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I hesitate to add to the atmosphere of dread, but Meta's increasingly unfettered acceleration of the kinds of messages that precede genocides is so alarming.
And—how to say this… Avoiding Meta platforms doesn't confer a get-out-of-atrocities-free card. This is why I'm so focused on the need to build broadly appealing, maximally accessible alternative platforms.
I understand, "It's good if the fediverse stays niche," but that's a solution for a tiny number of people.
"People should just think more critically about technology" is not a solution. "Normies just love their evil dopamine and dumb celebs, let them suffer" is not a solution.
"I don't believe people when they say it's unpleasant or confusing because it's not for me" is not a solution.
"But Threads!" is not a solution.
The window for making fedi a robust and substantial part of an alternative pluriverse of networks is not going to be open forever, I don't think.
I am hopeful about the changes at Mastodon. I think IFTAS is doing absolutely crucial work with very little support. I've come around on bridging, as wildly imperfect as it is, as a stop-loss and a way of keeping fedi more viable for more people who are willing to accept the (nebulous) trade-offs.
But also I love the federated model and I want it to be a real option for more people in more places, so it's discouraging to keep hitting "eh screw the normies" when the societal risks are so high.
@kissane there's been a lot of criticism against the IFTAS though – it's not all "screw the normies", there's the whole thing about the proximity to the self-proclaimed moderation authorities that push comically terrible blocklists that insist that every single trans/queer instance is somehow racist
@valpackett So two things here—one, my mention of IFTAS is a sidenote about many things that could help and has very little to do with my central points.
Two, there's a some lore (non-derrogatory) about IFTAS "pushing" Bad Space or equivalent via FediCheck and as far as I can tell as an earnest semi-outsider, that isn't happening? IFTAS just recommends CARIAD (https://connect.iftas.org/library/iftas-documentation/cariad-policy/) for new admins and has no working relationship with anyone in that whole schism.
@valpackett Also! I am happy to admit that I wasn't there when the Deep Magic Was Written etc, and I don't want to express excessive certitude/ IFTAS looks to me like an org that is trying very had to keep clear of trouble and make tooling we desperately need here, so I am trying to help with that stuff. That doesn't mean I'm ready to accept collateral damage to queer/trans fedi, and I continue to talk to people about this but it does seem like there's some confusion I can't get my head around.
@valpackett Anyway—"Collateral damage" should be in quotes because I hate that whole complex. Nothing good can be built on scapegoating.
I have to get completely offline now for a bit for unexpected reasons, please forgive slow responses.
@kissane I think the link that was pointed to by ppl on here was Jaz the executive director? But yeah, I appreciate the clarification, some in the queer fedi world might be a bit too eager to jump to preemptively canceling anyone even remotely connected in any way..