Notices by The Fedilore Otter 🦦 (fedilore@mastodon.social), page 4

@guinan For context, this is the post being referred to:

https://union.place/@kabrams/113103970961324153

If you're an admin with visibly queer users, it can be a good idea to pre-emptively block The Bad Space's source list and a few of their allies.

This drama almost always happens because they've gone out of their way to find queer people to harass.

mastodon.art
colorid.es
cathode.church
rage.love
strangeobject.space
queer.group
indiepocalypse.social
blackqueer.life
solarpunk.moe
queer.garden

tenforward.social
scholar.social
h-i.social

Can somebody vibe check me on how Ro is saying "queers" as a noun here?

It feels like it's being used as a slur, but I can't really place why.

If this wasn't somebody I already disliked, would I be suspicious of this phrasing?

https://mastodon.social/@fedilore/112961215145062342

WelshPixie has a long history of just making stuff up about instances they have a personal beef with. Usually queer communities.

There is also fairly credible (but disputed) evidence of WelshPixie creatively editing screenshots in at least one case, to cover up their own hate speech and to go after a couple of trans admins.

Unless the evidence they provide is an archive, in context, I would assume it's not true.

Boosting this one because Mastodon.Art has been less relevant lately.

WelshPixie, the Mastodon.Art admin, is not a good faith actor on moderation issues.

When reviewing past blocks that they have been involved in, you cannot take anything that WelshPixie/Curator say at face value.

https://mastodon.social/@fedilore/111372046962291462

Mastodon.Art is such a massive instance that they are going to be the dominant contributor to (and effective enforcement mechanism for) any blocklist they contribute to.

They have a substantial history of bullying other admins into following their blocks.

This is absolutely hilarious.

Four days ago, Ro and two of his friends tracked down user Cafkafk who SIX MONTH AGO, made a post calling out Ro's transphobia.

Ro and friends spend an hour trashing and making up conspiracies about Cafkafk, who (today) notices and responds.

Finally, two hours ago, Ro makes a #Fediblock post about it, about how this is some sort of unprovoked attack.

My dude. You know you're linking to the whole thread, right? People can just scroll up.

https://h-i.social/@are0h/112497162582602473

@Jain @alex I tend to agree with you, and have seen a lot of similar examples.

People understand why queer people might use drawn profile pictures, right?

If you're younger or poorer. If you live in a state or country where being queer is especially dangerous. If you don't have access to health care or your identity doesn't match what you look like. If you're racialized. If you're disabled or mentally ill or a victim of abuse.

Weaponizing safety tools against the people who need to use them is just pointless, intentional cruelty.

Well this is certainly a better history of the Fediblock situation than I could write:

https://twokitties.neocities.org/

Importantly, it goes into an aspect of this that tends to get missed - the role of the AI company, Nivenly.

Mastodon.art still federates with Scholar.Social, the instance responsible for the death threats.

The Scholar.Social user who made the death threats is friends with the Mastodon.Art admin.

The death threats were specific, and revealed private information about the victim that made clear that they were in serious and immediate danger.

[THREAD] If you are queer (or are an admin who cares about the safety of your queer users), do yourself a favour and block Mastodon.Art.

This is their response to recent credible death threats against Furry.Engineer users.

To be very clear, the "racism and harassment" mentioned here is reporting serious and credible death threats against a Furry.Engineer user.

#fediblock #mastoadmin

https://dotart.blog/dotart-blog/on-instance-blocks-and-racism

It is also important to understand that there is no level of apologizing or trying to make peace that will work to appease Mastodon.Art.

Tech.LGBT mods spent a month writing an extensive apology, because one of their admins made a comment about potential risks related to blocklists.

The apology was used as an excuse to further slander and direct harassment towards Tech.LGBT.

Mastodon.art's admin has a long history of specifically targeting queer instances with lies about racism.

This continues to cause damage to queer communities, which are essential for survival in the face of international trans genocide.

But she does not target all queer instances equally, and uses this in her defence.

If you're out and passing (and usually wealthy and neurotypical), she's willing to use you as a shield instead of attacking you.

I get that Mastodon.Art is a big instance and defederation is hard.

But the safety of your queer users is more important.

You don't need to start a fight. You don't need to get into the "drama".

But you do need to block Mastodon.Art.

The Furry.Engineer user at the center of this conflict.

The one who was accused of "racism and harassment" for reporting death threats against himself.

He left the instance.

And it still wasn't good enough.

Causing harm to queer communities is the only goal of Mastodon.Art.

Everything else is an excuse to justify causing that harm.

Screenshots of Mastodon.Art admin defending the death threats available here:

https://mastodon.social/@fedilore/111287360787964517

I am only writing this thread because Curator decided to write a blog post attacking a small furry instance, weeks after this conflict ended and they had given her everything she had asked for.

While it's impossible to know what's in Curator's heart, it would be naive to ignore the pattern of furry-bashing associated with these blocklist organizations and the history of furry-bashing as a homophobic political strategy.

A small postscript:

Attacking furries as a form of crypto-homophobia was pioneered by 4chan and is currently popular among the Qanon-right as part of the "litter boxes in highschool bathrooms" conspiracy theories.

Furry.Engineer is a small instance of a few hundred users. Mastodon.Art is one of the largest instances we have here.

Artisan.chat was an instance in good standing, contributing to both the TBS and Oliphant blocklists.

Now it has a 50% rating on TBS.

What did Artisan Chat do?

They relayed credible reports of queerphobia made against WelshPixie, as part of a service that aggregates Fediblock reports.

Artisan Chat immediately capitulated, apologized and fired the mod, but it didn't matter.

Half of TBS's sources are so controlled by, devoted to, or scared of WelshPixie that it's effectively a single source.