I believe the admin has sufficient skills to determine if any instances listed in tier-0 are consumed by users of theatl.social. I trust they’re making sounds calls what to include from the list and what to not include. That said, an auto-update could be deployed with some automated list scrubbing (i.e.: scan the list for changes, check if newly added instances are consumed, post a message to theatl.social clearly calling out changes or calls for review). But until then, a manual periodic review is appreciated.
I feel the general Mastodon community well established has a consistent baseline of acceptable use/content with guardrails requiring content warnings (CW) and proper flagging of material not suitable for general audiences. That said, there’s a time, place, and instance that can provide people with outlets to consume and share non-“G-Rated” (NSFW) content and other content not generally accepted in polite company. TheATL.social is managed in such a way to avoid publishing NSFW content- and that’s fine. My litmus test before posting on theatl.social: “would I feel okay if my mom saw this post?” If not, rethink the content or post to a more appropriate instance.
However…I want to call out one sentence that made me bristle a bit:
I’d support blocking brighton.social purely to protect theATL users from wandering into a conversation prompted by their nonsense…
Assuming the content/instance in question doesn’t violate established community standards or violate terms of use, I would not appreciate the admin (or anyone) doing something to “protect” me from accidental conversation wandering. I’m fully functional adult who can choose what to read, what to “believe”, and what to reject. Same goes for the concept of blocking mainstream news orgs and other entities with knee jerk reactions, such as preemptively blocking threads.net. Why actively close yourself off from the world around you? Echo chambers can be quite toxic and lead to uninformed world views. Why block something without a clear observation of impact? If I don’t want to see it, I can simply block from my account.
To round out the public park analogy- I’ve wandered through many public parks while people hand out flyers, yell from megaphones, and try to recruit for their cults. I just walk by and ignore them. Just as I do when I see something in social media I don’t want to engage with. I don’t need a nanny to “protect” me. As a gay man, I’ve heard plenty of mainstream news orgs propagate ideas I find personally offensive; I take the content for what it is and move on or engage in healthy public debates. By blocking the org, I’d loose context around the discussion, the people engaging in the discussion, and in impact of the topics. I’d rather be informed of the unsavory things than to be blindsided because someone put my head in the sand.
I hope it’s a nice addition to the neighborhood! The menu looks quite good! We really need some more restaurants in the area.