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Gab will become a Mastodon fork

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Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#51

Post by pgeorgi »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #27
davexunit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice job equivocating nazis and the people that don't like nazis.

He did nothing of the sort. And his assessment is correct. Mastodon, and federated social networks, are the wrong direction for social media. I don't understand how more people don't see this; open-source or not, walled gardens only worsen polarization and demonization of the "other side".

> federated social networks, are the wrong direction

> walled gardens only worsen polarization

So walled gardens worsen polarization but federated social networks (that provide a way out of walled gardens) are the wrong direction?

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#53

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #49
saagarjha wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

The right to say something is different than people giving material support to it. E.g., I will defend your legal right stand on the corner with a pro-holocaust placard. But anybody printing those placards or otherwise helping you is an asshole. I will happily tell them so, and I will refuse to do business with them. That's me exercising my rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association. Freedom of speech isn…

[deleted]

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#54

Post by 0815test »

davexunit wrote: post #21
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #18

Oh, the Mastodon community is going to be ticked about this... Purism said Librem One's server wasn't going to police speech, and they were upset about it. Gab is a whole different level. I think ActivityPub has huge potential to be a way for communities of disparate views and perspectives to exist out there, and two distinct and very opposing groups have grasped onto it: People who want space spaces who don't think…

Nice job equivocating nazis and the people that don't like nazis.

Historically, the nazis were neither liberal (favoring liberty and broadly-shared social/economic development) nor conservative (favoring the preservation of existing social arrangements). What they were was radically authoritarian, totalitarian, irrationalistic (the one key feature that might license us comparing recent political developments worldwide to naziism!), and engaged in the pursuit of war, militant politics, violence and State-managed, systematic violence - generally associated with extreme and utter demonization of all sorts of 'unwanted' social outgroups. (We nowadays see such demonization and routine violence being practiced by e.g. non-State actors such as ISIL, but not so much in mainstream politics, thankfully!)

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#55

Post by samfriedman »

Keverw wrote: post #17

I first heard of Gab when big social media sites were accused of censoring conservatives during the 2016 election. One of the idea of Gab is if you don't like what people say you can block them and don't visit their profile... So for example many social networks banned Alex Jones... With Gab if you don't like what he says, you don't have to follow him... So instead of the site itself trying to censor people, the user…

Sure you can block specific users, but if I don't want to see (for example) anti-semitism how can I block that topic completely? It's not as if users tag their posts with each brand of hate speech.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#56

Post by asdf21 »

davexunit wrote: post #29
rmtech wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gab is a festering pile of trash. That's your opinion. To some people, Gab is an alternative source of information that's independent of the narrative exerted by the mainstream media. > meme warning about the evils of feminism Do you want people to be kept in the dark about criticisms of feminism? What about feminism is so fragile or deceitful that criticism of it must be suppressed? In the end this is what free sp…

>alternative source of information nice rebrand of "hate speech"

Hate speech isn't even a valid legal distinction in the US, first of all.*

Even philosophically, it's extremely hairy to define. Would you consider harshly criticizing Scientology and its adherents to be hate speech? How about harshly criticizing Islam?

It's pathetic to me how nowadays any criticism of a group, no matter how valid, has been rebranded into "hate speech" by so many. Just because you criticize something don't mean you "hate" it.

But lets say you do. Even if you genuinely hate something, what exactly is so wrong with that? There are aspects of certain organizations and philosophies that I hate -- should I not be allowed to express that without being condemned for it?

*There are hate crimes, depending on mens rea (motivation) but anything that would be considered "hate speech" in many EU countries is generally fully protected in the US.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#57

Post by davexunit »

nicky0 wrote: post #44
davexunit wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>alternative source of information nice rebrand of "hate speech"

The trouble with outlawing "hate speech" is: who gets to decide what is hate speech?

Ah okay, so the clear best move is to do nothing and let everyone say whatever they want on every web application that allows user comments. That policy surely won't be abused.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#58

Post by dcolkitt »

vikingcaffiene wrote: post #13

I had heard about Gab but never visited the site before. I just spent 30 seconds perusing the trending feed. I saw the following: 1. a video of a man being shot and killed during an armed robbery 2. 3 anti islam posts 3. the usual pro trump propaganda 4. a meme warning about the evils of feminism urging women to get back to their "place" in the family. Gab is a festering pile of trash. Anyone responsible for making a…

I mean Tor is used for some pretty bad stuff. Much of the dark net, if not most of the dark net is pretty heinous. Definitely worse than Gab. Do you feel similarly about Tor developers?

The way I see it building platforms for detested people is a pretty good canary in the coalmine. If Internet technologies aren't resilient enough to keep the most hated people in the world online, then that's a pretty bad sign that those technologies wouldn't stand up to motivated state actors.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#59

Post by gfodor »

Those focused on Gab's audience should realize this kind of attempt is the best hope for a global migration off of twitter to a decentralized service. (Which to me, would be a good thing.)

If it was ever going to happen at this point, it would probably be by venture backed company addressing an alienated audience from the platform who is incentivized enough to switch platforms, building a good UX around a decentralized alternative, and then hoping you can get enough critical mass for network effects to kick in. In the limit, the alt-right focus of Gab will eventually dilute away if the edges of the network get built up and Gab is just another (big) node in the network -- nascent services have an audience focus to get traction that self-evidently goes away as they reach global scale. You don't have to like their choice of initial audience, but this strategic execution certainly seems one worth keeping an eye on, not just to see if the migration starts to happen at a larger scale but also because if they validate the strategy other companies can target similar niche audiences.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#60

Post by [deleted] »

wpietri wrote: post #49
saagarjha wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

The right to say something is different than people giving material support to it. E.g., I will defend your legal right stand on the corner with a pro-holocaust placard. But anybody printing those placards or otherwise helping you is an asshole. I will happily tell them so, and I will refuse to do business with them. That's me exercising my rights of freedom of speech and freedom of association. Freedom of speech isn…

[deleted]
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