On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
I came across a post by sheer serendipity a few minutes ago, while looking at a user profile in a different instance.
It mentioned a hashtag that was suggested for using on reporting and recommending blocking or banning other Fediverse instances. It uses the hash "fediblock" -- and I avoided using the # in this case to not have this post added to it, unintended.
Reading thru I found mentions to various instances, and reasons people had for suggesting their banishment. Was suprised by finding a mention to a Pleroma instance where I have joined, and also a mention that "Qoto people had alts there". 😎
The poster then proceeded to criticize the Pleroma admin and even his personal project called Husky, a fork of the popular "Tusky" android mastodon client.
Husky's goal is primarily to provided support for advanced Pleroma features like Rich Text Formatting -- which Pleroma users can use in their Toots, via html tags, MarkDown or even BBcode.
While I see this as a sign of progressive thinking, and the willingness to take on a project, the author of the critical post was adamant that Husky would or could allow Gab users to use it for their own needs; which Tusky has blocked on their own client.
I have informed the admin and developer of this, and he was aware and didn't mind.
It does bother me, the small mindedness I see in such petty fediverse politics.
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
@design_RG I was following along fine until you mentioned "Gab users".. what is a Gab user?
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
@design_RG @snow Thanks for the explanation!
🇳🇱
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
One thing to point out is that GAB got the way it is mostly because of the very actors that you describe (in general not these specific people).
Now before i continue I want to say, GAB is, at the moment, and for most of its history, very right wing. ITs content is significantly disgusting and I dont follow even a single GAB person (though have met some nice GAB refugees). So with that said let me continue.
The original mission, and even their current mission, was never to favor right-wing in any sense. They opened in response to FB and twitters censorship with only one goal in mind: free speech. Granted they took this goal to the utmost extreme, but in and of itself nothing horrific about the networks intentions.
However the left, particularly in europe, sees "free speech" as a sort of trigger word to mean "evil things are condoned here". So as a result the left boycotted the system from very early on. The end result is that hte left and even many moderates created the vile nature of GAB simply by boycotting it, leaving only the vile people to remain. Evil thrives in the darkness, by withdrawing and allowing an echo chamber to exist it ultimately snowballed and created a safe haven for that very darkness.
Federation I saw as an oppertunity to bring isolated, cruel people back into a larger community where their views can be challenged for the vile nature they are and hopefully well meaning people could bring some of these people back to the light. But instead the idea of blocking the whole network has only strengthened their resolve and given them an echo chamber where their ideas of prejudism are praised and reinforced.
We have to recognize that while they are entierly accountable for their own actions, we live in a society and int he long run it does more harm than good to silo them away in their own corner of the internet.
@lnxist @snow
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
Here is a relevant post I wrote about 5 months ago that touches on a lot of what I said in my last post in more detail (it got a big reaction both bad and good int he fediverse)
https://qoto.org/@freemo/102720253460317829
@lnxist @snow
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
@freemo Thanks, I enjoyed reading the post you just made in this thread, and will follow on to this other one. TY!
Went looking for some references, I recall reading a really good article describing the situation and the Mastodon developer dilema on what to do, when Gab approrpiated the open source code for Mastodon (which he couldn't oppose, with it being open source) and forked it into their own version.
https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/
And some commentary from a page I am still reading, seems a conservative voice but explained with reason : https://reclaimthenet.org/mastodon-blocks-gab/
AHHH -- found the article I wanted to link here, it's on The Verge : https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691957/mastodon-decentralized-social-network-gab-migration-fediverse-app-blocking
@lnxist @snow
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
Keep in mind the QOTO server (and as an extension myself as the founder) are several years old. I've been around since the earlier days of the fediverse. So I have seen how a lot of what you deal with now evolved in the first place.
@lnxist @snow
🔵
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
@design_RG @lnxist @snow Small amendment, as a former Gab user; they didn't stop their social network when the apps got shut down; Gab was still available online by browsing to gab.ai or gab.com
On small mindedness and shitty Fediverse politics. Long Post.
@lnxist Gab.com is a site that used to run their own social network, until their client apps started to be removed from the two major App Stores, Google and Apple.
Gab attracts a radicalized population, and is right wing, sometimes to the extreme. A lot of people on the Fediverse got really annoyed last year, when they saw and opportunity to avoid any more problems with their client apps being blacklisted -- by using Mastodon as their platform.
Lots of people here don't want contact with them, and are not happy to block the Gab instances (and their peripherals, there's a few other ones). They want their own instance and EVERYONE else to do that too.
I discovered recently that a large Technology based instance does block us here at Qoto; without any problem having existed, no conflict, no notice was sent, they simply blacklisted us along with Gab and some other less savoury characters.
@snow , I know, but it does bother me - there's enough sh1t going on in politics all over the world that I haven't been reading the newspapers as much as I used to. Annoyances galore, stupidity, outright biggotry, argh.
We got some twits here too, maybe I will have to write another blog post on Politics in the Fediverse. Would prefer some more positive theme, though...