Free Speech according to the idea of mostly left-wing oriented operators of Mastodon instances means to permanently exclude at least 500 instances worldwide from the federation because of "wrong opinions".
It took me more than a week of intensive research to find the part of Fediverse that was locked out by the Federation.
Mastodon, contrary to all praise, is degenerating into an even more censored platform than Twitter and Facebook combined.
https://gist.github.com/yetzt/32c754fbe87009f8c161f40541147c70
My instance is on the list... Quite an honor.
I have been operating ~18 months, and have had 3 reports. And they got the reply; "If you think the posts break the law, then please contact the authorities alternatively raise a civil suit against the user."
The speech-sensitive snowflakes were;
mastodon.online
mastodon.social
yiff.life
There is a "secret group" consisting of mainly German, left-wing & socialist-oriented Mastodon admins (instance operators) who specify who, ergo which instance in the Fediverse is to be blocked.
I know someone who has access to this group.
Admins or instance operators who do not follow the prescribed block list and other rules are branded (with their instance).
This is fascism in its purest form.
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@niclas @sophia_sardegna @iron_bug And people wonder why the word “fascism” has lost its meaning. Please explain to me how content moderation fits the definition of fascism. The purest form of fascism centers around subjecting your life to the interests of the state. When we expand the definition so much to include all sorts of nebulous things we risk rendering it meaningless and useless.
@sophia_sardegna @niclas @iron_bug What happens when the dissenting behavior is constructed in such a way to deliberately cause harm? What happens when such behavior is emblematic of entire instances with, at best, unresponsive moderation teams? Should we allow hate and toxicity to fester freely? Where do you draw the line between free speech and speech specifically designed to harm the other individual? These are extremely difficult questions. Nobody said moderation is easy.
I don't care if someone find someone else's speech so called "hateful". If you yell "Puppies are cute", there are people who will find that "hateful". If you promote "democracy" there are countries where that is against the law.
End of the day, there is no "line"as the line is a subjective construct and irrelevant to "Free Speech" (if that is what one upholds as a guiding star).
