One of these people from the “freespeechextremist” instance just tried following me on cohost, I guess I’m getting stalked everywhere by nazis now, oh to be Jewish online! I checked the link tree link because I was curious who this might be and they have an account linked to that instance on their… gab profile? But anyway yeah the fediverse nazis are now stalking me so that’s wonderful, I hate online I just like posting you fucking chuds
This is the response I got from Kara just now, this is… not great in my opinion, like I tell you people from this clearly nazi instance have been calling me a kike and tranny for 72 hours and someone from that instance follows me on cohost and that’s not actionable? Okay, whatever, I think I’m gonna leave cohost, see ya! I’d really rather see this rectified than leave the site, but I’m disappointed to say the least
my perception of moderation on the site has been that the slightest hint of a red flag when it comes to antisemitism, queerphobia, racism or any other type of shameful discriminatory behavior would get a user nuked from the site. this fuckin user came from the @/freespeechextremist instance, which is what i assume to be a significant enough red flag to make me think this site would not be better off allowing that kind of person on this site.
beyond just that, ASSC isn't looking to make a profit off the site either, or at least not in the ways other websites have gone. they're not trying to pump site population up to sell or anything. beyond that, users have been banned in the past who showed a history of queerphobia and sexism in the past. so why is this situation any different? i can understand if this particular user is the least bad among the trash on the FSE instance, but they still smell like fucking garbage.
i dunno. this moderation decision is either a goofy misstep, or i've mistakenly placed my trust in yet another social media site. idk.
the account in question was banned. i need to remind myself that ASSC are just four people trying to do good in the world, and sometimes they're gonna make mistakes. i know a lot of people have made promises about making change and broken those promises with no intention of rectifying it, but i also know ASSC is different. they genuinely want to do good. people are gonna make mistakes because people are not perfect. even the concept of "robotic precision" is inaccurate because robots can only be as precise as the humans building them can achieve with the robotics.
it's hard to keep emotions from overriding us. we've all been on social media that has been exceedingly toxic to our minds for decades, to the point that seeing a mistake like this can be scary. but unlike our past experience, the ASSC team wants to be certain they made the right call. as kara mentioned on its response to the situation, it's important to engage with discussions about these mistakes in good faith. Being able to engage in good faith discussion requires a significant amount of trust from both sides of the discussion, and it's a level of trust we're not used to seeing online.
I was putting ASSC on a pedestal, and that was my mistake. ASSC isn't perfect, nor will they ever be. but they're a whole lot better than i've seen from social media dev teams elsewhere, masto instances included.



