What is HO-LI style moderation?

HO-LI stands for "High moderation for outbound messages / Low moderation for inbound messages".

This style of moderation aims for instances to become well-moderated and respected fediverse neighbors, especially among instances that share the same interests, values and audience.

At the same time, HO-LI moderation encourages members to take initiative in blocking or muting remote instances at the user level, instead of necessarily doing it at the instance level.

It should be noted that remote instances with practices or content that is patently dangerous, harmful or illegal will be blocked regardless. Furthermore, we may also impose other limits such as "reject remote media" or "silence" to offer a better experience to our users by curating our public timelines and upholding our responsibility to our neighbors in the fediverse (for example, we may silence remote instances that don't use CW appropriately).

HO-LI style moderation has the following benefits:

1. It ensures that an instance is well moderated and preserves its ability to easily federate and connected with other instances that share its values.
2. It ensures that an instance is not used as a platform to publish content or engage in behavior that is contrary to the values of its owner (ie. it does not force owners to give a platform to content/behaviors they don't like).
3. It encourages users to find a "home instance" that shares their values instead of choosing instances just because they are large of popular.
4. It prevents the unnecessary fragmentation of the fediverse which harms users' ability to communicate and favors a model with large centralized instances.
5. It reduces or even completely eliminates the need for users, such as artists who might risk their livelihood, to sign up predominantly on large "safe" instances.
6. It makes moderation manageable for small instances by allowing them to focus on their local users.
7. It allows instance admins more time to analyze ongoing drama and avoids the need to take a snap decision in the heat of the moment regarding drama over divisive topics (eg. AI art, NFTs, Feral NSFW artwork, murrsuiting...) while users retain the ability to shield themselves from these topics.
8. If all or most instances on the fediverse implemented HO-LI style moderation we would be able to maximize federation while reducing the moderation overhead.

EXAMPLE: While many people despise anything related to NFTs or Cryptocurrencies, we believe this isn't content that should be blocked by instance admins. Overly zealous suspensions can become problematic and, instead, we believe that it makes more sense to encourage users to use their account's mute/block features.

In this way, we hope that packmates.org becomes an instance where you can feel at home and also connected to the larger fediverse.