“@adamdavidson’s decision not to take action on anti-trans content isn’t inspiring confidence and I totally understand why other places are doing instance-level blocking,” she wrote on journa.host. (Instance-level blocking refers to the ability, on Mastodon, for one server to block content from another.)
Zach Everson, one of the journa.host administrators, responded that he agreed with Ms. Molloy, then added, “Banning someone for posting a link to an NYT article sets a precedent that we really need to work through.”
On Saturday, journa.host suspended Mr. Pesca, who was informed via a text message from Mr. Davidson, a longtime friend. (The two are currently writing an exchange of letters hosted on Substack, about the nature of cancel culture.) According to Mr. Pesca, Mr. Davidson told him he had been suspended for referring to Ms. Molloy as an “activist,” which was dismissive. The suspension “seemed arbitrary and ad hoc,” Mr. Pesca said in an interview; Ms. Molloy didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.
“We want to be a place for passionate engaged discussion,” said Mr. Davidson, who recused himself from the decision because of his relationship with Mr. Pesca. “But we don’t want to be a place where people insult each other.”
Also on Saturday, Ms. Molloy appeared on a different Mastodon server, and announced that she, too, had been suspended from journa.host for her posts.
“Did it break their rules over there? Yes, so they were certainly in their rights to suspend me from there,” she wrote. And then, in a subsequent post she wrote, “I mostly just want to be left alone.” (Later, Ms. Molloy posted an apology to Mr. Pesca.)