i'll admit, i was a bit taken by the hype (and, before that, speculation) surrounding #bluesky in the years before its release
but the moment i saw they decided to not ban nazis, and just give you an option to hide them algorithmically, i was done with that platform
that's a social media experience with no goddamn teeth or grit or courage
on mastodon? the fediverse? (the decent sections of it, at least)
we've got more teeth than you can shake a stick at. nazis are defederated and banned without hesitation. because, here, we give a fuck
say what you will about the fediverse
it does have its various glaring flaws
but at least we're not too cowardly to ban fucking fascists
like... the standards of moderation here, generally, are light-years beyond the state of "moderation" on any commercial corporate platform
we GIVE A FUCK about transphobia here!!! name one other social space on the internet where that is actually an official part of their terms of service (or, in the case of mastodon broadly speaking, the mastodon server covenant)
trans people have such vanishingly few safe spaces online so of course we're fighting tooth and nail to keep this one!!!!!
it's such a low godddamn bar to clear
and yet, by and large, the fediverse is the only major social media platform that actually manages to do this
why? well, here's the big secret: BECAUSE WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PROFIT
big companies allow nazis to fester on their services because it makes them money, and here we're not beholden to such corrupting influences
people on fedi, usually, aren't doing this for money
they're doing it at a steady financial loss more often than not, or maybe just barely breaking even
we do this because we care. it's why we're admins or mods or whatever. we've made an active decision to invest in this community, to help it grow and flourish
i'd like to reiterate a point i made in the second reply
that when i'm talking about "the fediverse" here i mean the Good parts of it
the parts that, broadly, follow the mastodon server covenant and don't allow stuff like hate speech
there are definitely unsavory sections of fedi too... you can't stop shitty people from using your software, but you CAN defederate them to high hell
in my mind, there's two fediverses: Canon Fedi, and The Shadow Realm
first there's the good, decent, "canonical" fediverse that broadly follows the mastodon server covenant and doesn't allow hate speech. this is a safe place to be
then there's... the rest. The Shadow Realm. whatever you wanna call it. that's the widely-defederated instances where all the bad people are. but thankfully, if you're server's even halfway decent, your admins should have the majority of these already blocked. needless to say, this is NOT a safe place to be
so that's why i call the Good sections of the fediverse just "The Fediverse"
because the bad people don't deserve to be counted as part of this community. and they literally aren't, they're blocked basically everywhere
"covenantal fediverse" is another good term for the decent sections of fedi
@vantablack those bad people existed right from the start (and originally made up a much larger part of the Fediverse), but there has been a consensus since about 2017/2018 to yeet them into the corners and there are now fewer of them able to cause problems - as even though they have a lot of tech skills and make new instances, they stick out like a sore thumb these days..
@vfrmedia @vantablack instances such as
mastodon.social and .world and a few more are pretty much tolerant of corporate democrats, many other instance are not.
Like ones ignoring Israels warcrimes. Happily cheering for empire. Cheering weapon deliveries without worry of lobbying by the weapon companies.
If Palestinians can be discriminated against, they're going to change direction on other things. Like their BLM support was pretty much lip service too.
@vantablack I like to call the former the 'covenantal fediverse' for the reason you're stating -- instances banding together through their shared ethical values, summed up pretty well with the server covenant
Which is not to say that people all AGREE on how to implement ethical standards. (the disagreement is part of the... fun)
@rwg ooh, this is a good one!!! gonna start using it
@vantablack Here's something to think about: a lot of fedi drama centers around people trying to control who is part of the "canonical" fedi and who is part of the "shadow realm"
And if successful in relegating some instance or corner of fedi to the Shadow Realm (even if they didn't really deserve it) then those instances will become even more firmly entrenched there, because only other Shadow Realm instances will talk to them.
@vantablack where does mastodon.art fit in to this?