Irenes (many)Oct 10, 2024

the fucking Salvation Army had the nerve to send us a piece of paper mail asking for donations

so we figure it's time for our annual reminder to please not donate to the Salvation Army because their mission and their services are explicitly hostile to queer people.

Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
the really nice thing about hosting our own infrastructure is that, when somebody really deserves it, we can say "fuck"
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024
@ireneista
there are instances where you can't?
that's cruel
Show threadIrenes (many)
@Doomed_Daniel for example, twitter and youtube both forbid it
Oct 10, 2024 at 3:38amWeb
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024

@ireneista
ok, but those are no fediverse instances ;)

(also, pretty sure I regularly used fuck when I still used twitter years ago, never got any complaints, though it's possible that THE ALGORITHM punished me)

Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024
@ireneista
I'm on a Discord "server" that bans some words including fuck, meaning you can't send messages with them, and always find it quite irritating when that happens.
It's not like its target audience are small kids or something..
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel yeah. it's what comes of putting things under the control of hierarchical power structures, honestly. it isn't even all that relevant whether they're corporate ones. hierarchies need to worry about their own survival, and in the face of outside threats they'll often give in to pressure at the expense of the people they nominally serve.
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024
@ireneista
I mean, in the end it's their "server" so they can impose their rules, and they have other rules that I appreciate (like no nazi-frog memes, that unfortunately otherwise are pretty popular on Discord), but policing language like that always feels a bit like kindergarten
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel sure, absolutely. it's not unreasonable for the people who run the server to have rules of that general nature, it's unreasonable for so much of human social activity to be in places where there's someone with the ability to enforce rules like that at all.
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel humans are very good at making rules that are bad for humans. we do not believe there would be room for humanity to change and grow, in a world where we were all held to some fixed set of rules about how we speak at all times. that's true no matter how nominally correct the rules themselves might be.
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024
@ireneista
I agree, but also, one Discord "server" is just one little place, big social networks and the like should be less restrictive about language
(and on the other hand, probably more restrictive about what's actually said or shown, it's not like that kind of rules prevent disinformation or hate on Twitter or Youtube)
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024

@ireneista
related to the old thing about enforcing politeness as means of oppression, instead of *actually* protecting anyone.

(in the case of twitter etc, the aforementioned Discord server is a generally friendly place)

Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel absolutely
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024

@Doomed_Daniel the ends do not justify the means, because the means become the ends.

if the tool that's used is requiring people to be polite, at some point after doing it enough, politeness starts to be a goal in itself; any original goal (such as safety or justice) gets forgotten.

Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel if you've ever seen us worrying about whether a proposed activism strategy "embodies justice", this is what we mean
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel no, yeah, it's technically true that there are plenty of places on fedi that would allow it. we just don't like being subject to other people's rules in general, especially when respectability has been a core concept in writing the rules.
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel as regards twitter, since assessing the significance of the word was contextual, enforcement was driven largely by reporting. therefore, as you'd expect, it was disproportionately enforced against visible minorities. we saw trans feminine people get banned for it following mass-reporting campaigns.
Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel we regarded having to worry about that as a moral injury, but we weren't interested in actually dealing with the consequences, so we toed the company line.
Show threadDaniel GibsonOct 10, 2024

@ireneista
ok, I never was very visible and am not really part of a targeted minority, so it makes sense that I never got into trouble (apart from maybe becoming even less visible thanks to their algorithm, who knows)

I see the freedom that a custom instance gives, but I'm too lazy (and as far as I can tell the administrators of my instance are ok - but of course like on Twitter I'm in a privileged position and not very visible)

Show threadIrenes (many)Oct 10, 2024

@Doomed_Daniel oh that is totally fair. we're not advocating that everyone should run their own, we realize it's a lot of work (in fact we just spent a few minutes in the middle of this conversation fixing something we broke while upgrading it...)

but it's work that makes us happy, so we do it :)

Show threadLuna LacteaOct 11, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel @ireneista On Twitter you can say "fuck" if the context is "I fucking hate [insert minority]". If you are a minority you get banned for saying "fuck" though. That's how it was last time I used it about a year ago.