Based on concerns from both the admin team and most users here, the lemmy.ml admin team decided to add wolfballs.com to our blocklist. There is just too much reactionary content that breaks almost all the rules we have here.
It’s natural for open instances like this one to develop blocklists organically, and so far we’ve only felt it necessary to block 2 instances. If there’s any concerns about other instances that we should keep an eye on, let us know.
I agree with this decision. Freedom of association is a thing and Lemmy.ml can choose with whom to federate.
Besides, it wasn’t simply a “difference in opinion” like you could disagree on ice cream flavour preference or even serious topics like the role of China in the world: Wolfballs maintains and encourages users to be in communities like ‘c/racist’, which is just a community for straight up racism without any veils or dogwhistles in front. Wolfballs is an instance whose mission statement is to build a platform where people can call for and organize genocide and terrorism under the veil of free speech.
If it was simply a difference in opinion or even a staunchly conservative instance, I wouldn’t block them, but they were nothing but a front for unironic racism.
it’s always weird as hell to me that people will shout “but free speech” and “it’s just a difference of opinion”, when the people that’re being shut out support genocide, or segregation, or conversion therapy, or what have you.
100% agree with this. And I made a whole thread about this kind of rhetorical move, which is to take specific subject matter, such as support for genocide, and to step back to the generality of difference of opinion. That specific move, the step back, of not defending a belief on the merits is a characteristic strategy of people seeking to insulate it from criticism at the subject matter level.
It’s kind of like forum shopping, the way that a company might bring their case to one jurisdiction rather than another, it’s always defended in the abstract, but expressed in the specific.
But that’s just it, that’s literally what free speech is. There’s a downside to it, sure sometimes ignorant morons do in fact use it to spread hateful shit, but this is 2021, “hate speech” can be as simple as a disagreement on ANYTHING at this point, so if we draw a line, where does it end?
If I go on a mainstream forum and say I don’t think my kid should get a vaccine that hasn’t proven itself in kids, I’m spreading “misinformation”, except I’m not, I’m stating fact. They haven’t been tested enough. My kid has 2 friends at school that had nice trips to the hospital after being vaccinated because their parents couldn’t get the needle in their arm fast enough. I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I’m also not stupid. You’re not allowed to have an opinion that goes against mainstream without having a political buzzword attached to you and having your statement wiped out of existence. That’s a very dangerous line to walk just to shut up some ignorant trolls that would have been ignored anyways.
Bad faith actors weaponize liberal virtues like free speech to support the spread hate, toxicity and misinformation. This became a thing around 2014-2015 with gamergate and created a model that is followed by angry online mobs to this day.
One of beautiful things about federation is that it defangs these arguments. There’s no legal sense in which free speach claims actually apply here, and there’s no conceptual sense in which it’s being denied. There’s no actual legal entitlement to free speech on any particular federated server, and you nevertheless have access to the underlying technology and the freedom to express yourself on the platform.
This structure makes it easy to see when the mask falls off, because you give people what they claim they want, and it turns out that it’s not enough, because what they really want is access to a captive audience with no constraints on behavior.
There are also other inputs to cultivation of an atmosphere where interactivity and creativity flourish that have a lot to do with avoiding poison, hate and arguments, but this dimension tends to be totally ignored by people who claim they are trying to protect such values by invoking the principle of free speech. Which, again, is a mask-off indicator.
I think for complaints about free speech to be taken seriously, it is helpful to proactively demonstrate that you care at least as much about the phenomenon of bad faith weaponizing of liberal values, which is what these rules exist to address, and are coming from a place of shared concern and not just trying to open up new captive audiences to trolls.
deleted by creator
“I am not very happy about this Adolf guy running for chancellor. I will try and find legal ways to discourage him from ruling in a way that feels fair to the SA and the SS.” — Weimar bureaucrats, 1932
You’d prefer that people be allowed to use illegal means to end (once and for all) potential future Hitlers? Or, really, anyone they somehow believe to be potential future Hitlers?
If there is a third alternative, I’m just not seeing it.
I guess we’ll all be forced to relive (and ignore) Treaties of Versailles forever.
… Yeah, I would prefer that people use illegal means to end potential future Hitlers.
Ok.
So…
You know, we have the scientific method in the realm of history and politics. You can analyze which interests someone supports, which goals someone has and what policies and action they support. Because it’s not about killing a literal future Hitler but instead fighting any kind of reactionary, anti-people ideology, this is quite straightforward.
That’s a strange question because we don’t live in a science fiction novel. We are not trying to assassinate little baby Hitler clones, we are trying to lead the class struggle against future and current fascist and reactionary movements.
Again, I don’t know why your political conclusions come from science fiction novels.
Ah. The one that has us run the experiment many times before we jump to conclusions?
So like, if 1 million people had those interests and never became Hitler or Mussolini, then we invalidate those interests as a determinant of whether they’re actually going to become another Hitler?
It sounds like you’re now trying to twist science so you can use it as an excuse to unperson those you don’t like. Extrajudicially.
No, instead you’re suggesting assassinating real, live people. That you don’t like.
You always say ‘people you don’t like’ as if it was about people who liked movies I thought were bad, and not those who literally organize the genocide of me and those like me.
This entire conversation is immaterial because Hitler was not the Great Man who single-handedly caused the Holocaust to happen. Fascism is a response to liberal capitalism and is based in the material conditions of the people. Mussolini himself was a labor organizer who spoke at length about class (after he denounced socialism, of course). Killing all potential Hitlers is not a material response to fascism. Socialism is.
A little too mask off?
deleted by creator