Tensions are running high over the imminent entry of InstaGrope into the verse, via Meta's Threads server. Some of you may have noticed me speaking up against the Anti-Fedi Meta Pact, and I want to clarify a few things I think are important.
1) I'm *not* arguing against admins moderating their servers' relationships with others. That's nobody's business but theirs. If an admin makes a case-by-case decision to defederate from Threads, well, that's fediverse moderation working as intended.
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2) Nothing I'm saying is about defending Meta. I wouldn't piss on the scumbags that own and control that simulated psychopath, if they were on fire. To anyone who knows my background as a tech activist over 25 years or so - let alone as a green anarchist before and throughout that time - this ought to go without saying. But something about the heat of contentious online debates seem to have a melting effect on *context*. Even here.
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So if I'm cool with case-by-case defederation decisions by admins, and I don't want Meta's sticky fingers in our business any more than anyone else does, what exactly is my gripe with the Anti-Fedi Meta Pact? Why do I call it that? Well, that subtle rearrangement of the word order points to what my concerns are.
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3) In a nutshell, the Pact is based on guilt-by-association. Being on a server owned by Meta is being treated as a crime worthy of banishment.
Sometimes an 'I'm not racist, but...' person will have a bad experience with one PoC, and hold that up as "proof" that they're all dangerous criminals, I hope we can all see why that's not only bigoted, but *logically flawed*. Entire groups are not responsible for every action of everyone they might be associated with in one way or another.
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By the same token, it's deeply unjust to hold every person on a Meta-owned server responsible for the bad behaviour of others using it. Or for the contemptible business practices of Meta themselves.
Mastodon admins have a choice to Limit federation with the Meta server, without people who escape from Meta (to their server) being completely cut off from their friends who haven't escaped yet. This will help more people escape Meta, which is what we all want.
Right?
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Which leads me to...
4) It's equally unjust to hold fediverse admins responsible for Meta's failings, if they choose not to defederate from that server. They have the same right to have their federation choices respected as the admins who do choose to defederate.
Some admins are staunchly defending the autonomy of their moderation choices (and rightly so), while threatening to defederate others for making different choices (ummm...). The hypocrisy does not escape me.
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More importantly these threats to defederate anyone who doesn't, are profoundly counter-productive. For at least three reasons.
a) As I said upthread, it risks helping Meta keep people using its server trapped there.
b) It gives Meta's PR flacks ammunition to undermine things like the EU Digital Markets Act that are trying to force DataFarms to interoperate. 'What's the point', they'll ask, 'when the whiners don't even want to when we try?'.
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c) It breaks solidarity among fedi admins. It forecloses on our ability to respond as a *movement*. It makes our response to Meta into a war of all against all. When what's needed is open communication, consensus-finding, and creative adaptation.
We can Aikido this shit! Turn Meta's arrival against the whole practice of DataFarming.
We can find ways to compost the dung of Meta's entry so it fertilizes our network of community gardens. But only if we hold faith, and work *together*.
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"One under-appreciated consequence of believing there is such a thing as the “one best way” in every aspect of life is subsequently living with the unyielding pressure to discover it and the inevitable and perpetual frustration of failing to achieve it."
#LMSacasas, 2023
@strypey the one best way is termed #Monism, I believe, and is historically a fallout of #Monotheism
@tetrislife
> the one best way is termed Monism, I believe, and is historically a fallout of Monotheism
I could be wrong, but I believe Monism is the notion that the universe is - at its fundamental level of reality - all one unified thing. Taoism is an example of a philosophy with a Monist metaphysics. The Tao - or "The Way" - contains everything that is. Tao births both yin and Yang, which birth the Ten Thousand Things, but beneath that manifestation, its turtles (Tao) all the way down.