So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now “free speech purism”, so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.
Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.
Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.
(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn’t truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?
A ton of people flocked there because they think the Fediverse is too confusing, so now they’re going to Discuit.
I have accounts on both out of curiosity, but I had a feeling something weird was going to go down on Squabblr. I just got a weird vibe from that place at first. I am not sure about Discuit yet, but it’s yet another centralized service people are using because the fediverse is “too confusing”…
Yeah I’ve literally made accounts in squabbles and lemmy at the same time. At first squabbles was great, but somehow there’s something there that I couldn’t describe. I continued to go to lemmy but I’ve stopped going to squabbles for weeks now. And suddenly this!
Sometimes our instinct is spot on and we got to listen to it more often.
The commitment to tweet-like self posts is what made me leave. I don’t like posting an image or article without being able to provide a title.
Way too much drama on there. It’s like every week you have to catch up on what happened.
I honestly prefer fediverse remain as that complex open source alt, because it’s one of the few filters we have for users here.
I honestly don’t believe rapid growth is healthy for any platform, and we’ve even seen it here with how comments and memes are getting increasingly vitriolic and offensive. Fuck, antivax memes are starting to appear on lemmy.ml’s meme community.
I’m starting to think Beehaw had the right idea with vetting users, because there people here who think Lemmy should be another 4chan.
Why do a group of pricks feel they’ve gotta transform everything they touch into 4chan? 4chan itself is still going, stay the hell there!
I disagree. There are lots of good people out there who are not technical.
ok but then theh might lose their cool kids club and we wouldn’t want to not feel special and smart for… making an account on a website
Not only is the Fediverse puzzling, but it also struggles to clarify its essence; the majority lack an understanding of its functioning
My only complaint about it right now is that most instances only know about communities that are hosted there or that their users deliberately subscribe to. Which works fine for huge instances like lemmy.world, but small instances that aren’t running federation helper bots just don’t have much of an All feed, and initiating federation requests to remote communities you heard of through a directory or elsewhere is a confusing process.
“The fediverse” is puzzling, but Lemmy is simple. I find it weird people get so off put by sites just because they allow Federation. Like- are those same users going to quit Threads when it enables Activitypub? Just seems like a really weird place to draw the line.
Who owns Discuit?
It’s this dude: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/14b5rdo/introducing_discuit_an_easy_to_use_reddit/
That’s all I can find of him. He doesn’t believe the fediverse will take off and on that note alone, he can go screw himself.
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With name like “Squabbles”, I knew it was only a matter of time, lol.
The people who think making an account on Lemmy.world is “too confusing” but think making an account on Reddit or one of these other random sites is somehow simpler really surprise me.
I get that federation is a new weird concept but it’s not like anyone needs to know what it is to sign up somewhere and start posting.
I went there because it was simpler and more like reddit. Once this shit started to brew a few weeks ago I noped right out of there. Lemmy ftw
Funny, during the boycott of Reddit when squabbles was growing, I signed up and created two new communities - one for earbuds and one for vaporents (dry herbal vaporizing).
My earbuds community was quicky approved, but the vaporents group took almost a week before it was approved. It’s almost like the site’s owner (since back then he had no mods or admin team) was hesitant when it came to something possibly clandestine in nature. I guess drugs aren’t cool, but hate speech is?
Wtf is a squabblr
Used to be “Squabbles”. It, Lemmy, and Discuit were three of the major Reddit alternatives thrown around during the Reddit protests.
Sucks. We had lots of fun there when it first started. But I’ve deleted my account now. It’s hilarious to watch Jake try and make an empire. What a loser.
He clearly cares more about his idea of what the site should be than he cares about what the people on the site want.
This is why non-federated services are crap.
I’ve legit never heard of Squabblr or this… Discuit? What even are these?
Reddit alternatives that didn’t pick up a lot of steam yet. We’ll see if they end up winning out over the fediverse or reddit itself, looks like squabblr won’t if it’s already gone the truth social route
Squabblr was called squabbles until a very recent rebrand. You may’ve known it under its old name instead.
That was this stupid Reddit + Twitter mix, right? Never understood why some people were hyping that platform up so much.
It’s pretty alright. The dev is pretty fast, churned out a majority of the site between a month before reddit killed 3rd party apps and today. Decently responsive to requests and stuff too. But the site just didn’t grow, and the head dev was never okay with giving up sole leadership.
It felt like early reddit while it lasted. Lots of positivity and you started to recognize the usernames. On reddit I was a lurker, but I posted quite a bit on Squabbles. I’m already nostalgic about it lol
Every platform is nice when it’s small and not trying to monetize. The main benefit to decentralization is that anyone can spin up a new small instance, and block any other they feel has gone bad.
Well its nice to be able to have access to the platform from different instance. But its still annoying to have to resign up if the admins piss you off. They need to develop a way to switch instances but keep your profile/history. I had to get off Beehive when they defederated from lemmy.ml and I’d rather keep everything with me.
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Hot damn. I was reading the name and thought first its about squabbles, which I considered to be checking alongside lemmy how it develops.
So I was briefly shocked about this development, then I realised this says squabblr and not squabbles. And then I read your post.
Rollercoaster.
Nope.
On Reddit, just before most of us left, there were a ton of people going “omg lemmy and kbin are too confusing but I like squabbles!”
I signed up and checked in on it here and there, and then this happened. I am also on Discuit, but I’ve been spending most of my time on Lemmy.
I got a weird vibe from Squabbles/Squabblr and this basically confirmed it.
Same. I signed up to Squabbles but any time I visited, which wasn’t often, people seemed to be in the middle of a fight or dealing with the aftermath of trolls. They changed their name and URL and I stayed and at first it seemed fine, but the last time I checked the dev announced it was now suddenly a “free speech platform”; protections for LGBTQ+ people were removed from the TOS; and that all content created by users now belonged to the site to do with as it wished. So I deleted my comments (not many made so that was easy) and account and created one at Discuit. So I give Discuit a few months before that implodes, lol.
I am very grateful for kbin and Lemmy.
Have they learned nothing from the failure of Voat?
Isn’t Voat that superhero company in the show The Boys ?
That’s Vought. Voat is a reddit clone that eventually got overrun by the worst people and shut down.
lol ok, I questioned reality for a moment there
Have we?
This is a first that I’m ever hearing of this Squabblr.
And I guess nothing of value was lost since Squabblr was brought up so infrequently, it’s own death is just a footnote.
what the fuck is squabbler?
The reddit/twitter clone formerly known as Squabbles.io
Another shitty centralized proprietary social media clone. They already knew they failed so they’re doing this to get that right wing grift.
Since “free speech” is a dogwhistle, what should a hypothetical place actually interested in free speech as more than just a bigotry shield call what they’re trying to do? Some place interested in allowing discussion of objectionable topics without bigotry?
Yes, whatever, those don’t exist anywhere, you don’t need to respond with that tidbit. Humor the hypothetical here.
Call it “Open Discussion”. Make it clear that the purpose of the site is to allow for discussion from all walks of life and perspectives, but that it has to be actual civil discussion. Outright hatred and bigotry, as well as arguing in bad faith, aren’t helpful or productive in an open discussion, and as such would be shunned and banned. This way, you can still have opinions that aren’t “mainstream”, but you won’t be removed as long as you’re civil and respectful about it. Doing this will attract people who are really interested in hearing other perspectives and sharing their own, instead of alt-right shitheads looking for another place to infest.
This way, you can still have opinions that aren’t “mainstream”, but you won’t be removed as long as you’re civil and respectful about it.
I mean, you sort of identified the problem, but still missed it. It isn’t “mainstream” because we’re taking about marginalized minority groups. It can only be seen as leaning mainstream because LGBTQ+ have a lot of allies that don’t fall under that identity, but it still falls short of actually being mainstream and short of a supporting majority.
Think about the numbers this way; you have LGBTQ+ (or some other minority group), allies, “don’t cares,” “don’t want to knows,” and bigots. We think we know the bigots, those are the haters. What is surprising to most is that the “don’t want to knows” are the biggest faction of bigots, although it is an indirect association.
A common transition for the “don’t want to knows” is saying, “I’m tired of hearing from those Zorb snowflakes only, the other side should be heard as well – free speech. We should have an open discussion.”
This suggestion, while it sounds positive, enables those who want to troll and slander, and they get to do so behind anonymity and with the support of others. For the bigot which openly expresses a hatred for Zorbs and Narfs, they just been given an umbrella of protection under “free speech” to say hurtful things. – Oh, blatant hate speech itself is still considered a violation of TOS? – Good luck trying to moderate an influx of alt accounts which just stoke up the problem by saying, “The Zorbs and Narfs are taking over.” “It might be an unpopular opinion, but non-Zorbs and Narfs need a voice too.” “What Zorbs and Narfs practice is against the teachings of The Great Plunis.” “Plunis said that the Zorbs and Narfs are immoral.” “Zorbs and Narfs are stripping away our Constitutional rights.” “Even taking about Zorbs and Narfs in our schools might trick our kids into supporting or even becoming Narfs themselves. Think of the kids.”
Now telling a bigot that they can’t offend others isn’t hurting them. Giving them a platform where they can be safe to constantly etch away at human decency of marginalized groups is a platform too high, especially when it provides an opportunity to express their vile dislike of a group of people that are somehow different than them with a different perspective of the world.
So how about those Zorbs? From their perspective, anyone might be threatening to them and might want to cause them harm. How can a Narf recognize that someone else is a Zorb, a Narf, an ally, a “don’t care,” a “don’t want to know,” or an outright bigot? As a group of people already in a minority, they need safe spaces to find others they can identify with or who support them, so that they can openly discuss the social challenges they face daily. It isn’t a debate, these are challenges and problems they gave daily. If a social forum which seemed to offer that sort of protected space suddenly changes their TOS in support of “free speech,” and the maintainer of the site declares that they want to encourage discussion and multi-sided debate, that safe space has just been ransacked. Whereas the community they had joined was reserved for peers and allies, that may no longer be the case and those bigots can still be threatening even if they don’t come out and directly say “I hate you.”
There aren’t two sides to an “I am a Zorb,” and “I can’t stand Zorbs” debate. It isn’t the same as one side saying “I like tomatoes,” and another side saying “tomatoes are disgusting,” it is more like the debate about being Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life… It isn’t as though the Pro-Choice folks are Anti-Life, but the Pro-Life folks are very much Anti-Choice. The sides of the debate can’t even agree about what they are against.
So, as an ally, and someone who really liked squabbles.io a month ago, because it felt like a positive community, I’m disgusted with the changes made this past week. As far as I’m concerned, squabbles.io should have replaced their logo as they did, but they should have replaced Bort with a giant red tomato, to really emphasize how vile and disgusting the site has become.
What is surprising to most is that the “don’t want to knows” are the biggest faction of bigots, although it is an indirect association.
This is Dr. King’s White Moderate all over again.
How about hate free ™ free speech
Or “I can’t believe its not bigotry”
Oh God I Wish it Were Bigotry!, now available in an App Store near you.
It’s hard to find a name because nowadays people often use terms like ‘bigotry’, ‘hate speech’ and ‘bad faith’ to refer to anything they don’t like so they can shut down discussions.
I don’t have an answer for you but thank you for asking this (with the presumably earnest intent). It seemed to originally mean speech being minimally actionable by government. These idiots today turned it into speech that I agree with having no negative consequences.
I have no brief word or words to encompass this, but enjoy. Or critique it. There will be no consequences because I may or may not be Joe Biden.
Also, you guys wanna see my legs? I was just outside.
A forum? (Online this means a specific type of website architecture though, so idk.)
Frankly I’m just wondering how we let “free speech” become a dogwhistle. Is water in a bottle a dogwhistle because trump drank one one time on video (with two hands, remember that scandal?) Is coffee a dogwhistle because racist people also drink coffee? Not everything is a “dogwhistle” nor should it be considered as such simply because the words “free speech platform” are used instead of “non-censorious communication service.” Tipper Gore and her Moral Majority have been fighting free speech since Jello Biafra used an H. R. Geiger painting on a record insert she bought her kid, I’ve been complaining about censorship since she got “Parental Advisory” slapped on CDs limiting my ability to sneak music past my overbearing mother as a child (mostly seditious music, anto-religious music, or music by POC, mind you, which is racism), I’ve been bitching about radio beeps and edits since I can remember, free speech has always been a highly regarded value of mine and I’m not going to let those people steal it or their enemies bully me out of supporting it.
It’s because shit-heads love to hide behind objectively good ideals. They want to deflect criticism of what they’re saying or doing into criticism of the ideal. “Oh, you hate free speech!?”
It’s coded language in the right context – “free speech platform” with a wink and a nod.
See also: “Patriot”, “protecting children”, “thugs”, etc.
One can “not hate free speech” while also “hating what you are saying.” These are two separate things, it’s like saying “I like soda, but I don’t like pepsi.” There are other sodas, and there are other “things to say” besides racism. In this instance, tell the hypothetical person you’re talking to who said “oh you hate free speech,” “No, I’m all for free speech, and I’m also for freedom of association. I don’t like what you speak about, so I choose not to associate with you.”
Sure, in this context maybe it is a wink and a nod, but saying “free speech is a dogwhistle” and insinuating every free speech activist since Jello “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” Biafra is actually a secret right winger is patently ridiculous and it is a trend I’ve been noticing recently, and I will exercise my right to free speech to criticize the practice as you are free to ironically exercise your right to free speech by asserting that free speech is actually a dogwhistle.
To your see alsos:
“Patriot” and “Thug” I’ll give you, but “Protecting children” isn’t a “dogwhistle,” it is a manipulation tactic and it is used by all sides everywhere. Every time I hear it for any reason I am immediately suspicious of one’s motives. It is unsurprisingly effective on parents too, but since I’m not one and don’t want kids I have a pretty good immunity to it.
It’s not complicated. Today if someone uses the term “Free Speech” the vast vast majority of the time they are talking about being able to say shitty things without consequences. The remainder are mostly people who misconstrue Free Speech as something that applies to non-governmental entities and finally actual real cases that get settled in court.
You don’t need to label it. The vast majority of the internet will allow anyone acting in good faith to discuss their ideas. Every single time someone complains about being muted/silences/shadow-banned etc you can bet they subscribe to right-wing ideology using dog whistles or other hateful rhetoric. I was never banned anywhere for being Pro-Hillary instead of Pro-Bernie. I was downvoted sure, but that’s everyone elses prerogative. I wasn’t silences because some of my posts were hidden due to it. It’s asinine to claim that, and that’s what these people are whining about.
It’s starting to worry me that “free speech” has become something to be feared and avoided. Avoiding confrontation to your beliefs just makes you and your beliefs weaker.
The term is being abused as a dog whistle for freedom to pass prejudice and discrimination. Being apposed to a “free speech” platform risks you as being against said free speech. It’s falling under the paradox of tolerance concept.
I completely agree. I am a stressed sideliner politically, and I like to hear differing opinions, but I’m so tired of the term “free speech” being associated with alt-right dog whistle rhetoric.
What ideas have you heard from the Right in the last decade? Seriously, what have they come up with that wasn’t misleading at best and a total grift at worse? I made the move politically left over the last 15 years and don’t feel I really changed all that much.
Did you ever notice that the Democrats pushing for the strictest covid restrictions were vacationing in Republican-led areas like Florida and Texas so they would be able to party without masking or social distancing?
Humans are social beings. You can’t keep people locked down forever. Republicans were the only ones who even pretended to care about the side effects of forcing people to lock down. Sure, there were business motivations too, but society can’t function if everybody is forced to stay at home. Mental health, divorce, domestic violence, and alcoholism were terrible during the covid restrictions in states that had them, and only Republicans even pretended to care about anything other than case numbers.
Other than that, energy independence is a big one. If you shut down fossil fuel production here, we just end up buying them from other countries. Especially since Democrat governors like Pritzker in Illinois are fighting against nuclear energy, which means more coal and natural gas power plants. Wind and solar will only get us so far. Nuclear is our best bet to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.
I’m also against government overreach and believe the Bill of Rights is important.
That’s not an idea, that’s finding an excuse to be contrarian. They were 100% being disingenuous throughout.
Nuclear is not only supported in the latest DNC Platform it’s supported under Biden’s IRA bill.
“We have to invest enormously today to increase our reliance on cleaner and more renewable sources. And that includes nuclear,” Amos Hochstein, special coordinator for international energy affairs for President Biden, told Yahoo Finance. “We haven’t built a nuclear power plant in the United States in decades. We have a fleet that needs more support in order to be able to stay up. Look at what happened in Germany by taking offline nuclear. They’re now burning coal … that’s something we shouldn’t be doing here.” https://news.yahoo.com/nuclear-energy-could-make-a-comeback-under-democrats-new-bill-181427778.html
That’s great, but Pritzker literally just vetoed the return of nuclear in Illinois.
I don’t live there, so there’s nothing I can do about it. Write your representatives if you do.
Your comment history is a cesspool. Yikes.
Exactly, and that’s why this topic is important to me. I don’t wanna be silenced for wrongthink.
Yeah, thanks for proving my point.
Liberals are terrified of conversations. They updated the TOS and explicitly banned any kind of hate or discrimination but allowing people to have disagreements and conversations now makes you a bigot. 🤷
I mean, I get it, a lot of “free speech” platforms ARE a dogwhistle to all kinds of hateful shit but it doesn’t have to be that way.
It also came out on mod discord that jayclees hates lgbt people and thought they were scaring off conservatives. Luckily he won’t have that problem anymore as the dog wasn’t in the right frequency so everyone heard it loud and clear.
What does “hates lgbt” mean in this case?
EDIT: just show me the hatefull comments. I’m out of the loop
Would you care to share what was said?
The sole motive behind transforming a three-month-old online forum into a “Limited Liability Company”, which they did, appears to stem from either intentions of selling it or the reception of funding, consequently relinquishing your authority over it.
I may not be onto anything here, this may just be a coincidence. However, the timing of these two events are suspicious.
1: Squabbles.io rebrands to squabblr.co. The .io domain explicitly forbids anything that may be considered illegal by any country. The site could be shut down if this is violated. You know what would be considered hate speech by some countries, such as Canada? Discrimination of someone based on their gender identity, ie trans people.
2: Squabblr rebrands to a “free speech” website and removes all explicit mention of LGBT+ being protected under their ToS. Within microseconds (slight exaggeration, but within less than 24 hours) people are chiming in with the “trans women are not women” statements.
Was that planned, or just extremely unfortunate timing?
You’re not kidding about the anti trans openness there now. A poster was ranting about liberal safe spaces, when called anti trans this was his DEFENSE.
“I am not saying that people with dicks who claim thay are women should be exterminated…”
that was his defense. That should tell you everything about who squabblr is for now.
IMO if sites want to take a “free speech” approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don’t have free speech, we have what’s known as “freedom of expression”. Essentially, we can say whatever unless it’s hate speech or bigoted.
Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it’s essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.
A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.
Using hate speech as an example:
- if you forbid it, you’re lowering a bit the freedom of speech of those who’d otherwise voice it. It’s only a bit because they’re still allowed to voice non-hateful discourses there.
- if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave.
So by banning hate speech you’re actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.
The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like “that fucking user” doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).
I feel like this covers what you’ve linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it’s a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.
Also, it’s important to take into account that there’s a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.
if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave
I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn’t lesser just because someone doesn’t feel like speaking
The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim “we’re banning it but ackshyually we aren’t reducing your free speech. You’re still able to say it, it’s just that you don’t like the consequences of saying it here.” Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.
Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it’s better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This might sound like abstract “WORDS WORDS WORDS”, but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:
- It avoids the special pleading claim that “hate speech isn’t speech”, while still allowing you to ban it under certain circumstances.
- There’s less room to misuse the ban against hate speech towards legitimate/non-hateful discourses. Specially when you get environments infested with witch hunters, that sometimes are as bad as the witches that they claim to hunt.
- It gives you grounds to get rid of specially stupid, noisy, obnoxious or obtuse users, regardless of what they say, provided that their presence shuts other users up.
- It’s flexible enough to address even a 4chan-like “mods? what mods?” approach or a Beehaw-like “be nice or get out” one, because it forces you to take the userbase into account.
- You don’t need to deal with blackbox concepts like “feelings” and “intentions” and the likes.
Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams “kill all niggers”, it doesn’t actually do anything. If someone leaves, it’s entirely because they aren’t personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.
It’s the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don’t enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone’s speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.
Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don’t have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn’t used at all, and it is entirely devoid of “feeling” and “intent”, and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn’t particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.
This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave.
You’re moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t hamper your ability” to “people don’t leave”, Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won’t score.
If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to “I dun unrurrstand! Speach don’t do nothing!”) sounds like, you don’t need even:
- to tie the huge recent growth of Mastodon, or its strong queer presence, with a Twitter exodus that boils down to “Musk will let hate speech grow rampant here”; or
- to look at old news, where celebs encourage people to fuck off platforms that allow hate speech; or even
- to read news about LGBTQ+ users leaving social media due to something adjacent and often overlapping with hate speech, namely harassment.
No, you don’t need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.
Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn’t - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.
If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you’re doing currently. Otherwise, I won’t waste my time further, OK?
And Canada fucking sucks.
Better than America.
Here I go deleting an account, sigh, I liked the platform there
