[oopsman88]

With all of its faults, I'll take Twitter and its almost free speech over Mastodon any day. Many people say they are quitting Twitter because of the algorithmic timeline and so on, and they are going to Mastodon where a cabal of people choose to ban opinions that are perfectly legal.

[TheJoYo]

I follow people on blacklisted instances and have no problems viewing their posts. Counter Social seems to be a walled garden but it suits their mission statement.

EDIT: the article mentions shitposter.club as a blacklisted instance. I've been following https://shitposter.club/moonman for years with only minor migration issues.

[CharlesW]

> Counter Social seems to be a walled garden but it suits their mission statement.

It's not, but counter.social users are blacklisted by Mastodon folks who don't like how th3j35t3r[1] is running his Mastodon node.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jester_(hacktivist)

[TheJoYo]

not entirely true. they prevent veiwing of posts from anonymous users. I have no doubts that the blacklisting isn't helping them debug that issue. I just keep an account on there and cross post when it's relavent.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

I can't help but notice that you, complaining about “free speech”, have “88” at the end of your name.

Wonder what kind of speech (which you only defend by its supposed legality) you're concerned about being banned.

[ad_hominem]

Maybe they were born in 1988?

Maybe they play the piano (88 keys)?

Maybe they're a ham radio operator ("love and kisses")?

Maybe they're a big Kill Bill fan (Crazy 88s)?

Maybe they think it's a lucky number (Chinese culture)?

There's a million possibilities[1] besides this baseless ad hominem attack in which you're implying they're a neo-nazi. This moral panic over white supremacists supposedly hiding under every bed is really tiring.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/88_(number)

[lloeki]

TIL "88" stands for a neo-nazi thing. Lucky 10000 I guess.

A little bit of trivia: turns out in France a "département" is a country subdivision which receives two-digit codes, and it's quite common for people to include that in their online identity pseudonyms as a suffix. 88 is the Vosges department[0].

EDIT: Given the ambiguity, I do not support the use of the "88" thing at all, yet one cannot detract from the fact that cultural context and localization is a tricky subject. Even as a location thing I was not supporting it anyway as it's a terrible practice, being leaky information-wise.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vosges_(department)

[dx87]

Are you seriously implying that someone is a nazi just because they have the number 88 in their name? I have the number 87 in my name, what does that tell you about me?

You're a perfect example of what they're complaining about. They've said nothing even remotely offensive, just that they don't agree with shared block lists, and you've already decided that they're wrong and a nazi. I've seen people get added to shared block lists on twitter just because they commented on a thread saying that they both political parties in the US should work together instead of being so devisive, so it's not like only trolls and abusive people get added to those lists.

I hope you enjoy your self-imposed bubble, where everyone you disagree with is a nazi.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

I don't think everyone I disagree is a Nazi. It's just… easy to lose patience with the “free speech” line of argument when so many people invoking it are doing so in bad faith.

[malvosenior]

> easy to lose patience with the “free speech” line of argument when so many people invoking it are doing so in bad faith.

Many, many people believe in unfettered free speech. You should assume anyone who supports free speech is doing so in good faith as it's historically been the norm.

"I may not agree with what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it".

[oopsman88]

Also, not everybody you disagree with acts in bad faith. Nazis, communists, anarchists, you name it: most of them believe their views of society will lead to a betterment of it. They don't adhere to their principles just because they want to fuck with others.

[epeus]

Nazi ideology is explicitly about fucking with others. It is about separating people who they disapprove of and killing them. If you're trying to normalise Nazis, you are one of them, and the 88 dogwhistle doesn't look good.

[oopsman89]

I think all ideas should be discussed in an open forum. If you think some people may become nazis, communists or pastafarians because those ideas appeal to them, it's because you're afraid the ideas you're trying to push on aren't that good to begin with. (Posting from another account because that one has been banned for no reason I can discern.)

[lolikoisuru]

[flagged]

[lolikoisuru]

>I don't think everyone I disagree is a Nazi.

Just everyone who values freedom of speech then?

>so many people invoking it are doing so in bad faith.

You really think people who support freedom of speech are doing so in bad faith?

[lolikoisuru]

You say that as if supporting free speech was somehow part of the nazi platform.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Free speech is of course not something fascists want, but they will weaponise it to their own ends while it exists in law or in concept.

[phaedryx]

Why not just join an instance that matches your needs or start your own instance and make it whatever you want?

[oopsman88]

Because most of the bigger instances have shared blocklists. I am not interested in Mastodon as a tech stack, I am interested in joining a social network. But the truth is that it's all aligned to the political left. And I'm sad because I think Twitter is very politically charged and its alternative should be neutral. You can create your own instance or join a small instance you like, but that would be like IRC. I already use IRC every day, I don't need another IRC.

[jmarinez]

I agree. No single person or group should have the capability to "censor" anyone. On an individual basis, any single user should decide to block, hide or completely ignore anyone they want at will. And here's the thing, Mastodon already has all kinds of controls like that for all users. Why the need to have a "benevolent dictator" that can by popularity or influence can decide what an entire group gets to read or see. That's censorship in my book.

[Barrin92]

people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it. You don't curse in a church, yet plenty of people find them pleasant to visit.

People definitely should have the ability to put restrictive rules in place in place if the association with that community is voluntary, and nobody forces you to use mastodon.

I find strictly moderated communities very pleasant because I have no interest in debating trolls, nazis or whatever else crops up on the internet, and many mastodon instances as a result of this, especially the smaller ones are a lot more pleasant and feel more like a community than twitter.

[CharlesW]

> people have the freedom to associate in communities that censor if they are okay with it.

You'd think, but no. Some instances are run by "free speech absolutists" (in quotes, because they're really not) who block instances which, in their opinion, are "too aggressive" about blocking spam and bad actors. For example, mastodon.social blocks counter.social, preventing all counter.social users from federating with mastodon.social users.

In other words, Twitter users have to deal with the opaque decision making of one @jack. Mastodon users have to deal with the opaque decision making of a bunch of @jacks.

[egypturnash]

Uh no. Counter.social broke themselves off of the federation.

Also: your Mastodon admin could well be someone you know personally, rather than @jack.

[mirimir]

OK, I'm convinced that Mastodon is evil. I'm quite able to avoid what I don't like. And I don't want anyone else deciding for me.

Edit: Damn, that was a stupid comment, but I'll leave it as penance. I just wasn't seeing that Mastodon is perfectly setup for compartmentalization. So my Mirimir persona would have an account on some instance that focused on privacy, security and anonymity. And I would be protected from off-topic trolls. But I could have other unlinked personas on other instances, with different topics and blocking criteria. That's very cool.

[oopsman88]

Exactly. I get your point. But mine is: Mastodon shouldn't be publicised as an alternative to Twitter because it's not. It would be like publicising HN as an alternative to Reddit. HN only works as an alternative to Reddit for a very, very reduced group of people. People who share the same interests more or less, and with similar ideas about what flies in tech, politics, social movements, etc.

[freeone3000]

Mastodon isn't a monolithic thing. That's the entire point. The moderation policy of the server at mastodon.social has no bearing on the moderation policy of social.wxcafe.net or switter.net. Your complaint of "it's like irc" isn't quite true, because of a number of obvious technical and user experience differences. "Everyone should be able to reach everyone else" is proving to be less and less desirable.

[geofft]

I don't want to spend my time manually figuring out who I should block, work that I suspect a lot of people with similar values have already done; that's just wasted and repeated effort. I'm on the Mastodon instance I'm on because I trust my moderators to have values pretty close to mine and there are network effects in sharing this load (all of the users can mention things to the moderators), and then we have more time for the things we actually want to do on the site.

[ocdtrekkie]

I'm willing to bet most of the instances that a large group of instances have blocked federate with each other. There's definitely kinda a split among Mastodon instances, between free speech instances and fairly moderated instances. I wonder if you could find an instance which plays well with both sides.

There is no overarching authority on these instances, so there's a lot of options, it may just be hard to find the one that meets your needs.

[danharaj]

Freedom of association is the dual of freedom of speech.

[egypturnash]

I run a Mastodon instance. And to be honest the reason a lot of us tend to block right-wing instances is because there is a heavy crossover with trolling behavior. Or at least that’s mine.

If a right-leaning instance showed up that actively cracked down on people who hang out on the federated timeline looking for people to argue with, and other trolling behavior, I wouldn’t block it. But I haven’t seen such a thing. It’s just an endless sea of Pleroma installations with an admin who has an anime girl avatar and posts shit like “watch me get blocked by twenty more instances: [ethnic slur]”.

[stevenicr]

I am appreciating this comment, not because I agree or disagree, but it contains some views I had not considered and they may be important for others who I might want to attract to a mastadon instance if I set up one.

I've been keeping on eye on this project for many months, and it's been very interesting. A recent post about moderation and mastadon was very nice to read, but I had only considered the info there from my personal perspective.

I had not considered the network affects of shared blocklists, and now I wonder if this is put up front and center on each instance - are people who sign up notified of the blocklists each instance has?

It's also interesting to consider the end user who does not care about the tech and it's possibilities, and instead just looking for a social network that is easy to use and different than the other big networks in one way or another.

I do not see how creating an instance is like IRC, and I have not seen anything about joining small instances and how that would be like IRC. To me IRC is like a download and run, with mastadon you have to host an instance. I guess it could be just run on someone else's though.

If it was self hosted as an app or browser extension, I suppose it could run something like scuttlebutt and just re-sync when it re-connects - that would be interesting.

That makes me wonder what it could be like if it was installed on a million routers like nextcould is doing(?) - not sure I read that recent post correct.

I am still interested in mastadon, my idea is to somehow make it, or something like it has various bouncers you can follow / make part of your stream. So rather than depend on or have one block list server wise, you could have open servers and subscribe to different bouncer lists, kind of like the adblock lists - and that way some people could choose bouncers that block certain types of material they may want to avoid and be comfortable with certain people or groups making those kinds of, for example left or right leaning, or even block all trump and kardashian news, or all kinds of neat bouncers that could be created.

The future looks interesting and more possible to be less non-federated, I think the world is more ready for that now.

[pmlnr]

MastOdon. Not Mastadon. It's the same word as the giant ancient mammal.

[satokema]

there's definitely instances that serve as a DMZ between "opinions-banned-social" and the pleroma free speech "almost-everything-goes" types.

or just make your own and associate as you please.

[robobro]

Pleroma doesn't lack content moderation options[0]

Pleroma culture, on the other hand, is generally geared more toward free speech.

[0] https://git.pleroma.social/pleroma/pleroma/wikis/Message%20r...

- marking incoming messages with media from a given account or instance as sensitive

rejecting messages from a specific instance

- removing/unlisting messages from the public timelines

- removing media from messages

- sending only public messages to a specific instance

[AsyncAwait]

You're perfectly free to run your own instance and post whatever you like. Others might not want to read it, but that's your problem - you don't inherently deserve an audience, you have to convince people that you're worth following.

Luckily for you, there's also https://pleroma.social where they might align with your values[1] a lot more.

1 - I am pro free speech, however many on the right these days seem to think that free speech means they should be free to insult, abuse, impose their religion etc. on others, while also being free to ignore people's right to kneel, protest, worship Satan, support Palestine or whatever else they might want to do.

If that is the sort of "free speech" you're looking for, Mastodon might not be for you, otherwise it's a perfectly free speech tolerant place.

[lolikoisuru]

You basically said that you're pro free speech unless you disagree with said speech. It's quite apparent that you actually aren't pro freedom of speech.

[AsyncAwait]

> You basically said that you're pro free speech unless you disagree with said speech.

Where did I say this? I said I am pro free speech, especially one that I disagree with, that's the whole point. However I do not think me speaking means that people HAVE TO LISTEN to me. I do not want to be banned from speaking, but I do not demand an audience for my speech, therefore if someone blocks me because they find me annoying, that just means I haven't convinced them to be a part of my audience, as long as I can still speak freely, that's their personal choice.

My problem is with people who pretend to be free speech absolutists, but really aren't in that they'll make a fuss if you disrespect the flag, kneel etc. even as those are very clearly protected by freedom of expression. They're free to not watch someone do these things, (akin to blocking on social media), but not to go beyond that, in my opinion.

I am saying two things:

1. If someone blocks you, that does not violate your free speech, they don't have to listen. As long as they don't take action beyond blocking you it's within their right to do so and they do not violate your free speech.

2. That you should only complain about lack of free speech if you yourself respect speech you disagree with. If you think it's free speech to throw your stuff at people's ears, but then disagree with other people saying stuff YOU don't like, then you should not complain about anything free speech related, (see the whole NFL kneeling controversy for an example of what I mean, or people complaining about a statue of Satan, yet wanting to have In God We Trust in public schools etc.)