoring you, you are free to view the content you want to.

What about what the admin wants to see? Everyone do be like it's their right to choose but they choose by being here. The admin chooses what he likes, people choose whether they like what the admin likes or not. If they don't, they either don't join or they leave. If they do, they join and stay. Simple as that. I don't see why people should try and force their ideas onto some dude who prolly just doesn't want random genocide denial loonies filling the comment sections with hateful vitriol about why certain parts of the population should die.

Yes and I value transparency and I think a good mod/admin gathers feedback from the community before and after making important decisions that might be perceived as censorship.