Comment on The crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and so-called "tankies"
HubertManne@piefed.social 10 hours ago
Ok. So I had a similar initial experience to you initially but I am slightly left and libertarian of center (real center not the us overton window thing). I had the convo which happened when someone said to hit him up as I just assumed he was a bot from his behavior. I have heard all the anti tanky retoric but while I don’t go for communism I have by and large treated fine on the communities (the only thing I encountered was being banned from a community for “supporting” landlords but hey I got banned from another instance for using a term I might consider crass but otherwise common for it being considered a slur so to me its all a sensitivity issue). I am getting quite sick of blocking his alts and his motivations are not exactly good. That being said its laughable to use the term liable in a largely anonymous online setting like this. That being further said it is a problem but i not sure what to do about it.
I will do the thing I should and break this apart a bit. Anyway I just want to add a bit of my own experience as I think it adds a bit more to how his behavior is problematic. I asked if he was looking to post the comic I post daily and he said no. I asked if he would as I would stop posting if he was diligent about doing it but he said not he only crossposts and can’t be bothered to go out of his way to do it himself. I had experimented before when I thought he was a bot and found what I posted was crossposted within the hour but would not get posted if I did not post. At one point I screwed around a bit to try and poison his cross posts and this is really funny. He would go through all the work even if I did not post the link. I was posting comments about the comic for the day and talking around it and he would go and get the url and do the post properly. But only if I posted something! I mean it was kinda funny sad. I mean sad that he was this way. I sorta felt sorry for him. Anyway I could not keep it up and went back to posting in a standard way. Since I just block his alts as I see them. It is problematic but I honestly don’t know how we can deal with people that have mental problems. I have a brother who lives in a halfway house and you feel a bit bad about people he may interact with in a typical day but he has just enough ability to function and his issues are not really his fault as he is sick. I like the idea of not allowing disparaging but its a slippery slope. Discussions need to be made about defederation and at what point discussion is disparaging could be hard to say. I could see maybe a rule like that which is exempt in defederation threads.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Thanks for your detailed comments.
The point I was trying to make was that users and moderators here should take into consideration things that can lead to lawsuits. At least in the US, people can sue for any reason. Making completely made up statements look like they are direct quotes from other people for the purpose of materially injuring them (in this case, loss of income) seems like it would be easily actionable to me. I think this situation could easily be handled by moderators. I hate to say this because I appreciate moderators on this platform and think that they are already overworked, but I think that this case is low-hanging fruit.
As for cm0002, I don’t have anything personal against them. I wish them well and even mentioned this to them in private messages in the past. The problem I have is with this quasi-religious “crusade”, like I called it, against everything and everyone that they disagree with. I think it’s damaging to the Threadiverse as a whole and dangerous to individual instances. Lemmy provides the ability to block users, communities, and instances for a reason. Everyone can use this functionality to minimize any contact with people or sources they don’t like.
Having said all that, reading and thinking about your post made me realize something: perhaps I’m mistaken and the best answer here would actually be to split the Threadiverse into two or more segments. That would perhaps be the easiest way to cut down all the complaining, whining, and attacking that has been happening apparently since this grew into a large-ish network. Who knows? However, the thing about defederating is that it too can be a slippery slope - first they defederated the nazis (which was the correct thing to do), next defederate the so-called tankies. What next after that? Defederate liberals? Defederate conservatives? Defederate progressives? Defederate anyone who doesn’t follow a list of approved beliefs? Where will it stop?
HubertManne@piefed.social 9 hours ago
I mean the lawsuit thing is laughable and 100% not possible. I seriously think it weakens your statements. Especially given they are so long to begin with. Best to be as concise as possible (and yeas, I know, as does anyone who knows me in this media, im being a huge hypocrite with that statement).
As far as defederation I personally am not big on it but I get why it exists and its going to be a conversation. Personally I would rather not have it at the instance level and want the software to allow individuals to be able to block at every level. I don’t like lemmy.ml or lemmy.world and I would like to be able to block everything that comes from it. I don’t like a community and I can block that. Individual same. I personally would like blocking to be two way. If I am not having anything to do with something I would prefer it to not get my content as well as not seeing theirs. I additionally like other things like blocking web urls for posts that are links so I don’t have to see things from faux news or news nation or such. That being said (im into that phrase today I guess) it a fantasy ideal of mine and currently things don’t work that way and there are bigger world things that might not make that possible. One, ironically given my first paragraph, is law. I completely understand an instance defederating because another instance might have posts that could get them into legal trouble. Something like child porn. Further I can understand instances that are so diametrically opposed to defederate from each other. An instance thats put up for gay folks may not want to federate with one that is about how great nazism is. Again I really wish users could be the control point and the bidirectional is key so that people can realize just how unpolular their thing is when not only is no one seeing their content but they are also not getting content. But yeah defederating can be a slipperly slope and should not be done casually. I have found most people are not super gung ho to do those in general although in specific instances you can get cheerleaders for a specific one.
Cricket@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Regarding your paragraph on defederation, I’m glad that we agree on another thing. I don’t know if you know, but Lemmy allows a user to block at pretty much every level (user, community, or entire instances). I understand that the blocking is not 100% perfect, but I don’t know the details. I can see that bidirectional blocks would help. I would expect that the blocks as they are go a long way in improving user experience here though. My community and instance blocks definitely improve mine because it helps me not see stuff I don’t want to see. I can also understand that keyword filters and URL filters would also improve the experience, so I hope that they add both eventually. I’ve heard that Piefed may have more features in that regard.
HubertManne@piefed.social 9 hours ago
yeah im on piefed now mostly due to features like that. pretty much everything is there except the bidirectional and the devs are pretty active and seem to talk regularly about improvements so things have come to it that did not occur to me but im estatic about. just recently it was a setting to not have things in your feed that you already read which I am just loving. I pretty much don’t have to read looking at new now because everythig I read goes away and if there is no new stuff then old stuff will show. which I really like.
Skavau@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Because the entire fediverse has a net active user pool of 40k users. Moreover, the lemmy devs have no idea who anyone who might be diaparaging their instance is. They could literally be anywhere in the world. Do you genuinely think its worth their time at all?