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Gab will become a Mastodon fork

gab.com

31–40 of 335 posts

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#31
post #25

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…

> 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…

Shoot yourself in the head.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#32
post #4

> “Moving to the ActivityPub protocol as our base allows us to get into mobile App Stores without even having to submit and get approval of our own apps, whether Apple and Google like it or not.“ The perils (or benefits?) of open protocols. Existing mastodon/pleroma clients will be able to connect to Gab by adding a server setting. Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed server…

> Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed servers users can put in...

This is not the duty of client applications. Banning instances is the duty of the operators of individual instances, and the instance(s) on which you have your account(s) are the instance(s) whose blocking policy affects you. This is a feature.

Most sane instances on the Fediverse already ban extremist and alt-right content, and Gab will be no different in that case - just another entry on the blacklist, next to https://freespeechextremist.com/ and https://rapefeminists.network and other instances who shamelessly abuse the right to free speech.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#33
post #10
post #6

>Moving to the ActivityPub protocol as our base allows us to get into mobile App Stores without even having to submit and get approval of our own apps, whether Apple and Google like it or not They also had the option of creating an ActivityPub compatible API, no? But yes I guess it's easier this way. Having said that I wonder if they'll allow federation to happen. Most Mastodon instances restrict and censor speech so…

Deciding what content is allowed on your private platform is not censorship. The platform owner is exercising their own form of speech.

Incorrect.

> Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[2][3][4] Censorship can be conducted by a government[5], private institutions, and corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#34
post #4

> “Moving to the ActivityPub protocol as our base allows us to get into mobile App Stores without even having to submit and get approval of our own apps, whether Apple and Google like it or not.“ The perils (or benefits?) of open protocols. Existing mastodon/pleroma clients will be able to connect to Gab by adding a server setting. Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed server…

The conclusion I always seem to come to is you eventually want to be able to trust those within your network. I believe that requires some level of initial openness to prove who you are to a personally selected authority you decide to trust, who can verify your identity, and then allow you to communicate/engage with your real name or one-to-many pseudonyms, so if your actions are outside whatever rules exist for that network are violated then you could get a temporary timeout ("sit in the corner and think about what you did"), to permanent ban, to if it is considered criminal by society then reporting the person to appropriate authorities; we can't have inherent fear and distrust a chain of command, there is good in the world - we of course must stand strong, strongly together, and stand guard in order to fight against abuse of power, inauthentic behaviour - and so on - in chain of commands.

How will users of the Gab network know if it is INSERT_NATION_NAME agents, paid and incentivized to manipulate them and cause unrest in a societal structure we call democracy? Perhaps they're not even thinking or caring about it and its consequences, perhaps they're even simply happy they have a helping hand?

From what we've seen it takes very few bad actors to infiltrate a nation's foundational structures once the atmosphere of a population is disenfranchised enough, once we're disconnected and disengaged enough, and that has been accelerated by the cheap economies of scale the internet has afforded.

At the end what I hope for is that security services of democracies are being intelligent and allocating resources to fully and carefully infiltrating these groups (carefully as to not escalate the situation) to know who those who are involved is: this of course comes down to potential overreach, which must be addressed not because you may more easily know/discover who bad actors are - but because it may be bad actors who actually someday may get hold or access to these systems.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#35
post #4

> “Moving to the ActivityPub protocol as our base allows us to get into mobile App Stores without even having to submit and get approval of our own apps, whether Apple and Google like it or not.“ The perils (or benefits?) of open protocols. Existing mastodon/pleroma clients will be able to connect to Gab by adding a server setting. Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed server…

While apple does have some 'technology bars' you have to clear to get into their store. You can't use private APIs in the Apple frameworks for example. There are also 'content' bars that have to be surmounted. I don't think just because they use activity pub or whatever protocol that apple is going to roll over and play nice.

Their whole social network is literally a garbage fire, Apple doesn't want to associate their brand with garbage fires. I expect Gab management is in for a rude awakening.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#36

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…

Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#37
post #25

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…

> 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.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now I wonder if mastodon client app developers will start filtering the allowed servers users can put in... Any action of that kind would only fuel the alt-right persecution complex. Servers however do filtering all the time already, and that's how the Gab folks can be left out of view of the rest of the world.

Mastodon server instances already have blocked lists of "banned" instances. There's also a common ban list on github, so new server admins can join the federation in a "normal" way. The ban list has some pretty messed up instances it rightfully bans, but they either tend to be illegal or far-right. Far-left content is spread and encouraged. Note: I'm not trying to take a side in this, and I don't try to identify with…

>> Servers however do filtering all the time already

> Mastodon server instances already have blocked lists of "banned" instances.

well, yes.

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#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/

Re: Gab will become a Mastodon fork

#40

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 darkness is only ever undone by shining a light. By all means, people of reasonable sense should take a moment to look at Gab and realize what counter-factual nonsense it is, because banning it or censoring it will only make it more powerful.
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