so I was reading through a long thread just now re: mstdn.ca. realized there were a ton of responses missing.

opened it in my browser to get the context, and OH LOOK! a boatload of accounts I had muted a loooooong time ago absolutely treating Chad like a convicted criminal, advising everybody to jump ship IMMEDIATELY, calling him ugly names.

"innocent until proven guilty" apparently stops being a thing when you've got your conclusion already formed. wow.

@robyn i was surprised by the volume of immediate personal stuff that was lobbed. Also, the, uh, legal situation is often not being described accurately (he hasn’t been arrested or even charged with criminal activity).

Personally, I’m neutral on Chad: I’ve had no bad experiences but I can’t say I have cherished or special feelings toward those interactions either.

The situation is yikes though. I totally get the people scrambling to leave mstdn.ca given the situation.

@linux_mclinuxface Oh the situation is very yikes, no doubt. Can definitely see people going, oh well, today is as good a day as any to look for a new instance!

But there is 1000% a way (multiple, actually) to deal with this that isn't: immediately resorting to ad hominems, dragging an entire race into this (!? lmao), and presenting the situation as if he was already in handcuffs, convicted in a court of law.

And what some of these folks are doing definitely ain't that.

@robyn @linux_mclinuxface

The ones that get me are the people ascribing malice to his bringing the servers off the cloud and onto owned physical hardware, as if that isn't what 90% of the Fedi is constantly screaming that we should all be doing.

Like, y'all know he doesn't have to do any of that, right? He could just wash his hands of the whole thing any time, but has put a lot of himself into keeping it going.

@Daveography @robyn well, IMHO, a service that size shouldn’t be humming along in a residential basement. Too many risks, too many sacrifices. It should be in a facility on owned hardware if you want to maximize control and minimize risk.

However I don’t think this decision involved steepling fingers.

@linux_mclinuxface @Daveography @robyn kind of a general problem is that there's a missing middle hosting level for this sort of thing. Colocating one beefy server at your friendly neighborhood datacenter used to be a thing that wasn't too difficult or expensive relative to alternatives, but nowadays it's way more expensive and difficult than either cloud hosting or using the fiber you already have to your home.
@linux_mclinuxface @Daveography @robyn getting local for a sec tera-byte doesn't even list colo services on their website anymore, for example.