cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6853479
mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator. The administrator of firefish.social was found to be boosting posts from a known harasser on another instance. mastodon.art takes a firm stance against racism and suspending full instances in these situations is part of their policy as a safe space. The known harasser has a history of using slurs, harassment, and editing screenshots to spread misinformation. However, the administrator of firefish.social has now forged a screenshot to paint mastodon.art in a negative light.
The way I see it (especially since regsitrations are “pls let me in”) .art is admin’s house.
If they ask you not to wear shoes inside, you either abide or leave. Petty or not, that’s the rule.
If they catch you or your friends with shoes inside, you and your friends are getting kicked out, since everybody else is barefoot/eating off the floor.
There’s really nothing weird, petty or childish. You get a warning (suspension?) if you don’t fix the problem, you get defederated.
“bUt mUh frEey speyCh” doesn’t work in a super-protective, highly moderated “safe space”.
the issue here is not that i’m telling them to not do things–i don’t care what they do or don’t do. what i’m pointing out here is that people probably find this really stupid because it has an identical structure to and is similarly frivolous looking to a 16-year-old making a 10 page callout post against an artist for drawing problematic height gap
Sure. But, reading the comments under the .art admins posts on .art, .art people don’t find it petty, nor stupid. You’d see that they are thankful. And they are the only people who are affected by the defederarion.
I’m sorry to say, but it really does not matter what other people think. It’s like me, who has never been at your house, and never planning to be, thinking that your house rules are weird, arbitrary and petty. I’m also weirded out that you didn’t let that or this person in your house.
Would you care about my opinion?
in a federated system necessarily yes it kind of does regardless of if you think that’s fair. we get shit for what we believe (and maintain) are extremely valid and straightforward reasons for defederating with a handful of not-malicious instances and that can impact who comes here and why. if you were to create an image of being–for lack of better wording–a messy bitch with a catty and overdramatic attitude (as many people seem to read this as being) your instance will gain that reputation, it will influence who your users are, and it can go so far as to be negatively reflected onto completely innocent users.
now, if the mastodon.art person doesn’t care about that then they don’t care, and i’m again not saying that i care either way–it’s their website, they can do what they want–but the presumption that this is in a vacuum or absent consequences is silly. it’s not!
literally the opinion of a handful of people. If that was true, the instance would collapse.
There will always be people unhappy with something. You can’t please everyone. The .art admin chose to please people of their instance, instead of maintaining a “look” that is expected from randos on the internet.
I’m 100% with the admin, and I’m glad the admin isn’t peer-pressured into being whatever people need them to be. Again, there’s a reason why the instance is so popular.
I remember artist tumblr in the 00’s. Participated, then moved over to twitter in the 10’s before I got sick of it. This looks like another continuation of that same community.
They can do what they like, but this reeks of the exact same kind of drama and mobs that, for example, drives fanartists to attempting suicide because they painted a character’s skin a shade too light. (Zamii070, if you’re curious.)
These sorts of communities form an echo chamber that, frankly, can be absolutely horrible for kids. Yeah, they can do what they want in their house, but I’m staying far the fuck away.
I know you didn’t mean anything bad by it, but the person you mentioned in that fanartist example doesn’t like being associated with that as she doesn’t want it to be her legacy.
What the hell is this comparison. Yeah, moderation = death, people. That’s why I’m on twitter, sorry, ex-twitter, where they respect muh free speech, that has never hurt anyone! /s
Sorry, rereading it and I think I was unclear. I’m saying that this community moved from tumblr, to twitter, and now to mastodon. I quit this community at the twitter stage when it became too detrimental to my mental health.
But this community uses moderation as one tool to enforce cliques, rather than to actually prevent abuse. Or, you could say, this community has a history of using moderation as a form of abuse.
Alongside that, this community has a history of inciting witch hunts over the most petty things. And they will be happy about what the moderators are doing within their own clique.