remember kids: lack of consequences is tantamount to permission.

not holding people accountable for being fucking monsters is giving them permission to continue being monsters.

I feel like its important to add:

- not all monsters are huge political ones, some walk among us

- dogpiling people on social media, chasing them around the internet, harrassing them and abusing them for months makes you a fucking monster

- if you see people doing this to others, you should say something, or make an attempt to stop them or intervene

- standing there and watching someone get kicked in the teeth (figuratively) is the opposite of consequences

@Viss all at once, i appreciate my small circle where the chance of being involved or seeing such behavior is very rare, and also reminded there be monsters everywhere even if i dont see them
@h2onolan its probably less of an issue here on mastodon, because of the distributed nature of things - back on twitter, one of the hacks the attackers could take advantage of was that if they blocked their victim up front, the victim lost the controls on the attackers profile to report them. i think here even if youre blocked by someone, the toggles for reporting the profile still exist. also, its regular people doing the admin, not some corporate trust & safety group that needs convincing

@h2onolan so I don't think the same type of harrassment campaign could happen on mastodon, due to the architecture.

but the real horseshit part is that the folks who did these campaigns are just right here stood next to everyone, experiencing zero accountability for their malice

@Viss sometimes i will see a toot hidden with the label: “your admin has muted this account” or something like that, and i think welp if jerry (or another infosec.exchange mod) thinks they are sketch, ill just leave them be. I appreciate that, even if i dont know why it happened.

It is tough sometimes to clock an asshole unless someone tells you about them, and thats difficult to discern from regular griefing. I hope that any of my internet friends who spot me being chummy with a monster would kick me under the table or something. Not consequences exactly, i know. but maybe the best we will get

@h2onolan when i tell people about my experiences, its a mixed bag. there are folks that go 'oh thats horrible' and block them, which i appreciate. there are others who go 'oh i dunno, they seem fine to me' and i block them on the spot, and then i get others who are like 'show me proof', and i have to point to deleted twitter profiles and wayback machine and ask 'why would i lie about something like this', and usually end up blocking them because they seem... unconcerned

@h2onolan i treat these folks largely like the concept of masking. there are people who walk around largely unconcerned, and when warned about threats, they either do something productive, or make excuses.

so staying away from the ones who make excuses means you are less likely to catch the plague.

@Viss @h2onolan It's good to appreciate the ones who ask.
Do we need more AfterSchool Specials and Chris Crutcher novels (yea, I"m showing my age) out there to broadcast "they're nice to people I know!!!" is ... a skill and a strategy...
And consequences *can* help sometimes.
@geonz @h2onolan its incredibly sad when an influencer points to someone they dont like online and says' GET THEM', and all their little zergling followers just blindly obey
@Viss @h2onolan especially because 'get them' .... doesn't go away if you turnoff the computer.
@geonz @h2onolan and it gets worse when they say 'hey lets make a contest out of it, lets see how many followers we can make them lose" - and that creates a 'market' for people spreading a fuckload of disinformation
@Viss *warming up the guillotine*
@krypt3ia oh it scales down too. there are folks on your server that are 150% guilty of this shit
@Viss Well, I have no servers so…
@krypt3ia in mean infosec.exchange. i mean the people in the former twitter 'community'.
@Viss The all of them?
@krypt3ia i have a blocklist several thousand deep, yes.
@Viss agreed, now how do we apply that to elon?

@karl new supreme court justices, for a start.

but this thread was posted in a much smaller context. people here on mastodon being indifferent to folks attacking others maliciously

@karl @Viss

we fucking vote

@benroyce @karl this works up to the point where
- the voting machines magically do not have power cords
- the sherriff of the county grabs 500k ballots and holds them indefinitely
- dipshits set mailboxes on fire etc

like, if the votes get to where they need to go, yes, totally. but theres rampant, ugly meddling in the space right now

@benroyce @karl this isnt to suggest 'dont vote', but moreso 'just voting isnt enough' - we have to defend the ballots actual supply chain for the votes to get counted

@Viss @karl

totally agreed

however the vote is controlled by the states. so red states you're spot on, but blue or purple states- wherever two competing parties have an incentive to blow the whistle, the vote is fine

i also worry about "the vote is tampered" talk in general. because this can suppress voter turnout amongst the cynically inclined. then *that* becomes an effect by which MAGA wins again

but yes: organize, educate, protest, boycott, resist, build community, and more. and vote

@benroyce @karl being in california, i largely dont have to worry. i vote, i get an email telling my my vote was counted. its pretty rad. elsewhere in the country though, its way way way more fucked

@Viss @karl

same here, in new york

arkansas, not so much

@Viss Never heard a better explanation for the existence of Billionaires.
@Viss and if the only punishment is a fine then it’s legal for rich people to do