2/

So no, I don't think *I* am going to change any culture. That's going to happen on its own.

But, I hope we can make tools that 1) amplify positive voices, and 2) demonstrate to the haters through *actions* (not another lecture from the HOA) that trolling doesn't work here.

I don't know what that looks like right now, but it's worth talking to people on the front lines to see what's worked/failed in the past.

@jdp23 @scottjenson @rakoo @thisismissem

@benpate @jdp23 @rakoo I think this is getting at the heart of the issue. There are lots of what we'll call edge cases where someone mentions Cloudflare and honestly doesn't know their history. They then get clobbered by four or five reply guys calling them out on supporting fascists. It's overkill.

For my part, the number of times that people have massively misunderstood what I was saying and instead of asking a clarifying question, proceeded to completely overreact has happened quite often. It's exhausting.

This isn't about "allowing Nazis" it's about seeing them hiding behind dust bunnies everywhere.

As to the "message I'm trying to send" it has nothing to do with supporting fascists it's more:
* people are getting hurt
* it's helpful to talk about it
Do I expect I will change the culture? Of course not, but we can at least talk about it. We can even disagree. But can we at least *start* with the assumption that everyone here is trying to build a great fediverse? Assume that we're all acting in good faith? We can disagree but that doesn't make us evil.

@benpate
@jdp23 @rakoo

Yes.

"Not all antibody or immune systems work correctly" is the insight of the evening. This hits the issue right on the head.

@thisismissem @jdp23 @scottjenson @rakoo

@thisismissem
Strongly agree.

@jdp23 @benpate @rakoo

@benpate
No, I'm sorry but if you're telling someone "this place is full of nazis" and they still go there, the fault's on them, not you.

And, again, telling people that AI or Cloudflare are problematic is _not_ trolling. Let's use words correctly here. It's probably not the proper way to say it but the content is of value; trolling implies that the content itself is worthless.

The way the message is passed is very bad and must definitely change. But we can't just dismiss the issue at the core just because the form is bad.

@jdp23 @scottjenson @thisismissem

The way we deliver a message can be more important than the words themselves.

In cult-deprogramming, when someone is teetering on the edge of the cult, getting shunned by their community only pushes them deeper into the cult.

This negative online behavior radicalizes people AWAY from the "shun-ers" and into the arms of the cult. So if you want to keep someone away from Nazis, don't yell at them for asking about swastikas.

@rakoo @jdp23 @scottjenson @thisismissem

@scottjenson @benpate @johannab I think you're on the right track. My experience here is good but I've been pretty proactive (although I don't run my own server.) I wonder how we could make the experience good for users that are a little less proactive?

@benpate
Yes, and if you say swastikas are the symbol of nazism, don't reject that as trolling

@jdp23 @scottjenson @thisismissem

No, I don't think the pattern of fedi's resistance to projects they see as bringing fascism to the fediverse is at all analogous to the racist harassment that Black people here face.

I do agree that the way that it's easy for people who unintentionally triggering the antibodies get scorched isn't necessarily good. (I don't consider a few rude comments on reddit as scorching, but there certainly have been other incidents with more abuse.). I even have a suggested approach for making progress! High-profile fedi influencers need to do a much better job about informing people who are thinking of developing for fedi about what's likely to trigger the antibodies.

With consent (a common source of triggering antibodies) I even put in the time to host a fediforum session and write up a pretty good document (if I do say so myself) outlining what needs to be done, with a goal of making it easier for people with a much bigger megaphone than me to let everybody know that hey, these are the norms here, it can be confusing -- and make sure to get feedback. I and o thers certainly used that to defuse several potential blowups (which you haven 't heard about becuase they didn't blow up). That said, fedi influencers are gonna do what they're gonna do, so for the most part I haven't noticed a lot of change (although kudos to the Mastodon project, which has made a lot of progress taking consent into account on new functionality).

Anyhow even though nobody wants to hear it, the same approach applies here. Fedi influencers need to talk about fedi's history of resistance to fasciam, and the strong opposition to "AI" in many corners here, and make sure people considering writing fedi software know they need to take this into account. And it's not always obvious, so step 1 is to ask!

Yes, this is going to make fedi development a lot more difficult and/or undesirable to many developers. But the resistance to fascism and "AI" isn't going to go away, so the alternative is antibodies flaring.

@thisismissem @benpate @scottjenson @rakoo

That is a fair point. And "trolling" was just my shorthand for "behaving badly online." I can pick better words

The Redditors involved weren't trolling. They genuinely believe they're the good guys, even as they push people away from the Fediverse.

@rakoo @jdp23 @scottjenson @thisismissem

Is that the right analogy here? For people who see Cloudflare and "AI" as fascism, it's more that somebody showed up and said "look, I'm bringing swastikas to fedi!"

I agree that there are better and worse ways to send the message. But I don't think the goal of people pushing back bringing fascism to fedi is to change minds. It's to keep fascism and fascist-related projects out of fedi.

@benpate @rakoo @scottjenson @thisismissem

I'd love to read the document you made. Is it available somewhere publicly?

@jdp23 @thisismissem @scottjenson @rakoo

@scottjenson Just to clarify, are you agreeing with that the pattern of pushing back against projects that see as fascist is similar to the harassment that greeted Black people coming to fedi?

Yep! https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/

And it gets shared around fedi every time there's a blowup, most recently with tags.pub

@benpate @thisismissem @scottjenson @rakoo

Hey, thanks for sending this. I've read it through a couple of times

I understand that marking a post"public" does not mean that others have consent to use it. That's why we have consent-respecting quote-posts

It would help your doc to define the positive.. what existing flags DO represent consent? Or, do we need new ones?

Using tags.pub as an example, how SHOULD someone ask to boost a post? Should we build "consent-respecting boosts" too?

@jdp23 @thisismissem @scottjenson @rakoo

@thisismissem histamines is a good framing, quite possibly better. And whether it's histamines or antibodies, certainly times when it's gone awry, triggering more intensely than needed or in some cases when maybe it shouldn't. That said, part of the reason why (more obvious with consent-related stuff) is just because this response keeps getting triggered again and again and frustration leads to people reacting very sharply -- even though it's not newcomers fault that they've just walked into a situation with all this past history and nobody told them to be careful.

So yeah, definitely worth thinking about how to encouraged better-calibrated responses ... but also cutting down on the triggering would be good!

I've been trying to get a similar document written for the CG but there's been little to no interest in it.

Why am I not surprised to hear this?

@benpate@mastodon.social I think more political diversity would help. There is a strong far-left leaning here, and I think having more people on the right (but not the far-right, like MAGA level) present would be good in the long run.

When posters fail the liberal purity tests, instead of getting bullied and harassed and dogpiled in the replies, there would be arguments between people who think the purity test must be enforced on everyone, and those who do not. So instead of getting bullied away from the platform, they'd just get a typical internet-style comment-section fight, where the attention is diverted away from the OP and towards eachother.
It would still be annoying, but it'd be better than the replies mainly being hate towards the OP.

#Mastodon #Fediverse #socialMedia #partisanship

@golemwire

Great points, thank you

Isolation breeds extremism (in either political direction) and the Fediverse does represent a certain amount of isolation.

I listed the flags I know about in the "Honor existing opt-in and opt-out mechanisms", and talked about new ones in "Include an additional opt-in mechanism for your service if it's not just a search engine or profile discovery (or something very close to them)".

Easier saiud than done, of course. In general I think there's a big missing piece of consent-related tools. Bridgy Fed wound up basically rolling their own mechanism, but even after however many years it's been I'll bet there are a lot of people who would opt in if they knew about it ... but don't know about it, so haven't.

The tags.pub situation is interesting, and a great example of how it's not always obvious what's likely to cause a blowup -- there have been other hashtag aggregators that haven't led to the same response. The issue that sparked the blowup was related to relays (I've blissfully forgotten the details) and then there was an implementation glitch leading to some stuff appearing when it shouldn't have and on top of that Evan said "well it allows for opt-out which is consent" which is like throwing gasoline on the fire. (On my to-do list is to update the "DON'T say the things that developers who ignore consent typically say" section to include that.). On top of that, Evan previously argued against opt-in for Bridgy Fed, and was very pro-Meta, so it was already a situation where there wasn't a lot of trust. So it's hard to separate all that out.

Anyhow yes I think there should be the ability to restrict who can boost posts -- I believe GoToSocial's intereaction controls "canAnnounce" covers this, and hopefully it's in the FEP as well. Since this isn't widely supporte yet today, well, at the individual level I think it's generally accepted that it's okay to boost most posts although there are situations where it's better to ask (like if somebody's posting something relatively personal and it's not clear they want it broadcast to the world). For something like tags.pub, it's not obvious, which is why the doc has a section on "Get broad feedback before launching – and listen to it"

@benpate