this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Partially agree
It really is about the will to take a hard stance. Just look at twitch. You have hundred-ish concurrent channels with two or three volunteer mods who can't handle "the memes". And then you have stuff like (in their prime) Geek and Sundry where you had very attractive hosts outright making sex and bondage jokes and chat was pleasant. Because the automod settings would nuke any comment that included key words and mods would add the cheeky mispellings as they show up.
It really does boil down to wanting the audience. Numbers mean money. Money is good. If you get rid of the chuds, your numbers go down. So you try to "manage" them and only remove the "problematic" users. Until the overton window shifts and you try to ignore all the dog whistles.
Where I disagree is that the fediverse is any better. Lemmy.world is already an example of one instance getting big enough that it has a LOT of influence. And they (as well as other instances) have already had their bursts of mods (and admins...) going batshit insane like it is a vbulletin board in the 00s.
But also? We are seeing the same bullshit we see everywhere. A "good" example is Naomi Wu. She has been in the news cycles periodically because of all the "best" reasons (she is clearly being silenced by the CCP, a lot of "maker youtube" is shouting her out as an OG a result, she had the audacity to speak out about a prominent youtuber who recently imploded making her uncomfortable for the exact reasons said youtuber imploded, she has boobs and doesn't wear a burkha, etc). And I can attest to three of the prominent boards having moderators who think they are doing a good job by removing any mention of that because it "makes people angry" or "doesn't lead to good discussion". Can't acknowledge someone who actually influenced a lot of the design philosophies in the 3d printers we all use on a 3d printing board because the chuds will get mad. And so forth
And THAT is the problem. Mods and Admins will decide they want to be influential and want those giant audiences.
You make a fair point, but the difference here is that we can always just go to a new instance that is more desirable. Mods and admins can power trip, but only within their own domain.
And defederation is always an option
Yeah. People should have a right to speak their mind, but on the Fediverse nobody is forced to listen and therein lies the difference, IMO.
Most instances aren't going to defederate from the vast majority of the userbase. The various "we aren't even going to pretend she is a 9000 year old vampire" instances are easy to defederate from because its almost nobody. But if 80% of the userbase will be lost to get rid of all the dog whistling? I mean... look at twitter. People will spin their refusal to walk away as an act of defiance and heroism.
And you get that massive userbase by not being strict regarding hate and bigotry.