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Gab will become a Mastodon fork

gab.com

261–270 of 335 posts

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#261

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.

> it's hard to escape the conclusion that people are basically calling for persecution of white people.

Nah, just the rightful condemnation of their ideas and oppression of said ideas by any means necessary.

I'm lily white btw.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#262
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…

>You don't have to like their choice of initial audience

And what exactly leads you to believe that gab is going to somehow morph into a site for anything other than their "initial audience"? Why would "normal" folks actively seek out and participate in a forum full of racist, radical white supremacists?

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People who want space spaces who don't think mainstream platforms moderate enough, and the alt-right and free speech crowd. I've never really understood the 'safe spaces' line of argument. I'm a 30 year old white male, and whenever I log onto YouTube I see nothing but recommendations trying to force me down the alt-right rabbit hole. Sure, Twitter has booted off a few high profile people on the alt right but I don'…

The persecution complex among predominantly white males right now is high because there's a significant social change occurring that is causing those who've been disadvantaged the same privileges that white males have enjoyed alone for much of recent human history. It's a natural human reaction to care more about loss than to see the potential upside. We've also seen this numerous times before. The rise of Nazism was…

> that is causing those who've been disadvantaged the same privileges that white males have enjoyed alone for much of recent human history

No. Black people can't own slaves. They aren't going to get to profit off centuries of colonial oppression. They aren't going to get to be the only enfranchised people in the country.

They won't even get to enjoy the comfortable middle class lifestyle that persisted until the late 20th century.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are free speech absolutists only supporting fascists? Where are the people advocating for the destruction of intellectual property rights, for widespread declassification of state communications, for suffrage rights for felons, and for unionization and striking rights? I don't exactly see the gab users advocating for laws permitting sympathetic striking.

Because those opinions are not being banned by existing social media platforms. Whereas so-called "fascists" (who are not really fascists) are. No one is banning those opinions on gab, there is simply no point in them being there because they are free to post those opinions on twitter (and others) with impunity.

Are you hoping no one here has visited gab, or have you never visited gab? Because if you're claiming that site isn't full of literal fascists, it can only be one of the two.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#265
post #39
post #7

Regardless of how you feel about the Gab folks in particular, this is great news that clearly shows the power of the federated web in enabling, empowering and preserving diverse audiences.

Maybe now they'll stop concern-trolling about the inevitable slippery slope into an Orwellian fascist nightmare the world will descend into every time a site bans them. They have their own playground where they can be as racist and edgy as they want. Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1357/

The right to free speech in the US is indeed a specific law with a narrow scope to only limit the US government. This is why people that do end up in court often go the route of using anti-discrimination laws rather then freedom of speech. It has much bigger scope and it can actually demand that a company host people which they politically disagree with.

In EU, if a place cancel a reservation because someone is homosexual then they are likely breaking a human rights law. Anti-discrimination laws covers ideology, political, philosophical, religious and other identities, and showing people the door is often illegal if it done on the grounds of difference in ideology or politics.

In the US I don't know if a hosting company has the same right to show the door to a racist (that follow the law) as a racist hotel owner has the right to show a non-white person the door. I suspect the law does not really distinguish between online and offline so my guess would be that racist hotel owners can discriminate if they wish to not host a customer regardless of reasons.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#266
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.

Personally I think Curt Yarvin had a decent idea about how to handle this type of thing with Urbit. Of course Urbit itself is terminally esoteric and nigh unusable, but here are the principles:

“Urbit will do everything possible to help you block content you don't want to see. It does nothing to help you block content you don't want others to see. ... If you post content on Urbit which may offend or disturb any significant group of users, it is your responsibility to mark it properly for automatic blocking.”

https://urbit.org/posts/beliefs-and-principles/

There was a wordier post related to this but I think some stuff might have been purged with his separation from Tlon.

Anyway, the point is, if I’m writing from an alt-right perspective it’s my responsibility to tag it as such. Properly tagged, anti-semitism (for example) would not be an abuse of the platform. I don’t see how this is any less enforceable than the outright banning that e.g. Twitter practices now, and in fact it may be quite a bit easier, as you’ll get fewer “outlaws” who have to cycle through alts every week or two to get their message out to their followers.

One problem of course is establishing a small and universally recognized set of tags that work well enough for most people. Instead of very specific “content warning” types of things, it’s probably good enough to indicate broad political allegiance - black flag, red flag, brown flag etc. It’s rare that just a single word in isolation sets people off - offense taken seems to have more to do with the worldview motivating a given statement.

Then there’s the question of asymmetry. Say, for example, that As are mortally offended by B content but Bs don’t seem to care much about A content. In effect, you’d be creating an unfair burden on Bs simply because they’re more tolerant than As.

NLP algorithms can obviously help here, as well as crowdsourced tagging. So a single A user might have to be exposed to a B-type post to apply the tag, but we might consider that an acceptable loss over a large enough base.

This of course all assumes good faith. I suspect that As will simply be furious that Bs are able to talk to other Bs and neutral Cs, even if they never see those posts.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#267
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They censor speech in order to conform to US law, which means they don't support free speech. They cannot as a platform both support free speech and practice censorship.

Speech there is free-er than on twitter.

Which is odd, because in every other instance with every other platform, any censorship no matter how benign is denounced as a slippery slope towards an inevitable and irreversible Orwellian nightmare dystopia. I guess Gab is the exception to the rule for some reason.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#268
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common claim, but I've seen precious little evidence for it. For decades US Nazis and other loons were justifiably obscure. But the rise of the Internet, which enabled all sorts of connection, also enabled our country's worst to more easily connect, network, and recruit. A good book on the topic is Neiwart's "Alt-America", written by a journalist who studied American white supremacists starting in the 1980s.…

Deplatforming is like trying to cure cancer with an axe. Even when you have a temporary win, it's at a terrible and horrible cost. Plenty of folks have tried to ban history books too.

Nobody is talking about banning history books about Nazis. They're not even talking about about preventing Nazis from speaking. They're just choosing to exercise their freedom of association and not provide a platform for Nazis, the same way they boot harassers and spammers. And the same way that publishers have for centuries declined to publish works they don't want to stand behind.

You can handwave all you like about the (vague, unspecified) horrible cost. But unless you have clear, specific harms to weigh against the actual harm caused by Nazis, you're just blowing smoke.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#269
post #232
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a common claim, but I've seen precious little evidence for it. For decades US Nazis and other loons were justifiably obscure. But the rise of the Internet, which enabled all sorts of connection, also enabled our country's worst to more easily connect, network, and recruit. A good book on the topic is Neiwart's "Alt-America", written by a journalist who studied American white supremacists starting in the 1980s.…

>Why did fail? He himself says social media bans were the reason. Politician blames everything but his own politics for his failure to get elected. News at 11. >For decades US Nazis and other loons were justifiably obscure. But the rise of the Internet, which enabled all sorts of connection, also enabled our country's worst to more easily connect, network, and recruit. And yet the number of race riots and violent cri…

Experts who study the topic make pretty clear that this is a problem. That you, an anonymous person on the internet, believe otherwise, is not much in the way of evidence.

It's also ridiculous that you conflate the 1992 riots (which were a spontaneous reaction to police violence) with the sort of things that Nazis would like to get up to. It's even more ridiculous that you ignore things like the Charlottesville car attack, the Isla Vista killings, or the Christchurch mosque shootings, all of which were by ideologues radicalized on the Internet. Ridiculous and telling.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#270

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.

Will you defend my right to distribute IP I don't own? Or to vote if I am a felon? Or to share state secrets? Or to defraud people or slander people? Do you believe that if the people on gab became state leaders that they'd protect your right to dissent?

None of the things you mentioned are "rights", that's just muddling the language. Freedom of speech is a capital-R Right.
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