Something about #TheBadSpace appeared on my TL, I clicked out of curiosity and looks like a huge rabbit hole of drama and crossed accusations, but no idea where it started. Does anyone know?
The thing about #TheBadSpace is its the last refuge for people who hold bad opinions are are shit at defending them - they cant just mute and block and move on because well still be in their replies educating others on why they suck and and their opinions are dumbshit.
Their only available option is to engineer a new architecture of the internet that ensures that anyone who points out their bad opinions is exiled from everyones feed simultaneously
“Bluesky could be the future of content moderation”.
I 100% disagree.
Yes, the protocol offers a plethora of ways to filter content and ensure you never come across, say, Nazis.
But that’s not what content moderation is. Content moderation is making decisions. It is either welcoming or refusing certain types of content on your platform.
If you’re letting everyone in, and telling your users "but you have control!", you’re not moderating anything. You’re just quitting.
For anyone who is interested in reading what I consider to be an open-minded assessment of today's public version of Bluesky, I read this from Techdirt this morning, and I did find some interesting ideas in it that we should steal (back, in some cases) for the Fedi.
> The cold, hard, inescapable truth is that mstdnDOTsocial and blobDOTcat are listed on #TheBadSpace because they have a history of bad behavior, as their latest nonsensical blow-up has displayed.
Nobody could prove this before in comparison to the proven accusations against Ro and if there is something to criticize about blob.cat, you are welcome to contact us/me.
> Did I add them personally? No. They have been flagged for inappropriate behavior by multiple communities that do not include my blocklist. That is the exact reason they are listed.
You defined your so called "fair" Algorithm, you never showed proof / receipts about what you are talking about, you are hosting the site and therefore you are spreading misinformation.
I dont care if people block blob.cat, there are reasonable reasons, for example that here is a bot which posts porn.
> These bigots want to make it about me to spread the lie the project is a unilateral effort despite the fact it has been shown several times that it has never been that.
But it is. A centralized structure controlled by a few paranoid instances with proven false positives actually looks very familiar to me. Any person who has thought even a little about world politics should see more than enough problems with doing so.
> They know this lie will stick because of the undercurrent of anti-Blackness in the fedi, so they persist in instances that allow this behavior.
The situation, the accusations, the conflict had never anything to do with racism! It was never denied that there was racism against Ro, but that doesn't change the criticism voiced at all! In no way. On the contrary, the accusation of racism against criticism only shows that framing is being practiced here or that you cannot distinguish between criticism and hate speech. Both are very, very questionable as an operator of a shared blocklist.
> But that's what bigots do when reality is not on their side. They make up whatever they need to justify their continued unprovoked hate and abuse.
Simple and clean: Fuck you too :blobcatmiddlefingers:
@scrappy_capy_distro@Parasite whilst I can't say this about Ana, I can definitely say this about #Ro, tho he's like really a certified asshole by means of dogpiling and harrassing any critic of his actions - like #TheBadSpace...
Wildeboer’s third theorem: Every commercial centralised service that offers “free” services and relies on ads and/or a percentage of subscription/donation fees ends up being supportive of misinformation, hate speech and far-right to nazi content. Either through ignorance or acceptance.
Which is why I decided to #DoBetter than #TheBadSpace instead, because that blocklist was and is an irredeemable shitshow with so many #FalsePositives that it's just not rational to explain except as @are0h 's personal vendetta list because someone from any instance listed disagreed with him...
Remember when people said #TheBadSpace sounded like an alt-right sabotage operation because it so clearly worked in the same way as one, and other people said that just because they behave in a certain way that's not evidence?
So, there is less than a week left in 2023, so it's close to shutting down this instance permanently as I move to my new home at h.i..
I will miss this place because this is where I returned to the fedi after some time away. It will always be a special moment because I wasn't sure I would return to the fedi post Play Vicious.
But it's time to move on to bigger and better as I push #Fipamo and #TheBadSpace forward, from personal projects to a community effort. It's time to make some changes so I can do my part to make the fedi better and safer for everyone, not just a handful of people who like computers and have resources for expensive hobbies.
Through all the hate, harassment campaigns, lies, and abuse, I'm still very excited about the future of the fedi and what this place can be when we work together.
We can still create a new context for what social media can and should be.
Ha, and of course, I'm still gonna be talking shit.
Come over when you get a chance. We're gonna have some fun.
The Bad Space is only one of the projects exploring different ways of moving beyond the fediverse's current reliance on instance-level blocking and blocklists. It's especially interesting to compare and contrast The Bad Space with two somewhat-similar projects:
Fediseer is another instance catalog, including endorsements as well as negative judgments about instances.
FIRES (an acronym for Fediverse Intelligence Recommendations & Replication Endpoint Server) is infrastructure for moderation advisories and recommendations.
Many thanks to @thisismissem and @Db0 for feedback on earlier versions of this post!
(Part 4 of "Golden opportunities for the fediverse – and whatever comes next")
Hey, hey, just another quick reminder that this instance is being shut down at the end of the year as I move over to my new home at h.i. social.
This place will always be special as it was my home after returning to the fedi after being away for a while, but with the explosion of interest in #TheBadSpace (ha, both excellent and racist) and the continuing development of #Fipamo, it's just time to move on and get a bit more organized for the new year and provide a space for the community around these projects to have a home.
It's been a wild year, to say the least, but in the end, it has shown me what I need to do.
Hmpf. @Tusky does not load any posts from any of the three servers I'm on since tonight. Have they finally achieved adding #TheBadSpace to remove all LGBTIQ* content as planned? #tusky.
It seems like it's not the UI or the usability, that get's people to leave #Mastodon nowadays but - small, yet vocal and totally not self-critical - parts of the community, that can't stop lecturing others about the #Fediverse and how to act/post/comment here or about what.
German Mastodon had the ridiculous debate about #Zoom, other parts similar stuff (scolding someone for #bw-photos... really?).
Maybe the recent update helps people get it together, otherwise it will get even quieter here.
@mho Some folks are just assholes that want to dictate others how to post instead of pressing #mute and/or #block button if they can't handle someone...
But then again we see Egoists like #Ro abusing his #blocklist (#TheBadSpace) as a tool for personal vendettas and to silence critics, so I'm not surprised about it...
I haven't followed the #TheBadSpace discussion in all details... but isn't the whole point of the #Fediverse that people can curate their own experiences rather than having their own timeline be determined by corporate algorithms?
And obviously, different users with different backgrounds have different perspectives and needs. Obviously, #BIPOC people - who represent a much smaller percentage of users of Mastodon than it is the case with, say, Twitter - have different perspective on what they need for curating block lists.
Thus, I think the concept behind TheBadSpace is sound. And if it doesn't work out in practice, then I hope that other BIPOC Mastodon users come up with their own systems.
But "one size fits all" lists for defederation are not and will never be sufficient. We desperately need different perspectives if we are to grow, and hopefully supplant corporate social media.
And supplanting corporate social media should be the goal, since they are all riling people up against each other for the sake of "engagement". We are already seeing where this leads.
I respect the work @Are0h (Ro) and the folks participating in #TheBadSpace are doing to help keep Fedi safe.
I've read a lot of comments accusing them of transphobia, TERF, etc., but... I don't see it. Maybe an earlier version of the list, but I read through all 54 pages as of now (skipping the obvious ones), and it seems pretty level-headed, and contains a good number of instances that were expressly blocked for Doing A Transphobia. Hit me up if I'm wrong, I guess.
I've also read through the ActivityPub and Mastodon specs for ✨funsies✨, and frankly I'm not sure y'all understand how dangerous this space is capable of being without additional tools for users and instances to protect themselves. Ro clearly does, and he's doing something about it by developing a community-based, opt-in blocklist, which seems good to me.
I'm too out of it to properly structure this post, so there it is. tweaking.thebad.space probably good, probably necessary. also, Ro, would love to help out if there's space for me there, hit me up.
So the question came up if there are any streams sites that are racially diverse or run by BIPOC that would like to provide their input or perspectives using this platform to a general discussion surrounding online safety in the fediverse. I said I'd ask.
Over the course of this multi-part series, I'll discuss Mastodon and the fediverse's long-standing problems with abuse and harassment; the strengths and weaknesses of current tools like instance blocking and blocklists; the approaches emerging tools like #TheBadSpace and #Fediseer take, along with potential problems; paths to improving the situation; and how the fediverse as a whole can seize the moment and build on the progress that's being made; . At the end I'll collect it all into a single post, with a revised introduction.
This first installment has three sections:
Today's fediverse is unsafe by design and unsafe by default
Instance-level federation choices are a blunt but powerful safety tool
Instance-level federation decisions reflect norms, policies, and interpretations
Ok, so as everyone knows, there was a pretty ugly racist backlash a month or two ago around #TheBadSpace, which was essentially a group of bigots who have historically not liked me making up a narrative to stop it.
Outside of the obviousness of the hateful motivations of it, it got me thinking about the nature of my projects and how I present them.
There's an entire ideology around what I build and why. I generally kept it to myself because I viewed what I was making as personal projects.
But amidst dealing with one of the worst racist incidents we've seen on the fedi in a while, a funny thing happened.
I saw the impact of the TBS and how many people have been positively affected by it and support what it is becoming.
This is when I realized it was not a personal project anymore but something more significant.
So, I've taken the last few weeks to make some changes.
What up, folks. If you're wondering why this account is quiet, it's because I'm moving as I make the move to my new effort hueristic instruments.
This year has shown me that #Fipamo and #TheBadSpace are much larger than the personal projects I first saw them as, so I'm moving to get more organized and make it easier for the community that has formed around them to collaborate and communicate.
It's still coming together, but all of the up-to-date info will be shared on my new account, and I'll shut this instance down at the end of the year.
Heads up, folks. I'm moving away from this instance to my new home at h.i. and shutting down this place at the end of the year.
The events of the last few months that I needed to make some changes for the sake of sustainability for #Fipamoand#TheBadSpace and create a space for the community that has formed around them.
OK. So this #TheBadSpace moron directly comes up with such a bullshit. Instead of working on the critique, it’s anybody else’s fault because they don’t know, how his bullshit works :facepalm:
@kromonos Yeah, this behaviour alone disqualified #TheBadSpace because just blocking shit out of personal vendettas and basically doing the rhetorical equivalent of curbstoning critics is just bad...