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)Oct 10, 2024
@Doomed_Daniel for example, twitter and youtube both forbid it
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)
@Doomed_Daniel absolutely
Oct 10, 2024 at 4:41amWeb
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