Notices by Mox Fulder (moxfulder@mastodon.online)

@supernovae @benny You're ignoring these 100s of instances who are happy and protective of their local communities and whose communities don't feel *at all* that agency is being witheld from them, because you don't like moderation. We've known for years that Eugen isn't a fan of local instance communities (I've been here since 2016), but he has so far listened to the will of the people in not taking those away from us, because our voices in keeping the local feed have been strong and unanimous.

@supernovae @benny "There is a big picture problem of the HOA vibe on mastodon" There isn't. There are hundreds of instances who love their local feeds, who love public posts, whose users love having those things, and whose users are happy having those things and having the moderation teams of their instances being responsive, accountable, and willing to put in the work to keep them safe.

Keeping people proactively safe is not 'taking away their agency'. Their agency to what -not get harassed?

You are advocating for a safe space where the things you say into a public channel are never shared outside of that channel. The fact that this is what your idea of 'safe space' means speaks volumes about the kind of life you get to live.

*You* need to do better. Not us. *You* need to realise that in November 2022 you entered a space that had been existing for six years as safer place for the systemically oppressed, and we're not going to let you take that away without fighting for it.

- and you're doing it disingenuously, without providing the full context, which means anyone reading your posts will just take your word for it, nodding along in sympathy, imagining you facing off against these nasty admins and their ridicule and their tribalism and their irrational attacks, when all that's really happened is you made a suggestion in a Discord room, it was responded to by a bunch of people explaining why it's not a good idea, and your privilege did not know how to handle that.🧵

When the people in the Mastodon Discord call you out on co-opting and generalising the 'HOA' analogy from Black folk, that's an attempt to create a safe space - not for you, but for people vastly more in need of actual safe spaces. You interpret this as 'problematic', as lack of rational discourse, because you're being held accountable for the things you say and for the harm those things perpetuate.

You are framing the people who are trying to create genuine safe spaces as irrational - 🧵

* No, Byron, 'safe space' does not mean 'a public Discord server where my posts can be copy-pasted or screenshotted elsewhere'. Safe spaces are places where marginalised people can exist in safety, where there are safeguards in place to protect against harassment, discrimination, hate speech, etc. I can understand not knowing this, as you've probably never needed a safe space in your life. It is very disingenous to claim 'there are no safe spaces' when this is your interpretation of safe space.🧵

There's no 'lack of rationality'. What he means is, he's brought up these ideas before, and opinion hasn't changed. He can't understand why local feeds are valuable to instances that run as communities, so any opposition to it is considred 'irrational' and 'tribalism' to him. He's a white guy in tech, he's not used to having his opinions challenged, especially when they're being challenged in favor of building safe spaces* for communities that normally face oppression and discrimination. 🧵

For anyone reading this and thinking 'wow, Byron's doing some good honorable work here that sounds really difficult', what he means when he says 'dealing with other admins' is going into the Mastodon Discord and suggesting changes to Mastodon that would harm community instances, like removing the local feed, and then getting told by other admins that that's a bad idea.

There's plenty of rational discourse, it's just not in favor of his idea, which must be a pretty new thing for a white guy.🧵