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My Thoughts on the Fosstodon Drama | Kev Quirk (kevquirk.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 day ago (13 children)

Feel like Im missing a lot of context.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (11 children)

AFAIK, it goes something like this:

One moderator from fosstodon is not 100% aligned to the prevailing ideology on Fedi.
Someone on Mastodon found "bad" posts from said moderator.
The mob went on to presume that someone that is not 100% aligned to their prevailing ideology is unfit to be considered human - let alone a moderator - so they went after the admins.
The admins claimed to have reviewed said mod actions, didn't find anything out of the ordinary, but still got rid of them.
Regardless of actions and reactions, the mob now successfully tainted the name and reputation of the instance.
Less-principled users of fosstodon are now just leaving the instance, for fear of being associated with them.
One of fosstodon's admins (the author of the blog post) is now saying "Screw you guys, I'm going ~~home~~ to Bluesky"

EDIT: There's more to it. Seems like said mod is also active on Reddit (https://lemm.ee/post/60365167)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 day ago (1 children)

One moderator from fosstodon is not 100% aligned to the prevailing ideology on Fedi.

For clarity's sake, the views the mod expressed were:

Calling criticism of Mahmoud Khalil's arrest and transfer to Louisiana "yellow journalism" for using the phrase "disappeared"
Defending the striking down of a school privacy policy that requires teachers get consent from LGBTQ+ kids before outing them to their parents
Removing posts about surveillance of LGBTQ+ people in r/privacy for contradictory or unexplained reasons

The mob went on to presume that someone that is not 100% aligned to their prevailing ideology is unfit to be considered human - let alone a moderator - so they went after the admins.

Is all criticism now a "mob" just because they don't want people with anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ views to have the power to censor others?

The admins claimed to have reviewed said mod actions, didn't find anything out of the ordinary, but still got rid of them.

From what I saw, the admins actually said that they were fine with keeping him on the moderation team and the mod deleted their own accounts

Less-principled users of fosstodon are now just leaving the instance, for fear of being associated with them.

Are they? The most I saw was that people were considering leaving because other instances were going to start blocking Fosstodon

What is with the concealing and downplaying of the mod's views and then exaggerating the "outrage" of the "mob"? Yes the Fediverse can be drama-prone but most of the fanning of the flames seems to be coming from the people complaining about Fedi users genuine criticisms of the mods/admins on Fosstodon

I don't think it's unreasonable to remove mod privileges for these kinds of views if you're trying to run an inclusive space. There's supported suspicion that they've used their mod powers to censor information on minorities already, just because they haven't done it yet on this platform doesn't mean you let them lie in wait to do it. Makes me worry that Fosstodon admins don't see any issues keeping someone like that around

Would this get the same kind of backlash had the mod been kicked out for tankie views?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Just to respond to point (6): From the blog post, there is a link to a post from someone moving from fosstodon to hachyderm that says:

Overall I'm satisfied with the moderation process and neutrality on Fosstodon. What to do? As a Fosstodon user, it's hard to see any future path with the instance that works in my favor. (...) Most will never know anything about the name other than "the instance which allowed a nazi mod". While I believe the characterization is 100% untrue and unfair, the die is cast for lots of people.
If I stay, the likely outcomes are:

Limited communication with some other people, because some other instance mods will choose to block Fosstodon

Will have to explain my choices and the highlights of this post any time someone says "eeeww, Fosstodon", occasionally and probably forever

Some people will incorrectly assume I hold certain views based on my association with fosstodon

So, yes, at least one person is moving to another instance not because they are particularly against the admins, but for fear of being judged by association.

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