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Gab will become a Mastodon fork

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Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#101

Post by vikingcaffiene »

manigandham wrote: post #84
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…

The people who post those things also use the internet, email, chat apps, social media and everything else. At some point you have to accept that people can say and do what they want and only they are responsible for it. Gab is no different than any other social media site in that what you see is a function of who you follow, but gab has no moderation at all so you will see things you don’t like more often. It is wha…

> Gab is no different than any other social media site in that what you see is a function of who you follow

> At some point you have to accept that people can say and do what they want and only they are responsible for it.

I could not disagree with you more. It is very different and they are known as a haven for some of the vilest viewpoints out there. These fringe viewpoints reach a larger audience and bad things happen. Literally every social media platform of any scale is grappling with this problem. Since, as you say, Gab has no moderation, this is what you get.

It's very easy to just throw your hands up and yell "freedom" with this stuff but I'd be willing to bet you aren't part of a demographic that gets regularly demonized in these corners of the internet. There are stakes. It matters that things like this get called out for what they are.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#102

Post by sctb »

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?

No, let's please not douse ourselves with gasoline and try to relitigate this one.

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#103

Post by kgraves »

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…

Precisely, to me this is a big experiment in decentralised networks. Like Gab or not, this is an interesting observation.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#104

Post by cannonedhamster »

0815test wrote: post #91
cannonedhamster wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet, many SJW's and Berniebros are white dudes... Self-hating, perhaps? Or maybe the whole narrative that "the right is powerful because White guys are furious about having to give up their inherent power!" just doesn't stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny. It's blatant propaganda; fake news meant to demonize and discredit conservative thought, even to make it "radioactive" in the eyes of the (largely bandw…

I mean I'm not saying they're evil, it's just how history works. Those in power object to losing said power.

Edit: Nor was I trying to make the claim that this is limited to any political party. It's a tool commonly used in populism.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#105

Post by sctb »

asdf21 wrote: post #83
davexunit wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I hate soup" - OK "I hate muslims" - not OK glad I could help clear up these muddy waters we're in.

[flagged]

Please stop the battle. If you can't comment without attacking other community members then don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#106

Post by hedora »

asdf21 wrote: post #83
davexunit wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I hate soup" - OK "I hate muslims" - not OK glad I could help clear up these muddy waters we're in.

[flagged]

They are all hate speech, because the definition of hate speech does not distinguish between which groups are protected and which are not.

If you yell that, and then attack a member of the relevant group, then you can and should be charged with a hate crime.

The supreme court has ruled on this.

It is not controversial.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#107

Post by smacktoward »

loceng wrote: post #64
smacktoward wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nice thing about Mastodon/ActivityPub is that administrators of "instances" (which means basically each running copy of the server software; you create a user account with a specific Mastodon instance, rather than with Mastodon itself) can disable federation with individual other instances, if they want to. So if a particular instance becomes a haven for trolls or other miscreants, you can block that entire instanc…

Okay cool. I wonder does that mean Gab is able to use and benefit from any apps/tools created for Mastodon instances - or would it be possible for the owners of those apps/tools themselves to block/prevent certain instances from benefiting? I'd hope that's the case so everyone has the ability to 'vote' for who they are supporting.

> I wonder does that mean Gab is able to use and benefit from any apps/tools created for Mastodon instances

Theoretically, yes. If Gab becomes an ActivityPub instance, and you have an account on Gab, you should be able to use any ActivityPub client software to connect to it. Since all ActivityPub instances are supposed to implement the same API, clients are essentially agnostic as to which particular instance they're connecting to. It's kind of like how you can use any mail reader to connect to any IMAP/POP email account.

What makes the de-federating thing I mentioned above significant here is that, just because you could use an ActivityPub client to connect to Gab, that doesn't necessarily mean you'd get access to anything in the fediverse outside of Gab. You can only connect to resources outside your instance if your instance is federated with that other one. If other instances refuse to federate with Gab, Gab users would be able to talk with each other and no one else.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#108

Post by 52-6F-62 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #58
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 th…

Tor being a protocol, I think the better analog would be the people developing the "host anything you want here, no limits" servers would be more the type of developers OP was addressing.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#109

Post by asdf21 »

sctb wrote: post #105
asdf21 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please stop the battle. If you can't comment without attacking other community members then don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What part of my comment attacked anyone?

Why is this disagreement a "battle"?

I'll stop debating, if you want, but I find your framing to be a bit hyperbolic.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#110

Post by jtr1 »

kgraves wrote: post #88

As much as I hate the bad parts of Gab, I am glad they are standing up to their principles of being a truly free speech social network. The other social networks just love to censor everybody they disagree with, even a particular orange looking website. I am also excited and glad they are utilising open source software as well. (This was bound to happen sooner or later) This can make activitypub & decentralised netwo…

I don't share any such appreciation for Gab. IMO, "free speech" in this case was a thinly veiled excuse for white supremacism, which has plenty of other homes on the internet. The developers of Gab chose to devote substantial portions of their lives to creating a platform for people who promote ethnic cleansing and the suppression of minorities. I don't think it's possible to do that without your eyes wide open, and I think that makes it a profoundly evil project.
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