@sydneyfalk @Elizafox yes I was referring to her first discussion specifically.

I agree that shitheads don't belong here. Hopefully we can keep them at bay.

But whitelisting would introduce new problems (the admins are sleeping, the admins are all sick, people are DDoSing the admins' home connections so they can't approve anyone).

Having a large quality community like ours is a deterrent itself, IMO. The idiots will quickly be stifled by our goodness

@awilfox @Elizafox

> the admins are sleeping/sick/all DDoSed

This is why you'd need a large admin group, carefully curated, and spread out on Earth. You might even need 'silent backup admins' who are approved by the core admins but can handle literal "all admins attacked" instances, like Lastpass' emergency access tool, after a certain amount of time.

@awilfox @Elizafox

> Having a large quality community like ours is a deterrent itself, IMO. The idiots will quickly be stifled by our goodness

With respect, I don't believe that any more, based on all the times it didn't.

Right now, noagenda's there, and internally encouraging members to "not fight SJWs" in order to make themselves look more palatable temporarily.

If I ask myself why, there's a lot of awful answers.

@sydneyfalk @Elizafox

if they start fighting people again, they'll be blocked again

but if they're telling each other internally to stop fighting then that means that what we've all been fighting for is starting to happen, even if it is temporary:

it's becoming unacceptable to be a stupid fuckwit in public

@awilfox @Elizafox@mst3k.interlinked.m

> fighting people again, they'll be blocked again

Except that gives them room to game the system while growing into the root system of the tree.

> if they're telling each other internally to stop fighting

"They're" not. The ADMIN is, and I suspect only to stay in the fed.

@awilfox @Elizafox

> unacceptable to be a stupid fuckwit in public

Until.

Some of these folks who aren't looking to coexist. They want to bide their time, eliminate other admins via malice, then wrest control.

Some of these people aren't idiots. Some of them are straight up smart and malicious.

And they're the ones who say "Hey, hey, calm down, don't upset the snowflakes."

They just leave out "for now".

@sydneyfalk @Elizafox

Yes, but they can easily do that in a second federation, too. Wait six months or a year or whatever then turn into horrible instances.

The only true winning move is not to play. But then you don't get the truly amazing experience that we have here.

@awilfox @Elizafox

"Easily" is relative. If someone collects four dozen decent admins, sets the rules from the start, and only lets people join slowly, it's harder to game. If there's backup measures in case of coordinated attack, it's harder to game.

We should be shitproofing and Naziproofing the fed as much as we can -- but maybe a microfed could act in that capacity, making power plays less effective on the prime fed.

@sydneyfalk @Elizafox Naziproofing is easy. surprisingly, there are even a lot of people on the right of the polticial spectrum still that hate them and think they are bad.

the problem is defining "shit" in a way that everyone can agree on

and I'm not sure if you could find four dozen people *here* that do

@awilfox @Elizafox

> Naziproofing is easy.

I have to say that if that were true, I'd think they'd have done it to the white house of one of the largest, richest nations on Earth.

That's great, truly. But most Germans weren't "kill all jews", either. But ENOUGH of them were, a critical mass. Enough to either steal or win elections.

That's the seed of human atrocity, and it's growing here.

I hate that.

@sydneyfalk @awilfox It is a gross mischaracterisation to claim I wanted only "weird people."

Mostly wanted queer people, but, other people can join as long as they don't federate with Nazis. Community exclusionary and inclusivity criteria would have to evolve.

@Elizafox @sydneyfalk @awilfox
>wants people to have free expression
>but not people who believe in a certain ideology https://mstdn.io/media/Jh78PE_OIZDq2bvNRFg

@cetacean @Elizafox @awilfox

I want people to have free expression -- I also want space away from the ones who abuse it to pursue destructive ends.

Or, if I responded in kind:

> snerks about other people wanting freedom from Nazis
> won't let Nazis camp in their living room 24/7 hoping to recruit them to the Klan

@cetacean @Elizafox @awilfox

But, hey -- if you really want people who want to burn your house down to be wandering your home with matches, you can prove it. Go find 'em. Let 'em burn down your house.

I'll admire your steadfast adherence to your ideals! ^_^ From a distance. With a fire extinguisher. Silently.

Have fun with it, though!

@cetacean @Elizafox @awilfox

Oh, and I suppose I should at least say "paradox of tolerance, look it up, it's not a thought experiment" in good faith before ceasing to respond. (So I did.)

@sydneyfalk @cetacean @Elizafox I personally am closest to John Rawls on that.

If you don't know: "While an intolerant sect does not itself have title to complain of intolerance, its freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger."

tl;dr it's acceptable to dislike people, but you cross the line trying to do something about it.

@Elizafox @cetacean @sydneyfalk and yes, in case it isn't clear: that does mean the Nazis have crossed that line.

@awilfox @Elizafox @cetacean

I don't see how that's incompatible with "let's not let polite Nazis recruit to enlarge their numbers into greater danger", TBQH, but I'm willing to accept that I probably don't understand some of what you're explaining.

@sydneyfalk @Elizafox that reply was much more meant for @cetacean than you, Sydney. sorry if that wasn't clear :|

I'm agreeing with you that we need to block instances with Nazis.

@awilfox @Elizafox @cetacean

Ah! Okay, that'd explain. I thought I was missing relevant nuance.

(I don't think Cetacean actually cared, they were doing the pop-in "oh but HERE'S a potential hypocrisy" thing people do sometimes. That "Oh, you think society should be IMPROVED? Yet you PARTICIPATE in society as it is! GOTCHA!" kinda thing.)

@sydneyfalk @awilfox @Elizafox I do care, I am saying that doing the equivalent of banning a region of people from traveling to another region because a minority of people are problematic is basically condoning separation of people and encouraging them to their narrow mindsets. I do not want to burn my house down, I want to understand my fellow humans so we can work together in spite of our differences.

@cetacean @sydneyfalk @Elizafox and is literally what Trump is trying to do with the visa ban.

horseshoe theory!

@awilfox @sydneyfalk @Elizafox
Demonstrably, humans have only one major skill: separating people into ideological groups based on beliefs or physical characteristics.

@cetacean @awilfox @Elizafox

One could argue that's also what you're doing, though. "Hey, banning Nazis is just as bad as BEING Nazis!"

You're simplifying the world into "people who believe in free speech" and "Nazis". I'm simplifying the world into "people not looking for a legal way to murder me" and "people I can survive", IMO.

If the former makes sense to you, but the latter's "extremism", I dunno. O_o

@Elizafox @sydneyfalk @cetacean but here is what you might miss:

the problem is not "a few Nazis" on an instance. if that were the case, the admin could just remove them. the problem is that the admins don't care, which means the instance can grow to have a tonne of them. and it probably means the admin is one, too. and if the leader of a region is evil, the leader needs to be dealt with before their people are helped, sadly.

@awilfox @Elizafox @sydneyfalk Why is it something an admin does for all its users instead of something users do for themselves? Block buttons exist. Regex-based filtering of userids cannot be that hard to add.

@cetacean @sydneyfalk @Elizafox also, with Mastodon being such an open ecosystem, the good people "stuck" on those instances can freely move to a different one, and probably *will* when they realise what's happening. so really, we are offering a way out for the people.

@cetacean @awilfox @Elizafox
And I'm saying there's no middle ground with people who want to destroy key aspects of, and abuse towards that end, civil rights.

Giving the recruiting, war-preparing white supremacists the equivalent of a career day booth in the fed isn't going to eventually assimilate them.

It's gonna burn the rest of us, one target at a time. It's divide and conquer.

@cetacean @awilfox @Elizafox

(Also: I apologize, then, for assuming you didn't care. It seemed like a hit-and-run snipe more than anything else.)

@awilfox @Elizafox @cetacean

(I mean, unless they're off right now to find people who want to burn their house down, like I suggested, in which case I salute their adherence to their ideals.

I'd also appreciate warning if that's the case, so I can get a fire extinguisher, but I figure I'll notice the fire eventually.)

@Elizafox @awilfox

(Oh, god, I'm imagining them responding with something like "I'm not doing that, that'd be lethal"

and I'd WANT to just say "Hey, it's not like they'll DEFINITELY succeed at setting your house on fire! Freedom of expression! You have to watch them and keep all the matches and lighters away from them!")

@awilfox @Elizafox

THAT IS THE LIFELONG DUTY OF ALL KNIGHTS OF THE FREEZE PEACH! XD

@awilfox @cetacean @Elizafox

> restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security + institutions of liberty are in danger

The security of the tolerant is always in potential danger, and are CURRENTLY in increasing danger.

The institutions of liberty are CURRENTLY in danger.

I'm not sure what definition of 'in danger' you have if 'being infiltrated by' doesn't count. O_o

@Elizafox @awilfox @sydneyfalk

You're more patient than me. I just blocked him. So much for the tolerant left!

@awilfox @Elizafox

> The only true winning move is not to play. But then you don't get the truly amazing experience that we have here.

IMO, when only two options seem apparent, that's a failure of conception, not reality. There are never as few choices as it seems at first, and so far, I haven't seen a situation that wasn't malleable in some way.

Games CHANGE over time. Maybe the social media game can change for the better.

@awilfox @Elizafox
I want to believe it, don't get me wrong -- but I don't. History bears it out.

There are people who, insidiously and overtly, appeal to the worst of humanity and aim to destroy goodness, because fuck goodness.

With that unfortunate reality (IMO, of course), I have to try to imagine safeguards that might shut out shitbags and Nazis.

Otherwise, the future is a lot bleaker than I can handle. :\

@sydneyfalk @Elizafox I can fully respect that, I guess I just view things differently.

there's always going to be people who are bad/evil/whatever your word is for them

the point isn't to exterminate them fully (you can't), the point is to contain them so that they can't fuck up the rest of the world

and I feel like we're not there yet, but getting there (and we don't need a second federation IMO to do it)

@awilfox @Elizafox
> the point is to contain them so that they can't fuck up the rest of the world

That's ... what I've been saying this whole time, specifically about their speech.

I'm not sure why that isn't coming across, but I'm sorry I couldn't explain it more clearly.

> second fed

I don't see the downside of one, and if folks leave the Nazi-greasy end of the pool, that's kinda "making it unacceptable in public", IMO.

@NthTensor @awilfox @Elizafox

'Total fragmentation' isn't the aim. A Venn diagram is the aim -- leave the shitheads/possible Nazis in the first circle, keep them out of the second circle, the rest overlaps.

It wouldn't be perfect, but it'd be an improvement on leaving shitheads and Nazis clogging/plotting in the stream.

@sydneyfalk @awilfox @Elizafox I see... conceptually at least, your description is ideal. In praxis huge and free gated communities dont tend to work out.

—
I agree that the best thing you can do is create a peer revised grey list of instances or users, and try to get admins to vow to implement it. Any instance that follows the list, joins the micofederation.

—
There is your answer. Call it the microfed.

@NthTensor @awilfox @Elizafox

I don't see how that'd not be a second fed (albeit with different rules), but if the only difference in the concept is terminology, I'm still game.

Microfed, secondfed, whatevs.

So anybody know if it'll actually be possible within a short period of time, to potentially show people a safer/better/less-cancery federated timeline, and prevent total fractionation and gentrification?