Gab will become a Mastodon fork • Hacker News Board

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#191

Post by egypturnash » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:29 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #87

gfodor wrote: post #59

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 decentraliz…

Most of the Mastodon network will ban Gab immediately (and the founder of Gab acknowledges as much in the comments of the article), community dilution is very unlikely. But they will get to share federation with a variety of other alt-right and free speech zone Mastodon servers which have been banned by the larger fediverse community.

Shit, I pre-emptively banned gab.com and gab.ai on my Mastodon instance and they ain't even up yet.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#192

Post by village-idiot » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

gubbrora wrote: post #171

boapnuaput wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAGA hats boldly proclaim a fascist resurrection myth, though; it's not an inaccurate banner to be put under! I can understand the unhappiness of many folks on the right. It's unpleasant to have one's beliefs placed under scrutiny.

I see two propositions 1. Trump supporters are fascist. 2. Fascists should be sabotaged at every turn. If we link this up with the fact that the majority of white Americans are Trump supporters, it's hard to escape the conclusion that people are basically calling for persecution of white people.

What you’re proposing sure sounds like a logical fallacy to me. It sounds like you’re accusing others of having the following thoughts:

1. Trump supporters are fascists

2. I don’t like fascists

3. Trumps supports are overwhelmingly white

4. Therefore I don’t like white people because they’re fascists.

This is the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#193

Post by rmtech » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

village-idiot wrote: post #37

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…

I'm not sure how you got from someone criticizing what’s posted on gab to suppression of free speech, but it makes me think you have absolutely no idea what free speech really is.

They were criticising developers who worked on Gab, not just some specific piece of content, presumably with the aim of removing Gab as a platform.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#194

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

gubbrora wrote: post #171

boapnuaput wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MAGA hats boldly proclaim a fascist resurrection myth, though; it's not an inaccurate banner to be put under! I can understand the unhappiness of many folks on the right. It's unpleasant to have one's beliefs placed under scrutiny.

I see two propositions 1. Trump supporters are fascist. 2. Fascists should be sabotaged at every turn. If we link this up with the fact that the majority of white Americans are Trump supporters, it's hard to escape the conclusion that people are basically calling for persecution of white people.

> If we link this up with the fact that the majority of white Americans are Trump supporters, it's hard to escape the conclusion that people are basically calling for persecution of white people.

1. X is bad and deserves punishment.

2. The majority of Y are X.

1 & 2 together do not imply: Y are bad and should be punished.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#195

Post by spamizbad » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #183

paulgb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned. It's not old fashioned, it's just that people differentiate free speech in principle from paying the server bills. Just as freedom of the press never meant the newspaper had to publish your op-ed, free speech online doesn't mean Twitter has to give anyone server space to post Nazi stuff. (I agree that t…

The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like, which isn't exactly useful for the overall benefit of humanity. Sort of like how FB recently said that they are going to deplatform white supremacists. Why not all supremacists, while you're at it, or don't pretend that you are doing something for any kind of greater good...

But it's not limited to "white" nationalists.

They recently deplatformed infamous anti-semite and black nationalist Louis Farrakhan. And before anyone says this guy has always been a crank: he was actively being courted by Repulicans like Jack Kemp in the 1980s back when his anti-communist views were deemed politically useful.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#196

Post by rmtech » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

phoe-krk wrote: post #92

scohesc wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say they're abusing the right to free speech, they're taking full advantage of it. If you don't like what they're saying, you have every right to not listen to it, promote it yourself, and you also have the right to start a movement to let people know this is going on and to bring awareness to the festering shitpiles those websites are. It's not an abuse of the right to free speech.

Many people come to a conclusion that that the classical definition of free speech is easily abusable when enough people gather and utilize free speech to promote hatred, closed-mindedness and bigotry. Thanks to free speech instances we get hoaxes like the ones that way 5G is a mortal danger, vaccines are a mortal danger, women, Muslims, Jews and people of color are despicable, and many other interesting "100% verifi…

> classical definition of free speech is easily abusable

the classical definition of unfree speech is easily abusable, which is why free speech exists.

If an idea is bad, the best way to beat it is with better ideas.

Of course some bad ideas are good at spreading, or otherwise persuasive. But if you take the big picture view, the vast majority of really bad ideas and statements have been imposed centrally and have persisted by latching onto the levers of censorship and censoring all competing viewpoints.

The level of censorship and central control of information is already far too high in our world.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#197

Post by DanBC » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #183

paulgb wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned. It's not old fashioned, it's just that people differentiate free speech in principle from paying the server bills. Just as freedom of the press never meant the newspaper had to publish your op-ed, free speech online doesn't mean Twitter has to give anyone server space to post Nazi stuff. (I agree that t…

The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like, which isn't exactly useful for the overall benefit of humanity. Sort of like how FB recently said that they are going to deplatform white supremacists. Why not all supremacists, while you're at it, or don't pretend that you are doing something for any kind of greater good...

> The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like

No, it really isn't. It's a minority of people calling for violent white supremecy.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#198

Post by DanBC » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

rmtech wrote: post #196

phoe-krk wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people come to a conclusion that that the classical definition of free speech is easily abusable when enough people gather and utilize free speech to promote hatred, closed-mindedness and bigotry. Thanks to free speech instances we get hoaxes like the ones that way 5G is a mortal danger, vaccines are a mortal danger, women, Muslims, Jews and people of color are despicable, and many other interesting "100% verifi…

> classical definition of free speech is easily abusable the classical definition of unfree speech is easily abusable, which is why free speech exists. If an idea is bad, the best way to beat it is with better ideas. Of course some bad ideas are good at spreading, or otherwise persuasive. But if you take the big picture view, the vast majority of really bad ideas and statements have been imposed centrally and have pe…

> which is why free speech exists.

Where?

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#199

Post by jakelazaroff » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #181

jakelazaroff wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "who to follow" on the left side of the post seems to rotate, but if I go down the list of what I see literally every member boasts some sort of odious point of view: - @OldEarthNeoFash, whose description literally says they're a Nazi - @AlexanderVI, who posts about how gay men should not be allowed to be President - @Reality_and_Truth, whose description boasts about "exposing Leftist scum 300 chars at a time" -…

Frankly, if you look you can find people equally odious on Twitter as well. but if only people leaning in one direction get deplatformed there, of course they will congregate on a platform where they do not get deplatformed. Both end up as self-perpetuating filter bubbles (although Twitter might be slightly better just because its older and larger).

> Frankly, if you look you can find people equally odious on Twitter as well.

You can, but it's a tiny minority of people on Twitter. When I load this page on Gab, literally every single recommended account is like this. A random sample of Twitter users will be basically the same as a random sample of Internet users and brands; a random sample of Gab users seems to be entirely alt-right, white supremacists and Nazis.

Of course people who tend to get deplatformed will tend to congregate on a platform where they don't. But Gab actively courts this userbase. See for example https://twitter.com/ClenchedFisk/status/1027690034718224384

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#200

Post by egypturnash » Thu, May 30, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

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…

I run a Mastodon instance. This morning I blocked Purism's server for openly declaring that they plan to be free-speech absolutists who will not bother with any kind of moderation at all, which my years on the net has made me feel is akin to founding a city and declaring you will not have a sewer. This afternoon I preemptively blocked a couple guesses at what Gab's instance will be named. If and when I hear that Gab's instance is actually running and is using a name that doesn't match my guesses, I'll block that one too.

It's really not a big thing to me. I've been blocking Pleromas run by people with anime girl avatars who like to post swastikas for the entire time I've been running an instance. This is just a bigger one.

Your theory about how this will sort out in terms of federation topology matches mine.