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Comment by kstrauser | Hacker News Reader

I run a medium sized Mastodon server. I blocked them because one of their users called me the n-word, I reported them to their admin, and nothing happened. It had zero to do with fediblock or any other communal mechanism. Their users acted like assholes, their admins did nothing about it, so I decided I didn’t want to talk to them anymore.

The notion of FSE whining about being blocked by some cabal is hilarious to me. No, they’re garden variety trolls that are capable of annoying others directly. There’s no grand conspiracy required to make a bunch of people disconnect from them.

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>The notion of FSE whining about being blocked by some cabal is hilarious to me.

Are they whining about being blocked? I didn't catch it in the article, but maybe I missed it?

The only thing I saw was kind of the opposite of whining: "FSE being fedi's equivalent of a dive bar, I understand people on "gated community" instances not wanting to deal with it"

They seem totally fine & understanding if people want to block them. They just don't want the block reason to be a lie (e.g. saying they allow loli stuff when they don't). Presumably, you saying they are a bunch of assholes as your reason for blocking them would be completely accepted by them.

Yes. They say:

> I'd like to also thank fediblock for never fact-checking anything ever

and link to a list of all instances who have blocked them for any reason whatsoever. My instance is on that list, as though I blocked them because of fediblock. In reality, it’s impossible for them to know why someone blocked them without doing a survey or something.

>I'd like to also thank fediblock for never fact-checking anything ever

The rest of the sentence is important to the meaning of the sentence, though...?

"giving the false impression that things that FSE has never permitted were allowed." with a link to a claim that they allow loli.

(For what it is worth, I've blocked them as well, but I still didn't read this paragraph as them "whining about a cabal")

Maybe, but they’re still linking to my server (and a bunch of others) as evidence that they’re widely blocked due to fediblock, and not because of individual servers blocking them for bad behavior. I personally couldn’t care less what fediblock said about them. It was nothing whatsoever to do with why I blocked them.

>as evidence that they’re widely blocked due to fediblock

It seems like you're laser-focused on the fact that they link to fediblock instead of the actual words of the sentence.

Their complaint is not about being blocked, they make that clear in the part of the sentence you decided not to quote. They apparently just don't want the reason in the "Reason" column to be a lie.

It's probably a good bet to just read the whole sentence they wrote.

"I understand people on "gated community" instances not wanting to deal with it [...] but I would prefer if they did not lie about their reasons or about me personally."

They (seemingly) just don't want pedos thinking it's okay to post on there. Which is a good thing. So, if you're filling out a reason, just put "massive assholes" or whatever instead something untruthful.

>Their users acted like assholes, their admins did nothing about it, so I decided I didn’t want to talk to them anymore.

It has been my experience that the more vocal someone is about free speech rights the more likely it is that they are only vocal because they want to use those rights as a shield against criticism of their bigoted, annoying, or anti-social behavior and they want to criticize people for distancing themselves from the bigotry.

To them free speech is mandatory listening-- to them, no matter what.

That's been my observation. "Freedom to... say what exactly?"

I'm A-OK with people saying constructive, civil things I disagree with. I might reply with my disagreement but that's OK. We're talking! I have zero patience with someone jumping in with trolling, harassment, or other abuse.

> Freedom to... say what exactly?

What's the difference between this and saying "Criminals want trials with defence lawyers, so people who want trials with defence lawyers are criminals"?

At least when someone promotes free speech there's a chance that they are proponents of democratic principles. If they are against free speech you know that they have an authoritarian ideology.

No one believes themselves to be against free speech.

You do.

> I blocked them because one of their users called me the n-word

I'm not against free speech. I'm just exercising my right not to have to hear them, or to spend my own money to carry the traffic they're generating. They can still say whatever they want to whomever they choose. We just get to decide not to listen.

There is a well known effect that goes by many names that anything taken to its extreme becomes its opposite.

There is the popular belief that shunning people or groups of people like this will lead to their exclusion from society, not yours.

If you can’t shun someone for their direct misbehavior, then why can you decide not to mute someone?

Note that I never told you that you’re not allowed to talk to them. I just said they’re not allowed to harass me or my users anymore. You can still hang out with them all you like.

I was unable to settle on the Fediverse as i did not find an instance from where i could follow and interact with all the people that i know. My social circles are rather "diverse" and people like you are apparently working hard to not allow that.

I guess your users were okay with you setting blocks?

Yes and no. I’m working hard to keep people who act horribly out of my corner of the fediverse. I’ve never blocked someone for having different political opinions from my own, for example, but I’ve blocked plenty of people, even those who mostly share my opinions, because they were behaving like jerks. I’m doing nothing whatsoever to keep you from talking to them.

Hang out with anyone you want to, and I’ll do the same. And yes, my users are specifically OK with it. Our moderation actions are public, we put them to a vote when there’s some question about the right thing to do, and I’ve blogged a lot about the details of it all. Users tend to join and stay with my instance because they agree with my moderation actions, not in spite of them.

"behaving like a jerk" by your cultural norms and standards. I understand your position and wish you and your instance a future of diverse and fruitful conversations.

Well, of course we’re not going to block them due to anyone else’s standards.

Thanks! We’ve been online for 8 years and it’s been a lot of fun, other than dealing with moderation of bad actors. Like the one above who called me an n-word, for instance. Although that was one of the easier mod decisions we had to make, to be sure!

Do you believe that people can hold a negative opinion of someone else and choose not to interact with them, or does your world view require that people are compelled to interact with anyone who demands it of them?

My problem is that the instance admin does the blocking decision for the user, based on their own cultural norms, not the users.

Caveat, I haven’t used mastodon or the fed inverse and might be off on the details.

Isn’t that how the fediverse works? You sign up for an instance based on if you like how they admin it, and if you don’t, you join a different instance?

I’m failing to see how that is a problem for users if they aren’t compelled to stay

That’s exactly correct. It’s a marketplace of policies. If someone thinks I allow too much trash through, they’ll go to another server. If someone thinks I block too much, they’ll go to another server. There are thousands to choose from, each with its own local culture.

People who’ve been on my server for many years implicitly mostly agree with my actions. If they didn’t, they’d have migrated.

Yes, but the different instance has a different set of blocks (both outgoing and ingoing), so the problem kinda persists even when you change instances. You can't have both A and B people in your feed when they (actually their admins) instance-block each other on sight.

What exactly are you advocating for? This sounds entirely like the systems working as intended, it’s just not exactly how you personally would prefer.

You’re using words like you’re pro liberty but the implications of you’re sentences is hyper authoritarian

Forgive me if I am not understanding:

Doesn't this mean you can just go to an instance that has mutual open communication with both other instances and then have access to both feeds? This is what happens IRL when I have two friend groups that don't engage, I engage with them both as a separate person.

> go to an instance that has mutual open communication with both other instances

How do i find these neutral instances? I tried around some but with unsatisfying results.

You make one? I thought spinning up an instance is designed to be easy.

Is this supposed to be sarcasm?

I hear variations of that logic so often and it’s frustrating. It’s impossible for me to infringe someone’s freedom of speech on the fediverse. Someone can spin up a brand new server right now and start saying whatever they want. I can’t stop them, even if I wanted to, which I don’t. But if I blocked them from my own server, some people are quick to complain about my “censorship”, or whatever.

No. In exercising my freedom of speech to say I don’t want to hear their trash, and I don’t want them harassing my users. Their freedom of speech doesn’t say they have the right to force me to listen to them.

(For people following along at home: the speech I’m talking about here isn’t a debate about appropriate fiscal policy, but about vile escaped-from-4chan trash. I’d never block someone for disagreeing with my politics. I’ll block their ass in a heartbeat for a timeline filled with swastikas and death threats.)

Yea, with his clarification in the other comment it’s clear that this guy is one of those types who probably calls himself a Libertarian while unironically advocating for the removal of people’s right to assembly

You were projecting hard in your last two comments - i generally do not think by constructed group identity. And i'm lost what parts of my wishes you consider authoritarian. I'm just pissed that instance admins install blocks that leave me unable to make my own decisions who i want to interact with - blocking people i like on my behalf.

Typical scenario is that someone gives me their fedi ident and i can't follow them because either my instance blocked theirs or theirs blocked mine.

Ideally i'd have a tool that knows all fedi blocks, where i can specify the people i want to follow and it tells me on what instance i need to register to be able to do that.

Couldn't you just spin up your own instance that only consists of yourself in that case? I'm not being facetious I'm genuinely baffled as I thought this kind of custom plug-and-do-yourself-if-you-dont-like-it is fundamental to how fediverse works and is considered a "perk" of it.

The fediverse is not designed to scale to single-user instances. If it was designed for the in the first place then yes, this wouldn't be a problem.

Uh. That would actually solve the problem, but at the cost of having to operate that setup. I saw many people who self-hosted their instance but it seemed rather stressful dealing with some technical aspects, so initially didn't consider it.

Currently researching managed fedi hosting...

> That would actually solve the problem, but that the cost of having to operate that setup.

So you expect someone else to incur that cost and not exercise control over how their resources are used, so you can use it for free/low effort?

Valid concern... but my conclusion from that is that the Fediverse is just a bunch of personal lawns you'd better stay away from.

I mean, yeah, that's the whole point of the Fediverse. It makes explicit that internet spaces are just sets of lawns.

Diverse conversations are actually pretty rare in reality when conflicting opinions exist. The paradox of tolerance pretty much demands you weed out the extremists or they will be all that's left.

> Diverse conversations are actually pretty rare in reality when conflicting opinions exist

So are we just not supposed to debate anything ever? Just find a convenient excuse to ban/block/mute and move on?

> The paradox of tolerance pretty much demands you weed out the extremists or they will be all that's left

Too bad everyone has a different idea of who an "extremist" is, and conveniently ignores the ones on their side.

Sigh....

Does HN have diverse opinions?

Some say yes, others will say no. It depends on the topic.

Now the moment you start acting like a jerk on HN you'll get a message from Dang or one of the other mods, and if you keep it up you'll be banned.

Diverse opinions are fine. The problem is there are a lot of people that get way too wound up in the rightness of their opinion, and there are others that are just trolls that live on the conflict. When you start banning the trolls/extremists they go off and make articles like "Site X bans any difference of opinion because they are big meanies" Then other groups like free speech extremists show up to complain about how the site is authoritarian in the most annoying and offensive ways possible, and it's not long after that admins block entire topics to make the problem FOAGA.

Being an admin/moderator of places where people can post will quickly drain you of understanding and compassion. The frog and the scorpion is a good fable here. You get tired of the scorpions asking for a ride then stabbing you in the back on your forums.

The "paradox" of tolerance is a weak excuse to enact your own tyranny and nothing more.

Cool story bro.

Me: "let's hang anybody with account in their username"

You: "why don't you come over to my house, I wouldn't want to seem like a tyrant!"

You see how this might not work out in your favor.

The trick is not being an ass towards someone you disagree with. If you quote Popper on this, you failed that and are rationalizing your behavior because you know its not good.

The trick is the other person doing that too. Simply put a lot, if not most people don't want a rational debate where they discuss the many sides of an issue. They want to win.

Take religion for example, seemingly most people that have one tend to believe not only they are right about it (if you debate it's correctness it shows your lack of faith), they are trying to convert you and if they fail you are an enemy.

Nah, this approach is not good because it kinda starts with the frontiers already drawn.

You don't even need to assert your own position, just ask question like "What is your intent behind saying that" or "Why does it have to be this specific way?" to derail them into some status quo. Provoke them into explaining their "great plan" until they tumble.

Can you think of a forum that isn't tiny that does not do this kind of moderation that isn't a cesspool? Your theory seems sound, but I don't know if I have ever seen it implemented such that the theory is correct.

I believe HN does it pretty well.

HN weeds out/flags a massive number of topics very quickly. Especially political topics that lead to flame wars. It also weeds out the unnecessarily argumentative posters pretty quickly.

But at the same time because of this there are some that say that this limits conversations and topics that can be discussed on HN. So, no you can't make everyone happy, but you can attempt to at least make the atmosphere pleasant.

I agree. HN has a strong moderation policy against trolling and other awful behavior. Forums that aren’t as moderated as HN don’t tend to last as long, or at least don’t tend to maintain this level of civil communication.

> "behaving like a jerk" by your cultural norms and standards.

Calling someone the "n-word" doesn't really need a lot of cultural translation to be considered offensive.

Its less a translation thing, but: I do not consider it offensive, yet i have to accommodate these sensitivities while the reverse is not considered.

There is zero real world scenarios where someone who is communicating in English in the modern day, call someone an n-word and does not mean for it to be offensive.

You mean, you personally weren’t the target of an insult and you apparently are mystified as to why any other people’s feelings are taken into consideration

s/there is/i don't know/

Nazi and KKK consider it proper valid word, the only one that actually expresses who and what they have in mind. Their goal is not directly to offend, just to express how they feel about some people.

As far as they are concerned, the worst offense against propriety you can do is to ... call them racists. That is totally always unfair.

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