Or, as I keep suggesting, you make the authority figures have as little power as possible, i.e. the only people with authority are mods so they only have control over communities and don’t have the power to prevent tens of thousands of people from communicating with each other.

You can choose the best admin in the world, the admin from another instance has the power to make it so you can’t see what’s on their server just because they don’t like how your admin manages their part of the fediverse.

You realize the way things work currently doesn’t prevent that, right?

As I said from the beginning, front end and back end are separate.

Ok, let me put it another way. Reddit’s content is decentralized already (everything isn’t hosted on a single server, everything is backed up on multiple servers in multiple locations) but all its content is available from a single web page.

What I’m suggesting is that the hosting is “done the same way” just handled by anyone who wants to provide servers instead of dealing with a service like AWS. Now contrary to Reddit, that content is then made publically available so anyone can develop a front end for it. There could be a default option (Lemmy.com or whatever) but it would give users access to the exact same thing as any other website that offers access to the database via a UI. No defederation bullshit, no admins that can decide to wipe out part of the site (everything is backed up, you wipe your server, no one cares, all that content is pulled from another server instead), just a huge decentralized database anyone can access.

That’s the server owner’s job, it doesn’t mean they should also have the authority to decide who the users are federated with.

An instance ban or defederation is a high level decision that has an impact on thousands of users at once, in a single click the admin can decide that tens of thousands of people don’t connect with each others anymore or that a single person doesn’t have access to hundreds of thousands of communities.

Moderators on the other hand have control over a single community, the amount of damage they can do is minimal.

No, but you can delete the illegal content from your server and other server owners can do the same on their side.

The way it works currently is no different for that, the person who controls the server can block IPs if they want.

What I’m saying is that if some servers are ready to host your content then it’s the users’ and moderators’ decision to block it on their side.

Create the community > you’re the mod, if people aren’t happy with your moderation they create their own community

Getting rid of bad actors is the job of the users (from their feed) and the mods (from the communities they moderate), no one should have the authority the admins have.

No, by my logic only users should be able to decide to ban me entirely and only mods should be able to ban me from specific communities, admins shouldn’t exist at all, that’s real decentralization, Lemmy is an half-measure.

And those CSAM attacks weren’t prevented by the way it works at the moment so that point is moot…