Saying distrust is an ad hominem is one of the takes ever, lol.

It is literally ad hominem, that is the definition. We aren’t discussing whether we can trust Meta or not, we’re discussing a specific topic.

By the same logic, blocking or banning a person instead of vetting every post and comment of theirs would also be an ad hominem.

It definitely is, but again, we aren’t discussing a person or an entity, we’re discussing a topic related to that person or entity. This isn’t a discussion on whether Meta should be defederated or not, frankly that’s simple, just join an instance that defederates with Meta or don’t, or build your own! There’s a ton of freedom here.

And I’m not saying ad hominem arguments can’t be used, but when an argument is entirely made up of ad hominem points while discussing a specific topic it isn’t a good argument.

Also, side note, as for trust I definitely don’t think we can trust corporate entities, but I also don’t think we can entirely trust the Fediverse as it exists already. We know there’s been an influx of bot accounts, moderation tools aren’t great yet, and every platform attracts bad actors.

(also, unrelated: you can embed images using the ![](https://image_url) syntax, and you can even add alt text in the brackets to help users with screen readers)

Thanks for the tip! Haven’t been able to get that working well here, I think I was missing the exclamation mark.