Damon Outlaw
Man these people are sick. Stop falling for the fake outrage and the facade. These people were toxic on big social & they are toxic here. Justifying death threats & saying people are playing victim. Over freaking #Meta if anything the people freaking out are playing victim. This is social media. No one is putting their handles in their obituary & on their tombstones. The fact that people are equating & lessening threats on people’s lives in comparison to #meta joining the #fedieverse. I’m so disgusted and disappointed
Jun 29, 2023 at 12:23amWeb
Show threadJonJun 29, 2023

@damon @damon Death threats are toxic, I completely agree.

I also agree that these are also patterns on other networks but there's a long and bad history of this in the fediverse in its own right ... in any case: not okay.

In terms of "playing the victim", Ihat's what always happens with defederations. Even when people agree on the facts, they interpret them differently. So some people think they're victims, others think they're playing the victim.

For example: there's a history of Mastodon instances getting defederated for running a non-consensual search engine and posting about it. An admin does this and then somebody posts a warning that they're going to defederate his instance in a week for this and other reasons. Is that unfair? What if you don't agree with this attitude, or some of the other reasons? Depending on answers to those, he's either the victim or playing the victim.

Or, suppose there's a guy who refers to women who disagree with him using very disparaging terms like "pathetic" or "tiny tyrant", while also talking about the abuse he's getting. Is he a victim? A guy using the same kind of DARVO techniques abusers use? Both? An added complication here is that not everybody's seen all the posts, or interprets them the same way -- this language and tactics is normalized in a lot of tech environements so many people are used to it and don't see it as a problem, but a lot of women (and queer, trans, and non-binary people) who have been targets of abuse often have different perspectives in situations like this see it differently.

The fact that people are equating & lessening threats on people’s lives in comparison to #meta joining the #fedieverse. Many people see #meta joining the #fediverse as threats on their own lives -- or their mental health. Many (including me) don't, lucky us, but that doesn't make it any less real for people who do.

Again, I completely agree about "no death threats" and don't mean to minimize the importance of that. I've only seen one myself and I reported it ASAP. So I am in no way trying to excuse that. Beyond that though I think the situation's a lot more complex and nuanced.