woah! octodon.social blocks fosstodon.org? (and blob.cat apparently)
That's kind of depressing, that was the first mastodon instance I joined.
๐ณ๐ฑ
@swiley Its pretty absurd the levels blocking has gotten. Usually its done under threat as many people demand you block a laundry list of instances lest be blocked.. it snowballs quick where instances wind up blocking instances just not to get blocked by what few instances can still see them. Its why we are so resistance to going down that very slippery slope here.
It seems to be a pretty big portion, and sadly there are very few instances that have local moderation rules and a polite environment but themselves are not block happy. Its so rare in fact that its been the main attractive feature QOTO presents to new users in my expiernce.
When users are more than capable of blocking instances on their own, and its a trivial matter to just go down a list when you first open an account and create your own personal block list, then I really fail to see the point besides perhap virtue signaling.
Its just armchair whiteknighting.. its a way of telling themselves they are doing something to stop the evil when really they are just perpetuating it.
bonifartius ๐ผ๐
@mathlover what bothers me most with this reasoning is the view that other people are _too dumb_ to decide for themselves. it's essentially anti-humanist, contrary what those who hold it believe they are.
i'm getting a bit off-topic here: this school of thought has gotten a strong foothold in politics, that's why we get "anti-hate-speech" legislation. which will be applicable to everything in the end, as those laws always are.
@bonifartius @freemo @swiley Agreed. Fortunately, with all the precedent regarding the First Amendment and the way courts see things here, "anti hate speech" legislation is impossible to pass without being struck down.
I do hope things calm down here in terms of partisan nonsense, but it's going to be bumpy for at least the short term.
@mathlover i'm in germany and it's more than likely that we will have such a law, sooner or later. our highest court is rather good with delaying those things as they are often against the constitution, but laws are then refined so that they are at the exact limits of what's possible.
that said: i guess it's rather calm here compared to the US, but i don't like where it's going..
@bonifartius
@freemo @swiley
I should add that at the moment things are calmer than they were even a month ago. Partly because COVID rates are down and vaccinations are under way (a lot of the stress of this was compounding political issues) and partly because we aren't constantly worrying about what Trump does. Biden may not be perfect (I disagree with his stance on at least two issues and with his handling of the Kashoggi aftermath) but at least he's not an attention seeker who does things when the camera pans away to get it back on him.
Well, they are too dumb.. but its important to note this is dumb in the sense that its learned behaviors not inate ability.. That is, other humans go "Oh that dumb thing you just said regarding your political opinion, thats GREAT, glad to see your fighting for whats right".. rather than "I am glad you care about the right thing, but your ideas wont get you there they will make the problem worse, you ARE the problem but you can change that!"
As long as we refuse to accept the people are "too-dumb" and make a conscious effort to change that and maket he people thoughtful and well educated in what works giving them the intelligence and the compassion, then the problem will persist. yea saying the people are "too-dumb" may sound anti-humanist but only if you exclude the fact thatwe can change it.
The worst part is that for long as we refuse to acknowledge the blame lies on us and our stupidity we will never break the cycle. So by rejecting it out of hand you also perpetuate it.
It also doesnt have to lead to anti-hate speech, again that is only the consequence if we feel or conclude that people cant be educated and improved and must be forced.
@freemo
> Its so rare in fact that its been the main attractive feature QOTO presents to new users in my expiernce.
it was one of the main reasons i've joined here. i have some years ago created an account at another server but never used it really.
when deciding to really invest some time into the fediverse, i looked at their block list, half of the blocks were because of "free speech". unsurprisingly, unsavory posts about right-wing people or the police were no problem on that instance. while any instance is free to block whomever they want to, it's a shame that so many people fall for the doublethink.
i get why people want a "safe haven" where they don't have to deal with ugly real life shit. a closed web forum might be better than a federated microblogging protocol for that though.
The safe haven part isnt an issue, I get that. Which is why we have account-initiated instance blocks. Each user is still free to create their own safe bubble as they see fit and I would never hold that against a user.
The issue is more so the inverse, where someone holds it against some user or server for **not** blocking someone.
@freemo
i was more going for "i want a safe-space-community-thing". why federate if you just want to talk to people of a really narrow mindset ๐คท
> The issue is more so the inverse, where someone holds it against some user or server for **not** blocking someone.
it's racketeering. funny that those who think they are right always use those methods.
@bonifartius @freemo @swiley I joined Qoto and Linuxrocks.online a few years before the spectacle involving Gab. I am happy those two servers never got involved in the scrum over Gab.
Regarding doublethink: it's very common for people in the US to engage in it these days, as polarization has gotten overwhelmingly severe. I suspect that might be part of the problem: a lot of Mastodon users are in the US.
@bonifartius I am happy that you've found a home at QOTO. I think that there are always interesting perspectives there. But the only way to think that blocking "free speech" (and I'm reading that as racist/misogynist/homophobic) and allowing critiques of Nazis and police is doublethink is if you think silencing oppressors and oppressed is the same thing. And if so, that's a pretty sad and myopic world view.
The reason it becomes doublethink is because, inevitably, the people who are in charge of identifying racists, misogynistic and homophobic/heterophobic people really just depends on the opinion of the hour.
In most groups these scary words are abused to the point they go well beyond literal nazis or racists and very quickly begin to include "anyone who disagrees with me about race", sometimes and often even evolves so far to become racist itself.. So while in an ideal world it may be easy to reason that doublethink isnt an inherent property, in virtually all real world scenarios we find it very much is.
@freemo I'm not saying these things are always just, but power dynamics do not change every hour. I'm saying that to call it doublespeak is to create a false equivalence between those who have that power and those who don't. Instead it can be a bad action and not the same bad action, and the subtlety of the OP's insinuation that the two are the same is what I took issue with. @bonifartius @mathlover @swiley
Doublespeak makes no assumptions or assertions as to powerdynamic or on a global scale what race has the power or not, none of that is really being applied here.
But even if we do let power structures enter into the equation the doublespeak still seems to ring true.
What we often find, or at least what I have seen as myself being a member of a minority is that the same oppression occurs internal as does external when censorship becomes the agent for perceived good.
First you get communities of minorities who censor those they feel have unwanted opinions, and that censorship itself is usually so general as to the point of absurdity more often than not. But worse yet that same censorship turns inwards and becomes the same instrument for oppression applies to their own minorities. You quickly find minority members of the community who are critical of the censorship or the ethical choices of their own community come under oppression of that same censorship.
The aspect of doublespeech is just as harmful to the minorities that is the intention to protect as it does towards the harmful ideas it censors in the first place.
@pants
@bonifartius @freemo @swiley
We are talking about two different phenomena outside of server moderation:
1. Instances coercing other instances to block based on their preferences.
2. Instances making choices for their users regarding other instances.
If a user wants to block someone or an entire domain, they are free to do so as is. Why should someone make that choice for them?
Also, oppression is not a black and white affair. You can't sort the world, or Fediverse into oppressed and oppressor, get rid of the latter, and expect everything to suddenly be golden from then on out.
- shitposter.club is listed blocked as "free speech". there may be edgy content there, but the blocking people act as if it's a pure nazi server. that's bullshit.
- i think that "silencing"/"deplatforming" or whatever one will call it is wrong. it's a broken strategy which doesn't work, it only has the potential to make things worse.
- to say nazis are bad but in essence doing the same thing, hating groups of people, is doublethink. i know that many hold a different view.
- I hate the word 'edgy.' It's a classic bullying technique to humiliate, then to accuse them of 'being overly-sensitive' and 'not taking a joke.' If you have to tell someone something is a joke, then it's a bad joke.
- I have another name for "silencing"/"deplatforming" It's shaming. It's what happens when everyone around you thinks you have shitty ideas. Change them.
- If you think censorship was the worst thing Nazis did I'd read a history book.
you seem to be assuming that i'm discussing things in bad faith. maybe things came around wrong because i'm no native speaker?
- i'm sorry that you hate "edgy", but i think it describes certain things very well. that said, as long as _someone_ finds it funny, it's a joke. it may be a bad, tasteless one, but it's a joke.
- shaming people also isn't good. either the topic is important to you, then you have the obligation to try to change the views you don't like _or_ you ignore them. deciding that for someone else isn't the thing to do. secondly, just because the majority thinks i have shitty ideas doesn't mean that the ideas are shitty. it's good if i reflect upon if they are good or shitty, then maybe change my opinion. i won't change my opinion because someone tells me to, it doesn't work that way.
- it might surprise you that i do very well know what the nazis did, we learn rather much about that in school here.
maybe i've expressed myself wrong. i said that hating groups is what nazis do. you shouldn't take offense if i say that hating groups is wrong, look at the history in general.
@bonifartius I didn't mean to suggest you were discussing things in bad faith. If I seemed curt it is because I haven't used @freemo's code and have a 500 character limit. But:
- I think many people who use the word 'edgy' are acting in bad faith. they use dark humor as a kind of shield to protect themselves from robbing other people of their humanity. Can you say that that hurt is worth one person thinking it's funny?
- Shaming can sometimes be the only tool we have. cont-
@mathlover @swiley
@bonifartius -cont When people you care about tell you you have bad ideas you should listen. It's very rare for someone to be the brilliant bastion of truth and far more likely that they are just for a moment misguided and that the ones who truly love them are trying to guide them back cont-
@freemo @mathlover @swiley
@bonifartius -cont
- And finally, it's not wrong to hate groups, or ideas. It's wrong to hate people. Blocking these folks blocks their groups or ideas. Gas chambers kill people for having different ideas. It's this violence against people that made them so bad.
@pants
Which is why blocking should be done at the user level and servers should not try to bully other servers into blocking according to their list of hated groups/ideas.
I have a nontrivial block list myself.
@bonifartius @freemo @swiley
thanks for the replies, i sometimes forget that not every instance allows large posts :)
- i understand your point regarding dark humor, but it's difficult to declare what's ok and what isn't. apart from some dadaist jokes, the majority of jokes are about things which _could_ hurt someone.
- i like to believe that discussing especially with people you don't agree can have very good results for everyone. just finding people who are able to do that is hard. telling someone "you are shit" isn't likely to change an opinion, that's why i don't like shaming.
- you can hate ideas, of couse! i'd say that hating groups is hating people though, and i'd _really_ like to see less of that.
@pants
I personally avoid dark humor unless I know my audience won't be offended. I also tend to make all my dark jokes at my expense.
@bonifartius @freemo @swiley
We 100% agree on that, I make all my jokes at your expense as well ;)
@pants @bonifartius @freemo @mathlover Most people would prefer *stopping* oppressors to silencing them.
Kicking a Nazi off twitter is something you do to look good.
@swiley They use that platform as a recruitment tool. Yeah, it's good PR, but it's also how you end up with less Nazis. And I agree, we should stop them!
Actually as a general rule (I did my undergrad thesis on this) censoring something generally has the effect of increasing intersest,/consumption/adoption of an idea. It doesnt not give you less Nazis, it would give you more.
People have a tendency to want to expiernce what they are told they are not allowed to, even if it taught said thing is harmful to them. For example stricter heroin laws results in increase in a communities heroin abuse, censoring certain books results in more people looking for and collecting copies of those books (and an interest in spreading illegal copies).. one could conclude the same is true for concepts like Nazism, by censoring it you effectively increase the number of nazis over time.
@freemo Doc, this is provably false. I have a degree in folklore and did a multi-term research paper on hate groups. They need exposure and normalizing behavior to grow. I'll try to dig up my paper if you can find yours. @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover
I'd like to see both your papers. ๐
Censorship doesnt stop exposure, it just switches the channel of exposure to ones where the behavior is normalized, which is exactly what, as you just pointed out, is needed.
consider the fediverse where the nazi community is largely isolated by blocking. Censorship creates the initial interest, users then simply create a single account somewhere in the Nazi community, and now 100% of the content they see, flooded every day, is nazi hate.. they have complete exposure and their entire community appears to normalize the behavior. Couple this with the fact that the community tends to be welcoming to newcomers (assuming they arent a group they would be racist against) and you have a recipe for disaster.
Consider the inverse of that where they arent blocked. When they arent blocked the Nazi community would represent an extremely small community and a voice that would rarely be seen out of the sea of more positive voices, no censorship to create the initial appeal or interest, exposure would be minimal as there is no walled off comunity to act as an echo chamber (even if you join a nazi server your still federated with the vast majority of anti-nazi servers).. and no normalization in their own server or outside (because again the federation means non-nazis are interjecting and call them out constantly)...
So your own point actually directly supports my own, not only does censorship create more nazis but it in fact creates the two elements needed for them to thrive, exposure (created by a walled off community where you can hear only nazis) and normalization (the echo chamber such a community will have).
@swiley
Agreed. Nazis exult in being martyrs. They actively seek it in fact. Kicking them off a platform and making a spectacle of doing so gives them an ego boost and pushes them to places that they can't be removed from.
@pants @bonifartius @freemo
@mathlover But I think it also helps dismantle the idea of the 'alt-right' as something mainstream. It won't sway the hardcore racists, but if you've just got a toe in the water and then have to go to a Nazi-only site to continue, it might make you reflect a moment. @swiley @bonifartius @freemo
The real consequence is it makes people think the idea, and the nazis are themselves oppressed and that maybe there is something to it if people are going to so much trouble to oppress it. Afterall, if it were just some nonsense idea with no truth to it then there would be no fear of the information being available..
We always see the same pattern when we analyze censorship.. censoring the thing usually increases support and interest in the thing.
@freemo But they're the ones framing it as censorship and we're letting them! Most folks don't think people with mental health issues are being censored when they're asked to leave a restaurant for ranting loudly about their delusions.
@mathlover @swiley @bonifartius
@pants
There's a difference between a restaurant asking a mentally ill person to leave and asking restaurants to remove people you think are mentally ill, especially if you are not a psychiatrist. The latter is closer to what we were talking about. Freemo removing an asshat from Qoto is different from if Freemo asked other server admind to remove said person under threat of block.
@freemo @swiley @bonifartius
Agreed, and to be clear when I say we shouldnt censor people (including nazis).. what I mean is, if one of our users wants to go read what some piece of shit nazi is posting for some reason (could be research for a paper, could be a personal motive to understand how a person can turn into someone like that, whatever), they have that right.. it doesnt mean I have to give that user the resources of my server and a seat at the table to use my server as a soapbox either.. I am talking about censorship in terms of a good persons right to be able to consume any information they wish, not that they have a right to use my private resources to broadcast shitty unethical information.
@freemo I for sure agree. And I didn't mean to hijack this thread, because I agree with it's origin. What I'm saying is that when @bonifartius said that silencing Nazis while allowing anti-cop rhetoric involved holding two contradictory ideas in one's head at the same time (doublethink), that that statement was wrong because there was no contradiction. @mathlover @swiley
Fair, we are about half a dozen tangents away from the original target at this point :)
@pants
I don't think @bonifartius was talking about Nazis. If I recall correctly he just said "unsavory posts about right wing people or the police." Most people right of center or right wing aren't Nazis, just as most people left of center or left wing aren't Marxist-Leninis who praise Stalin.
There's also a difference between people saying ACAB or calling out police misconduct in colorful terms and people talking about normalizing murdering police on the spot. I have seen the latter be given a pass from a user on a server that was very block happy at the server level.
@freemo @bonifartius @swiley
@mathlover Thank you for setting me straight.
@bonifartius I'm sorry if I jumped on you. I've spent too much time lately around real dog-whistle-y types IRL and it's made me edgy. I read right as far-right and police as, well, police. :)
Thats the danger of the dog-whistle spotter.. as real as dog-whistles may be they are designed (as the name implies) to be easily mistaken for innocent comments as well. So best to try not to assume when you hear one (as I'm sure you usually do)... in a way its a bit insidious on their part, part of the point of a dog whistle is to get you to question who is or is not using it as such and as such get well meaning people to start accusing each other.
We really have to do our best to not follow those tendencies.
@freemo I disagree (as always). We all kept level heads, talked through it, and I learned something. Maybe others did too. And if someone wanted it to be a dog whistle now they know it wasn't. I think it's better to always challenge what you hear, as long as you're not 100% committed to the idea of being right. @mathlover @bonifartius @swiley
Doesnt sound like your disagreeing at all.. if your challenging what you hear and not assuming it to be a dog whistle (in other words asking the intent explicitly) then you are doing exactly what I suggested, that is, not assuming a dog-whistle is a dog-whistle
@undefined @pants @freemo @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover And why are we only talking about the extreme right, not the extrem left? As if nazism is the sole evil and repression of speech according to the alleged anti-fascist is therefore justified.
We often see the reference of the paradox of tolerance from people who try rationalize the suppression of speech, they claim that nazism is the sole intolerant ideology, therefore a free society shouldn’t tolerate their speech. This in fact is a dishonest misrepresentation of what Karl Popper was saying. Very often, these people would invoke the first sentences from Karl Popper the argument, stating,
“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. “
So far so good, until you read continuing part,
“In this formulation, | do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.”
See? for all their close-mindness and toxicity, Karl Popper isn’t suggesting we should shut down such intolerant speech as long we can counter them with rational argument.
“But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. (This is exactly what the postmodern social justice theorists are doing)We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.โ
Karl Popper here isn’t saying nazism bad leftism good, therefore we should ban free speech for the nazists(especially when the word is misused to such a extent), he is saying all intolerant ideologies are threats to a free society, and that includes communism as well as the postmodern social justice theories. But even though such intolerant ideologies could undermine our freedom, we shouldn’t counter them with illiberalism and suppress free speech. We should criminalize them, however, when intolerant speeches turns into intolerant actions(mob violence, harassment, as the leftist students and scholar activists often do) and punish them with law.
@Vectorfield
Thanks for the interesting perspective on this!
@pants @freemo @swiley @bonifartius
To be fair I did bring up some of that earlier, that these communities often seem to censor the extreme right, but then cause the same harm internally in their own communities by oppressing those in the community who are moderator or otherwise call out the anti-ethical position of its own members, not surprisingly being called nazis and exiled.
So yea I agree these are problems that go with extremism on either end of the spectrum really.
@Vectorfield It's really bad form to include your own commentary in a direct quote. It's misleading, whether intentional or otherwise. @freemo @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover
That rule is new to me, as long as the person makes it clear what part is the quote and what part is his own words I'm not sure I see the problem and never heard that objection before.
@freemo Because no one can be quoted who uses parentheses? I had to look up the quote to make sure Mr. Popper didn't address 'postmodern social justice theorists.' That's why I brought it up. Of _course_ that's a rule! You break up the quote when you want to comment on it. @Vectorfield @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover
@pants @Vectorfield @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover Sorry I didnt understand this:
Because no one can be quoted who uses parentheses?
@freemo If parentheses exist in the actual quote as an aside to the reader, how would one discern them from the brilliant social commentary @Vectorfield is offering up? We do this by leaving the commentary outside the quotation marks because it's not part of the quotation.
Ahh I see what your saying now. I actually didnt even realize that the parenthesis were his comments and not part of the quote either. I thought you were complaining about how he added his commentary after each quote.
@Vectorfield Also, look at the examples he cites- murder, kidnapping, slavery. To that I personally would add rape. These are crimes that rob people of their agency, of their humanity. That's the kind of intolerance I think, in good faith, he's addressing. People can be intolerant to other people's ideas. What threatens free society is being intolerant to their humanity. And _that's_ the paradox. Do you dehumanize those that dehumanize? @freemo @swiley @bonifartius @mathlover
@pants @freemo @mathlover @bonifartius Kicking out someone merely for an idea (rather than harassment which is what the ranter would be doing) *is* censorship.
@freemo @swiley That's sad.
I use 4 fediverse instances regularly (qoto.org, linuxrocks.online, mstdn.io, and pleroma.blob.cat). I avoid instances that are block happy at the server level.