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Charles ☭ Hutchins @celesteh

Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

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Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

> People who say they block nazis only block actual nazis

> RMS is a libertarian

:-D

@clacke American libertarians are basically ancaps. And lately ancaps and fascists are discovering high degrees of overlap. This is the ideological basis of the Trump administration.
Which is to say, there's a lot of variance in the Nazi ecosystem. they are a dominant political power right now.
If somebody gets caught up in a block, they have a lot of options.

@celesteh Yes? This has nothing to do with rms. He's a socialist.

@clacke wait you just said he's a libertarian! pick one!

@celesteh No, I was paraphrasing you. That's what the ">" implies.

@clacke
'Meritocracy' is not socialist!

Systemic means of dealing with harassment are anti-meritocracy because they recognise systemic problems. It's not perfect - all systems have tradeoffs. This tradeoff happens to favour people who do not tend to have systemic power.

@celesteh FSF is in favor of measures that increase diversity. They get flak for a lot of this from people who just want to code and don't want to be bothered with social issues.

But that's not what I'm getting at. If you look outside code and internal project management, he is anything but a libertarian. Maybe socialist was a bit hyperbolic. He's a social liberal.

"""
However, I don’t believe that you can use social mobility as an excuse for poverty. If someone who is very poor has a 5% chance of getting rich, that does not justify denying that person food, shelter, clothing, medical care, or education. I believe in the welfare state.

JP: But you are not for equality of outcomes?

RMS: No, I’m not for equality of outcomes. I want to prevent horrible outcomes. But aside from keeping people safe from excruciating outcomes, I believe some inequality is unavoidable.
"""

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/free-software-as-a-social-movement-by-richard-stallman/
@celesteh Favoring a welfare state is not libertarian.

In other places he speaks in favor of business regulation, e.g. he would like copyright to be abolished, but only if anyone redistributing a binary would be required by law to provide source code. That is not a libertarian position.
@celesteh "He once described himself as "a sort of combination between a liberal and a leftist anarchist. I like to see people working together, voluntarily, to solve the world's problems. But, if we can't do that, I think we should get the government involved to solve them."

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/12/283113.html
@celesteh 30 years of speech and action. Just browse through https://quitter.no/rms and see what he thinks of governments, corporations and regulation.
@celesteh GNU social users are not unified, and there are various criticisms of Mastodon which are not directly related to blocking Nazis
@celesteh Quitter.se has silenced accounts based on harassment of transpeople, for example, I thought it was good but not all agreed
@celesteh I heard more criticisms of the concept of instance-wide blocking, more than criticism of silencing individual accounts

@taknamay This seems like a fair point, except that experiences of twitter shows that individual blocking doesn't scale and fails in practice.

@celesteh super cool to see federated abuse control systems getting battle tested already.

Does "nazi" show up in the WHOIS for the domain or something? ;-)

@nds
unsafe.space
sealion.club
So, well, actually...

My personal issue with instance-blocking is I think breaking the network is a very poor way to solve the problem.

@nds The experience of twitter shows that individual blocking doesn't work because it doesn't scale. The only way to solve a systemic problem is through moderation. Why would I want to allow a bunch of unmoderated content into a forum I was moderating?
It doesn't 'break the network' if some servers don't connect to all servers. Affected users have MANY options.

in that case I'll have to take your word for it. I've never had an issue with trolls that couldn't be solved with per-user blocking, and I get that web technology+automation could overwhelm this.

Software poltics / criticising Stallman Show more

@nds that's probably the most reasonable thing i've seen anyone say on the matter
@celesteh if it's just a matter of the admin having a policy of kicking nazis then that's fine. Some years ago when I was on Redmatrix (now Hubzilla) ISIS started showing up on a few servers. These are the really bad guys, similar to nazis, and as soon as the admins were alerted they got swiftly kicked off and their accounts deleted.

Kicking nazis and other authoritarians isn't against free speech, it's more about self-preservation. Nazis will laugh at free speech and do not care to listen to your quaint ideological monologue before they pull out their Luger.
@bob @celesteh The trouble starts in the definitions. Actual Neo-Nazis and terrorists are pretty clear cases. 

Being realistic, both here and Twitter it's possible to attract the label simply for disagreeing with someone. I'm sure we've all seen it. 

@sulman @bob
And people engaging in politically-motivated harassment of disempowered groups are unfairly tarnished?

@celesteh @bob Depends very, very specifically what you're referring to. I do not broad labels, at all.
@sulman @celesteh when I'm refering to nazis I'm referring to the real deal, not casual uses. People with weaponry who are ideologically educated, motivated and usually organised in the proper sense.

@bob @sulman

For clarity, I'm using a more expansive definition including anyone who is pro-racism (etc) or anti-democracy.

@celesteh Disclaimer: I have only a limited view of some of the banned instances, mostly follow admins, I don't have the full view

At least in some cases calling these instances Nazi is an exaggeration. Certainly questionable content there, maybe even the occasional far right view, but I've actually seen a lot of diversity of opinion in some of those places. Crying nazi/commie every time anything outside of mainstream centrism is said is probably the main reason twitter is such a shitshow IMO.
@celesteh PS And I'm on of those pesky anarchists who hates nazis/commies and is happy everytime they get to eat their own boots :)

@hermeslispegistus Well, I mean, the reason I think twitter is a shit show is the constant harassment, so I guess perspectives vary.

Anyway, GS id a wide ecosystem and effected users have many options.

@celesteh One instance basically banned them just based on the rumors and admitted it. Rumors and FUD don't make a healthy community in the long term. Transparency is important. The main complaint isn't that Msoc banned whole instances, it's that there is no public list or stated reason. You lack transparency and the issue becomes impossible to address. People create rumors and those come to bite you.

@hermeslispegistus I agree that transparency is important and hopefully a process will emerge.

@celesteh There is. On GNU Social instances you can see who's banned by the admin, these are for the server I'm on:
https://quitter.no/main/silenced
https://quitter.no/main/sandboxed

If no GH issue for this exists already, I think I'll have to make one