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How the Liberal Left created the Conservative Right and extremism in the fediverse:
As someone who cares greatly about equality, and recognizes minorities and underprivileged groups deal with some unique and difficult struggles I realize the title to this post would seem a bit inflammatory. But that is not my intention, my intention is to address a very real problem.
As anyone on the fediverse knows there are generally two major groups of instances. Those that wont ban anything of any kind, no rules it's the wild west (red instances). Then there are those that ban anyone who shares any opinion that disagrees with their politics, even if you criticise both the left and the right in the same breath you will likely quickly find the instance or yourself banned.
However the unfortunate consequence of this pattern of behavior is to promote ever increasing support for red instances and to drive grey instances (instances that take a middle ground) into being red instances. Should be obvious why...
You basically have a spectrum of behavior with red on one side and blue on the other. With everyone crammed into the 0.1% of either end of this spectrum that means most new instances will start off, most likely, somewhere in the grey area, even if their just marginally shy of being red or blue in its full extreme.
The experience for an admin of such an instance is to quickly be overwhelmed with people from blue instances blocking and banning for things like criticising a democratic politician or something rather minor. By the end of the first few months a blue/left leaning instance will quickly find itself on dozens of suspend or ban instances as a result and find they only have a voice among the 99% red instances and the 1% grey instances out there.
Since this means they naturally wont have a voice among blue instances, and most people are on social media because they want to be social, this means their only incentive is to appeal to red instances (since that's where all their boosts and likes come from). Along with building animosity for how blue instances treat them and with the acceptance of red instances you will find all the incentive for the instances to move to be an extremist red instance with extremist no-rule policies quickly develop.
As such we see exactly what we are seeing now on the fediverse, an ever increasing number of red instances very quickly overwhelming and overtaking the blue instances.
Of course this is made worse by the fact that those ont he blue instances can only see other blue instances. so they will be under the mistaken impression that the red instances don't exist and that the blue instances are thriving and growing and dominating over the red instances. This ignorance just ensures the red instances grow unchecked and unchallenged.
As someone who's personal policy is anti-extremism, and with this pattern being one that generates extremism it is very VERY concerning to me.
I posted this as a main post here, going to repeat it here because it is relevant:
https://qoto.org/@freemo/102720620029876902
I had an idea and a proposal for an anti-censorship cooperative among the free speech instances. It is just an idea, not sure if i support it yet. but would be curious to hear any feedback.. the idea goes something like this.
Any instance can get into the cooperative so long as they pledge to a few rules
1) personal suspensions and silencing is permitted.
2) Ban circumvention will not be allowed and enforced. If a person from one instance blocks someone and makes it clear they do not wish to be contacted, and a user creates another account to circumvent this personal block then that user will be banned.
3) no instance is allowed to suspend any other instance within the cooperative.
4) any server that suspends/blocks any instance inside the cooperative must be blocked/suspended by all other members of the cooperative in response.
5) any instance not following these rules will be kicked out of the cooperative.
The purpose here would be to ensure that any instance which has a policy of frivolously blocking other instances without due process or cause will be punished by loosing their voice throughout the larger federated community.
Opal's been collecting a list of instances that are completely transparent about their blocklists and policies, I like this effort: https://wowana.me/fediverse.xht
@p The issue that needs addressing is that a policy where others block you as punishment for not blocking others will proliferate. If you silence other instance you cant hear them but they can hear you. so if your interest is having a voice there is no downside to silencing other instances but incentive to do so (as to prevent yourself from being blocked).
The end result of this is that instances that otherwise might not care will get ont he block train just so they themselves dont get blocked.
So unless I dont feel that simply being transparent will resolve the issue. We need to use the same tactic in return.
