Erik Uden 🚩May 8, 2024
The perfect Mastodon moderation principle
Show threadkonstruktive DiskussionMay 8, 2024

@ErikUden

In case this comic is meant to be taken seriously:

This strategy might be problematic because it gives uncontrolled power to those who can simply define who is a bigot (e.g. also by lying or tinkering with facts). Defending oneself with rational arguments is not possible after the FWOOOSH has happened.

There are many objectively hard problems to solve and rational debate was a major innovation of humankind which before used to solve problems by violence and mere power projection.

Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 10, 2024
@kddk
1/ While I commend you for attempting to argue from your principles respectfully, your aim and the aim of your interlocutors in the communities their moderations are intended to build are divergent. At the risk of 'teaching you how to suck eggs', Mastodon as a platform is very versatile. As suited as it is to facilitating massive interconnected nodal networks, it is equally well suited for the use of small groups centred around shared values or special interests.
Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 10, 2024
2/ For the latter, near-total autonomy in curating an isolated online space is not a mechanism open to abuse by bad actors, it is the principle on which the community is founded. Most who desire to intentionally create such spaces do so to gain temporary respite from he plethora of spaces where people of oppositional mindsets can rationally debate each other to their hearts' contents.
@kddk
Show threadfear is not a Weltanschauung
3/ Your worldview may lend you to feel that Mastodon is more "rightly" a platform for the former community, but that is a personal values-based opinion. Their worldview, that they need no external oversight to be able to create their flavour of community is also thus. The platform itself is entirely agnostic to the communities able to be built with it. You seem already to know there's limited point in attempting to dialogue someone out of their worldview, and are content to repurpose...
@kddk
May 10, 2024 at 5:53amWeb
Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 10, 2024
4/ ...your comments, post-block-and-mute, to provide some insight and value to the passer-by, and I suppose there is some value in that, but my own personal values-based opinion is that it is not so much to make beginning the engagement in the first place worth the effort.
@kddk
Show threadkonstruktive DiskussionMay 10, 2024

@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing

Thank you for your differentiated perspective.

> not so much to make beginning the engagement in the first place worth the effort.

The reason why I reacted on the comic posted by @ErikUden

The original post seems to propose silencing criticism as quote "The perfect Mastodon moderation principle". And while I absolutely can live with communities following this strategy I strongly object that *Mastodon as a whole* should adapt this moderation principle.

1/

Show threadkonstruktive DiskussionMay 10, 2024

@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @ErikUden

The reason: I see Mastodon (better: the Fediverse) as one of the few tools which can save democracy, solidarity and freedom from being drowned in the corporate media swamp represented by Xitter, TikTok etc.

But for this it must be possible to debate on *controversial topics* without being FWOOOSHed at the first occasion, because people tend to disagree on many things.

2/

Show threadkonstruktive DiskussionMay 10, 2024

@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @ErikUden

My personal theory is:

Communities need to establish rules which kind of statements they tolerate and which not.

If these rules are not strict enough this is obviously problematic.

However, if these rules are too strict than this IMHO also problematic because the community will unlearn how to resolve conflicts and in the long run fragment itself over minor issues and disappear.

My whole point is to express this warning about the original post.

Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 11, 2024
1/ While i certainly understand your motivation, this was not a formal proposal to adopt a mastodon-wide stance on moderation, nor even an *in*formal one. it was a low-effort, deliberately superficial and irreverent polemic. I suppose to me it comes down to sphere of influence. Were your goal to effect change, even at a hyperlocal level, you would be better to involve yourself in one of the efforts to define shared principles undepinning moderation such as UFoI.
@kddk
Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 11, 2024
2/ as to your personal theory, your commitment to the longevity of communities as a general principle is broadly admirable, but again citing sphere of influence, it seems an odd choice to insert yourself into a community as a stranger, to educate them on how they should be community-building. small, hermetic communities are dynamic. They are always expanding, dividing and collapsing as their membership grows as individuals.
@kddk
Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 11, 2024
3/ Those who tire of the small pond, or who disagree with moderation direction, branch iff and start their own communities which have their own cycles. It is again, very much part ofthe model.
It is a more organic kin to the formalistic 'rational debate' model of problem-solving. You are invested in your model, as you should be, and while alternatives might be less aligned to your own cognitive bent, it is a failure of judgement to assume the model you prefer is suitable for, and...
@kddk
Show threadfear is not a WeltanschauungMay 11, 2024
4/ and should be adopted by, everyone.
Alternatively, if your goal is mere intellectual diversion (which is, i should disclose here is my main goal in our discourse), you are welcome to continue indulging in low-speed collisions between incompatible worldviews.
@kddk