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.
I don’t get it why tge commenters are upsetti of the way .art admin cleans their house.
If they smell anything fishy, it’s their duty to protect their instance’s users. It’s what is promised for joining .art.
There’s a reson it’s such a humongous instance. Because the admin is doing a stelar job.
It’s not to my taste, that’s why I’m on another instance. But my lord, leave people be.
If the admin is doing such a poor job, the instance will collapse, and people will simply migrate.
To me it looks like fragile egos are all around, and somehow get “offended” when defederation happens.
Also, GIMP is both a slur and a shitty graphics software. I’d personally block it as well.
i would imagine most people’s issue here is this seems to be more “extremely petty schoolhouse drama” than “actual thing worth defederating over”, especially when mastodon has better and more granular defederation tools at its disposal than lemmy or calckey
The way I see it (especially since regsitrations are “pls let me in”) .art is admin’s house.
If they ask you not to wear shoes inside, you either abide or leave. Petty or not, that’s the rule.
If they catch you or your friends with shoes inside, you and your friends are getting kicked out, since everybody else is barefoot/eating off the floor.
There’s really nothing weird, petty or childish. You get a warning (suspension?) if you don’t fix the problem, you get defederated.
“bUt mUh frEey speyCh” doesn’t work in a super-protective, highly moderated “safe space”.
the issue here is not that i’m telling them to not do things–i don’t care what they do or don’t do. what i’m pointing out here is that people probably find this really stupid because it has an identical structure to and is similarly frivolous looking to a 16-year-old making a 10 page callout post against an artist for drawing problematic height gap
Sure. But, reading the comments under the .art admins posts on .art, .art people don’t find it petty, nor stupid. You’d see that they are thankful. And they are the only people who are affected by the defederarion.
I’m sorry to say, but it really does not matter what other people think. It’s like me, who has never been at your house, and never planning to be, thinking that your house rules are weird, arbitrary and petty. I’m also weirded out that you didn’t let that or this person in your house.
Would you care about my opinion?
in a federated system necessarily yes it kind of does regardless of if you think that’s fair. we get shit for what we believe (and maintain) are extremely valid and straightforward reasons for defederating with a handful of not-malicious instances and that can impact who comes here and why. if you were to create an image of being–for lack of better wording–a messy bitch with a catty and overdramatic attitude (as many people seem to read this as being) your instance will gain that reputation, it will influence who your users are, and it can go so far as to be negatively reflected onto completely innocent users.
now, if the mastodon.art person doesn’t care about that then they don’t care, and i’m again not saying that i care either way–it’s their website, they can do what they want–but the presumption that this is in a vacuum or absent consequences is silly. it’s not!
literally the opinion of a handful of people. If that was true, the instance would collapse.
There will always be people unhappy with something. You can’t please everyone. The .art admin chose to please people of their instance, instead of maintaining a “look” that is expected from randos on the internet.
I’m 100% with the admin, and I’m glad the admin isn’t peer-pressured into being whatever people need them to be. Again, there’s a reason why the instance is so popular.
I remember artist tumblr in the 00’s. Participated, then moved over to twitter in the 10’s before I got sick of it. This looks like another continuation of that same community.
They can do what they like, but this reeks of the exact same kind of drama and mobs that, for example, drives fanartists to attempting suicide because they painted a character’s skin a shade too light. (Zamii070, if you’re curious.)
These sorts of communities form an echo chamber that, frankly, can be absolutely horrible for kids. Yeah, they can do what they want in their house, but I’m staying far the fuck away.
I know you didn’t mean anything bad by it, but the person you mentioned in that fanartist example doesn’t like being associated with that as she doesn’t want it to be her legacy.
What the hell is this comparison. Yeah, moderation = death, people. That’s why I’m on twitter, sorry, ex-twitter, where they respect muh free speech, that has never hurt anyone! /s
Sorry, rereading it and I think I was unclear. I’m saying that this community moved from tumblr, to twitter, and now to mastodon. I quit this community at the twitter stage when it became too detrimental to my mental health.
But this community uses moderation as one tool to enforce cliques, rather than to actually prevent abuse. Or, you could say, this community has a history of using moderation as a form of abuse.
Alongside that, this community has a history of inciting witch hunts over the most petty things. And they will be happy about what the moderators are doing within their own clique.
How are people starting drama over a FOSS program that has been around for 25 years? Gimp is free, open-source, and good software. People starting drama over that are looking for trouble.
Why is everyone calling it drama. How difficult it is to understand a dumb rule that says “no slurs”?
“Gimp” is literally a slur. The makers were aware of it and did for the lulz. Now they’re denied an account in an incredibly moderated instance because the name is a slur and everyone’s “why the drama11??11”
I think you have a different view on the project from reality. According to Wikipedia, the name “The Gimp” is a Pulp Fiction reference. The people who came up with the name “The Gimp” don’t even work on Gimp anymore. They’re CEO and CTO of the company developing CockroachDB. To imply that the volunteers running Gimp’s social media are some slur-crazy edgelords is counter productive.
I don’t think any people think of the slur when talking about the project, and I think this is a bunch of Twitter drama nonsense. If you want to change it, then join the project and change it, don’t harass volunteers.
A slur is a slur, no matter how you dress it.
If I made a program named “Fag*ot”, I’m sure, nobody cared about my story how it’s just a bunch of sticks.
That’s not how it works. But there’s an effort to fork the program and rename it.
The ‘harassment’: “can we join your instance?” - “no, your program name is a slur”.
Wait since when is it a slur, and for what? I’ve only heard it refer to a particular role in a BDSM context
You’re one google “is gimp a slur” away from the information you seek.
I’m personally a bit upset because, as a user on firefish.social, I am getting punished for doing nothing wrong. Now I won’t be able to interact with mastodon.art users, for what? I spent a bit of time digging, and the evidence this is all based on is weak at best. A person trolled (not even clearly in a racist way, sorry), and the Firefish dev/firefish.social admin happened to boost a news article posted by the once-troll, and now all the rest of the users of the Firefish instance are defederated? What kind of logic is that? It absolutely is offensive.
Plus, how she went about it is just wrong. Rather than reaching out to the Firefish dev, she publicly shames him and announces the defederation. The result was so much drama.
Look, sure, the .art admin can run their instance how they want, and they’re absolutely free to go about that in a way that offends people, but don’t tell me I can’t or shouldn’t be offended.
Don’t like to be associated with Firefish dev or want to contact people on .art? Migrate. Or contact the admin and ask for stricter moderation. Don’t want to migrate? Stay. But accept that not everybody want to share their toys with children from a sandbox that’s misbehaving.
Honestly, I really do not get what the fuss is.
It’s not for you to decide what I can decide. I am just as much within my right to judge as she is. It’s her that made the initial judgment, and it’s her that’s
abusing powerpunishing people 2 layers removed from the party in question (edit), not me.Get outta here. Not everyone in the instance is misbehaving.___
No, I mean it’s literally not up to you to decide what’s racist, from the .art point of view. If the admin smells racist dogwhistles, or even uses intuition, they’re free to use their judgement to act as they please.
“Not everyone” works for everything in life. Shit argument. If your contra argument is to deal with this on a “per-user” basis, I’m pretty sure that would require a medium-sized team to do that for all users on the Fediverse.
“Abusing power” LOL. I mean, this is just pure petulance and entitlement.
Upon further reflection, I may have been harsh with that term. I was angry, and you successfully trolled me. I did not appreciate being called a child, or petulant or entitled, for that matter.
As I said, though, she is free to run her instance how she wants. I do feel bad for the folks that feel they need her protection, as they are living in fear, although I suppose that’s their choice. The fact that she blocked even BBC added a dimension to my understanding of what sort of instance she is after.
I still do not agree with her methods of indiscriminately blocking 2 levels of relationships (if you can even call it that) from one person, though. To me, personally, this approach seems too likely to cause offense. If I were trying to make that type of instance, I’d probably just start with limited federation mode, and federate only approved servers. That way it’s a positive process for including one, and there would be much less reason to call myself a nickname like Tiny Tyrant or Stabby Stabby.
Anyway, I suppose I’m still getting used to the Fediverse and what sorts of interactions that come from it. I’ve accepted the situation now.
That’s incredibly condescending. Not everyone wants to doomscroll on every single social media they’re on. Why is it so hard to understand?
Why do people understand that Behance, Art Station, etc, is a social network for art, but can’t comprehend that .art is for primarily for art as well, and not for twitter shit throwing?
Not everyone wants a muskian “everything website” that just bombards you with all types of content, like some sort for 4chan.
What is BBC going to bring to the table that cannot be accessed though their website? It’s just going to be a barrage of their articles with clickbait titles, just like it is on all the other social networks.
Her primary intent is to create a “safe space” for affected individuals. What is a safe space except a place where one can be protected from that which they fear? Most instances have rules against bigotry and such, but she is much more aggressive than other admins. Defederating an entire instance based on one boost of one fairly innocuous news article, defederating a mainstream news source that folks can still access outside of .art, it all seems like theater designed to make the users feel coddled, but at the expense of stepping on so many others’ toes. Is this style of moderation really effective for these users in protecting them? Well, for their sakes, I hope so. I hope it’s worth all the drama.
Who is the one that’s being closed-minded, here? You keep saying this and make no attempt to understand the answers I am giving you, so this will be my last reply.
Mastodon is a social network that’s designed to be eerily similar to Twitter, and Twitter came first (and definitely pre-dates Musk…please don’t imply that I want Mastodon to turn into Musk’s X or 4chan). The Fediverse is still new to many, if not most, people. If the aim of the mastodon.art instance isn’t close to the average use case for Mastodon, perhaps the domain name is misleading. Administrative actions can hurt people’s feelings, too. We are all human…at least those of us that aren’t bots!
Edit: You are right, my replies were mostly about me and my reaction to the drama she started. I don’t pretend otherwise. I don’t claim to be one of the “good ones”, I only said I am human, have feelings, and did not break any of her rules. Do I have a fragile ego? Perhaps! But you are putting so many words in my mouth that I did not say. I am here responding to your initial statement that you can’t understand why a commenter might be upset by the .art admin’s actions.
Again, so condescending. And you hold yourself as one of the “good ones”? Lol. You’re just helping the .art admin’s case, the more you talk, the more the defederation makes sense.
“Fear”. Okay. That’s either a projection or… I don’t know, stupidity. Your inability to put yourself in others’ shoes is staggering, but not surprising. Do you think that just because I walk around a pile of dogshit on the ground, I’m afraid of the dogshit? What is this logic?
Let me really chew this for you: wanting to avoid something, does not equal fear. I’m not on facebook because I fear 5G-anti-vaxx-GOP Karens, I’m not on facebook, because I don’t want to read that shit a.k.a, I WANT TO AVOID IT.
A safe space, is a space that is safe from idiocy & hate speech. A safe space where you cannot hide behind “muh free speech”. It’s basically like any other privately-controlled space, where the owner decides what is “safe”. If you enter a cafe and start giving out flyers with your own agenda, you will most likely be asked to leave. This is not because the owner is afraid of you, it’s because the owner doesn’t want you or your bullshit in their space, that they’re keeping safe. Privately held mastodon instances are not a public square. You hold no rights. You are entitled to nothing.
That is not what happened.
Toes of fragile ego folk? Otherwise, nobody’s toes are stepped on.
Drama that you literally create out of thin air, just because an instance you were on got defederated? Now that’s fragility if I ever seen it.
Mastodon is an open source project. It’s designed to be used in ways people find it useful to be used. Some create instagram-like experience (Pixelfed), some create Twitter-like experience, some create Behance\Ello\ArtStation experience. Your expectation of what Mastodon is and how it should be run is narrow-minded and simply incorrect.
“Average use of Mastodon” sounds very similar to “Normal people”. Sure, let’s change the domain name, because of your expectation of how Mastodon should be used.
Imagine, Mastodon.art being about… wait for it… art? On… let this sink in… Mastodon?
Ah, there it is. It’s all about YOU. Again. Petulance & Entitlement. I’m done, it’s a case of terminal fragile-ego-techbro-ism that any time spent at the keyboard will not mend. But thanks for making me side with the .art admin even more, even though I have no horse in this race.