this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/6853479

mastodon.art has decided to suspend firefish.social from their instance due to issues with its administrator. The administrator of firefish.social was found to be boosting posts from a known harasser on another instance. mastodon.art takes a firm stance against racism and suspending full instances in these situations is part of their policy as a safe space. The known harasser has a history of using slurs, harassment, and editing screenshots to spread misinformation. However, the administrator of firefish.social has now forged a screenshot to paint mastodon.art in a negative light.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Why is this article a problem? Seems like a good thing to keep in mind - federation and using open source software doesn't mean you're private.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

The article is not a problem.

From what I seem to understand, the "problem" is that someone got accused of being a Nazi sympathizer because they boosted the article, that had been posted by someone accused of being a Nazi, which made the .art admin want to defederate from all of them due to some (not clear) previous history they might have... but it just happens that the "sympathizer" is also the developer of a relatively popular Fediverse project and instance, so by blocking them by association, they're also by-association-by-association blocking a lot of people who couldn't care less about who develops the software.

If smells a bit like when people wouldn't want to check out Lemmy because the Lemmy devs host a "tankie" instance.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I share your understanding.

Also, setting aside the question of whether the user they boosted is a Nazi or not, anger over boosting a post made by a supposed Nazi seems a little misguided.

If the post is a racist rant, sure, that’s a big problem. If the post is something innocuous, because Nazis have regular interests as well as hateful beliefs, I can imagine boosting it on my kbin account, where boosting exists. Because I don’t go check the post history of everybody I reply to or boost. I just boost good content. And the boosted post was an EFF article.

Unless Mastodon is one of those places where you just follow people, and do not see anything from people you do not follow. Then the question of “is the person whose post they boosted a Nazi” is a lot more relevant. I don’t use Mastodon. On Lemmy and kbin I follow nobody and see stuff anyways because I subscribe to communities/magazines.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

That's the same theme of a reply I made yesterday. I read the article and might have even boosted it myself because as a fediverse citizen, I'm concerned about any government agency seizing an instance like this. The "well known racist" claim is demonstrably false, because I still don't know who they are talking about nor would I know the person behind a username.

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