Notices by Raccoon :mastodon: (raccoon@techhub.social)

Reminder to people in #Europe and #Canada that there are a lot of #transgender and #disabled people in the US who could use your help right now. There are a few #charities which are going to need some heavy funding over the next couple years (the Trevor Project and ACLU come to mind), and we also have a #MutualAid hashtag right here on Fedi. Please also consider that servers in the US, like this one, are talking about relocating to a safer country, which may change our financials.

If, per chance, you'd like to help a particular transgender disabled moderator who may need to relocate in the next year, my KoFi is at...

https://ko-fi.com/rockstarraccoon

"Why do you block all the far right instances but not the other political instances??"

Because people on the communist, socialist, and anarchist instances actually believe in peaceful coexistence, so they can can go for 5 fucking seconds without harassing minorities or calling for a second holocaust or lusting after 12-year-olds.

#FediMeta

@nus @aral @LALegault @Gargron
Yeah no problem, it looked like he was trying to align himself with y'all, but obviously, y'all would not post the kinds of things that are getting him in trouble at the moment.

See y'all around Fedi.

@aral @LALegault @Gargron @DocScranton

Important Context for the above post:

Ramzimo68 here recently appeared on the FediBlock tag for posting a video, which he described as "true facts", in which some guy goes down the list of all the "Jews" in the CDC, repeatedly ending every description with the single word sentence, "Jew.", during a conference about COVID, literally attempting to make a case that some part of COVID is part of a Jewish conspiracy.

In my opinion as a moderator, criticizing the violent policies of the Netanyahu regime is well within the realm of acceptable political speech, but what Ramzimo68 here has been posting is pure and direct hate-speech against Jews, which clearly violates the rules of pretty much every mainstream server.

This does not reflect on LALegault: I do not know why she was banned, as I have never seen a bannable offense from her. I just think it's important to know about Ramzimo68's post here, as he has pinned it to the top of his timeline.

@aral
So, it occurred to me last night that it is possible that the Mastodon Organization cannot block or even encourage a block of Threads for the same reason Twitter can't ban them: it could potentially run afoul of anti-competitive laws. Because of this, legally speaking, the best course of action is to let them federate, then make a big public paper trail of the problems associated with federation, and use that as precedent to start limiting interactions. In short, waiting to block may be legally necessary.

That said, realize that everyone who has made the decision not to block has done so after some clear thoughts about it. We are aware that this is a bad actor, and we are aware that we will likely have a moderation scenario the moment they actually federate, assuming they even do. We have weighed that against the cost of preemptively blocking such a large new entrant, and decided to hold off for the moment, and wait until there is an actual problem.

@aral @cferdinandi
As someone from family which had members in the Nazi party, I find a lot of the Netanyahu regime's rhetoric, policy, and claims of racial-hegemony extremely disturbing: never forget that Germany was the first country the Nazis took over, our entire economy converted to a killing machine, and what we took part in "for the good of all German people" is something we still live with the collective shame and trauma of.

I'm also disturbed by the rampant shouting-over of all the Jewish people who are also concerned about what's being done to the Palestinians. Every day, I see someone post a story about a holocaust survivor being horrified by the level of violence being thrown at a civilian population on an ethnic basis, yet we still see the narrative of the Israeli government, that they are doing this for "all Jews", and that "all Jews" support this violence, pushed into the mainstream, when all of the Jewish people I know offline are openly appalled by it.

@nus
For reference, the FediBlock tag is a special hashtag used as a sort of early warning system for content that server administrations or individuals on less moderated servers may want to preemptively block.

In order to use it, you take some screenshots as you did here, perhaps some links, of the most egregious behavior being done or accepted by server staff, and make a post beginning with the hashtag #FediBlock, followed by the URL of the server or account, then give at least a paragraph of explanation after that. Attach links / screenshots, CW accordingly (Begin with "FediBlock"), and post.

Staff of servers will see this and verify your report, then choose how to respond. Do not expect every server to block, as it is really a matter of how much bullshit people are willing to put up with. I also don't recommend doing it with single accounts unless you know they've been reported and their staff has done nothing, because we often investigate whole servers.

Hope that helps.

#FediBlock catposter.club

After a long time of hesitation, I finally come across a post from them that warrants an immediate server block: the admin went on a rant about how he doesn't use "N***** software". I'm going to go ahead and include TechHub and anyone else who wants to block in that category for him.

@nus
This feels like needs to be stacked on its own FediBlock post, so people can see it, because I don't know that they will in the comments of an older post on the hashtag...

@aral
Something noticed about #Twitter lately, when I go on there (first mistake) and look at the feed, not only is it even more overwhelmingly negative than it was before #Elon, but If you search for one of these issues wear that far right fringe is strongly against everyone else, like looking up #Ukraine or the #ADL, the feed is completely dominated by these fringe viewpoints by far right / #neoNazi accounts.

Somehow, he's managed to get the #algorithm to really push these fringe ideas, overwhelming the mainstream on things that aren't actually hotly debated or even #controversial.