Part of this is that I’m new, a Reddit refugee, and still learning my way around.
Part of it was prompted by Beehaw’s choice to defederate with lemmy.world & other instances - there’s a clear disagreement on how to keep difficult people from dropping turds in the punch bowl.
And part of it is from watching the enshittification of Reddit.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to set up a nonprofit organization for the purpose of promoting independent distributed social media. Conceivably, it could fundraise to help keep servers alive, have some people promoting the Fediverse elsewhere on the Internet, lobby and keep lawyers handy to keep government from squelching free speech. Something along the lines of EFF or FSF.
There could be a mutual agreement among members on ground rules for users (for example, requiring all member instances to ban/block/delete hate speech). Or it can operate services like anti-spam/anti-hate blocklists so mods have better tools to keep the riffraff out. And it can serve as a venue to resolve disputes in a civil way.
And I say it needs to be a nonprofit so it’s enshittification resistant. For-profit companies are required by law to maximize profit for owners/shareholders, which makes enshittification inevitable. A nonprofit’s mission in life is to perform beneficial things for the community, be it stopping teen suicide, running an orchestra, or promoting independent social media.
Just my random brainfart, I’m sure half of this has already been done.
I think we just post from the instance we agree the most with and wait for the other ones to eventually look like dumpster fires because of poor moderation.
I believe generally sane people will flock to the same instances and everyone will be happier wherever they fall.
For the violence/harm issue, I don’t think there’s a plausible solution. It will happen either here, or discord, or telegram, or closed forum, Facebook group, etc, and people will find their ways. It’s up to state authorities to monitor and work with moderators and infrastructure providers to track criminals down, and gather intelligence over harmful acts.
But, again, sane communities will remain sane, just like closed forums stay generally sane, for the people they gather, and the moderation’s decisions.