The admin of sh.itjust.works has been approached but as of yet has failed to reply to concerned Lemmy users. I’m glad Beehaw admins look out for us by cutting off instances that host communities like this.
Just to temper the backlash a bit. The community has 10 members, and is being brigaded/downvoted by the sh.itjust.works community at large. Whether or not they should allow it as admins is a fair question. But it seems clear, at least for now, the wider sh.itjust.works community isn’t on board. I still hope to re-federate with them some day when moderator tools are better, and federation can be more granular.
No kidding, everything is heavily downvoted and 99% of the posts are incredibly lazy memes by its creator, ‘LEFTWINGTEARS’, who beyond the name and banal posts, has a meme that was already tired years ago as their user img.
Kinda seems like a stretch to even say that that community is being hosted there, given it’s almost entirely just one very bored person. (Would be surprised if they were even 16 years old.)
Over here on kbin.social, I simply blocked that community as soon as I heard about it and now the only indication I have of its existence is threads like this one.
Definitely this. Blocking communities is the way to go for community problems. Defederation is for server-wide problems (like the management of bot swarms, which I hope to be a temporary issue and that re-federation will happen as soon as it is resolved)
But isn’t that a slippery slope? If bigotry is tolerated under the mantra of “just block it”, then it shows other even worse things that they have a potential home. Actual CP, extreme gore, whatever.
Give them a proverbial inch, and they’ll take a mile.
That’s the thing. You can’t do anything but block it. Even banning is just blocking. It’s not like you’re going over where they live with a rifle and pumping a few rounds into them and their children. Defederation is blocking an entire server. Sh.itjust.works has like 6000 people. Defederating the entire server over one dude with 2 accounts shitposting for attention is a bit extreme in my opinion. However! This is not my instance, and beehaw is the most ban-happy instance I’ve seen, so I guess you do you lol.
Someone is defensive.
I think this implies a server-wide problem actually; that a community like this could exist there, and that it isn’t an immediate, burning problem for the people in that server.
WOW.
This is why I love Beehaw.
Thank you!
That’s why we’re here mate! Great job on your part
Thank you 💖
This “defederate at the slightest sign of trouble” mindset is dangerous. It’s not like sh.itjust.works endorsed that terrible community they just happened to temporary set up there before they were banned.
If you just block every instance that hosts a community you disagree with, beehaw will end up completely isolated. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but don’t try to pretend you’re part of the federation at that point.
Agreed. Sh.itjust.works has plenty of interesting communities, pressing the big red button for just one name seems a bit overkill.
This. Defederation should be used as a last resort or if an instance has been a significant problem.
Damn right damn straight
This is really a microcosm of the problem of “free speech communities.” They wind up being infested with trolls and Nazis.
The only plausible reasoning for the admin not banning this community is they don’t mind it. Glad Beehaw is not federated with a place like that.
That was Voat. Voat, feature-wise, was like a better reddit. But then they (I think it was like one guy administering the whole site) stuck to “freeze peach” and it quite quickly turned into a cesspool. Like on Day 1. And of course reddit tried that, too from time to time when it was convenient. But as soon as it was inconvenient, like when the media found out about the JB, FPH, etc subreddits, free speech was off the table.
Free speech - as it’s understood in the US - concerns one thing: Governments. People literally have no free speech in any other regard; certainly not on privately owned/operated websites. Unless it’s their own; and it’s never their own, because no one would visit it.
I always wonder if these free-speech-people have ever tried yelling profanities or slurs at their boss or customers at work. The answer is of course they haven’t for the vast majority, because they know that yelling back “FREE SPEECH!” wouldn’t stop them from getting fired on the spot. But it’s the same principle. So it’s weird to me that people think they have some fantastical “right” online to get away with saying anything.
Yep… people usually interpret “free speech” as “freedom from the consequences of my speech,” but it’s never meant that.
Yep… people usually interpret “free speech” as “freedom from the consequences of my speech,” but it’s never meant that.
It’s not even that complicated. To these people, “free speech” only means that they believe they should be allowed to scream literal slurs when they want to make someone feel afraid or worthless. That’s literally the only thing they really want to use “free speech” for.
People need to realize that free speech only protects you from the government. We don’t have to listen to speech we don’t agree with.
I’m not sure what’s more painful, American Free Speech’ers who don’t know it has no relevance outside being free of government censorship, or non-Americans thinking it’s some universal truth.
Yep, and we have literal decades of evidence to show that Every. Single. Internet. Community. - whether it’s forums, blog comments, newsgroups, etc. - will always descend into a Nazi-filled hellhole without moderation or content guidelines.
And you really nailed it. It’s always a bad faith front. The people pushing for this “free speech” shit want that kind of community
Sometimes I wonder if the early version of the internet (the one that millenials grew up with) were too accepting of the “online edgelord” mentality. You know, the people who don’t believe their own words, just spouting stuff because it makes them look edgy and cool. Like, I know a younger me thought being edgy was cool, and I took that version of myself to online spaces - it wasn’t shut down like it should’ve been. However, I did end up growing out of it, only to realize my old friends never did. Even in their 30’s they still act like “top kek memelords” and are some of the saddest and loneliest people I know.
It kinda made me realize that “grown up people” online need to NOT put up with that crap. Like, zero tolerance, “Oh, your being an edge lord today? Temp ban - come back when you grow up”.
These same people, that were my friends back in high-school days often feel “persecuted” when they can’t be an edgelord anymore. After all, it was just SO NORMAL before. “It’s just a joke bro!”. And now every time they interact with society it’s through a lens of persecution because they can’t be as edgy as they want anymore.
THEN it get’s to bad faith bullshit as external bad actors feed the narrative that they “get” to be an edgelord and that’s what freedom of speech means - which then becomes a slide into alt-right and incel territory.
It’s exhausting, and honestly, I have a bit of myself to blame here - when I was more accepting of that type of behavior rather than pushing back on it. I even think that extends to the larger millenial cohort as well. We just kind of “accepted” 4-chan and the trash that came out of it for so long that many just feel entitled to be an edgelord these days.
It’s always a joke until it’s not anymore. It’s why places like 4chan led to the creation of QAnon and real-world white supremacist terrorism. Even on sh.itjust.works, the mod of the Trump community insists it’s all just “ironic”. But I’ve heard that before and it never stays that way.
I had always heard that supposedly the original r/t_d started as a joke, and we all know how that ended up.
Poe’s Law ruins everything
“Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.”
Absolutely. The edgelord mentality got completely normalized and persisted for so long that people just seem to accept that’s how people on the Internet are.
I used to spend a lot of time in Linux and F/OSS forums and there were so many people who, when posting in screenshot threads, had their browsers open to 4chan. It was just a totally normal and everyday thing for these people. And back when I was a bit more naive and having never heard of it, I remember hopping on and looking around 4chan, like just to see what the hype was all about, and wondering wtf was wrong with all these people who spent so much time there.
I don’t think those sort of folk are specific to F/OSS communities, but moreso as an overall tech culture thing. There’s this myth of “meritocracy” where people think that if your a 100X coder, then that’s all that matters, and being a disgusting shitstain of a person shouldn’t be relevant at all. And when they get chucked off of a project for being a bigoted asshat, they get pissed and spew their bile and entitlement all over the place.
THEN it get’s to bad faith bullshit as external bad actors feed the narrative that they “get” to be an edgelord and that’s what freedom of speech means - which then becomes a slide into alt-right and incel territory.
And this is absolutely where it led and where it leads. It feels like it takes its roots in tech enthusiast circles, then bleeds out into other enthusiast cultures, e.g. gaming, comics, etc., and then just poisons everything. And then after something like GG, you get people like Steve Bannon who see how that entitlement and disaffection can be weaponized, and can be used to drive the alt-right pipeline even faster.
Another thing I think contributed to this is that, as millennials, especially early on in Internet adoption, we had this idea of a separation of identities. Our online personas were completely different from our IRL personas because we were conditioned to believe that this was the safe way to go about things. But I think it just gave people a mask to hide behind, and just assume “well, it’s not real life. So I can just do whatever” without ever thinking about there being an actual human on the other side of the screen. And for so many millennials, it seems impossible to change this perspective.
As PA put it so succinctly:
Yes, I think this is true. There was a lot of “irony” that, as it turns out, was not really very ironic.
I genuinely think a lot of it was ironic back in the day – at the very least people seemed to know not to “take it too far” – before a generation grew up online who perceived the edgier posters as Cool and took it seriously, leading to the miasma we have today.
#UPDATE it’s been removed :)
Well, some of us are actually trying to convert it into a Donald Duck sub. Which I find kind of fun and couldn’t have happened if it was immediately banned.
Unfortunately my account over there was already banned from that community(I asked if they were being ironic when they first popped up) so I can’t help.
Edit: and someone else pointed out that the mod there keeps changing his display name so the community looks more active than it actually.
Urgh, great. I know I’m stating the obvious but we really don’t need The_Donald on here.
It’s been deleted
Good to hear they just deleted it at the very least, what a stupid decision allowing a community like that on any lemmy instance is. You might as well just throw a box of spanners into the gears, or throw lit matches into a peat bog.
Depending on the instance settings, anyone can create a community without admin approval. Presumably the admins didn’t know about it until someone pointed it out.
Glad they deleted it, but I am also glad that the mods saw this possibility and acted proactively before that shit could accidentally make its way onto our timelines. Beehaw is an intentionally safe space - that is much more of a stated goal than protecting libertarian “free-speech” or having an expansive presence on the threadiverse.
Even a single negative or hateful post showing up can have a profoundly negative and harmful effect on the community. We need to take this shit seriously and I am so so so thankful to have mods who are unafraid to act boldly here.
If you want an instance that is 100% reactive to hate speech and prioritizes your access to other instances at the potential risk of other instance members, maybe Beehaw ain’t the place for you (and that’s ok!)
I’m perfectly OK with Beehaw de-fedding from 75%+ of all lemmy inatances, including very large and popular ones, if it means keeping this space consistently free of hate. We are a community, not a platform.
Much love!
Looks like Beehaw was indeed the perfect fit and best instance to join. Though it is troubling how many shits like this have joined the Fediverse.
I picked Beehaw because it was an instance that was big enough to have activity, yet small enough where I wouldn’t bee overwhelmed (ba dum tsh). Although I am thinking of creating an alt account on a friendly server just in case, because until mod tools get better, I an kind of scared of defederation and fragmentation.
I heard it’s pretty common for lemmy users to have accounts across multiple instances. I have a couple as well “just in case” but the Beehaw community is pretty good and I’m just on it all the time and have barely ventured out on my other accounts.
We’ll see what the future holds for federation but as long as your chosen instance has high quality and active…activity then you should be good.
Yeah, I’m on here and kbin.social, mostly because there’s so many communities popping up and I have a million niche interests that I’d feel like I was shooting myself in the foot by locking myself out of communities that are defederated due to having too many spambots etc. but also because lemmy and kbin don’t seem to play perfectly with each other yet.
(Presumably a natural consequence of a sudden influx in users, both due to bots having more reason to spam said instances, and due to the rapid rise in users making them somewhat harder to spot and expunge.)
Same. I have a few accounts everywhere. Not on beehaw tho cuz too many defederations. I wanna read what my buddies are doing on Lemmy world and s.j.w and I couldn’t from here.
I think it’s reasonable to have an account on another federated server, especially if they’re a smaller (sub 100 users) instance that requires applications. In my experience after switching to a smaller server, I was able to see a similar amount of activity on my feed by subscribing to a wide range of communities I’m even mildly interested in.
I like browsing by New and on Beehaw, it’s a bit rough because I would see a lot of NSFW communities and have to constantly manually block them, and as it’s a more active instance, I would run into the “person subscribes to new community and feed fills with those posts” bug very often. On the smaller instance, there’s a lot of overlap between my subs and other users’ subs in terms of content so New is still a pleasant browsing experience.
I don’t know that bug. Can you describe it a bit more? Not sure if you typoed there.
It’s something to do with the web sockets implementation in 0.17 - when any person on your instance subscribes to a community, the community’s posts get added to the top of the web ui feed (possibly only if you’re on page 1?). so if I’m on page 1 of new and someone subscribes to a self-hosted community, I’ll be flooded with all the recent posts from that community as I’m scrolling through the feed.
should be fixed in 0.18 since web sockets are removed there, and it’s also less of a deal on small instances as I said.
I’m watching the drama from lemmy.today and it’s very nice to not get involved in the politics of all this. It’s still super small and maybe it will always be, but that’s not a problem since we are using federated tech and can take part of every community that exists anywhere. :)
Using a small instance offers the luxary of being neutral in all this.
I joined beehaw June 1st, it was the best choice at the time, there was basically Beehaw and lemmy.ml . But when Beehaw defederated lemmy.world I created an account there too. So for the moment I have 2 accounts, it covers my need.
I mean them joining is 100% expected since anyone can make and host an instance. The issue comes when a larger instance is ok with harboring these psycho fucks
Not only that but anyone can join too. It’s open registration. However, do note it’s so new and small it’s gone virtually unnoticed until now.
I would normally think someone like the … proprietor of that community of one-ish, would simply be a troll. But going off what they posted I think they’re just immature, heard about a new social media thing, and wanted to be able to tell people they’re the ‘owner’ of a Trump-fanboy ‘community’.
Huge extrapolations on my part, but I really struggle to see this outside a lens of someone who is incredibly immature trying to be edgy, looking for clout, or both.
Theres also a discussion at https://lemmy.ml/post/1467310
One of shitjustworks admins just replied:
He still thinks TD could grow into something beautiful…
i think you should assume good faith but i will say as a user it… does not really inspire confidence that this needs to be “reviewed” when it’s like two people doing the unfunniest bit imaginable. this should be a pretty easy nuke, and it really shouldn’t need the community weighing in. letting it stand will eventually let the cretins fester.
Not just nuking the donald community. But banning each and every subbed community member. Else they’ll still be there, roaming the instance and spreading malicious ideas.
Yeah, that feels like crossing a line for me. I don’t believe in guilt by association.
How do you know somebody didn’t just subscribe to monitor them?
Nor does it take into account that people’s views can change, and an outright ban simply for being part of the community only isolates them from the less batshit communities that may help them actually move away from it.
I recently read a letter by Dietrich Bonnhoefer, who was a German Lutheran pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, who was imprisoned in 1943, hanged by Hitler’s personal directive in April 1945.
His letter is titled “On Stupidity” and it explains A LOT.
Yeah, I’ve known plenty of antifascists subscribed to, or otherwise technically “members” of awful online spaces just to keep an eye on things.
you lot are going to be the death of this place
Well, the dude has a vision that the community should discuss it first, they have, and it’s now deleted.
Says more about admins honestly. Sh.itjust.works is going to become a sh.it.hole.
maybe. but i’m not in the business of telling The Dude how to personally administer his community as a fellow admin–hence me taking off the mod cap for that post–and we don’t really have any reason to think The Dude is a bad guy or that his instance has bad intentions. hopefully it’ll just resolve on its own.
The dude abides… having the_donald on his instance! ba-dum-tiss
This aggression will not stand, man!
OVER THE LINE!
Just wanted to let you know that you can mark the community as “removed” on your backend and it’ll disappear from beehaw even if you federate to the the s.j.w instance.
I also wanted to let you know that The Dude created a “Greek Democracy” style system called The Agora. That’s probably what he means by “review”. He said a few days ago that anything important would be thrown there for the crowd to decide.
I have little doubt that by the end of the week the 1 or 2 users running TD won’t have a home there anymore.
I also wanted to let you know that The Dude created a “Greek Democracy” style system called The Agora. That’s probably what he means by “review”. He said a few days ago that anything important would be thrown there for the crowd to decide.
i’m aware, and i’ve stated already why i don’t think this is worth that (and separately, i have extreme reservations about using a system of that sort to make decisions like this).
Noted. Thanks for clarifying. I think he just wants to give his little pet project Agora a test run to start things up since he just set it up lol. I bet if it were a month into it he wouldn’t do that.
What part of the last fifteem or so years of human history leads you to the fairly surprising assertion that you should assume good faith?
i’m not entirely sure what you mean here tbh
They mean that they think that humans in general are very bad because war and theft and hunger and greed and all of that. I mean there’s a shitton more than that in life but yeah I think that was their point.
It only becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if you go into every situation thinking like that. Most people are pretty decent, it’s only that they try to do what they believe is right.
Taking off your mod cap doesn’t give you the distance you think it does. You essentially contradicted the pinned mod post you made.
You essentially contradicted the pinned mod post you made.
we’re pretty upfront about where we stand on like, everything, so i don’t think it’s too much to ask of you to actually provide evidence of supposed contradictions. this should be something you can do in literally five minutes, probably less.
Sure, one of the bullet points is assume good faith. You said otherwise.
if you’re going to do UM AKSHUALLY rebuttals, it might behoove you to read the posts you’re doing that to, instead of making an ass of yourself. this was, quite literally, the first thing i said to the poster.
i think you should assume good faith but i will say as a user it… does not really inspire confidence that this needs to be “reviewed” when it’s like two people doing the unfunniest bit imaginable.
i just also have reservations about this, because in my mind as a user i do not think this really needs to be reviewed. it’s not a “community”, it’s like two people who have been overwhelmingly downvoted and pretty clearly conflict with what i assume are the goals of SJW.
you need to reread my post. I am challenging that your statement “as a user” is putting any distance between you as mod. It carries the same weight as yelling I declare bankruptcy.
i sincerely don’t care what you think about this incredibly meaningless point. go sealion somewhere else, thanks
Who exactly cares
I honestly don’t even give people who are even tolerant of those people any consideration at this point. Either completely remove the community no ifs ands or buts, or your entire instance is illegitimate. Period.
Well, most users already banned it when it was created, then of course when more attention was brought to it the trolls got what they wanted and ran with it.
It’s now been removed anyway.
“Just let the nazis congregate… it could turn out ok!”
I mean if they start saying outright nazi shit it’s already in the rules there that they get the boot. But one person getting off to themselves making cringe political memes that were old nearly a decade ago is, well, just that.
I guess I just think that it’s a teeny, tiny bit dangerous to make out like this is actually them hosting a community of nazis, when it’s essentially one user – we have no idea how many of the small handful of people subscribed to it share their affiliations, versus how many are subbed just to keep an eye on their bs or even just to downvote their posts (personally I think those people would be wasting their time, but they certainly exist).
What @truckkun@lemm.ee said seemed pretty believable to me:
I think he just wants to give his little pet project Agora a test run to start things up since he just set it up lol.
And I say that because it’s pretty clear already how the community is going to vote on this issue unless there’s an incredibly massive brigading – unlikely given, again, this is one loser – or his tool is terrible.
(Much as I agree it’s unnecessary to get communal consent to nuke what could only develop – at best – into a well of negativity. He should just tell the dweeb to get lost.)
I think that at best he’ll just get bored. I think that what you say is the “at worst”.
That’s why I’m not really worried either way. Unless they 100% fail to enforce their own rule, the second it goes beyond braindead political shitposting he’s going to be out of there anyway.
Having a rule against bigotry that is entirely ignored would be much more concerning than one wayward fool anyway.
Well, if they would congregate, they would be easier to identify and block/ban.
They do congregate. And they have already been banned. Lol. Their main communities are elsewhere. The TD instance is defederated. This is just some guy with too much time, thick skin and a bit of sadism trying to bother people with his ideas.
He still thinks TD could grow into something beautiful…
originally the subreddit was ironic and making fun of supporters of trump (I think the name was that somebody (Melania?) referred to him with “the” article.
Then it quickly was overrun with people who truly believed that.
Anyway, I also agree that anyone currently creating this community will likely be one of the later group.
Where does he say that he thinks it could still grow into something beautiful? You are commiting logical fallacies and cognitive distortions.
It just feels incorrect to even label it TD because it (as far as I can tell) has no relevant connection to that pile of filth beyond its “topic”, ultimately being only one person.
deleted by creator
So much for beehaw folks assuming good intent…
i think you should assume good faith
i dont see them assuming bad faith anywhere in their comment
It’s really an issue with how the fediverse handles communities. On Reddit each sub had its own moderation/governance structure which I think fits the role of an “instance” best. Here, each instance has a variety of communities which may overlap with other instance.
I.e. banning an instance for having community X impacts community Z who may also dislike X.
Without ripping up the floorboards, I suspect the answer is instances having community-level granularity in blocking. So one can block: The_Donald@*, *@sh.itjust.works, or most narrowly The_Donald@sh.itjust.works
From a fellow instance administrator; does anyone know if it’s possible to block a single community across your whole instance rather than defederating it? E.g., is it possible for me to block “HateSpeechCommunity@*” or “HateSpeechCommunity@domain.ext” as opposed to defederating all of “domain.ext”?
Specifically, we would love to ban “The_Donald@sh.itjust.works” from our instance without having to blanket ban the server, as there are some communities on this server (e.g. gaming@, etc) that we do actually want to interact with.
I’m aware that I can block the community on my own user account, but not sure if I can block just the one community from showing up on my instance altogether.
It is possible. Yes. This was confirmed in the sh.itjust.works thread on the same topic by an instance host. He said that you just have to mark the community as “removed” and then no one in your instance can see it. Except admins, probably.
You’ll still have to deal with the users of that community coming onto your server and posting on other communities you can see.
Yea, understood. In this case I was looking for a less heavy-handed option, blocking just the communities in question rather than all the users on the instance. We’re a tiny instance so we don’t get too much inbound traffic, it’s just me and a few other people interacting with the wider Fediverse for now. So something in between defederation and complete tolerance would be great if they add that in the future.
I’ve not seen it myself (not being an admin), but I think there’s a “remove” (not purge) button on the community page. It clears all the posts from that community, and prevents new ones from being received.
That might be what I was looking for, thanks a lot!
I don’t think v0.18.0 changed much regarding moderation tools. The blocking of communities was limited to the account level in v0.17.4
Thanks. So I guess no real recourse for the moment.
That’s why I left that instance. I tried to explain the paradox of tolerance but they refused to listen. They didn’t want “censorship” of their “free speech”. I don’t have the patience to watch people learn the same lesson that has been learned over and over again all throughout history, in millions of different contexts. It’s always the same thing that will happen because sheeps keep thinking it’s “healthy” to have “discussions” with “dissenting” hungry wolves.
loudest free speech proponents are 100% of the time bad faith actors who want to spread alternative facts type shit
eventually they turn into communities like voat or /convervative where dissent is banned/soft banned, or they defend shit such as /jailbait or antivax
I don’t remember which comedian, but one made a joke a while back that has resonated as absolute truth with me. People only use “free speech” as a defense when they’re trying to say shitty things.
@iAmTheTot *Things that the mainstream perceives as shitty. Imagine if slaves were still illegal, and anyone campaigning for their abolishment was not allowed to speak on social media. See why you need free speech now?
And you might say ‘That’s different, slavery is bad and advocating for its abolishment is good, but advocating for Donald Trump is bad’, but that is the point.
‘I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’
*Things that the mainstream perceives as shitty. Imagine if slaves were still illegal, and anyone campaigning for their abolishment was not allowed to speak on social media. See why you need free speech now?
wow, you’re telling me that if you just make up a world where things are different, things might need to be different? enlightening stuff, thank you. a great argument for unfettered freedom of speech here.
Most of the time people bring up “free speech”, its when free speech isn’t even being threatened: they’re just being told their opinions are bad or people don’t want them to get paid for expressing those bad opinions. If your defense of your statements is focused on the free speech aspect, its because you don’t have a reasonable justification. Those who campaigned against slavery defended their positions with arguments about why slavery is bad instead of saying slavery should be abolished otherwise you’re violating my free speech.
Edit: there’s a difference in being a support of freedom of speech and responding to any criticism by claiming other people expressing their opinion somehow violates your free speech.
And you might say ‘That’s different, slavery is bad and advocating for its abolishment is good, but advocating for Donald Trump is bad’, but that is the point.
This is where you misunderstood. The problem here isn’t slavery is bad and advocating against it is good and how that compares with the_donald. It’s that in the US, many countries in the EU, Australia, and New Zealand*, getting arrested or harmed by the government simply for speaking isn’t something to worry about. So, the people who use “free speech” to hide behind are, almost by default, bad actors. Even if you count mainstream (the citizens), no one is trying to harm the person speaking. In this case here it is also the opposite. What these racist fkers say (and do) can certainly hurt and harm other people, and they are doing everything they can so they don’t have to be responsible for their own speech. Hence, the “free speech”. It’s a similar tactic to opposers blending into a group of protestors and trying to sabotage by staging violence.
Now, if it’s another country where free speech is not where it should be. I’ll use my own country and it’s outdated and stupid lese majeste law as an example. Free speech here isn’t completely polluted by those bad actors yet because it still holds a very real value to combat tyranny. So, what I’m saying is this “free speech” problem in the US is a first world country problem, which should not be confuse with what free speech is about in more oppressive regimes.
People already heard what they had to say long ago, and it’s not welcome. So at this stage it’s about not letting them run all over everyone else. It’s not as if they have anything different to say from before. The answer is still the same, their racism is bad, their anti-science believes are bad, their disinformation are bad, their actions toward the LGBTQ+ communities are unacceptable etc. What else is there to listen to?
*Purposely left out Canada here.
I couldn’t disagree more. The ACLU are the biggest defenders of free speech in the world. Opponents of free speech are far more dangerous than advocating for free speech.
Downvoted for supporting free speech and the ACLU. Tell me again who are the extremists? Because fuck a Nazi but they aren’t the ones trying to silence discussion in this thread. YOU ARE.
there’s a neverending sea of guys like you who personify this panel, huh
There’s a never ending sea of people like you who just make assumptions about others. You know fucking nothing about me and have already dismissed my position in favor of free speech because you’re so incredibly biased and not open to conversation. It’s not surprising that someone so opposed to any opinions contrary to their narrative is opposed to free speech.
You know fucking nothing about me and have already dismissed my position in favor of free speech because you’re so incredibly biased and not open to conversation.
it is a bit wild to get indignant about me immediately writing you off as Yet Another Annoying, Probably White, Probably Cis-Het Man who doesn’t understand why the minorities and transes are so uppity when you literally opened with “Opponents of free speech are far more dangerous than advocating for free speech.” you do realize how that comes off on an instance with a ton of minorities and LGBTQ+ people who are currently having that freedom of speech used to advocate for things up to and including their systematic murder, correct?
I oppose your reactionary, thoughtless response. You think that attempts to silence them is righteous. I think you’re every bit as misled and confused as they are.
And fuck you for your assumptions about my race and gender as if they’re at all relevant to the support of free speech.
You’re just like those people you despise. You make ignorant assumptions, assume righteousness, and refuse to have open discussion. You’re using the EXACT SAME in-group out-group dynamics that are toxic as fuck.
When you find yourself in opposition to the positions held by the ACLU, you’re probably fucking wrong.
okay so no, i guess you don’t get how this comes off. i’m not even going to dignify your false equivalencies or appeals to the ACLU as if they are infallible or can’t be criticized for some of the positions they take (however principled). i think it’s telling that you’re screaming about how insulting it is for making “assumptions” about you–yet you in no way deviate from how a person who my assumptions apply to would respond here. to put it another way: you’re not beating the Yet Another Annoying, Probably White, Probably Cis-Het Man allegations, and this space isn’t for you. go away.
We are explicitly anti-free speech. In the context of this document on what we stand for, making a statement that “free speech is good” without addressing any of the issues we bring up isn’t operating in good faith towards us, so you should not expect us to treat you similarly.
Inaccurate: there are no slurs, guns, not even a dogwhistle on the fash side. angry rant about awful people and ‘freeze peach’ omitted
Thanks for your work on beehaw <3
Part of the issue is that the “nazi” line is being placed haphazardly. For example, this comment will be enough for some people to put me on the “nazi” side, without knowing anything about me.
For example, this comment will be enough for some people to put me on the “nazi” side, without knowing anything about me.
if you have to pre-emptively say this, this is already a self-report. i have literally never been called a Nazi (or anything similar) for saying political things online, and neither have the vast majority of normal people with sane things to say.
Mfw self reporter doesn’t realized they self reported
i mean, the beehaw modteam has definitely been called nazis by lemmygrad
“It’s just a differing view point that I think [x] people are the root cause of all the problems in society. In fact, I daresay society would be better without them. I’m not opposed to finding ways to get rid of those people and that they just shouldn’t exist. Why can’t you be civil about me implying genocide against a group of people that have actually not caused any harm to anyone?”
To be fair, I see this said about republicans, and even center/independents, all the time. Dehumanizing is never good.
I’ve seen plenty of actual death calls for gay and trans people. A Texas pastor even talked about lining up gay people and shooting them. Or that trans people should be eradicated completely. Donald Trump himself even reposted a tweet where the first sentence was, “the only good democrat is a dead democrat”.
Can’t say I’ve seen nearly anywhere near as much about republicans. Not as many people nor prominent figures. Sure, they’re called corrupt and maybe stupid or harmful or other words but I don’t remember Biden endorsing “the only good republican is a dead republican”.
Obviously if someone says that republicans should all die, then yeah. That’s just as bad. And it does happen. But not nearly as often as minorities get targeted. You’re still right. Dehumanizing is absolutely not good and you should judge each person as an individual. But just realize there’s quite a bit of difference in scope.
near as much about republicans
That’s a pretty poor metric/goal, but you’re obviously right. But, dehumanizing large swaths of strangers is bad. That template, used by anyone, is bad. Full stop.
There’s free speech, i.e. the government cannot persecute you for what you say, and then there “free speech”, i.e. people expecting others to platform speech they find repulsive.
The alt-facts folks aren’t being silenced. They’re free to keep on talking. No one is obligated to host them and their words, however.
For eight goddamned years already we’ve been subjected to their “idea” - more like “mockery” - of Free Speech.
They’ve had their chance, and they proven over and over and over and over again that they act in bad faith, that wherever they rear their sick little heads, they are there to deliberately fill with noise, to fill with lies, to doxx, to corrode.
Nobody hates Free Speech as much as THEY do, and it’s not even close.They are a bigoted, stubbornly-ignorant circlejerk that incites violence, that wants to watch the world burn.
These creatures delight in the suffering of others, and should be dealt with in the exact same manner as this space should deal with Al-Qaeda or NAMBLA if they decided to plant their unholy seed here.Free Speech doesn’t figure into it anymore, not after all the shit that’s gone down for the past eight goddamned years. A line was crossed a long, long time ago.
Defederation opinions aside, free speech should be protected from a legal standpoint, and the ACLU is all about that. I’m glad you pointed this out, sorry about the downvotes - free speech is an important legal right.
To add my perspective - in terms of defederation, I’d say that is an example of a healthy boundary, which needs to be respected as well. If folks collectively want to create a personal boundary that they don’t want to discuss antivax theory in their space, that’s also cool. We set up boundaries like this all the time as communities - churches are a good example. Sure, you can legally swear in church, but the community set a boundary that they don’t want that there, and they might punt you out of the community if you disrespect it. One of the nice things about the Fediverse is that free speech is “legal”, as is you can use the software freely for whatever you want to say or discuss because of the open source license, but there are also tools like defederation to create reasonable boundaries among communities.
I hope more folks start to think of it this way as federation catches on and that this concept helps make room for nuance in discussion again. Healthy boundaries that keep you psychologically safe are good and necessary. In real life, we wouldn’t think it’s good or healthy to let someone constantly badger or berate us or talk about things we don’t want to discuss anymore. We’d say “end the conversation and walk away”. I think it’s okay to bring those boundaries to the internet too.
Biggest doesn’t mean loudest. ACLU typically embodies the quote “speak softly and carry a big stick”. Their actions often speak louder than their voices, and when they do speak its generally not shouted at the top of their lungs.
Free speech, as a concept, is the very first thing all fascists turn on people who value freedom. It is that value of freedom that makes the free speech argument so powerful. “How can you love freedom if you don’t even let us speak?” they will say with crocodile tears and false humbleness. And then, they will take full advantage of the fairness and moral treatment they are given to promote their brand of hate. You cannot stop fascism by treating it with fairness. They will not give you the same, and the end goal is to destroy the exact thing you are giving to them. Fascism has to be stopped in its tracks, immediately. If you entertain them in any way that allows them to signal with their dog whistles you’ve already lost. And we’ve lost a lot, because our leaders aren’t even bothering to use dog whistles anymore. They’re just stating it outright.
Whenever I see bigots citing “free speech” to justify their bigotry, I’m reminded of this xkcd.
sh.itjust.works said this? That’s really disappointing.
Doesn’t anyone else remember back in circa 2011-2014 when ISIS was all over Reddit?
Like you just be browsing r/Syriancivilwar or r/Arabspring and all of a sudden there’s some ISIS motherfucker just shitting everywhere? Saying the absolute worst things. r/syriancivilwar even had ISIS/ISIL flair for a while. To be overly fair, I did have one really interesting conversation(with a dude who thought I deserved death) about ‘Paulinism’ vs ‘Christianity’ but I don’t think that overall makes it worth having folks like that around.
I feel like people forget that era of development of mod tools and site policies. r/The_Donald were running into rules put in place to deal with literally ISIS.
Give yer balls a tug. Seriously. Maybe if you’re being as shitty as literally ISIS then you should take a look at your behavior. Get the fuck out of here.
It’s also highly disturbing that at least ISIS was honest. R/The_Donald would never admit to their hatred.
I do not agree with that at all, as a user you can block that community or the entire instance, but I do not want anyone to make that decision for me, I am an adult and I know how to distinguish toxic speech, but I also like to read ideas other than mine, however different and controversial they may be, I think that makes me think more about my own ideas and arguments. I would block blatant spam and clearly intentional fake news, but always to specific communities and never entire instances
It is my opinion of course, for that there are different instances, to moderate each one in its own way. But I think if you massively block out everything you don’t like, you’ll end up in a room full of mirrors.
Thanks for the post! Just defederated from my instance too, they violate our code of conduct.
No instance should allow misinformation or hate under the guise of “free speech”.
Free speech isn’t just a right, it’s a responsibility. Too many people touting free speech don’t understand that.
Exactly this. Thank you!
“With great power comes great responsibility” but too many people just want the power and utterly refuse to acknowledge, let alone accept, the responsibility that comes with it.
Free speech for me, not for thee. :)
Update: the admin deleted it :)
So was defederation not the right call now?!
OK, anyone can create a community on that instance so this is not yet a reflection of their values. HOWEVER, if that instance is still there after a bit it DOES say a lot about that instance and specially about the admins
I like people and humanity as a whole, but I lack the faith that everyone is a good actor or has good intentions. In theory the negative freedom of not being restricted from creating whatever community one wants on a site is a pleasant idea, but in reality it’s like leaving unlimited matches in a room with a huge number of children where most of them are responsible. There may even be a lot of nice uses of matches but…
In this case it’s more like there’s an entire town with thousands of people, and there’s someone who’s on a walled garden yelling slurs, and the towns all around are yelling to close the doors to the “racist town because they don’t boot that racist old man”. Which in a sense is kinda like yeah maybe there’s this duty there to boot the racist old man. But it’s just one guy and everyone can just erase the garden from their existence with one button. If it were beehaw. No doubt, boot the guy. But unlike beehaw sjw is not the banhappiest instance, and seems instead like the banunhappiest community lol. So judging them by judging your immediate surroundings is setting too high of a standard.
In your example, you referred to an individual who was easily dismissed by everyone who heard them without exception. If there was nothing to fascist rhetoric, I wouldn’t worry about it. The issue is that it can be very compelling if you are not its victim and don’t have reason to critisize it.
I used fire in my example because even though it can start small, it can spread rapidly. Fascism spreads wherever it’s allowed. I’ve watched it happen and known people who were unprepared become seduced by it. Please don’t assume it’s benign.
Your post reminds me of The Crust Punk Bar
Here’s the story
dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.” And i was like, ohok and he continues “you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too. And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down” And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
I’m not sure it does. It’s not as though it’s very active. All I’ve heard about it is how people are blocking it.
I think it comes down to community philosophy. Should we just ban communities on a user level? Maybe. Until it poses a bigger issue I’m fine with trying that approach. I’m quite confident if it became big or a nuisance the admin would remove it.
