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 spent way more time than was warranted digging into this completely petty drama.
Eris seems to have been widely blocked and defederated for using the word ‘based’ and for thinking ubuntu.buzz was about linux. I’m not sure what kind of perspective makes that a priority, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be one based in compassion or world experience. Half the people I’ve met who use the word ‘based’ have nothing to do with 4chan, they’re just young. The first time I heard it was in reference to Mark Bunker during the Scientology protests in 08. Which, while certainly connected to 4chan, I don’t think can really be cast in the same light as all the Gamergate crap and everything that came after.
Defederation is an important feature, and people should be able to defederate from whoever they want. What isn’t okay, though, is people going out of their way to propagate pettiness as much as humanly possible. Eris seems a little rough around the edges, but I also get the impression that the folks interacting with her in all the overly dramatic nonsense I just read are not acting in remotely good faith. They resemble a twitter mob looking for somebody to hate on, taking zero interest in understanding or nuance. No thanks.
Half the people I’ve met who use the word ‘based’ have nothing to do with 4chan, they’re just young. The first time I heard it was in reference to Mark Bunker during the Scientology protests in 08. Which, while certainly connected to 4chan, I don’t think can really be cast in the same light as all the Gamergate crap and everything that came after.
Also probably important to note that even being connected to 4chan isn’t always a bad thing. The web (particularly youtubers) have made 4chan as a whole to be some boogeyman website full of hackers and nazis, but it’s a loosely connected web of forums (known as boards), many of which don’t have anything to do with another apart from being anonymous. It’s kind of like lemmy in that regard. I’ve browsed it in my time, and while it is definitely quite a toxic site, most if not all the toxicity originates from a select dozen-or-so boards, and only 3 or 4 of them are even popular (b, pol, r9k, x). Hell, if you go right now to /a/, you’ll probably just see a bunch of weebs discussing anime like any other forum.
note: this isn’t to say 4chan is safe like beehaw. The whole culture of the site is very archaic and a lot of people on there are still there saying slurs and being generally offensive, but when you stay away from hellholes like /b/ or /pol/, I’ve seen worse on reddit.
If some stranger on the street told me they used 4chan, without specifying what board, I mean I might be suspicious of which boards they’re using (depending on context clues) but it’s not a buzzword that translates to “white supremacist”
I agree. Not all these forums are about the same content nor do they all involve the nazi stuff.
/vp/ used to be really good at good Pokemon info back in the Black/White days.
That said - I haven’t been back in quite a while, but even back then you did occasionally see folks who obviously were from /b/ or /pol/ posting. I’m sure it’s probably gotten worse over the years, as people start growing out of 4chan…
I almost thought I had written your comment and completely forgot about it. No, I just almost made the exact comment and want that hour of my life back.
If there was some over the top racist rant, I sure didn’t see it. And the admin pushing for the defederation sounds so bizarre. Bizarre is the best word I could come up with because “petty” makes me think it was like high school politics. This is closer to a grade school sandbox argument.
The worst I saw was “defedfags” and it was used in a way that was meant to highlight how they never said anything offensive. Like saying, “If you thought what I said before was offensive, let’s see how you respond to something intended to be negative.”
The crazy thing is that the decision is being made because the admin just liked a post. It’s not even because of the post content - which has nothing controversial and appeared maybe 8 times in my Lemmy/kbin feed yesterday.
Editing to add that this is the article: https://kbin.social/search?q=wakeup+call
I don’t even see who posted an article in my feed unless I open up three post and look for it. I upvotes things all the time without knowing who posted them. I’m all about aggressively defending safe places and I don’t think they were out of line to defed, but I agree that this whole thing seems awfully overblown from what I’ve seen. The users deserve an explanation of the defed and why and the story should’ve ended there.
Generally, if someone’s being a total asshole so severely that they have to be yeeted with several thousand other unaware bystanders, I expect to see a bunch of examples within the first… 2, maybe 3, links.
If someone can point me to a concise list of examples (actual data), I find it more disturbing that an admin on another server can yeet my account because they make noise on a discord server.I mean, yes, federating is a feature, but why even offer the ability to enroll users? Maybe for a group of friends, or something, but just rando users is nothing but a liability to everyone involved.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned is that ubuntubuzz.com is about the Linux distro, and it’s the first hit for “Ubuntu buzz”. I’d definitely interpret ubuntu.buzz to be about Linux, at least if I didn’t check the about page.
Is it just me or is mastodon.art the source of almost all of the drama on the fediverse?
I think it’s the admin of mastodon.art the source of almost all the drama. Even the admin of the server where I am had issues with that admin and blocked her.
@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.
There’s an amazing amount of conversation about how this person is supposedly a racist with no evidence to support it. Am I missing something?
I got around 5 links deep for each of the links in the admin’s post, and fuck if I know. There was an argumentative user, but they were articulate and thoughtful. Not dropping slurs or wasting space nonsense, but still bordering on “edgy”. The person pushing the defederation appeared to be bullying them and on a power trip.
It was embarrassing. That’s all I took away. (My opinion can change if someone digs through the shitpiles of nothingness to pull up some actual naughty posts, but that’s not going to be me.)
Irrational people behaving irrationally.
Thread where calckey dev responds. https://firefish.social/notes/9hp49vhkce098zn8
What other art focused Masto instances do people recommend? .art seems to get involved in a lot of drama and I’m getting tired of it.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and include furry instances provided there’s enough of a sfw community since a lot of my art could be considered that, but I’d prefer a decently active general art community if possible.
The admin of mastodon.art is terrible and a huge, huge troll - just ignore them and move on lol
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.
Defederation is one of the big issues fediverse social media will face, now is getting more population and will be more in the future
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 think the current discussion is a good example showing that it’s not as black and white, and definitely not easy, as you make it out to be.
Defederation is an important tool to protect communities. It helps prevent the Fediverse from being overrun with bad actors.
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.
This is what kept me off fediverse for a while. Reading about another incident like this.
If your admins are adults about things and don’t overreact to every little thing, then that’s great. But sadly not everyone is mature like that.
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.
But what happens (as did recently) when instances change direction? What happens (as did last year) where one instance admin had the wrong contact details for another so a message didn’t get through and ended up with an instance blocked and defederated for no good reason. What happens when an admin has an episode and gets in an argument that results in tit for tat blocks.
How can any new user know this might happen? How can they know what they are signing up for when descriptions are so brief?
Defederation is a good thing but unfortunately the people are human and fallible.
You can always set up your own instance if you are disturbed by the actions of admins on instances that you have joined.
Alternatively, if the instance you are on changes direction, you can easily find a new one. It literally took me about half an hour after I learned about the Fediverse to get myself set up on several instances, then later on I decided which I preferred. But I didn’t delete the other accounts- they’re still there in case I want them someday.
But what happens if the instance you are on is defederated through no fault of your own. As has already happened, even not through the fault of the instance admin but another instance making a mistake and adding it to a block list.
There isn’t an easy way to migrate everything to a new instance. And the migration options we do have a a bit buggy.
Perhaps people have seen the survey of ex-mastodon users? It really brings out that federation is simultaneously an advantage and a problem.
At the moment, it looks like the only solution is to have multiple accounts and when you do it’s starkly evident that there’s content that you miss because of federation issues
I think the issue is that your are expecting a perfectly seamless, Reddit-like experience, with all the admin work done for you but also always done to your satisfaction. That isn’t what the Fediverse is about. It’s more of a DIY ethic than a “The admins suck but this is all we have” like on Reddit.
I’m also not sure what you’d need to “migrate” to a new instance other than yourself. Karma isn’t super relevant here.
My main account is on Beehaw, which has very rightfully defederated with some other instances. When I log in using accounts on other instances, I don’t see a massive amount of missed content. In fact I’ve seen so little of interest that I’ve stopped looking, it’s not worth my time.
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.
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.
Wait since when is it a slur, and for what? I’ve only heard it refer to a particular role in a BDSM context
