The way it works now, is that marky's vigilante mob adds whoever they dislike to their blacklist.

And as much as they like to pretend it's not "arbitrary" it absolutely is "arbitrary".

Once you're on marky's blacklist, everyone everywhere sees a red "(1)" next to your name.

Every post, every comment, even on your profile page, you get a scarlet letter 100% of the time.

Marky even had a proposal to create a cross-platform standard so all front-ends could use one set of blacklists.

PURE CENTRALIZATION OF POWER (CENSORSHIP).

And if they really don't like you, they can add you to a blacklist that makes all your posts and comments undetectable to other users (Hive account@joe.public). And there's nothing you can do about it, except beg marky and the gang for mercy.

The VOLUNTARY blacklist idea would work like the NSFW settings on each individual account.

It's also like the "safe-search" default settings you get on a lot of websites.

If you like marky's vigilante view and you think that everyone on their list is "evil", then you're perfectly free to subscribe to marky's list.

Then you will only see posts and comments that marky approves of.

However, I for one will be among the first to OPT OUT.

And if I happen to see something so horrifying that I can't risk ever seeing it again, I'll add it to my own blacklist, but that won't stop EVERYONE ELSE from seeing the horrifying (low-effort) content (unless they CHOOSE to adopt my blacklist).

Each person should be able to choose for themself what they want or don't want to see.

Modifying EVERYONE'S ability to see specific content means you are acting as an EDITOR (CENSOR) which violates Section 230. LINK