Technology

Exactly. What happens when a far-right troll like libsoftiktok sics thousands of rabid followers on a fediverse account? I get the feeling our small, volunteer group of moderators just don't have the resources to cover that kind of brigading.

Oh, we haven't been speculating about moderation because that's a known quantity. A major driver of defederarion discussion on the microblogging side of the fedi has been about the moderation issues that people would have to deal with if federated with Threads. And especially about bad actors on Threads getting posts from users on defederated instances via intermediary sites, and then spotlighting vulnerable people to trolls on other instances.

It's why many niche Mastodon instances are talking about defederating from any other site not blocking Threads. It's a significant mental safety risk for vulnerable people in the alt-right's sights.

I am not required to respect "free speech" when it comes from a place of fundamental dishonesty. Slander is not protected speech. They are within their rights to bitch and complain about whatever non-issue they're up in arms about today and I'm within my rights to ban and ignore them.

They are, notably, NOT within their rights to call for violence and death against LGBTQ+ folks, which many are doing, because that constitutes hate speech, assault, or even inciting a riot, depending on which particular situation you find yourself being a bigot in. All three of these are illegal and are not protected speech.

Tolerance of intolerance is not a paradox, it is a failing of the people who are supposed to be protecting their communities. Tolerance of Nazis and racism are not required by the tenets of the Constitution or by the tenets of democracy and instead actively erode the protections enshrined within each.

In short, Nazi punks, fuck off.

It doesn't mean you have to give them the platform, though. If they want to create their own Nazi federation that's entirely on them, but you don't have to integrate their content.

That's just common misconception. Free speech is there to protect people from the government, not business. If my anti-racism voice gets suppressed on Threads (assuming I ever make an account there) I'd just move to another platform.

And really, there's no good reason for a well-intended internet community to allow racism expand.

Free speech has always had limits.

It’s mostly about the government not arresting you for what you say. It doesn’t protect you from the consequences of saying hateful things in a public space. Say something racist in an area largely populated by the race you’re talking about and you’re likely to get kicked, post some right wing misinformation in an online space that is largely left-leaning and you’re likely to have your post deleted. Neither of those things infringe on anyone’s right to free speech because other people also have the right to not want to listen to Nazis or racists or TERFS etc.

such a slippery slope! supporting free speech means allowing people to talk about how much they want queer people dead, too. tell the people calling for violence against queer people to fuck off, and maybe one day your very own calls for violence might get told to fuck off!

everybody deserves a platform to call for the extermination of people groups, but they have to earn their audience 😏. i think we should do absolutely nothing to stop them, because doing anything just makes them stronger anyways. /s

The right to free speech is drawn from a US constitutional amendment, which says the US government can't censor speech, but it has nothing to do with private platforms like this, much less individual responses to Nazi rhetoric. Nobody owes hate speech a free platform.

Yes, bigots are bad. And if you see a bigot on the internet, you don't have to click on their profile or view anything they put out into the void...And it is a void by the way, the amount of people that their content appeals to is a very small number of people.

So what's the harm in them having a platform if hardly anyone will even pay attention to them?

dealing with someone who physically shows up to your place unwanted and uninvited isn't the same thing as allowing them to tweet mean things.

Threads, while built on ActivityHub is not federated.

If all instances defederate it will force people to hand their data over to Zuckerberg to access the bigger network, and they will have no control over what shite the algorithm pushes into their timeline.

There's a very good case for some instances to defederate. All of them defederating would be a terrible mistake.