woah! octodon.social blocks fosstodon.org? (and blob.cat apparently)
That's kind of depressing, that was the first mastodon instance I joined.
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@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.
bonifartius ๐ผ๐
@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.
@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.
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.
@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