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Have encountered racism, hate speech or homophobia on the fediverse yet?

If so, do you consistently report it and get the feeling that it gets dealt with? Of course there are instances dedicated solely to being human trash

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  • Personally I think kbin and @ernest should take a more backseat approach to this stuff, apart from very radical exceptions. If you don't like content/people/magazines that you see, simply block it. If you want to join a community that will outright ban people who disagree with you, check out Tildes (left) or SaidIt (right) which are more 1:1 Reddit replacements (not in the fediverse though)

    Time will tell what the overall approach for this is on kbin, but the great thing about the fediverse is if things get out of hand or take a turn here you don't like, you can simply find another instance or a different fediverse site altogether and still interact with mostly the same people/content. But I personally very much like the relaxed and not-very-political space kbin has been so far

    • While I tend to agree with your opinion, that people should be allowed to express their political view of the world, I also think that intolerance is not a political view. It's just the heritage of a mob mentality that's more suitable for the dark ages, rather than the globalized world we live into.
      So if you want to spout about dumb non-facts like "ethnic replacement" and such, you can take a walk and come back when you'll have a mindset more appropriate for this century.

      • I agree with your first sentence and that's what I meant when I said "radical exceptions". I think the issue is many people coming from Reddit will equate anything that is right-leaning as racism or hate speech. Like I don't want ernest to be in here during the US elections banning magazines supporting the Republican candidate

        Sure, get rid of the users talking about how the Jews control the world or are going on frequent racist tangents. But I think there's a lot more to gain about getting perspective from a place I might not necessarily agree with than just getting rid of it altogether. I hope people can be mature enough here to feel the same

        • Yeah for sure, political debate (done in a constructive way) is always helpful for both sides.
          Extremism are to keep separated from political views, from both sides and that's why I don't hang out in Lemmy's main instance too: because (while most people in there are cool) there are a bunch of self proclaimed "communists" that takes the sides of Russia in the war of Ukraine or denies the genocide of the Uyghur ethnic groups operated by the Chinese government.
          And they use the same catchphrase the far-right extremists use: "don't believe what mainstream media tell you".
          That's because extremism is not a political problem, is a social issue. Extremists only use politics to have a justifiable outlet.

        • Like I don't want ernest to be in here during the US elections banning magazines supporting the Republican candidate

          Just to be clear the last time this happened anywhere online was r/The_Donald, which was objectively a radical exception promoting racism and hate speech while also being a sub "supporting the Republican candidate". You are being misleading.

          • when you declare something "racist and hate speech" there's not a consensus on what that means. For example, I think affirmative action is very racist, yet people who strongly oppose "racism and hate speech" openly and happily support it.

      • What people consider "intolerance" is not a consensus. I consider some people to be very intolerant, while they think they aren't intolerant at all. when you say intolerance shouldn't be allowed, you have to say which one of us is right. who is getting kicked off for their "intolerance"? because whichever one you pick, they'll be upset and think you are intolerant.

        • Dude we all know what "intolerance" or "racism" mean, don't build an elaborate system of mirrors and pulleys to fuck yourself in your own ass.
          Playing devil's advocate on this matter is what allowed this kind of behaviour to exist in the first place

          • You say "we all know what they mean" but it really isn't clear. I've met people saying "racist" just refers to all white people. I've seen "intolerence" refer to transsexuals merely saying we exist, while hating on transsexuals is "tolerance".

            Perhaps I've been in political discussions too long. The words on the surface are obvious. Be chill, don't attack people for the way they were born, etc. but people who strongly vocally oppose "intolerance and racism" often don't mean that. they take "racist" to mean "simply commenting on race in a way they disagree with" and "intolerance" to mean "disagree with them".

            I'm always wary of when people are crying to censor someone, because historically those doing the censoring have not used their power fairly.

    • I strongly disagree. If there are a bunch of magazines here with racist / anti-LGBTQ+ / etc content, the site as a whole will get a reputation for it, other instances will block it, and people who don’t want to deal with that stuff will go elsewhere

    • I think individual instances should take whatever stance they want. If you don't like it, you can choose a different instance. And if you DO prefer a space without bigots (as most people do), you can use an instance which takes a hard stance against bigotry.

      I personally couldn't engage long-term with any instance which doesn't stamp out bigotry. There's no reason to expose myself to bile like that on the regular.

      • The problem instantly becomes "who decides what counts as a bigot?" to me, the "transgender movement" is filled with transphobic and homophobic bigots. but if you ask large social media companies, they think any opposition to that movement is bigotry. These are two conflicting views about who is considered a "bigot". They can't both be right.

    • @ernest can only control what happens on the instances he controls, i.e. kbin.social and the others. If you're on an instance, and find a magazine that is poorly moderated, that would be an issue to take up with That Instance and their Ownership/Moderation team. It's not an issue for the software developer to be stepping in on.

      • Ernest can still block people on other instances, and whole instances themselves. If hateful people from hateful instances are intruding, we shouldn't let that happen

        • No, he actually can't. You're confusing kbin, and kbin.social

          He can absolutely choose to block people at the instance administration level, or defederate an instance, as the Owner and Administrator of kbin.social, or karab.in, or whatever other instances he might run.

          There is no reasonable way, as the developer of the kbin software, that he can magically write into the source code that "nazis aren't allowed" for instance. How would you even test for that, when somebody downloads the software, and tosses it up on their own server? He can't control what people do with the software he writes, as long as they're otherwise complying with the license he releases it under.

          Could he put "nazis, bigots, and other assholes aren't allowed to use this software" into the license? Probably, if he chose to, but it's basically unenforceable.

          • It sounds like @Kara is just talking about defederation. Any instance in the fediverse can block connections to/from any other instance that they find to be excessively problematic. It should be used sparingly, but there are definitely cases where it is appropriate.

71 comments