These are all cosequences of a federated approach.
Also we absolutely need moderation tools in the internet. There are way too many jerks out there. Fortunately people like to stick together with like-minded people and form groups. Especially after they’ve been shouted at, banned, etc. the jerks will find their own instance and we can cut contact to all jerks at once.
I like defederation for that. However, it is the deliberate act of destroying the one thing you’ve invented the fediverse to do: to ‘federate’ with other instances. If you do that too often, you kill the idea and the spirit of the fediverse. Probably followed by killing your platform, community and the mood of everyone involved.
We need nice people. Good people pushing the buttons in the backend. Diversity. And a healty way to communicate and moderate.
One thing is: If i run an instance of something like lemmy: It’s my decision what to do with it. I bought the server. I pay the electricity and internet bill. I face the consequences and get nasty mail by the police if someone does something illegal with it. And maybe i invited my friends to join. It’s the same like inviting them to my barbecue party. I don’t want them to be shouted at by some right-wing nuts, there.
There is one simple consequence that is important to know for the user: Chose the right instance for you! Diversity is a great thing. And we all know it’s too difficult for a new user to also know which instance to join. But it’s absolutely necessary to put some effort in. You need an instance that federates with like-minded people and which owners are aligned to your own morale and ethics. You can’t join something else and the complain. That way, you’ll probably be lost for the fediverse, after too many negative impressions.
For what it’s worth… I think there are useful AI tools. For example the offline translation feature that doesn’t send your content to google is something they recently introduced. I’d also like to see someone compete with a decent and open text-to-speech solution that gets wide adoption… And the idea of flagging fake reviews doesn’t sound too bad (I haven’t tried it.) I mean people are complaining about SEO making google unusable and fake news only ever getting more. I can see some benefit there - if done right.
But we definitely don’t need a Clippy 2.0 or another smart assistant. And I don’t think everything has to be embedded in a browser and make it yet more complicated and bigger, or implemented in the operating system. An add-on will probably do.
(Edit: And I sometimes don’t understand Mozilla. Why not focus on their core product and make that exceptionally great? If they’re already struggling… What’s with all these side-projects and dabbling in AI anyways?)