Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
Mastodon Politics Show more
The people who want to use blocks as a political tactic to pressure this or that admin are just trying to create a status hierarchy with themselves at the top of a chain of command. It's a familiar game.
@bob @fallerOfFalls The counterpoint to that, is that when there are no rules then the weakest suffer.
Having a hierarchy isn't always a bad thing. Having rules isn't always a bad thing. Even having a benevolent dictator can be a great solution, as long as it lasts.
Extremes tend to be wrong, no matter which direction they take.
@bob @fallerOfFalls Trouble is assured either way.
Your "no rulers" utopia has no provisions to deal with assholes, let alone mobs of assholes who mobilise of their own volition to mistreat other people.
As soon as people start working together - whether on defense or offense or just creative projects, you get hierarchies and rulers, defacto or otherwise.
That's humanity.
When you apply the small scale psychology to large cities or nations then it becomes dysfunctional. The attempt to work around this is to invent bureaucratic structures and recruit police forces to ensure that rules are followed, but all that really does is create a privileged class who lord it over the rest. This kind of dynamic is why many of use stayed out of the silos to begin with.
@bob @fallerOfFalls Now we're getting pretty philosophical, but I'd like to point out that these large bureaucratic structures aren't pure evil.
They're the reason we're not mostly dead of measles, the reason we have CPUs with billions of transistors and the reasons violent crime is probably at its lowest point in all of recorded history.
Just sayin'. Working together, at scale, does have a few advantages. 😎
@HerraBRE @bob @fallerOfFalls Iron Law of Oligarchy, Robert Michelss, "Political Parties", 1911.
@HerraBRE @bob @fallerOfFalls When there are rules then the weakest suffer in a privilege structure reinforced against opposition. Bullies gang up too, and the top of any hierarchy is irresistible to them. When they get the mantle of legitimacy, they use it to enable their own bullying while silencing and punishing opposition.
@HerraBRE @bob @fallerOfFalls I agree. Rules and hierarchies are a necessary part of human society, and as you say, without rules the weakest suffer in a free-for-all. Since rules are hard to enforce without hierarchies, we need them also. We may not always like the rules and hierarchies, but not having them would be worse. The good thing about Mastodon is that we can choose which instance to use, and each instance has its own rules.
@fallerOfFalls @bob @HerraBRE And because of the ability of users to choose instances, we can have the advantages of benevolent dictatorship (long-term thinking, stability, a general care for the community even if not everyone agrees) without the disadvantages (potential for tyranny/repression) because users can choose their dictator through choosing an instance. If the dictator goes too far everyone can leave and the dictator can't stop them.
Too much hierarchy and rules lead to dysfunctional systems. There's the David Graeber book called "The Utopia of Rules" which describes this to some extent.
@bob @fallerOfFalls @HerraBRE Its true that the rules are often stacked against the weak, but equally, without rules, the weak suffer because unfortunately the strong will ride roughshod over the weak in a free-for-all contest. As long as rules are clear and enforced fairly, rules give the weak a chance. Problems occur when the rules are applied selectively (an in-between worst of both worlds that's unfortunately fairly common in the world)
@bob @fallerOfFalls @HerraBRE So ignoring for the minute the fact that you can block them what's to stop someone setting up their own instance and harassing others? You can't kick them off their own instance and as has been pointed out the whole system is federated, how do you exclude them from the federation?
What constitutes harassment anyway? Continually belittling someone? Personal insults? Name calling?
More: https://pastebin.com/882k0sQp
@bob @fallerOfFalls @HerraBRE I don't think I like that idea. Smacks of Elitism to me. Or the Eloi and Morlocks. :-)
Or maybe disagreeing with someone? Some of the harassment threads I've seen blow up in the past few weeks were little more than that.
@pettter @lnxw48a1 What I mean is you will end up with a small group who will meet out justice to users for the most pathetic of reasons or for reasons of cronyism.
While I agree bullying ect. needs to be stamped out I cannot fathom why supposed victims don't block their so called tormentors? It's not rocket science.
Why, though? I don't see how that necessarily follows. Are people not capable of moderating in reasonable ways? Is civilization impossible?
> why supposed victims don't block their so called tormentors?
Because it's cheaper and easier for abusers and harassers to create new accounts to use for harassment than for the abused to keep blocking and blocking and _meanwhile suffering the harassment_.
@pettter @lnxw48a1 "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" -- John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton
Hell I've even seen people who've signed the Code of Conduct piss all over it while in a blind rage and still to this day they've not made amends for it.
Every day we see some government, police force etc. etc. hauled over the coals for abuse of power or privilege. why should a social media board be any different?
People are not perfect, I agree, which is why we help each other, and strive for better procedures, protocols, and a better culture, but honestly I think that it's quite possible to have reasonable moderation standards without everything turning into Nazi Germany. In particular, freedom of speech absolutism is not a prerequisite for a free society, especially not in private and voluntary associations like the fediverse.
As for the specifics actions you're alluding to, I'm afraid I don't have any input, which was why my initial question was if the disagreement amounted to "opinions" or "denial of rights", as an example.
1. It matters what the disagreement was about whether or not it can be considered "harassment".
2. Free speech absolutism is not a predictor of future tyrrany. In particular, community moderation is not something that leads to totalitarianism and censure (taking "censure" as "censorship", that is, the practise of the powers that be to check messages prior to publication)
3. The economics of blocking is not (currently) on the side of the harassed - abusers have repeatedly shown willingness to create new accounts to continue harassing after their original account has been blocked, or to take the harassment off-site out of spite for the crime of blocking.
I claim that this is not true, based on being part of many different communities over the internet, and the problem for longevity and productive conversations have much more often been too lax and inconsistent moderation rather than excessive banning and moderation, and in particular, that the longest-living and best internet community I've ever been part of has a particularly strict moderation in relation to others.
@pettter @lnxw48a1 You should join our government. They too would like to control the Internet just like you want to control Mastodon. Your comment of "productive conversations " leads me to suspect you feel more at home on a developers list maybe even the Linux Kernel list where "Off Topic" is considered a worse crime than murder.
I'm not exactly sure where you're going with the namedropping and claims of seniority, and why you think that giving examples of (apparently?) failing communities would somehow prove the "moderation = tyranny" claim (which I still am not sure is your claim, but as you've chosen not to correct me _twice_, I'm going to assume that I haven't misunderstood you, please do correct me otherwise)..
As for having "productive" discussions, I prefer having conversations either for shits and giggles (with friends or presumptive friends), for genuine exchange of viewpoints and ideas (with either friends or strangers or just others), or for a thousand other purposes. I find that harassment doesn't help for either of these things, and that moderation and community standards does help.
@lnxw48a1 It's Yeah, no worries. Sorry about that. :-)
@pettter Just so that I too understand you correctly.
What you're say is you love FREEDOM you love the FREE opensource Mastodon and Fully support the idea that Mastodon is better than other social media platforms because of its FREEDOM and yet you actually don't want FREEDOM you want Control, You want a person to control what people say and do. Question is, who decides how serious something is? How far do you let a heated debate go before excluding them?
I want moderation, as shouting matches and harassment seldom lead anywhere, and that moderation can be implemented at various levels.
The most obvious one being the individual (e.g. me) keeping their patience and trying to find common ground, and to explain their own position, and their understanding of that the other person, and obviously not harassing people, laying off and untagging people when asked, and in general not writing off the rights of entire groups of people for sexist, racist or other bigoted reasons.
If an individual is not capable of restraining themselves, then the other party could mute or block, temporarily or permanently, for example, letting tempers cool off, or blocking simplistic harassment.
However, when the abusive user or group is not content with being blocked or muted, but takes the abuse through other means, >
If talk fails, and the remote admin is unable or unwilling to shut it down, then an instance-wide block might be motivated, for the local instance, and possibly for others.
In particular, if abuse and harassment occurs in one instance, then the risk is obviously higher that it'll happen again, wouldn't you agree? In particular, if the admin is unwilling to step in and say "hey, that's wrong, could you not?", and perhaps rather piles on or encourages the harassment, then the social consequences of abuse _on that instance_ would lead to _increased_ abuse, on the whole, it seems to me.
@pettter Seriously? I mean seriously? You actually wrote that and then ask me to explain what the problem is? #facepalm
Hey, if you want an exclusive club that has a moderator who effectively sits in judgement of what people say and do then be my guest. But I assure you that is definitely not my idea of freedom and is definitely a controlled environment.
If you can't see that I don't think there's much more point to this debate.
@pettter @dick_turpin @lnxw48a1
Premise: "if blocked, harassers will create new accounts to continue harassing"
Then it would make sense to block as the first test in determining whether something is harassment, vs argument or misunderstanding.
If a block ends the interaction, then it seems to me it probably wasn't harassment.
I think the idea that every interaction that goes south is abuse might become a self fulfilling prophecy.
@frankiesaxx @pettter @lnxw48a1 Ermm? I think my response is "yeah" but I'm not 100% sure. :-)
More importantly **UNICORNS!** :-)
@dick_turpin That's how I win all my arguments on the internet. :) @pettter @lnxw48a1
@dick_turpin @pettter @lnxw48a1
My observation, from a long time on the internet, is the majority of the time, ongoing harassment and abuse complaints often stem from a bad interaction that neither person will drop.
The people involved are generally both just normal people, but they can't let it go. Instead they *both* keep talking about each other and justify continuing to respond as self-defense. And then other people take sides...
@frankiesaxx @pettter @lnxw48a1 You are a very wise Unicorn. I like what you have written. I agree with what you have written, I shall now look for you on the web to follow you more. (Or you can give me some links to save my valuable time?) You sound liker my kind of Unicorn.
@dick_turpin twitter is @frankiesaxx also :)
@lnxw48a1 @pettter @dick_turpin
I guess what I'm saying is I don't think punitive retribution is a good model for governing social interactions. For a lot of reasons that I can't fit in 500 characters.
I think what we need is a system for de-escalating and diffusing situations *before* they turn into online gang warfare between a random soccer mom and college student.
Reserve network blocks for dealing with organized abuse, raids etc
@pettter @dick_turpin @lnxw48a1
That's true. But I feel like on the one hand there's an increasing tendency to assume any bad interaction is deliberate, intended as bias attack or abuse or insult on the other side, and demand anything that offends us be moderated and punished, while on the other hand less willingness to accept responsibility for moderating ourselves.
And I think that feeds the creation of the situations you mention.
@lnxw48a1 @frankiesaxx @pettter
I think you'll find it is a Norwegian Blue. :-)
(Google is your friend)
@tomas
I would like to think I would.
I'll tell you what I find offensive. People who virulently give me their opinions and yet get their arse in their hand when I give them mine.
Or my other favourite is people who do not read what I've written and respond to what they *think* I've said. Now those types really should be blacklisted. :-D
@lnxw48a1 Ah, exactly. and where does it end? Shooting your neighbour because their dog pissed on your lawn.
Mastodon Politics Show more
@fallerOfFalls I am pretty sure @maloki said recently that boosted content circumventing blocks was a bug that they expect to fix.