The Good Space :patcat:
Hello #fediblockmeta, many people are discussing #thebadspace #blocklist after they blocked tech.lgbt, but few people went through all 355 pages to look at it the #badspace contents. I did that and want to share my findings.
I don't want attention or followers, but I want this post shared, so I am posting from an alt.
:blobcathug:
Hannu Ikonen, MD
"Because this list is just assembled from multiple malicious blocklists without any checking at all, the problem is not just with this list: every blocklist will be like that, a list of personal grudges misrepresented as hate speech. "
"Looking through this Bad Space, I didn't find many nazis, I mostly found a lot of nice new trans people to follow."
@AnarchoNinaWrites is right, they are the HOA.
Hannu Ikonen, MD
"Conclusion: Do I really have to tell you? This blocklist looks exactly like what kiwifarms nazis would come up with if they decided to make a malicious blocklist to isolate vulnerable trans women. So call it what it is, and call out people who promote it."
Susan Larson ♀️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🌈
@TheGoodSpace I had AI review the list and this is what it came up with.
In summary, the Bad Space Fediverse blocklist appears to have inconsistencies in its blocking reasons.
The majority of instances are tagged with vague or ambiguous reasons like "no description" or "FediFenced," and many don’t have provided evidence or "receipts" to substantiate the claims. (1/2)
Susan Larson ♀️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🌈
@TheGoodSpace So basically sounds like this list should not be used by anyone as it seems to be based on conservative or rightwing political views as evidenced by the plethora of LGBTQ instances being blocked for unjustifiable reasons. All instances blocked on account of this blocklist should be reviewed.
Susan Larson ♀️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🌈
Additionally, a pattern of blocking instances focused on LGBTQ+ and minority communities seems evident, raising questions about the intent and fairness of the blocklist. (2/2)
:blobcathug:
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@TheGoodSpace wow look at this list it is so incredibly discriminatory it's kind of insane like it's very clear that whoever built this block list just has a vendetta out for trans women and furries and queer people in general
Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel
@TheGoodSpace well, we can finally put to rest the "is the bad space project transmisogynist?" question.
yes. yes it is. holy shit, is it ever.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@amberage @TheGoodSpace but see the fact that you had to fill them in on the drama instead of it being there as receipts on the block list is kind of endemic of the problem. Also I don't know that not blocking covid denial is a reason for defederation, especially when the dominant sentiment here is extremely against covid denial, but then again I might be biased because I'm on kolektiva.
Mx Amber Alex (she/it)
@TheGoodSpace I appreciate your effort, but right off the bat, I've found a bunch of very superficial entries.
i.e. firefish.social (formerly calckey.social)'s lead developer recently made waves for faking screenshots of DMs, defaming people to frame them for allegedly insulting him, and by revelation of his own screenshots being in a groupchat called "degen callout" (degeneratives, nazi vocab).
blacksun.social should be fairly obvious: the black sun is a hardcore neonazi symbol.
froth.social: we have them down as "racism", and "these alleged nazis sound reasonable and polite" is hardly a reason because that's kind of what nazis do to when they want to call their enemies liars
ihatebeinga.live: being the lead dev of akkoma, a software hugely popular with neonazi instances, is hardly reason to not be on a blocklist. In fact, I'd say some 95% of akkoma instances I see on the daily are nazi instances.
kbin.social: with the recent reddit disaster, tons of redditors flooded onto kbin and lemmy instances, and many brought their hateful subreddits with them, onto understaffed instances overwhelmed with moderating that. and mastodon.social is the flagship instance of Mastodon too, and it too is infamous for lacking moderation (it's also on your list)
kolektiva.social: in my experience, they've regularly failed to block COVID denial, and I know of at least one instance of them failing/refusing to delete kiwifarms-sourced doxxes.
raspberrypi.social: they recently (half year ago) hired a british spy cop for their org, proudly announced him as "this guy used to build surveillance devices with raspbis", and then blocked and insulted all criticism and went to the media to cry shitstorm, and they got rightfully boycotted for it. that is good reason to defederate them.
bbc: need I even say it? The single most notable racism and transphobia print in the UK?
Now none of that is to take sides here, I'm not familiar with "The Bad Space" beyond a superficial look at the site, but if you want to criticise, your own list can't be full of holes. Certainly, there's entries on your list I can't explain, but there are many I can, and that overall gives the impression that your criticism may be ill-informed and broadly unaware of many past and not-so-recent incidents that probably informed these decisions to block.
Again, I'm not familiar/qualified enough to speak on the situation as a whole, I'm not taking sides here (I don't even know who the sides are!) or saying anyone is 100% right or wrong, this is purely supplemental feedback about your list and some entries on it.
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@amberage @TheGoodSpace I guess. I did notice the ones you listed were oversights
Mx Amber Alex (she/it)
@anarchopunk_girl @TheGoodSpace like I said, I'm not familiar enough with the site, nor taking sides, just trying to point out that the criticism itself has holes in it. I'm not stood here saying "a site I've never heard of before the other day is perfect and needs no improvement", I'm just saying, "hey, your counter-list has a bunch of oversights".
Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel
@amberage @TheGoodSpace re kolektiva: there were no "kiwifarms-sourced doxxes." that was an accusation from laurelai bailey, a known serial sexual predator and abuser with a long, sordid history too long for me to go into here, against a transfem person outing a certain ranch as a home for abusive behavior.
in other words, it was a case of abusers trying to shield abusers, and kolektiva's mods were correct in taking the (lack of) action that they did.
I can't speak to the COVID denial thing for sure, but as a COVID-safe person on kolektiva since last november, I can say that I haven't seen any notorious COVID deniers on my local feed.
(side-note: THIS IS WHY RECEIPTS WITH CONTEXT ARE IMPORTANT!)
Rachel, Femme Doux Naturel
@amberage @TheGoodSpace oh, hey, I didn't expect ana mardoll drama to come up here, and I'm not going to rehash it except to say that you cited "doxxes," plural, when you clearly cited only one, and that one amounts to, "this person was a nepotism hire at the drone bomb factory."
and as a transfem person on kolektiva, I can tell you that the instance is home to a ton of other trans people, and that there's a reason that we feel safe there.
Mx Amber Alex (she/it)
@YKantRachelRead @TheGoodSpace oh but I'm not talking about Bailey (now there's another drama I only witnessed peripherally), I'm talking about an unrelated incident a year earlier.
Kiwifarms had doxxed a trans person working for a miltech contractor, for "literally no other job will accomodate my disability and pay me a living wage" reasons (debatable, but not the point), and any sort of "hey maybe don't let KF paint targets on trans people or spread their information" argument was shot down with "MILTECH? BURN THEM AT THE STAKE I DON'T CARE NAZIS DOXXED THEM".
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@rticks @amberage @TheGoodSpace haha that's a good line
rticks
@amberage @anarchopunk_girl @TheGoodSpace
Being the devils advocate pays the devils wages
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@apophis @amberage @TheGoodSpace ah, I didn't realize he was a known character, what's the story?
a shady most false and rotund
novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
@apophis @TheGoodSpace thank you! While I obviously can't take this as fact without receipts — that's the whole problem with the bad space! :P — this is an interesting lead and I'll go do my proper research.
a shady most false and rotund
Shar(yna)Tran/Shark(aeopteryx)
@TheGoodSpace Hi, Spanish and Portuguese are not the same thing.
ophiocephalic 🐍
@TheGoodSpace
Something that lots of folks in this convo are probably not aware of is that the Bad Space isn't just another blocklist or website. It's at the center of a plan called FSEP which (at least initially), during the setup of a new fediverse instance, would load the Bad Space blocklist, and only that blocklist, by default. If the scheme is deployed the instances on that list could end up being defederated from most of the fediverse. Agreement from only two "trusted sources" is required to affirm an entry on the Bad Space.
AnthonyJK-Admin
Good. Lord.
This is a blatant censorship model that goes even beyond MusKKKrat and Zuckerburg.
This is a true blacklist.
No appeal or even vetting to determine if an instance deserves defederation?
No true standards or criteria of the level of expression that reaches the level deserving of blacklisting?
This is so dangerous that it could (and probably will) be used against sex workers, Indy Leftists, and marginalized folk.
Oggie
@Susan_Larson_TN @TheGoodSpace
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that this listing includes my server, though the reasons are pretty head-scratching.
Of course, it's possible that there's hate speech on my server, somewhere. I certainly can't promise that, but I sure as hell haven't seen it. Haven't seen moderation issues either, but who knows?
Does seem like it's mostly on there for 'queer, sex positive', which dovetails with a lot of other stuff.
Piko Starsider :verified_paw:
@TheGoodSpace I would add anarch.cc, a private mastodon server hosting... you guessed it: trans women. Posting about anarchism and philosophy among other things.
Also a bunch of furry servers like blimps.xyz accused of federating with other servers (none of which did anything wrong either, as far as I know). And as we know most furries are queer.
I'm all for defending from harassment, racism and bigotry, but I'd like queer people to still have a community they can communicate with...
Exec. Goofy
@TheGoodSpace I would like to point out one more thing, which is this #FSEP proposal created 10th August 2023. In it, the authors propose integrating #TheBadSpace directly into the install flow of Fediverse platforms (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc) as a suggested starting point for block lists.
https://nivenly.org/docs/papers/fsep/
I feel that this is a critical but overlooked part of the discussion: you will not be able to simply "ignore" the site's existence if its creators continue with their stated goals.
Purple :verified:
@TheGoodSpace I don't understand why any admin would use a blocklist like it in the first place.
If you run a public instance, you owe it to your users to properly vet and think of the consequences of actions onto your users.
It hurts me whenever stuff like this happens, because the people affected are the fediverse users, all by the decision of a single admin who found a list online and just decided to roll with it. This hurts trust of the fediverse in general.
Any instance blocked on my instance will have a thought out decision behind it (which is also why we always write a short explanation for each block. You will never see a "no information provided").
Instances that aren't hostile, but just not moderated correctly or have repeat offences will be Limited until we can either work it out with the mods, or until moderation improves in general.
The big difference between a Limit and a Block is that when we block another instance, we force our decision on our users, wheres with a limit we protect our users, but they can still willingly decide to interact with said accounts by following them or letting said account follow.
I wish admins think more about the consequences of their actions, and their responsibilities.
Either way thanks for the post, I appreciate you providing information and context as to why this blocklist is bad :)
O!i :neurodiversity:
@TheGoodSpace
About #BadSpace I prefer to be cautious and consider that this server may indeed have detected widespread discrimination.
As has already been repeated and explained countless times.
Dora
@olireiv @TheGoodSpace that isn’t what i asked and you didn’t address, at all, what i said. I asked why are there no receipts of this behavior but “the bad place” and the receipts they do have shown none of the behavior in place.
If you want to make comments about racists and racism, the least anyone should be able to do is product proof of said behavior.
O!i :neurodiversity:
@dora @TheGoodSpace
I suspect the issue is the way fediblock doesn't prevent total blockade of racists instances. This is a confederated issue that should be dealt with globally.
Dora
@TheGoodSpace @olireiv then why do so many instances NOT have receipts to prove it? If you want to claim there is wide spread discrimination then show up with receipts.
db0
@TheGoodSpace I just wanted to take this opportunity to mention that we're building a truly crowdsourced alternative with the fediseer (https://gui.fediseer.com).
It started around the anti-spam needs of Lemmy but we've expanded it to be able to handle more fediverse software.
The difference to existing unaccountable centralized lists, is that it doesn't have a single group deciding for everyone. Everyone can submit and combine and filter multiple lists on demand.
livinghell
@TheGoodSpace Liberals blocking anarchist servers for having a liberal view of "free speech" is funny.
ophiocephalic 🐍
@AnthonyJK @TheGoodSpace
Agree that in its current form it's dangerous, but the controversy is also an opportunity for everyone to collaborate on a more accountable and democratic means of improving blocklist compilation and distribution on the fedi. You yourself just tossed in a couple of good ideas. There are lots of them circulating, we should build on the prospect
livinghell
@goatsarah @TheGoodSpace First Socialist International was came together in 1864. In the preamble it was written that workers liberation will be the work of the workers themselves. We never wanted to have better policies, we wanted a new world. It appears that this is a more realistic response to our current global situation, both geopolitical and ecological.
livinghell
@goatsarah @TheGoodSpace Actually i dont mind Beckys. Lib-bashing is a thing but it is disingenious to claim that the origin of opposition to liberalism is mere joy of trolling. Biden literally broke a strike in favor of "economy", and Sanders is still supporting him.
buttplug.io ??
@TheGoodSpace 🍑 🔌 ❤️
Seriously, thank you for this.
Katanova, the Lucent Nomad
@ophiocephalic Can we just call this a coup and move on?
A small group of influential people are making moves to sieze power, who refuse to acknowledge any criticism as valid, and who threaten accusations of wrongthink to anyone who doesn't accept their assertions of what is Actually Social Justice.
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