JustinHanagan

Exactly. FTA:

"Trust and safety” departments are kinda like “Human Resources” departments. They exist to help the company avoid expensive lawsuits and expensive PR blunders. These departments, I assume, are comprised of good-hearted people who care deeply about their work and the well being of others. But they are fighting a battle that the companies do not actually want to end.

It's literally in the article lol

I actually did jump into the replies and went back and forth with him a bit and I do think he (finally) understood the FOSS perspective. I think a lot of people get very hung up on this concept of a customer-product relationship and for some people it's a very hard mindset to break out of. I often forget that while "FOSS" is software, the "free software movement" is not really about software, it's political.

It’s like telling someone with a shitty landlord to move to a new free house which they get to own

"Hey so my free car that was built and maintained entirely by volunteers who received no financial compensation and was provided to me no strings attached is making a weird noise and I don't want to learn how to fix it myself nor am I willing to wait for someone else to fix it, nor am I willing to even tell the car-builders it has a problem."

In this context suggesting they complainer pay for a car doesn't sound so crazy?

I and a few other people kinda chatted with him a while and the reality kinda seemed to click with him? He was very stuck on "it is a product and I am the customer" mindset that is very ingrained into so many people. He said filing a bug report felt "dehumanizing" and we tried to illustrate that it can actually feel empowering if you view yourself as a collaborator, not a customer. I think he's coming around.

At least I hope he is because (opinion on FOSS aside) he really is one of the all-time best creators on YouTube right now.

Exactly! I actually talked back and forth with him a bit and eventually said that "complaining about a missing FOSS feature is like complaining to the volunteer ladeler at a soup kitchen about the lack of a gluten-free option. It's just not the path to getting the change you want."

In the end he seemed to get what I was saying, but was still irritated. I've been really learning lately how hard it is for some people not to see themselves as customers in FOSS land.

Very well said all around, (and in many fewer words than it took me) I may actually quote you in the future! Hadn't seen that 2018(!) Esquire article before today either. Kind of sad "Twitter without Nazis" wasn't a more compelling selling point. Just speaks to the power of network effects, I suppose.

I look at that as as proof it wasn't written by GPT.

Yeah. People should have a right to speak their mind, but on the Fediverse nobody is forced to listen and therein lies the difference, IMO.

The success metric is a vibrant, happy community, not MAUs or engagement numbers, so they make decisions accordingly.

YES well said. An instance is measured by it's quality, not it's profitability.

Any civility rule that is enforced with greater priority than (or in the absence of) a “no bigotry” rule serves only to protect bigots from decent people.

There's a saying I think about a lot that goes "The problem with rules is that good people don't need 'em, and bad people will find a way around 'em".

The best thing about human volunteer mods vs automated tools or paid "trust and safety" teams, IMO, is that volunteer humans can better identify when someone is participating in the spirit of a community, because the mods themselves are usually members of the community too.