Casey Rollins 🔵 @realcaseyrollins@qoto.org

@freemo
Dude then proceeded to click every link on my profile until he found any evidence that I had white skin.

Which, for some reason, makes me a white supremacist. I had no idea.

@freemo
This literally happened to me and my single user instance.

There I was, enjoying silly pointless content, when I saw a toot about censorship, boosted by someone I follow. I replied, and said maybe the problem is a bit nuanced.

Little did I know, that person was a particularly popular instance admin. Not even his instance was particularly popular, just the admin (though I suspect he alters his numbers)

But because I didn't 1000% praise his opinion... Bippity, Bippity, NAZI!

Shortly after posting this I had this pop up in my feed on an unrelated thread. Fitting!

@Alonealastalovedalongthe Here is an example of such extremism from blue instances (since you said you were unaware of it happening). In this case a blue instance is calling for a ban on any instance which has anyone from that instance even following someone from another instance. Nothing to do with opinions or even politics. Just being able to hear what someone else says is enough to warrant a ban these days.

So apparently if some user from 2 years ago signed up and followed someone from that domain, then stopped using that account, it means our entire domain should be blocked...

It is shocking to me that with this pattern being as pervasive as it is that you dont see it.

https://cybre.space/@mirzaba/102719771245949245

@Alonealastalovedalongthe Well the best place to get those numbers (the place I get them from) is looking at the user statistics and growth rate across the red instances.

When i look across the user growth rate charts for various red instances I notice a very marked increase in users. You also notice during periods of campaign to block red instances the user count rate on those increases in the time that follows.

I agree that is hardly scientific, but there are no scientific papers obviously to argue either side on this. As such its the best I have to draw my conclusions from.

@freemo Yup, exactly. We've been getting soooo much flack for not blocking certain instances... but like... we want those people to hear what we have to say, too! And maybe we can find some common ground on which to have a normal human conversation. But I guess that makes you a fascist who wants to kill people now 🤷

@mk The worst part is they are such over the top extreme about it that even if you simply dont block a server that is blocked that is cause enough to block you.

Apparently now if your grandmother's, cousin's best friend's dog is a nazi that makes you a nazi too.

@freemo Couldn't agree more! I think it's also very concerning how the left decries the "echo chambers" of the right, and then as soon as the right (or anyone they disagree with, really) joins the Fedi, the left scrambles to isolate them -- creating the very monster they claim to want to destroy. Do you want echo chambers or not?

@freemo

Noagendasocial.com has been saying this for years but we got banned and labeled pro Trump. No a lot of noagendasocial.com probably is pro Trump... Go figure.

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.

#mastodon #fediverse #uspol #extremism #mastoadmin

@design_RG Sadly there is a lot of this sort of people. Most of the mastodon are whitnighting against violations they see on FB or twitter. As such they are usually quite assertive about their politics.

@design_RG

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

@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

@design_RG

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

@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...

@design_RG

I never understood the psychology of trying to censor things, regardless of the public or private nature of the censorship. Its one thing to refuse to engage with content (perfectly valid and an excellent case for just ignoring or not federating with servers with it) and trying to deplatform it.

I remember the Anarchists C Cookbook (certainly something which, if you read and applied it, has a lot more destructive potential than the average troll Gab post) In censoring anything, you automatically make it desirable to have to curious people (I remember tracking down a PDF of this book with dogged resolve, even using an application to transform it to readable form on my PSP as a kid, just to have it because authorities didn't want me to, I learned something of encryption and stenography just to hide it)

Anyone who keeps trying to quash these things just ends up amplifying them by virtue of talking about them. I'm pretty sure most of these people don't really care, they just want to be seen "caring" and "doing something".

If they really cared, they'd shut the hell up about it and let these crappy sites die in silence (trolling / being an asshole becomes a lot more tedious after you are ignored) rather than providing an endless stream of curious people looking for "what they don't want you to see".

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.