cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6853479
mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator. The administrator of firefish.social was found to be boosting posts from a known harasser on another instance. mastodon.art takes a firm stance against racism and suspending full instances in these situations is part of their policy as a safe space. The known harasser has a history of using slurs, harassment, and editing screenshots to spread misinformation. However, the administrator of firefish.social has now forged a screenshot to paint mastodon.art in a negative light.
Thread where calckey dev responds. https://firefish.social/notes/9hp49vhkce098zn8
article was fine, mastodon.art’s mod didn’t like the person who originally posted it
i just wonder how one could possibly know whether that person was racist before boosting it. i mean, sometimes we all see stuff and repost or boost it without making a whole profile check on that person right?
Mastodon.art has 29k users, so it’s not nothing, I suppose
Defederation is one of the big issues fediverse social media will face, now is getting more population and will be more in the future
How is it an issue to be faced? It’s an advantage of how the fediverse is built.
It can force those who disagree with defederating to find a new instance that has access to all the communities they want. It also makes onboarding new people significantly more complicated, as their choice of instance will drastically influence their feed.
To be clear, I’m not arguing against defederation, just pointing out that it causes issues that need dealt with.
those aren’t issues, they’re features.
your instance should be curated in a way you agree with. new users should always understand what they’re signing up for.
It’s not an issue, it’s an intentional and important feature.
Don’t want to be defederated? Don’t let chuds and bigots on your instance. It’s pretty simple.
Don’t want to be defederated? Don’t let chuds and bigots on your instance. It’s pretty simple.
While this is the main reason for defederation, I think it’s important to recognize that humans are going to human and as of such you’re going to have defederation over extremely petty issues. In human history we’ve literally started wars over petty issues, costing countless lives - defederating is small stakes in comparison.
With that being said I agree with other posters that defederation is a tool. Just like any other tool it will be used in ways not everyone expects. A hammer can be used as a can opener if you really want. Or as art. Or in an elaborate machine. Tools may be designed for a purpose, but humans are creative and you can’t enforce that tools are only used in certain ways.
I would advise against armchair hypothesizing about the mental health state of individuals based on how they post online.
most federations have councils or independent regulators to step in so that members don’t lose out by the actions of others. But not the fediverse.
There are at least two technological solutions to that at an end-user level:
- Apps (including webapps) that let people both easily interact with defederated instances, and block instances themselves.
- User migration between instances, which right now are kind of working on Mastodon, and kind of pending on Lemmy/Kbin/etc.
And one at a pro-user level:
- Run your own instance and federate with whoever you wish.
There are proposals for creating “councils” that could keep blacklists, whitelists, chains of trust, and whatever else, but once analyzed more in depth, they all seem to lead to more knee jerk reactions, not less.
Defederation is a feature, not an issue. Bigots, racists, etc can be confined to servers that allow that behaviour without polluting friendly servers with their content.
I do think defederation is an important tool for the many pedophile, harassment or extremism oriented instances there are because of the fediverse’s decentralized nature. But it is an extreme action, and I don’t see it as a good immediate recourse when there’s issues with an admin or some users.
Is it just me or is mastodon.art the source of almost all of the drama on the fediverse?
@donuts I recently had a short conversation with someone from mastodon.art. They denied the GIMP devs an account on their server, because GIMP is a slur word. And they made a public announcement of this fact. Looks like the moderation/administration people are assholes, if they act and communicate like that. This community is new to me and all I know is about this GIMP announcement and this new drama.
@shnizmuffin For those who know less/more, original name was General Image Manipulation Program, before it got renamed.
Wow - bit overblown all in all. While it sounds like the quinoa guy is kinda a jerk, I’m not seeing any proof of racism on his part. He just boosted a legitimate news article (the Fediverse servers being seized that popped up yesterday) posted by this Eris character, who had been flagged as a racist troll in the past. This isn’t confirmed or denied in the various posts aside from a profile link on thebadplace.com - which has no information aside from a few racist tags on that profile (can’t tell who the profile is for).
This sounds more like the admins got snippy at each other in off-site discord drama and decided to take their toys and go home. Interesting for the /popcorn, but hey, if mastodon.art doesn’t wanna play with firefish, that’s their decision, regardless of the reasoning, end of story.
This is why I prefer using my own instance- I don’t want these federation choices made for me by people like this.
