@doctornovakaine "Twitter committing fully to fascism"?

I was more concerned about the opposite problem; Jack Dorsey's straight-up said his office leans left.

@4of92000 Not in the slightest. Jack reinstated Richard Spencer, a known Neo-Nazi, and Alex Jones, an alt-right figurehead. And now Twitter is hijacking accounts and adding likes on them to tweets from Trump and other alt-righters to force the dissemination of their viewpoint. That is straight-up fascism.

@doctornovakaine
There's a difference between granting fascists (who while granted Spencer is, Jones really isn't; he's just kinda a general right-wing nutcase) a platform and agreeing with them. I think Dorsey made the wrong call in suspending him for "hate speech" rules instead of actual ToS violations, and I don't like hate speech rules in general (because those who give a shit are those who are the most easily offended). And I'm on an instance with few to no restrictions thereon, and it's rather freeing. (It also has a 65k-character limit, which is nice.)

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if MGB won, just because a lot of the Mastodon base right now (at least mastodon.social) is so policing (of themselves and others). I mean, you kicked off Wil fucking Wheaton, and he's as far left as I thought you could get before joining Mastodon (*Soviet national anthem intensifies*).

I think Spencer and Jones have the right to speak. I also think we have the right to prove them wrong on those same platforms. Shutting them up, unless they are literally directing violence against people, only gives those in power the tools to shut up whoever the fuck they want for whatever reason they want.

@4of92000 Granting fascists a platform validates them and gives their ideology legitimacy. We've been through this in history, it has NEVER ended well when they get a chance at power. I am not a free speech absolutist, there are certain viewpoints that are not up for debate, and ideologies that say certain people are subhuman are unacceptable and deserve no platform.

Also, I literally just joined Mastodon today so I have no idea what history there is, only that I've not been a part of it.

@doctornovakaine
Forgot to say this before; too lazy to use the stupid delete and rewrite "feature":

Giving fascists a platform does not legitimize them (whatever the hell that means); it merely says that the person who is running the platform either considers their ideas non-threatening or considers the act of censorship more threatening than the speech itself.

I am a free-speech absolutist not because I like what Jones and Spencer and Kessler and such are saying; I wish they'd shut up as much as you do. I am a free-speech absolutist because when a government, or any hegemonic entity, gets the power to shut down political ideas it doesn't like, it invariably abuses it.

@4of92000 Some ideas should be shut down. We settled the Nazi thing 70 years ago, we stood up and said that has no place in the world. White supremacy should have been shut down long ago much more vociferously than it has been. These are inherently harmful ideologies and there is no debate about them - saying there is is saying there is legitimate question as to whether Jews should exist or non-whites should be second-class citizens.

@4of92000 I realize there is a risk of abuse, but I don't believe the answer lies in "no limits." I think that's even more harmful because it allows harmful ideas to flourish and gain traction, where they can build up and become prominent again. Sort of like they have been the past couple years, because too many people have been too willing to give them legitimacy and not shut them down.

@doctornovakaine
I don't like white nationalism or anti-Semitism either; I too find them abhorrent and disgusting ideologies to hold, which is why I don't hold them.

But my problem is that one of these days a state or statelike entity (which the social media Old Guard basically are right now) will be run by people I don't like (hell, that's how the Old Guard are in my opinion), and I don't want those people to have the power to censor ideas I have because "they're bad for the community". I draw the line at directly advocating violence against a specific person or group of people or the property thereof (so if Spencer says "we're going to burn down a synagogue tonight," then yeah, arrest the fucker). No earlier. And the Constitution as interpreted by American judicial precedent backs me up on this.

I for one am a lot more scared of the radical left showing up in massive numbers and burning shit down, as Antifa have already proven themselves capable of doing (J20, March 4th and April 15th in Berkeley, the Milo riots, the recent Portland craziness, the abject mindfuck that was the last G20 meeting in Hamburg), than I am of a racist right wing that showed up en masse exactly once (Unite the Right I) and then has been basically neutered since then. Unite the Right II was the most pathetic thing I have ever seen, and one of their "thought" leaders, Jason Kessler, gave a big speech instructing his racist followers to tone down the dialogue.

If anyone needs to be banned, it's the outright Leninists populating mastodon.social.

But nobody needs to be banned. Unless they're outright saying "harm X".

@doctornovakaine
Also your definition of "fascist" better fits the more generic "dictatorial". 😀

@4of92000 Also, when you hijack accounts to make your own preferred content more visible to others, that's explicitly fascist. Jack deliberately took control of individual accounts out of the hands of their owners in order to push a right-wing agenda. I don't give a damn if Trump has a Twitter, but to start putting likes on his posts from MY account so my followers (who hate him as much as I do, if not more) see more of him? Inexcusable.

@doctornovakaine
... the fuck? I'm going to need to see a citation on those ghost likes.

Also do me a favor and define fascist, please.

@4of92000 @4of92000 It's been all over Twitter today. Several accounts were going over it, saying that they had been hit. Some people are saying it's a "bug" but most don't buy it because most of the tweets being reported are of Trump and his sympathizers.

As to fascism, my take on it is that when people are interested only in having and wielding power for their own benefit and to the detriment of or dispassion towards those who they are supposed to serve, they're fascist.