It’s still weird though. Like, let’s suppose that the poster was indeed referring to Hexbear, and that Hexbear was indeed “a safe space for authoritarians and transphobes” (I’m not digging on this further, as it isn’t necessary for the sake of the argument). It’s still randomly associating “being pro-defederation” with orthogonal matters, like the alleged bigotry. (Plus they’re usually the ones being defederated, not the ones defederating.)
Well sure. A bigot cannot tolerate the free exchange of ideas. If bigots don’t have a safe space to be bigots, then someone may come along and call them a transphobe and hurt their feelings. Authoritarian powers have always found excuses to shut down the speech of progressive radicals. Protest cannot be tolerated. They will use words like “brigading”, and “wrecker”, and “harassment” to construct a worldview in which political speech is a moral wrong, and they will enforce that worldview. I’ve seen this behaviour from both Blahaj and Hexbear. And I’ve seen it from my own government used against all kinds of progressive protesters. It’s universal.
This reasoning breaks for Hexbear, since it blocks exactly four instances: Threads, Burggit, Exploding Heads, and LW. As such, if Hexbear is a “bigot instance”, bigotry doesn’t lead to being “pro-defed”. As such, the other user was soapboxing against instances defederating others. (And if it is not a bigot instance, then it is not an example for that at all.)
[I’ll probably not talk about this further ITT because I need to “chew” a bit on what you said, and I don’t want to be an assumer. I’ll still read anything that you might reply in this regard.]
You’re right. That other person was probably talking about Blahaj and their reactionary political position of pretending anything can be apolitical. Also, doxxing trans people.
I consider Hexbear to be the same pattern in a different colour. Instead of defederating, they just ban any leftist or trans person who they’ve chosen to harass today. I consider defederations and bans to be two means of accomplishing the same goal, so I wasn’t keeping the distinction in mind.
Thank you for the clarification.
It’s still weird though. Like, let’s suppose that the poster was indeed referring to Hexbear, and that Hexbear was indeed “a safe space for authoritarians and transphobes” (I’m not digging on this further, as it isn’t necessary for the sake of the argument). It’s still randomly associating “being pro-defederation” with orthogonal matters, like the alleged bigotry. (Plus they’re usually the ones being defederated, not the ones defederating.)
Well sure. A bigot cannot tolerate the free exchange of ideas. If bigots don’t have a safe space to be bigots, then someone may come along and call them a transphobe and hurt their feelings. Authoritarian powers have always found excuses to shut down the speech of progressive radicals. Protest cannot be tolerated. They will use words like “brigading”, and “wrecker”, and “harassment” to construct a worldview in which political speech is a moral wrong, and they will enforce that worldview. I’ve seen this behaviour from both Blahaj and Hexbear. And I’ve seen it from my own government used against all kinds of progressive protesters. It’s universal.
This reasoning breaks for Hexbear, since it blocks exactly four instances: Threads, Burggit, Exploding Heads, and LW. As such, if Hexbear is a “bigot instance”, bigotry doesn’t lead to being “pro-defed”. As such, the other user was soapboxing against instances defederating others. (And if it is not a bigot instance, then it is not an example for that at all.)
[I’ll probably not talk about this further ITT because I need to “chew” a bit on what you said, and I don’t want to be an assumer. I’ll still read anything that you might reply in this regard.]
You’re right. That other person was probably talking about Blahaj and their reactionary political position of pretending anything can be apolitical. Also, doxxing trans people.
I consider Hexbear to be the same pattern in a different colour. Instead of defederating, they just ban any leftist or trans person who they’ve chosen to harass today. I consider defederations and bans to be two means of accomplishing the same goal, so I wasn’t keeping the distinction in mind.