Spacedragon Apr 17, 2017

Fascinating dynamic unfolding across Mastodon: instances are dividing into two ideological factions: safe speech, and free speech.

The safe speech instances are likely to start sharing domain-level blocklists (like Adblock but for speech) in the near future, to "curb harassment".

The free speech instances legitimately don't seem to care, and so far, have held much more interesting, substantive and intellectual conversations than the safe speech zones.

What can you expect from me? Free speech.

Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017
@wogan I see this as an internal dispute of the steadily shrinking English-language minority of Mastodon. Neither side of it has yet really processed the fact that they aren't still the majority, but anyone who wants a clear view of the situation *must* be aware of that fact.
Show threadSpacedragon Apr 17, 2017

@mattskala That's a good point, though there's a lot more to it than that.

The fediverse has been around sine Laconica (10-ish years), and it's only recently that there's a clash between the safe-space culture from the US, meeting the existing global free-speech culture, in the context of a foreign culture now dominating in user size.

Essentially, this is the new Wild West right now.

Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017
@wogan Yeah, I ran into the 500-char limit there. Maybe a useful distinction could be between "the fediverse" and Mastodon, even while they remain able to communicate with each other. Much as everything else on the Internet ended up in the margins of the World Wide Web even though we still have all the protocols and most of the services.
Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017

@wogan free/safe speech unfortunately maps pretty well onto the existing "culture war" division of English-language Twitter. I think what you're* seeing simply comes from the existing Twitter user base and its issues being imported.

*not me - I'm one of the invaders myself, only joined here a couple days ago.

Show threadSpacedragon Apr 17, 2017

@mattskala Oh it's definitely coming from Twitter

One common thread so far is that people are not used to not being able to globally mute/silence people they don't like, and feel like they still need protection from the internet itself.

Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017
@wogan Being able to silence others - as in prevent them from talking to third parties and among each other - has long been the Holy Grail of what certain pressure groups wanted from Twitter. The fact Twitter actually gave it to them, stealthily through stuff like shadowbanning and openly through stuff like the "advisory board," is one factor that drove me here.
Show threadSpacedragon
@mattskala 100% with you on that last one. On top of the advisory board, Twitter's opaque handling of bans, open defense of celebrities, hard-left ideological leaning, tacit enabling of hate-mobbing and the fact that one bad tweet can ruin your life, I'm glad to be on a network with a lot less zealotry about.
Apr 17, 2017 at 3:30amWeb
Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017
@wogan not all those things are solved by Mastodon, of course. But so far I like what I see.
Show threadSpacedragon Apr 17, 2017

@mattskala Well, so far, I've been silenced from a furry instance, and have only had to issue 1 block against an individual myself.

The greater problem is that the hysteria-driven news media still exists, and this federation itself is pretty public. You could probably still get into decent trouble for shenangians here, but at least control over the flow of data is decentralized.

Show threadMatthew SkalaApr 17, 2017
@wogan Goodness knows what the media is going to do with the "child pornography" issue. Nothing good.
Show threadSpacedragon Apr 17, 2017

@mattskala Yeah you can bet it'll go viral with something like "Eugen's hot new messaging app lets people share child porn with no ability to block it".

They'll get their pound of flesh, unfortunately, and as always. To be honest, I'm not overly sad about the fact that mainstream media is suffering a screeching death.