Notices by Oliphantasmal Force (oliphant@oliphant.social), page 3

If I don't shove horrible content in front of your face, then you won't engage and if you don't engage I don't know how we'll get the people here who want to engage with outrageous content, so therefore please don't get rid of any outrageous content, we need all the outrageous content for the people motivated to 'engage' but who will not engage without outrageous content--

All these amateur social media managers telling us what we should host in the name of 'engagement.'

Seriously, no, seriously, in all seriousness, kindly grab the nearest vegetable, write "engagement" on it, and go fuck it.

We don't need to recreate the anxiety factory. The rage-click engine.

Some of us are here precisely because this place prevents that kind of shit.

It's been about a whole month since I kicked out the bigots formerly known as my friends out of my life on Facebook and people who feel like radical, ongoing engagement (combat) with our political enemies is a healthy, productive activity should note that my two former friends have only grown more radical and more hateful over time, and are the most easily-led sons-of-bitches I've ever fucking seen.

Like from Ted Nugent's dopey lips to pulled from their ass inside of 5 minutes.

Ten years of arguing with them did absolutely fuckall, except it kept me in a state of frustration and wasted many nights of high blood pressure where I tried to convince them they were wrong and explain how they were wrong--

All wasted.

Because, see, the trap was that I thought they actually cared about the truth.

Libs, lefties, whatever, we like to think the world and in particular the Right is similarly interested in what's right, what's just, what's good.

And it's none of that.

They are the most fearful motherfuckers that ever lived and they just want comfort and they will burn down the whole world to stay warm.

And if they aren't personally targeting YOU, they don't see why you're so upset with them, like, damn, dude, it's not like we're targeting you. We're just saying those other people are truly awful and irredeemable and should be scorned and abused, what's wrong with you?

It was a waste of my time to ever engage with them once I knew who they were. It was never my paternalistic job to pull them out of ignorance, be a "better example" or motivate them to see things in a different way--or any of that shit.

It was time I could have been spending doing something far more valuable or spending it with people more valuable--or even doing nothing at all, and saving my sanity and energy for the bigger fights ahead.

I just think the radical thing in this culture is taking a stand, and not letting others bully you into rationalizing hatred as acceptable. Refusing to compromise or concede or give a single inch to hate. And refusing to debate, refusing to engage most of all.

They can conceive of almost anything, but in social media the complete refusal to engage is unthinkable.

But it works. If nothing else, it refocuses one's energies on what is most important.

This is why I will defend to the death your right as an admin to punt a server or an account out the airlock.

Because it's a revolutionary act in this culture to be able to effectively--like to actually have the tools to do it--to cut harmful and destructive people and ideologies out of your life, rather than have them constantly shoved in your face, while centrists out there lecture you about tolerance, and being tolerant to fucking nazis.

Take that moral equivocation to the birdsite or facebook, they love that shit there.

Motherfuckers soon start realizing that we've curated a left-leaning space and one reason it's so nice and pleasant here (relatively-speaking) is that we've ostracized and treated right-wing fascist provacateurs like the cancer they are.

Unlike literally every other space that presumes they deserve respect, consideration, and a platform--

This space has realized that if you let the nazis in, you end up with a nazi bar.

And I don't see that changing any time soon, and it's one of the best things about this place.

Admins moving en masse to suspend Newsmax account and basically ban all its horseshit from their server is an example of this.

Unlike every other place where these opinions are elevated and boosted to foster outrage and 'engagement' here we can treat that shit like the cancer it is.

And hold anyone accountable who platforms it.

We don't do the whole "both sides are equally valid positions" shit here.

What would have happened if the media had treated Trump like the cancer he was from the jump, and ostracized him?

What if that dude couldn't even buy media coverage, what would have happened?

@atomicpoet This is something I try to reiterate periodically. Unless you're talking about Gab or Kiwifarms or something (which generates a near-universal block response) fediblock works like this:

1. A person or group announces a fediblock/suspend against a server.
2. A small handful of servers investigate the claims, and Suspend/block.
3. A slightly-larger number of servers silence as a first punitive step, or out of caution.
4. The vast majority of everyone else does nothing (or treats it as a 'wait and see')

People talk about 'defederation wars' as if there's massive numbers of servers all defederating in response to one event and that just has not happened in my experience.

In this case?

People might defederate right off the bat as a precautionary measure.

But other servers won't.

I do find it interesting you mention mastodon.social, however. Since I think some of the content (apologia for transphobia, for instance) would violate mastodon.social's rules.

Most likely there will be several larger servers willing to federate with them.

This is all just my opinion, but I don't think massive defederation is necessarily going to happen.

Even if justified (for privacy/content reasons.)

"What's the word for that feeling where you're kind of creeped out but kind of aroused at the same time, atop this ever-expanding state of existential dread?"
"There's no word for that feeling in English, but in German it's what you just said, but as one word."

Don't ask me to explain the rules, far as I can tell there aren't any.

This is why I like how German just embraces the ability to smash 5 words together and form a new word.

No hyphens, just enjoy your new 76 character word.

The fairweather sharpshooter snapshotted his one-shot, one-trick-pony playthrough in a halfhearted half-measure.

"It's email. Yes, it's valid to spell it 'email.' Well I don't know when they removed the hyphen, Mom, they just did, okay?"

The rules of English state that once you stick a couple words together with a hyphen for a long enough time, those hyphenated words later become a compound word without a hyphen, and thus "correct English"; and the amount of time before you're allowed to remove the hyphen is completely arbitrary, but until it becomes official, everyone will tell you you're doing it wrong.

Then you'll show them that it made it to the dictionary, and they'll get mad about it not being "proper English."

Ha! Like that's a thing.

@kainoa I knew it was coming soon, and that's very good to hear. But I assume you also had to deal with spam DMs from m.s.?

Though there might be some other kind of mitigation that can be done in Calckey for that I'm not aware of.

Admins: Before you freak out the whole fucking fediverse (myself included in this admonition) please be very, very clear in your announcement that "Silence" does not mean "defederation".

And maybe educate people about the difference between Silence (no defederation, does not break follow relationships) and Suspend (defederation).

Note: "Silence" is also known as "Limit" in newer Mastodon UI, so you might hear "Limit" used interchangeably with "Silence."

#MastoAdmin

Another note: Mastodon is not the entire fediverse. Admins running other software might justifiably have no idea wtf a "Silence" vs. "Suspend" is.

and not all fediverse software (looking at you Calckey) even has this distinction yet at the server level.

No idea how calckey is handling this.

People were getting justifiably pissed off about what felt like a complete "whim" decision to defederate mastodon.social.

Not realizing that no one was announcing defederation, but a Silence. (Also known as a "Limit")

Silence is infinitely less destructive, and doesn't break follow relationships, and still allows you to follow people on the other server, it just puts the server in a more 'restricted' mode so that randos from that server don't have the same privileges (to your eyeballs) that non-silenced servers do.

Suspend is what you do when you're done with that server. When you've given up, and when you've informed users on your server that you're defederating a server that has existing follow relationships you're about to break.

Most of the time that is not a decision that is made lightly especially when there are already existing follow relationships between the two servers.

(This is another reason mastodon.social has little to fear from defederation, but I digress.)

@binarytango When we're lucky, John Mastodon.

"Who's the main character?"

Oh, you didn't know? The main character of the fediverse is usually not a person.

It's a server.

I got told the other day, by someone who doesn't live in this country, that things probably aren't as bad as I think they are.

I'm white het cis male. They are almost certainly even worse than I already know, and I know a lot.

"Well sure, you have a balkanized system of rights by state that has criminalized abortion, helping to get abortion, leaving the state to get abortions, being trans, helping someone be trans, helping someone leave the state to be trans, books, helping people to get banned books, getting banned books from another state's public library; gunning down unarmed black people by cops is pretty much legal as long as you 'fear for your safety'; public displays of 'male and female impersonators' and the forced detransitioning of kids....

"...But that's just in several states right? Not, like, all of them? You still have your health, so cheer up! It's not so bad!"

No....it's really seriously bad right now.