> I never once said you were dumb.
I was treating the "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING YOU ARE IGNORANT OF HISTORY" stuff glibly, and treating it as equivalent. Mea culpa.
How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.Good point, Alex Jones, I'll keep that in mind.
Like this stuff:
> Its tiring thatI need to spend most of my time in any discussionw ith you correcting invalid assumption you make
> Yes, that's how conversation works
> My point was that the absolutist thinking that you are promoting when talking about this subject is ultimately harmful
I also said that I would like to hear your proposal and in positive terms, i.e., not defined by opposition to another proposal. Tell me what it is, I'll take it as a given that what it *isn't* is the stuff I said. Your first post was vague and included a lot of phrases like this, from the post I'm replying to:
> My case was that we should stop
Here is my proposed course of action: I would like to be able to say what I want to say and listen to whatever anyone else is saying. I intend to build things that make this easier for me and for everyone else, and that will make it harder for anyone to stop that.
I was able to say this concisely and without reference to what it is not.
> trying to sell the narrative
This, in my view, sounds like you think I am saying things I do not believe. I am not selling anything, and this is not a narrative. I'd be happier if people agreed with my proposed course of action, but I believe that enough people already do that the objectives can be achieved. I am not concerned that people disagree with me; I expect that in life. I have no reason to "sell a narrative" and if that's what you're doing, I'm not buying, try the next house. If you've got a course of action you want to propose, that I'd be interested in.
> we must look past it if we are to have a positive impact
Look past it at what? Please just propose something.
🇳🇱
Another post with more energy into telling me that I'm saying something I didnt say (and now reiterated that I didnt say it) than actually bothering to discuss the topic, mostly.
I never said you didnt understand anything, nor that you were ignorant of history. I have pointed out the assertions you have made that were wrong, but made no sweeping accusations of your ability or knowledge beyond that.
None of the quotes you provided are contrary to that and I think thats rather obvious to the reader so I wont break it down piece by piece.
I have also already told you what my proposal is, multiple time now. It mostly boils down to changing public sentiment and acting as an example.
That means drawing respectful, well spoken, people who tend to draw in others to hear their message under a free speech banner as well as demonstrating the harm such censorship has, again by concrete example.
Usually when we look back at history where some form of censorship runs rampant, when and if that winds up being overturned, is due to societies that promote free speech as a legal principle but themselves mostly foster selective forms of speech, not through censorship, but through a moral consensus that tends to outcase people who are otherwise being harmful.
Generally when free speech is curtailed it tends to be in response to groups like the neo-Nazis, which tend to have deplorable messages that serve as a beacon for what people want to silence. If a person stands up and respectfully disscents at a neo-nazi meeting you will likely be confronted with very childish hatred, attacks, and maybe even violence.
Compare that to organizations that have been free-speech in nature and have pushed for acceptance of a free-speech mentality where it may have been previously lacking. If one reads, for examples, the discussions and notes we have left over from meetings of the Sons of Liberty we often see that as long as respectful discourse is maintained dissenting ideas are allowed. Those of a deplorable nature tend to be outcast by the group, and thus creates a social pressure, but otherwise the rebuttals to them are well thought out, educated, and respectful. In the end this combination caused the people to rally behind the idea of free speech as a good force. This of course carried on into the process of defining those civil liberties and the USA's first congress.
So the solution is simple, promote free speech in the groups (informal or otherwise) you are part of, while being a shining beacon of respect and admiration, and you can convince people, it wouldnt be the first time in history for sure.
What doesnt help is an absolutist approach. Free speech of any kind no matter how deplorable or disrespectful gets a stage, and a voice, and is socially accepted among the peers. Legally one should have such a right, but only when the morality of the group is mature enough to ensure the respectful voices are the ones we hear and survive within the group dynamic.
As with most problems of this nature it is a social problem. It isnt solved so much at the legal level, thats just the final step, it is solved at the social one.
> I never said you didnt understand anything, nor that you were ignorant of history. I have pointed out the assertions you have made that were wrong,
Let's just say that any details about the conversation are not important and I'll just concede every point you care to make about who said what. Not relevant, not interesting.
> It mostly boils down to changing public sentiment and acting as an example.
Changing public sentiment to *what* and *why*? What's your objective and how are you going to get there? What does it have to do with me?
> So the solution is simple, promote free speech in the groups (informal or otherwise) you are part of, while being a shining beacon of respect and admiration, and you can convince people, it wouldnt be the first time in history for sure.
All right. I think this is fine to do. I won't get in your way, and I intend to do similar, but I don't think I'm going to be a beacon of anything, I don't plan to do that.
I think you'll have a much easier time giving people free speech than convincing them that they'd like it if they had it.
> What doesnt help is an absolutist approach.
Absolutism is forbidden forever! Absolutely no absolutism!
You're free to advocate against absolutism, but I don't give a damn what's helpful. I intend to say the things that I believe to be true.
If you're selling clothes, you can always say either "You're too fat for these pants" or "These pants are too small for you", don't get me wrong. There's a huge difference, though, between exercising tact and crafting a message.
But if I perceive that something is the overwhelmingly likely case, I will say so. I'm not selling anything. If you think I'm wrong, you're free to point it out, but if you think I'm saying something unhelpful to your goals, it's a non-starter. I'm not a salesman, I'm a hacker.
> Legally one should have such a right, but only when the morality of the group is mature enough to ensure the respectful voices are the ones we hear and survive within the group dynamic.
Did I read correctly that you feel the right is contingent on respectful voices being prioritized? (By some standard of respectfulness, which standard I do not know.) I think this is a bad approach, but maybe it was a phrasing artifact, so I'll hold off on that until you confirm.
> As with most problems of this nature it is a social problem.
Great. I'm building a home defense system, not trying to convince people to stop robbing other people. Go solve society if you like.
> Changing public sentiment to *what*
To a sentiment that feels free speech should be an important legal right which is preserved and exercized.
> What does it have to do with me?
I dont recall saying **you** had anything to do with it either way, aside from the mentality you espouse at times sometimes getting in the way of that intended goal perhaps. but the focus has mostly been a general one and not directed at you specifically, you just happened to respond.
> Did I read correctly that you feel the right is contingent on respectful voices being prioritized?
No, to be more clear. The right from a legal sense should be absolute. However a legal right does not imply a moral right on an individual basis. Individuals should shun members of a group who exercize harmful freedom of speech, but the right to make such speech legally speaking should be preserved regardless.
Yea P has seemed to be confrontational and had an issue with me ever since one of the members from his server started threatening to kill me and opening multiple accounts across multiple servers to harass me. It led to us almost silencing his server on QOTO but ultimately even though the other moderators approved the silence I blocked it and choose an alternative approach (a new feature in the works).
He unfollowed me and became antagonistic in all our communications ever since. Usually anytime he is in a thread with me it is, sadly, mostly him accusing me of things I never said and me needing to waste most of my effort correcting him.
I have no issue with him, I think he means well. So my hope is eventually it will die down and he will go back to acting normal, but for now this is usually the response i get anytime he is in a thread where I have a comment, we will see how long he keeps it up I guess.
For the most part I'm just going to try to ignore it, address it when he does it, and hope eventually the maturity he is otherwise capable of comes back to the surface. He may not even mean it that way, ::shrug:: I suspect in time it will die down on his part.
@freemo >one of the members from his server started threatening to kill me and opening multiple accounts across multiple servers to harass me Sounds like a certain somebody we all know. :gyate_hina_amused: Bu-ut the one in question has been well-behaved as of late AFAIK. @realcaseyrollins @p
In the end he caused little more than noise for me. the bigger issue we had to face was how to empower our users to handle such situations in the future.
> In the end he caused little more than noise for me.
You said you were going to call the cops if he tried to sign up for an account on qoto, and later said you were preparing to call your lawyer. Where'd that go?
Mostly because P is lying. I **did** say something similar in a private conversation to P, but did not make such threats to him directly... I mentioned that we had a lawyer and that when legal issues have come up (threats on a persons life) we have invoked it in the past to protect our members.
I did **not** however suggest that was going to be done againt p, or the offending person here. P had asked what I would do if he continued his assault, used VPN, opening multiple accounts, and continued to threaten the life of people. I mentioned if it escalated to that point that there are legal remedies that could be employed.
P has a habit of putting words in peoples mouth it seems and today he seems to be far worse than usual.
Yes except P seemed to suggest I was "preparing to callyour lawyer"
I never called the lawyer or threatened to do so to handle the istuation with P, I only said I would do so should the user start to attack QOTO directly.
True, though I gave no indication i was "getting ready" to either. In no way did I suggest I was getting the lawyer involved yet.
Well I cant predict the future. But I gave no indication a lawyer was going to be involved against P in any way.
I told you, because I was asked what I would do if MKULTRA decided to start using VPNS on our server to continue death threats against me or others... I suggested lawyers might get involed against MKULTRA should he exhibit violence **on** the QOTO server. I never suggested a lawyer would be involved against P in anyway.
Let's not forget the time that @freemo, God among men, silenced the Spinster server and then threatened to sue me personally because an intersex woman disagreed with him about intersex issues.
Seems like antagonizing people on the Fediverse and making legal threats is a recurring issue with Freemo.
Here you can see where I responded shortly after to reassure him my comment was **not** a threat to sue. Our lawyer told us to not engage in the conversation and that we needed to revise our ToS, our lawyer was also extended to help alex, if he wished, be informed about what part of his ToS is against US law.
But as can be seen from my follow up I made it very clear that my comment did **not** imply any legal action was going to be taken
Notice the time stamp is only about an hour later, so we very quickly made it clear it was not a threat of legal action.
I did mute the thread. over the course of several days the individually continually opened new threads to harassed, got several dozen other people to open new threads to harass, etc.
At one point I did a personal block ont he whole server for 24 hours, then when I removed the block the flooding instantly picked up again.
The only reason we had to silence the whole server is exactly because muting was not effective.
As we discussed at the time, I could not have a mute on an entire server since I'm an administrator. I have to evaluate and rule on accusations made and to do that I have to be able to view threads and potential harassment.
So I muted the whole server personally for 24 hours to let it die down but as a rule neither me nor the other moderators can keep any server on personal mute indefinately.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but would there be an obstacle to personally muting the server while leaving it unblocked on the account listed as site admin? Seems to be the best of both worlds - you get to ignore instances as you please, but you can still see the full context if someone reports me in a thread involving users from those instances.
That account isnt actually used for moderating. We use it for announcements only, its an unmonitored account.
In theory i suppose we could have every moderator have their own sock puppet for that purpose though. But its tricky, moderation is ideally pro-active and not just reactive. In other words we dont just respond to reports but try to defuse situations as they develop ideally.
It would be worth considering, but it also means that we would open our userbase up to all sorts of spam and attacks if we made that a general rule, at least in theory.
Keep in mind it is only a silence not a suspension. Our users are still free to follow spinster.xyz accounts if they wish. It just means that if you arent following an account or a specific conversation then a spinster account can not show up in a users notifications without the user responding to or following the spinster account first.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins My main dissatisfaction with it is that I can (1) follow a user on such a site, (2) click on a post of his, and even after these two active, affirmative-consent things I have done, any reply-threads are cut off once another user I haven't followed comments (i.e. that comment and any children are suppressed). A QOTO user really can't be part of the conversation with even a silence in effect.
cut off in what sense? As far as I know you should be able to still see replies you just wont get notified about replies if the reply is from a user on a silenced server.
There is a solution in the works (I suggested it upstream) to better handle muting in a way that users could override it at a server level. I need to check in to see how thats coming along.
In the sense that if you visit a post from within QOTO, say, https://spinster.xyz/@TatsuyaIshida/posts/104158509568722634 you only see one reply (even if following the post author). But if you go to the Spinster site, there are more - it's just that any branch of the tree of replies is pruned where the author is a Spinster user you're *not* following.
@khird
Interesting. I did not know it would actively prune the replies like that when explicitly viewing them. I dont like that...
@realcaseyrollins