Our Antifa Bar Is Being Surrounded

Convener: William Maggos (@wjmaggos@liberal.city)

Blog post: https://democracyofreach.org/our-antifa-bar-is-being-surrounded/

Notes

• William: thesis of the blog post is that the web could have been a Nazi bar in the past 30 years, due to bad content existing, but was not, because it was decentralised.

  • William: some of his servers have been defederated because he federated with servers which defederators did not like.

  • If we force people out of the Fediverse because we disagree with some of their views, they will have no alternative but the truly nasty places.

  • We are keeping people out of the Fediverse. It will make it harder to grow the Fediverse.

• Comment: we are in very separated silos, so I never see some of the content there.

• Double-defederation is the name of the tactic of defederating from servers that federate with servers with which you disagree.

• Example: GAB server.

  • William: I understand that GAB had conservative viewpoints but also trolls. I am fine with Fediblocking servers for hosting trolls. …

• Comment: It is not the goal of my community to educate the people with whom I disagree. The purpose of my community is to be safe for my people.

• William: you can either have the old culture of the Fediverse (a refuge from other platforms) or a growing Fediverse.

• Olivia:

  • conservative viewpoints may include anti-trans or anti-women views as long as they’re not harassing people (is that right?)

  • history of the fediverse included contributions by many queer people.

  • These kind conservative viewpoints are not acceptable to Olivia and would not want to allow anyone in her community to expose to them.

• Jim: there are big social forces energising this

  • on both the political left and political right, there is a moralisitic approach, that people we disagree with are not just wrong, but immoral and should be driven away or isolated.

  • on the political right, trolling (infuriating your opponents) is a common tactic

  • algo social media monetises engagement, and infuration leads to anger leads to engagement, so alto social media reinforces trolling.

• Jim: there is a tension between keeping the Fediverse as a refuge for one’s own community, and growing the Fediverse to include many many more people.

• https://glaad.org/releases/meta-anti-lgbtq-hate-speech-dei/

  • “With these changes, Meta and Mark Zuckerberg are now not only permitting and encouraging, but engaging in anti-LGBTQ hate speech — by intentionally employing anti-LGBTQ language (“transgenderism”) in the company’s own hate speech policy and instituting new policies permitting extreme anti-LGBTQ slurs (“tr*nny”),” said a GLAAD spokesperson. “This is a complete break with best practices in content moderation and squarely moves the company into the territory of Truth Social and other extreme right-wing platforms that are unsafe for youth and advertisers. Platforms that encourage anti-LGBTQ hate and violence and other strains of general extremist rhetoric.”

  • We’re not doing enough to help queer people and people of colour to join the fediverse

  • queer people are being hurt on centralised social networks.

• People stay in corporate social media because the network effects are strongest there. Because Fediverse is smaller, network effects are weaker.

• people don’t join the fediverse because of network effect, they don’t join it because their friends and loved ones aren’t there. That has nothing to do with double defederation risks.

• “Medium places” which accept content which is not acceptable to safe spaces, but is not as bad as corporate social media.

• Contrast these two approaches to disagreement: “I disagree with your view, but I will fight for your right to say it.” vs. “Words are actual violence.”

• Jim: the title “Our Antifa Bar is being surrounded” did not convey the meaning I got from the full blog post.