I think https://s.yelvington.com/@Steve's point is different: he's not criticizing marginalized people, but people who want to take away the individual choice of each person to decide whom they want to interact with.
There are not only bad people on #threads, and I want to be able to communicate with people on #threads of my choosing. I don't want somebody else deciding this for me.
I'm just saying that there are many nice people on #threads I want to be able to communicate with across social media silos, and I don't want to be restricted by admins.
In the same way as I exchange emails with people using #gmail
In my view the core idea of the #fediverse is open social media borders instead of silos.
That's the technical misunderstanding others and I addressed in other posts: users can block instances trivially easy. Really no need for an admin to do it for you.
It's really difficult to imagine that their goal for #Threads isn't to expand the reach of creating these shadow profiles throughout networks they don't even have to sustain.
Put differently: any responsible admin has to think about scale, not just individuals. #FediPact is doing precisely that.
@folkerschamel@ryanrandall@steve Remember the original point is that the people you disagree with aren't fucking Nazis just because they have a different risk assessment vis-a-vis data scraping and moderation than you do?
This is the line that gets passed around among the pro-federation-with-Facebook crowd, that #Fedipact is a violation of individual choice. That's bullshit. Not only are people still free to exercise their agency by switching instances, it's a goddamn lie to say that admins are joining the pact without input from their users or even against their wishes.
You are all fearmongering about being forced to switch instances. Yeah it's a PITA but you're not being violated. Like come the fuck on. Argue in good faith for a change!
And fashjacketing people whose PRIMARY concern is that Facebook does not moderate hate speech is offensive bullshit. None of your excuses make that particular lie remotely OK.
I wouldn't call it violation, but obviously they are restrictions of individual choice. But yes, you are right, people who choose such instances subject themselves to these restrictions.
I agree with Steve and I think it is not fair to call it "fashiacketing" that the "we must protect our better culture against worse culture" argument is a dangerous path. #threads consists of individual persons, and I can tell you for sure, far most of them are nice or decent people.
Me: "#StrawMan: nobody claimed that every Facebook/Instagram user is a bad person. The argument is that the company is evil and has evil policies and will do evil things based on a long history of doing evil things."
You: "#threads consists of individual persons, and I can tell you for sure, far most of them are nice or decent people."
An exchange would require that you pay attention to what I'm saying and respond in a substantive way to it.
@SallyStrange@folkerschamel@steve
As a user, you can block the WHOLE instance with fewer than 5 clicks.
Switching to another instance is a lot more hassle.
The question arises: as there is a way to make everyone happy with just a few clicks why do you opt for others to take a long, winding road?
@thunderbird@folkerschamel@steve If you don't know then why are you opining instead of, for example, reading one of the many blog posts enumerating the reasoning behind the #FediPact?
I have. I just don't find them convincing, because of technical misunderstandings (how data collection works, how blocking works), because I think they contradict the idea of the #fediverse, and because I want to make my own decisions.
@folkerschamel@thunderbird@steve What an amazingly shameless confession of mendacity on your part. So you knew all along that people aren't actually misinformed, you just decided to argue against that #StrawMan because... why? You have no factual counter to the basic observation that #Threads moderation policies are inferior to those of most of the instances that federate with yours? You just enjoy fashjacketing queer people and BIPOC?
#StrawMan: nobody claimed that every Facebook/Instagram user is a bad person. The argument is that the company is evil and has evil policies and will do evil things based on a long history of doing evil things.
"and I want to be able to communicate with people on #threads of my choosing."
It is literally impossible for someone to take that choice away from you. Suppose Threads were to arrive in the Fediverse tomorrow. Worst case scenario: your admin defederates with them immediately and you have to migrate instances. You don't even have any pre-existing connections with them to lose. All your follows are ported. Stop fearmongering about this!
"I don't want somebody else deciding this for me."
But I think a valid concern is that many #fedipact instances not only want to block #threads, but all instances federating with #threads. So doesn't it mean that all users on such #fedipact instances loose most of their followers at the blink of an eye?
Its very silly to say "if you block threads youre a Nazi" when threads is already full of Nazis, I would think only someone with vested financial interest would make such a reach
@big_louse@folkerschamel@steve ah yes thank you! To be charitable, it's also possible that he's very gullible and was listening to someone with a vested financial interest
Like, Steve probably knows those tiki torch carrying motherfuckers literally ran a car into a crowd and killed 3 people in the name of antisemitism, and that this comparison is disgusting and shameful
"and I want to be able to communicate with people on #threads of my choosing."
Great! Then open an account on Threads.
You want to visit the Nazi bar, go ahead (and yes, I will judge you harshly for it). But don’t tell your neighbours they need to be ok with you inviting the Nazis to your place for a fascist’s block party.
Amazing how you can't follow this analogy even though you started out in this thread by defending someone else making the same analogy about people with whom you disagree
@SallyStrange@folkerschamel@steve I am an admin of an instance. The members for the foundation that runs our instance voted. The members voted to block so we block.
And also, I think that the idea to push all moderation responsibility to the user is a bad idea. For people that don't get a lot of hate and death threats (like myself), it is quite easy to block some specific ass holes. But if you are a POC or lgbtq you will likely get way more and want admins to block more on instance level
That's a technical misunderstanding. As individual user you can block the whole #threads domain / instance as easy as blocking a single user with a single click. No need that an admin to do that.
Let's educate users how trivial this is!
My fear is that many people favor the #fedipact simply because of technical misunderstandings.
@avi "The Fediverse is not looking for growth. It is offering a place for freedom. People joining the Fediverse are those looking for freedom. If people are not ready or are not looking for freedom, that’s fine. They have the right to stay on proprietary platforms. We should not force them into the Fediverse. We should not try to include as many people as we can at all cost. We should be honest and ensure people join the Fediverse because they share some of the values behind it.
By competing against Meta in the brainless growth-at-all-cost ideology, we are certain to lose. They are the master of that game."
Prediction: both Steve and Folker will, again, avoid explaining how they think such views converge with fascism.
I really don't understand what you understand by freedom.
Doesn't freedom mean that I can decide myself with whomever and with what instances I want to communicate with (or block), without being restricted by admins?
@folkerschamel@avi@samuel@steve you've already revealed that you were lying before (about being ignorant of the reasoning behind #FediPact) so I'm just going to assume that you're lying about:
--not knowing what fashjacketing is (it's been a whole fucking day and you haven't looked it up?)
--not understanding how comparing people to neo-Nazis is fashjacketing
In conclusion: fuck you, you fucking liar. You belong with Mark Zuckerberg.
@folkerschamel Yeah you can decide... You can decide to open a threads account and stop whining that your instance might have blocked them. No one will stop you from doing that and if you're so desperate to be involved then go for it. But you shouldn't put minorities in the firing line because you want to interact with someone that doesn't know what mastodon or fedi is. And YES people will be in the firing line. Maybe you don't know or understand the impact of the hate dolled out on FB etc.
But I don't think it works: #meta doesn't care about #mastodon instances blocking #threads. But it has the negative side effect of unnecessarily building walls between people, disconnecting many decent people on #threads from the #fediverse and vice versa.
It's like punishing #zuckerberg by naming your local hard disk "*** zuck". May provide a good feeling, but he doesn't care.
By the way, did you consider adding #therads on the block list not for the whole instances, but just for the members who want that block?
Or even easier, instead of voting for the block, these people can just block the instance themselves anytime they want? Same number of clicks than voting.😉
The advantage would be that people who don't want to block #threads are not forced a block onto them against their will.
Yes, and I have to apologize to you. It has nothing to with what I thought it does, but is only related to harmless food and - what the heck is the second thing??
@folkerschamel@samuel@steve So you just believe everything google tells you, huh? And you're out here lecturing other people about how to use the internet?
Flash coating is a term from construction. You useless, lying taker
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@steve No, we didn't. We think that a part of running an instance is maintaining a block list that makes the experience nice. There are a lot of shitty instances. It's enough that the admin teams have to handle them and block. We just block the worst. But a giant instance run by Meta? We say thanks but no thanks.
The awesome part with fedi is that people can migrate to other instances. The people that have accounts on our server know how we run things.
While I think that good content moderation is key, I just still don't understand the benefit or reason for instance level blocking or #fedipact when any user can simply just make their own choice by blocking whatever instance they want, leading to the same experience for that user without patronizing others.
But of course I support your feedom to run your instance as you want to. As you point out correctly, this is one of the awesome parts of the #fediverse.👍
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@steve OK, so you don't see it as a tiny bit too much for marginalized people who have been hated on on their social media presence to have to themselves individually keep up with all the nazi shit sites and block those instances proactively as individual users? Or do you suggest that they wait for all death threats first to know who to block?
I get that if you have never encountered death threats on a daily basis (as a lot of people do), you might not see a problem
Well it’s an issue of no perfect solution, only trade-offs with downsides.
In this case the alternative is empowering somebody else to censor the content that you see.
Are they going to do a good job? Or are they going to censor things in ways that you don’t actually like? Or are they going to actually take advantage of that power that you are giving them to censor things in ways that intentionally manipulate you?
There are serious downsides to handing other people control over what you see, even if the motivation might be reasonable. It still takes a big risk.
Yes.
And speaking in general terms, in many situations it's the right choice for me to delegate and hand over power to someone else. I just don't see it in this situation.
@folkerschamel@volkris@samuel@steve "I just don't see it in this situation" therefore you're going to endorse accusing the people who do it of having fascist tendencies
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@steve Ok, you might have missed that there has been a lot of black users who migrated from Twitter to Mastodon who had a pretty bad experience. A lot of it had to do about landing on an instance that wasn't a good fit and also not having tools they were used to (like quote post). Mastodon and fedi can be confusing for a lot of people. And to top that with abuse from assholes from places like poa.st and bae.st and what not won't make things better
Believe me, I really get all this. But I don't see the connection to #fedipact. It seems to me more a issue of moderation - which is key in social media - as well informing users about how they can easily block #threads if they want.
@folkerschamel@samuel@steve You obviously are not getting something important, or else you would not be continuously defending the comparison between Fedipact and neo-Nazis
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@steve ...when they complain about racists attacking them and using the n-word and more bad shit, they would instead get a response like "oh, didn't you personally block this and that instance? Than it is your fault. Tough luck"
I don't know, but if I got that kind of response I might say to hell with it.
I think we as fedi admins have more responsibilities than that
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@steve Well, it is called fediverse and not distributeverse. Is is about federation and it's in its very core a matter of federating with some/most instances and defederaring with others.
A big problem with onboarding to fediverse is to choose an instance. I think the process can be made better though but I still think that instances must have (and do have) autonony to make up their own rules and federating with whom they want.
@folkerschamel
Because Meta are a bunch of data hoarding, identity mining, climate destroying, tax avoiding murderous fucks--and if you need more reasons than that, then maybe, just maybe, it's you, and not the fedipact, that's the problem.
For me, the risks about federating with Threads are several. One of them has to do with bad/unfair moderation and thus it's reasonable to block them. One could of course argue that one should wait until the Threads instance should first show that it fails moderating on the fediverse and be quick to hit the block button. I don't have to wait though. They have shown again and again that they suck.
@folkerschamel@samuel@steve you don't understand the reasons for the fedipact, yet are confident asserting that fedipact signers present some kind of danger that may in some way be related to fascism
this is both obviously lazy, bad reasoning, and morally reprehensible
@folkerschamel@samuel@steve Wow, what a 180! From "if you do this, you're like a neo-Nazi" to "I don't understand this."
Maybe next time you should lead with "I don't understand this" instead of accusing a bunch of people who are typically among neo-Nazis' favorite targets of being neo-Nazis.
(And if you're going to object that it was the OP not you who made the comparison--STFU. You know that's disingenuous. You started by defending his post. If you didn't want to endorse the neo-Nazi comparison then you should have said so a long time ago.)
You can be cosmopolitan and at the same time proud of your own culture and preserve your own culture, without being afraid of other cultures or having the feeling that you must protect against other cultures.
@folkerschamel@SallyStrange@samuel@steve Dude. This is a world where actual cultures have been enslaved, dispossessed of their territory, and faced genocide. There are cultures today who have REAL GOOD REASON to be fearful. Dude.
You are right of course. But I don't see the connection, because being fearful as you describe it is not the same as claiming that another culture is a thread to your culture.
Personally I prefer communication and integration over segregation and isolation.
And I think technology can be a very powerful tool for this.
@folkerschamel@quietmarc@samuel Wow look at you arguing with a person who appears to be a white man far more respectfully and thoughtfully than you've argued with me so far
Unfettered tolerance leads to rampant intolerance. It’s basically a choice between intolerant groups that would quash any that disagree with them, and tolerant groups that are willing to work with others. Being a part of the Fediverse means accepting a social contract of sorts to play well with others. If an instance isn’t willing to do that, it needs to be blocked to preserve the rest.
(This is also why, when Musk claimed to be a “free-speech absolutist”, most of us called BS.)
I'm not arguing against blocking. And I'm not even arguing against instance blocking in general.
I'm just saying that I prefer giving individual people the choice if they block #threads, and I don't see the need of instance admins making the decisions for them.
But to say "I don't understand" while simultaneously defending the comparison between Fedipact signers and neo-Nazis? To say "I don't understand Fedipact" while asserting that Fedipact could be dangerous in the same way that fascism is dangerous? You're either a fool, an evil liar, or both. There are no other options.
@folkerschamel
As someone who has always been seen as a foreigner in my own country, who has repeatedly been told to 'go home to my own country', who has received death threats for being a member of the global majority, who has been called any and every kind of racial slur, I'm telling you to NOT FUCKING USE THAT INANE PARABLE!
The cultures that we reject are those that are actively hostile to the lives and cultures of others. To ignore the existence of these hostilities is to ignore reality.
You claim instance-blocking as xenophobia, yet deny existing forms of xenophobia within those other instances, and argue against the right of instances to defend against that xenophobia.
There’s a term that describes that sort of behavior, accusing others of hostile behavior by defending themselves from hostile behavior: DARVO. Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender.
@NicolaElle@folkerschamel@samuel@SallyStrange@steve DAFUQ we have a system that empowers instances (an aggregate of consenting users) to connect and disconnect with other instances at will, to then shame them when they do it.
You're not entitled to an audience. If an instance dehumanizes others, we'll disconnect. Period.
I in case of #threads I am in favor of giving individual users the powerful tool of blocking instances, instead of being imposed by admins.
The core idea of the #fediverse is to tear down the walls between walled gardens.
There are also so many decent and interesting people on #threads. I see no need to be afraid of them and their culture. And I support #mastodon users who want to interact with them.
@steve@folkerschamel@NicolaElle@SallyStrange@samuel I’d argue the core idea of ”fediverse” is ownership. You run your instance the way you want, and if people don’t like it they shut you out, ‘cause that’s the way they want to run their servers.
Mate, I don't know how many people need to tell you the same thing.
People are in favour of their admin blocking threads, because it massively reduces the chances of them getting spanked in the face by repeated racist/transphobic/homophobic/misogynistic/fascist insults.
Now, COULD they do it themselves? Sure. But by that point, they've already seen it.
Now, for the likes of me - and assuming your picture is you - as a middle-aged cisgendered white bloke, what will happen if I see something horrifically bigoted, is that I block the individual/instance, have a few moments of distaste, and then I get on with my day because I'm not directly and personally impacted by it.
No matter how much of an ally or whatever I consider myself, I simply cannot be impacted by (eg) white supremacy in the same way as someone who isn't white. I can be angry, I can be ashamed of my fellow white people, I can feel all sorts of sadness, but at the end of the day, I'm still white.
But by the time someone who isn't white has seen the white-supremacy post, and blocks the person/instance, it's already too late. Now, I don't know, and will not presume to know, how it makes them feel, but I rather suspect that they feel pretty shit for a hell of a lot longer than I do.
What you're advocating for is allowing those people to feel personal discomfort/distress, so that the likes of you and I don't have to go to the effort of, oh, I dunno, joining threads and finding the decent and interesting people ourselves?
@folkerschamel@samuel@SallyStrange@steve I don't think you understand how impossible it is to protect yourself individually from hatred and abuse if you are marginalized. It is not a case of blocking one or two bad apples, it is a case of blocking a firehose with your hands and trying not to get wet.
I suspect you think of racism, sexism, ableism, etc as fringe, individual issues, and maybe that has been the case for you, but not for many of us.
there are not only bad people in the police, nonetheless I'm not inviting any of them to listen to my conversations in my living room, because the institution itself is bad.
federating with Facebook means opening the entire instance's timeline to assholes, algorithms and governments that can fuck me up. you don't get to federate with Facebook only as your user without exposing your entire instance with you. now maybe you think it's safe for you to have cops around the living room, but marginalised people don't.
the problem with Steve's argument up there is the "don't see colour" of liberalism: Black people setting up Black-only spaces is very different from white people setting up white-only spaces, for the same reason that an abused wife shooting her husband is very different than the husband shooting her. the directionality of the power asymmetry matters. Facebook closing itself to Kurdish activists is very different from Kurdish activists closing themselves from Facebook spying; Facebook has ties with a hundred government/police forces, billions of dollars to get away with anything they want, datacenters running discovery and espionage and mass-plagiarism algorithms etc., Kurdish activists have none of that.
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