I have not seen it yet, though I have no doubt that it exists.
I believe that in real life as in the fediverse, hate speech and bigotry of all kinds needs to be very firmly shot down. Immediately downvote and block that shit. It has no place here, or anywhere.
That being said, debating or even engaging with these pricks is worse than pointless because you’ll never change their minds and will only give them a platform.
To change someone's mind, the person needs to respect you. Bigotry largely comes from a place of disrespect, so the targets of bigotry cannot change that person's mind.
Now, when my mom was starting down a pretty homophobic path, I had the opportunity to talk to her, to explain that her misconceptions weren't what most gay people were like. Because she respected me more than she respected internet strangers, I was able to change her mind.
But to strangers, no matter how much I type, or how convincing I am, I'm never going to convince someone who's racist or homophobic to stop being that way. They simply do not respect me enough to believe what I say, to trust me over their own friends, family or news sources. I don't have the time to build the trust and rapport with someone to be able to change their mind, so the best thing to do is just minimize the trouble they can cause me by blocking them.
Yeah, and then once they are banned from the public places they find the hell holes with the other racists and form groups that dress as nazis and march on washington. We literally drive them into echo chambers where people will agree with them, whereas we should be heckling them and showing them that the general public at large disagrees with them. It's impossible to show that your community is the general public when you ban people right away. Then they think they aren't allowed to be there and it's not because they're wrong, it's because you're woke or whatever. You can't concentrate the evil, you have to dilute it.
The problem with this assessment is that we've tried the approach of reasoning with people like this and all it does is allow them to proselytise. They don't want a polite debate, they want a pulpit.
A neo-Nazi who's stuffed in a box talking to other neo-Nazis is a neo-Nazi who's not infesting some other place trying to spread shit about "race realism". They'll find it a lot harder to "march on Washington" when it's just a couple hundred Nazis and not a couple hundred Nazis plus thousands of others they've radicalised.
Sunlight's a shitty disinfectant. I prefer bleach.
No, you don't argue with them. You berate them. You harass them. Treat them with their own medicine. They aren't intelligent enough to get got with knowledge. That's why it hasn't worked. You've tried to outsmart people without brains.
Racist is racist. Fuck them. I have no interest in appeasing these people, and even if I did, it wouldn’t calm them down or make their hatred tolerable. Sexists, racists, homophobes and the lot should be shunned without compromise. As the saying somewhat goes, there should be no tolerance for intolerance.
Only caveat I'd add is to differentiate between A racist/homophobe/misogynist/whatever, and someone who just expressed an ignorant viewpoint. Whether or not there's actual malicious thinking behind things is important in figuring out if you can reason with someone or not.
Quickest example I can give off the top of my head: I'm gay, and one of my best friends is a straight man who, when I met him, had some reasonably-significant issues with his own masculinity, probably stemming from being short and slim and the resulting treatment he'd often get from both women and other men (which also lessened as we got older and out of the early 20s). That occasionally extended to things like worrying that other people would perceive him as gay because of hanging out with a bunch of LGBTQ+ people and women from work, or his slightly defensive reaction when I told him he looked good one day where he had a particularly nice outfit on and had styled his hair well, as if I'd propositioned him. Both things are a little insulting, but he also was never one of the types who views us as basically child-molesting mentally-ill deviants who don't deserve equal rights.
We got closer, enough that he was willing to open up on the subjects, and I was able to explain how that kind of thing looked from my perspective and, in turn, kinda figured out where it was coming from on his end, but it was always from a place where he just didn't understand why what he was saying or doing was wrong or hurtful, not because he intended to cause hurt. And he's significantly better about that sort of thing now in general, because it made him do some introspection, and he got better at doing that for other things as well. And in all fairness, I learned a bit, too; I knew short guys often got made fun of for it, but being average size myself it wasn't something I really had to deal with and I didn't understand just how pervasive and wearing it is, so now I better understand how he might have gotten there in the first place.
I wholeheartedly agree, and it was the use of the word “fool” that was my only minor problem with the article, which is also what I expressed in the thread by @Kupo_Knight, to whom I’m grateful for posting the article in the first place.
As for your experience with your friend, that’s a touching story and I think you’re both lucky to share such close bonds of friendship. You handled it perfectly. Congrats.
Yes, it's really unfortunate when I see people of a given oppressed group start attacking an ally simply because the person hasn't kept up to date on the latest preferred words. I know there is an angry subsegment of people that feel that everyone should spend all their time keeping completely up-to-date on the latest terminology, but it's a really unrealistic and damaging expectation.
There are often people who want to do the right thing and are simply out of date, or not well enough informed. These sorts of people can and should be educated as they generally want to help. When they get canceled for minor transgressions it's not constructive.
The internet has a big problem with people forgetting to read things with nuance, which leads to the behaviour you described. In the past decade, social media has convinced millions of people that all-or-nothing thinking is acceptable (because it causes conflict, and conflict is cash).
Tolerance is a peace treaty between society's sub-groups. When one group breaks that treaty it's moral and necessary to respond in kind and not tolerate them.
If a country rolls tanks into your country it's not immoral to respond in kind to defend yourself. Same idea applies to intolerance.
Oh I'm not saying about being offended by everything. There's a difference between disagreeing with someone's PoV, or even them saying something disagreeable without malice, vs. Someone being a plain old hateful bigot.
Like my Mum will say things that aren't necessarily PC, but I know she doesn't mean anything hateful by it. I wouldn't even think of reporting anything of that nature.
But someone disseminating hateful ideologies or being bigoted towards other people, then you need to shut that down.
this honestly. There's a huge difference between "waaah this person disagreed with me!!" and someone actually being fucking rude and hateful. People who are progressive in their politics tend to conflate them for whatever reason.
Like, yeah, no one likes when someone is going around shouting slurs at people and generally just saying blatantly hateful shit (death threats, slurs, etc style content). But so many people end up crying that "oh you're pro-life therefore you're a sexist and misogynist and pushing hate speech you bigot!" like wtf?
I get this a lot as someone who is transsexual. I'll merely talk about my transsexualism, explain the science and biology behind my condition, and then suddenly I'm a "hateful transphobic bigot" because I had the audacity to agree with the scientific literature rather than some random person's political beliefs. Like no, I'm not being hateful towards you simply by talking about my medical condition and the science around that. What's happening is that you're disagreeing with me.
Whenever people place huge emphasis on "combatting hate speech" unfortunately it's always this "disagreeing with me is hate speech" shit, and not actually dealing with hateful content.
Saying shit like "if you're a gay man who doesn't want to fuck someone with a vagina, you're a bigot and you're choosing to be like that" is blatantly homophobic and hateful (my phrasing here is nicer than some I've seen), yet it gets praised and rewarded and declared "not hate speech" because it happens to align politically with those constantly crying about "hate speech".
This is the great part of the fediverse - if one server isn't moderating a magazine well, another server can step in to help blacklist that other server's instance pretty easily.
You're phrasing this as if it's something great about the fediverse, but centralized sites can just ban the magazine-equivalent directly (since they only have what we'd call local magazines). In fact, the fediverse may be worse. What's stopping bad faith actors from constantly creating new servers pushing bad content? Centralized sites can generally do more to control who can use them with things like captchas, but federation can't have such measures.
Saw some in the comments of a post yesterday about Starbucks and Target. It'll likely pick up as more and more people come onto these spaces just by virtue of a larger population.
It also sucks that reporting it did nothing, and despite being heavily downvoted, it was at or near the top of the default sort. That wasn't a productive conversation, it was just a modern version of blood libel. I don't have high hopes for this platform if it can't nip overt bigotry in the bud.
Proverbs 26:4
"Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes."
Sometimes the fool has a platform already, or starting to gather attention. It's important to diffuse inflammatory noise with truth. To handle it properly, we must be careful not to fall to their level by responding with an insult.
Responding with truth is the best path to expose their inflammatory deceit.
Ephesians 5:11
"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them."
Proverbs 15:1
"A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger."
I don't entirely agree it's pointless to debate or engage. While there's something to be said about not feeding trolls, at the same time, there is value in making sure trolls don't get an unopposed platform to spread bullshit.
If their posts aren't being quickly removed, then I think it's ideal if their post has a response that at least makes it clear that the troll post is bullshit. This isn't to convince the troll. You'll never convince them. This is for other readers. How does it feel for someone to read a homophobic comment? It feels like shit. But when there's comments opposing it, it gives it some feeling of hope. A reminder that there's people who not only disagree with the homophobia, but also don't just ignore it.
As well, while you're not gonna change the troll's mind, there are other, more reasonable people who are basically on the fence. They might agree with the troll, but can be persuaded against it. If the troll's comment is allowed to stay up unopposed, then only the bad opinion gets expressed, which allows that opinion to spread.
I'm not saying you or anyone else has to respond to trolls and bad faith actors. The ideal is that their comments are removed very quickly. But there is some value in replying to them, especially in places where the troll comment won't get removed.
PS: replying to trolls can be seriously bad for your mental health. I appreciate people putting up the good fight, but don't put others before your own mental health. It's entirely valid to not want to deal with that bullshit.
I saw that too so I'm sure it's around these websites just like anywhere else. I've seen some really weird comments here and there too. It's honestly probably just a natural symptom of expanding. The internet can be a nasty place in general so it's hard to ever have anywhere untouched by these idiots. Especially somewhere like here which is brand new.
Should've been a post of a guy pissing in the burn flavored starbucks coffee machine. People are way too obsessed with the stances of corporations that could give less of a shit about you. I'm seeing less of the "support small business" stuff nowadays and I don't like it.
In the fediverse? Sure! There are some very problematic mastodon instances out there. But they all get fediblocked and de-federated by others, so that's a relief. I have spotted at least one lemmy instance owned by folks from Indian far-right full of casteist and xenophobic content. I hope such places get quickly defederated from us once federation is fixed. If you scroll down the #Fediblock hashtag, you will come across examples of some really horrible instances (some folks tend to report instances there without any substantial reason, ignore those). Also be warned that you could come across screenshots of some extremely vile content if you scroll through that hashtag.
@Ignacio I've found not only tankies, I've found right wing homophobia and antisemitism too. But it was not very problematic, since always come from the very same instances.
The only site I was aware about that has those problems is that one with a frog as its brand. But despite using Mastodon code, it doesn't belong to the fediverse. Not in my opinion. I tend to be very settled when I join an instance, not changing unless I feel uncomfortable or find something better.
@Ignacio believe me, there are a lot more. Sorry if I don't give names here, I don't want to make publicity for them, but some of them are listed here: https://joinfediverse.wiki/FediBlock (I don't necessarily agree with the list).
Sure there's instances dedicated to being human trash as you've put it, but in the general discourse it's not an issue I've noticed, and I think there's a few reasons for that:
There are no "Agendas" here yet: Make no mistake there are people spending a lot of money to define the discourse on major platforms. An example people are fairly comfortable acknowledging is the existence of Russian content farms, - a lot of what stirs up bigotry on platforms isn't genuine users sharing their experiences or hobbies or whatever, it's people with an agenda astroturfing discontent so their backer can point to it and say "see, the ordinary people are revolting, they would prefer our regime/product/way of life". I'm not saying every racist on Reddit is a paid actor, I'm sayinga lot of people who haven't given things much thought are being prodded and goaded into being insensitive through consuming the fake bullshit those people put out.
There are no advertisers here: Again, look at the major platforms, they sideline content and spaces about sexuality or race because they see these as unpalatable to advertisers. YouTube faced a lawsuit last year for “unlawful content regulation, distribution, and monetization practices that stigmatize, restrict, block, demonetize, and financially harm the LGBT Plaintiffs and the greater LGBT Community.” On YouTube, content is separated not by target age, or [N]SFW status, but advertising palatability.
These spaces are not US centric. The US has some stupid laws, which Spez alluded to in relation to NSFW content, an example of which is FOSTA-SESTA. This is one of the reasons Tumblr and Only Fans attempted to go SFW. The laws claim to be anti sex trafficing but in reality they're just social conservatism for the internet age, you'll note in the link above regarding YouTube, the platforms defense of discrimination was that they were only abiding by the US Communications Decency Act, of which FOSTA-SESTA is an amendment.
The latter two points largely just hide or remove users from platforms, but that contributes to an overall atmosphere where bigotry goes unchallenged or bigot mods support bigot users. If people aren't seen as a valid part of the community things do go sour from there.
Mastodon is rife with it..... IF you're on a shitty instance. I just happened to join an instance with no moderators (absent or maybe they just like a free for all), and it comes through pretty regularly. The nice thing about the Fediverse is you can just block it immediately at a couple levels.
I'm looking for a new instance that blocks hate & illegal stuff, but is free-speech and open minded otherwise.
Yeah, the one I joined is 100% clean of that bullshit because they made it very clear in the description that the BS would not be tolerated and they apparently either enforce it accordingly or those folks just never joined because of it.
Haven't seen them on lemmy/kbin yet but... it's quite an established issue on the Fediverse. There are literal Nazis and far-right people on corners of fedi. @oliphant and a whole bunch of people have put invaluable effort to create several tiers of instance block lists because of precisely this reason.
I'm not familiar enough with lemmy/kbin to know how instance blocks work on here so... we'll see!
On Kbin specifically? Not sure, just made my account very recently. But on the Fediverse broadly (been on it since 2018)? Yeah I've experienced hate speech for sure. The more explicit hate speech was typically from your usual chuds who'd show up to troll under posts about trans rights, antiracism, etc, and their instances would usually get defederated very quick.
But outside of just explicit hate speech, there's the issue of normalized mistreatment of certain groups of marginalized users across the Fediverse, particularly Black users. Black Mastodon users were very open about the racist mistreatment they experienced from white Mastodon users during that initial Mastodon growth wave around November last year, and white Mastodon users mostly sat around going "huh??? But I'm not MAGA! I can't possibly be part of the problem!"
What sucks is that you can't just defederate antiblack attitudes when those attitudes are common on nearly every Mastodon instance. Like, I'm not Black (I'm Asian), but I think to myself: if I was a Black user trying the Fediverse and found myself surrounded by white Gen X techlords who love talking down to me, talking over my experiences with racism, telling me the social features I mostly used with other Black friends on Twitter were bad (and that only bad people like them) -- fuck no I wouldn't stick around! Not only would I leave, but I would warn my other friends not to waste their time with the Fediverse either!
So coming back to your original question: yeah I've experienced hate content, and I'm happy that the Fediverse offers options to help limit the reach of hateful instances. Yet bigotries as a whole (antiblackness as a prominent example) are still all over the Fediverse, and it'll take more than just existing moderation tools to fix that.
A couple years ago, when Mastodon started rising in popularity, some far-right instances popped out among others, the most notable being Gab.
But the nice thing about the Fediverse is that you can exclude the connection your instance has with those harmful environments. And that's what most instances does actively.
If you want to look deeper, I suggest this video that gives a better overview on this particular case.
I don't think I've seen it on kbin, but I sort of encountered it in a community hosted on beehaw, iirc.
There was a thread in the lgbt+ community where the OP was asking why the average person hated lgbtq+ folks and one dude clearly explained why he hated them.
His explanation was basically "as a muslim", so as someone with the muslim identity, he was alright with "gays" first because he didn't care what other people did in their bedrooms, but "it didn't stay there" and the gays with their ideology started to show up everywhere and started cramming their ideology to everyone else.
So yeah, the guy thought islam was an identity but being lgbtq+ was an ideology.
Ultimately this is what happens when you try to decide that people's beliefs are "hateful bigotry". each side thinks the other are doing some ultimate moral wrong, simply for having different beliefs.
When it comes to governing and politics, you end up with clear philosophical divides depending on how you see existence itself and peoples' role within it. To the muslim guy, opposing lgbt isn't hateful, it's trying to help people. to lgbt people, it's seen as hateful. In reality, it's a disagreement over facts and governing.
Someone having a polite disagreement isn't hateful. They might be wrong, and their incorrect view may lead to harm, but such things are often not malice.
I've blocked a handful of people for spouting far right rhetoric and trans/homophobia so far, as well as three or so xtian instances (am I using 'instances' right?) that have shown up in the 'new' feed.
I like being able to block bigots and hateful subs, it's really weird to me that ither sites (squabbles) don't have this feature.
Nope. I did some research. I know which ones to avoid. This one and Beehaw have been pretty smooth sailing so far and I'm not planning to visit other instances for now.
I will report it if I see it (hate speech, I don't care about being edgy as long as it's not hurting someone).
So block my account ahead of time if you can't be decent. A block it not an insult, and it is way less effort all around if you block me ahead of time so I never see it in the first place.
My first move is to just block-- individuals, and whole instances if need be. Hell, I'm quick to block instances anyway! The Internet is vast; I don't need access to every instance nor give every one a chance. I'll report if I feel like it'll do anything.
It also helps when you're on an instance that takes this sort of thing seriously-- you need Mods That Actually Do Something. Furthermore, there are tags you can follow to keep up on what to block, at your discretion.
💯. Background radiation is a great framing — @shengokai’ The Whiteness of Mastodon has sent great perspectives on this. And agreed that being on a well-moderated instance — and blocking/reporting whenever necessary — is key to having a good experience
Yes. It exists. But most servers that I'm on have zero tolerance for that nonsense. They either block the person responsible, or with repeated violations the entire server that the bigotry originated from. A perfect consensus doesn't exist, but basically everyone on the wider fediverse agrees that hate speech in general is bad. If an individual likes their hate speech, they are welcome to spin up their own server. And when they try to federate the rest of the fediverse is welcome to say, "naw, we're good."
This is easily the largest server that I'm on. I haven't seen it here yet.
I am on both kbin and Mastodon, it feels that all of the servers that I am on does have a active policy of non-tolerance of that type of thing. In other words don't be a piece of human trash. Even with Mastodon, I think that site wide in its Server Covenant, which is the very first thing, they do have a anti-racism, homophobia, ect, because of where they are located at and that the founder of Mastodon, Eugen Rochko, does not want Mastodon to become the next Facebook or Twitter, who tolerate that type of thing.
Add comment