Gregory's ServerI laugh/cry every time I see people complaining that the volunteer organizer of a blocklist compilation isn’t polite or collegial or nice. I’ve been in the “business” of fighting harassment and discrimination for a long time and news flash: the people who do this stuff are not happy fun get-along pleasant people! If we were, we wouldn’t do things that make the nazis mad. Creating an annotated blocklist sourced from a variety of instances makes the nazis super mad! What “nice” person does that?
 25 comments
So someone didn’t respond to a helpful technical tip with gushing gratitude and positivity. I’ve been there - it’s hard when you receive constant bullshit criticism to feel anything other than rage when someone tells you that you are Doing It Wrong. I’ve learned a lot of ways to pass on information I think someone wants to know in ways that don’t trigger this response. If you’re not on the receiving end of the DDoS and death threats, I suggest you take that work on yourself. Learn to distinguish between someone who has uncompromising moral standards and is brave enough to stand up for them in the face of attacks and threats from very scary dangerous people, and someone who enjoys hurting other people. It’s true that sadists and power-hungry people often masquerade as justice-seekers. It’s your job to learn the difference in behaviors. One difference is the second is more likely to be pleasant to you if you’re “important” in some way. The person who is equally grating and annoying to the admin of a powerful instance, some nobody on the internet, and a person who is used to receiving politeness and respect due to their privilege is more likely to be someone doing good work that benefits society than the person who is pleasant to only the powerful and privileged. So if you have some privilege or power, take a hard look at your own preferences and biases towards people who make you feel good. This is all to say: let people doing hard unpleasant difficult social justice work be hard, unpleasant, and difficult themselves!!! </rant>  @vaurora here's something: They may not be 'nice,' but they ARE 'kind,' which is much, much more important. Kind people don't let shitheads do shithead things to people.  @vaurora I wish this were obvious to everyone, but considering the number of people I've seen on leftist/progressive fedi who think being nice to Nazis will make them turn away from Nazism...  The efforts at tone policing by Republicans aren't efforts at establishing common standards of civility. They're efforts to establish a standard of deference to Nazis, bigots, and the rich & powerful. Deference isn't mutual respect, it's its antithesis. It is the worship of power & a demand that everyone worship the moneyed & powerful. @BernieDoesIt @toolbear @Npars01 there’s a degree of absolutism in both these posts that would trigger self-reflection in some people. Probably best for both posters to block me, thanks! @toolbear you literally used the word “absolutely” in your first post. Also “100%”. I’m not interested in listening to anyone who thinks they can state that anyone is “absolutely” non-racist, especially in a situation absolutely chock full of well-meaning civility-worshipping white people who all believe they are acting out of the purest non-racist intentions and just have some concerns about exactly how this Black guy is going about providing the absolute bare minimum defense for PoC on fedi  @vaurora Oh, and I guess you did mean me. So I'm less confused now at least. > at would be good note from a good faith editor, though, so I'll edit the word out. Oh wait, no. You're trying to use my paraphrased quote of Andrea Chalupa when she absolutely meant absolutely. I see the games you're playing 👀  @vaurora Where can I see such an “annotated” blocklist. It would be refreshing to see. I’m just familiar with the Twitter variant that blocked anyone for any reason, no questions asked. If someone using the list blocked you, it rippled far and wide. The false positives shut off thousands of accounts from one another. None were Nazis or toxic, except to the person adding them to their blocks. I’d like to see how the fedi variant is ideally supposed to work, if different. @vaurora I am absolutely aware of it. I missed the word “compilation” in your post, and as Bad Space wasn’t mentioned in it, I assumed we were discussing blocklists alone. I can’t say I am familiar with each of them in the fedi, but aggregating them to block entire instances seems relatively benign because a few false positives would not likely result in an instance ban. But that doesn’t make me any more comfortable with blocklists themselves. |
If we weren’t driven by some internal sense of justice, we would be like the rest of the happy chill people who are fun to banter with and backpedal furiously the instant someone criticizes them. You all benefit from the misery that the unpleasant stubborn difficult people go through to create and defend online boundaries that keep out shitty people - who do know when to flatter and agree and insinuate so they can get access to victims.