I’m not exactly surprised to see Roy Schestowitz taking this position. However, I think he’s making the classic mistake of assuming that centrally-issued censorship by an institution is the exact same thing as a bunch of people swinging ban hammers because they don’t like what somebody has to say.

An important component of Freedom of Speech (by extension, Freedom of Association) is the freedom of the individual to decide whether they have to listen (or in fact, associate with a person at all). I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes various parts of the fediverse can get a bit ban-happy…sometimes that sets up a toxic dynamic where the people making those kinds of announcements are at best loosely informed on what they’re spreading around. But, that’s also nothing new when it comes to online communities.

If you’re going to act like a repulsive human being, I reserve the right to cut you out of my feeds so that I don’t have to deal with you. In a sense, that puts power directly into the hands of the user.