Fedilab, Librem Social supports the pushing out of marginalized groups

As I have already explained many times too, I was scared to see my application banned from the store since several people warned me.
My mistake had been to act too fast, otherwise I would never have brought this block.
Sorry for mentioning peertube.social but it’s a fact, this is the only instance hard-coded inside the app.

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I’ve got to disagree.

  1. it’s a really thin line to censorship
  2. people can still block them
  3. it’ll take too much time and bikeshedding to dissolve such cases of whether or not an app is labeled with this tag and when it will be removed again.
    I think we really have other issues that will enhance f-droid much better.
  4. F-Droid will have a really bad time getting involved in the problems of others.

If anything I’d personally just remove anything from this project to avoid further confrontation and tears, saving my time for others. They clearly have arguments that should not be fought on the shoulders of others. I think it’s already too much that we’re having such arguments over here.

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To further clarify this:
F-Droid should be driven by the use of free Apps. F-Droid already has few manpower [1]. We’ve all seen projects getting involved in such cases of discrimination, censorship etc. And I’m pretty sure we’ve all avoided these projects and conversations, waiting for the people to calm down so you can start talking about the actual project again.
And exactly this will happen to f-droid, we just can’t make sure to have the truth. Some will call it censorship, apps will get tagged for no reason. Some apps will be skipped by mistake. People will start avoiding f-droid entirely as rumors about false positives and negatives in a ban system for hatespeech spreads. (Yes we clearly reached the level of twitter & youtube, except that we ask Mozilla to keep a blocklist.)

I will be the first one to start searching for a project that is able to stay technical and focus on its core functionality should we really start messing with such mud-throwing contests.

Anyone here that is seemingly able to invest enough time that we have now ~28 Messages here is a missing manpower for the project.

I think @Bubu covered the key point pretty well already.

[1] Yes I’m also to be blamed.

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No one is suggesting to do any kind of censorship. The request was only to add an “antifeature” for apps that support bigotry. Everyone can still install the apps, but users will be warned and cant choose a different app instead.

This is censorship.
You add a negative flag that’s on-par with ads, user tracking & co and we also have the nice “hide anti-features” switch.
Do you really expect people to read about what exactly this means, whether or not they are ok with that, whether that matches their description of this word ? We’ve clearly seen that the name “bigotry” is already a hot topic. So we’re at paternalism. And from there it’s not that much of a jump to exclusion of such projects. This is modern witch-hunt, running to other projects and telling them to blacklist things that could be used in a bad way.

Please take this war to your own communities and leave us alone, thanks.

I will disable further notifications.

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@craigevil Twitter and Facebook aren’t run by leftists or else I and many of the LGBTQ+ people on the Fediverse wouldn’t have been harassed off of Twitter by TERFs & privileged white boys. Please avoid spreading misinformation like that.

@stom I already went over this, so I’d appreciate it if you stopped conflating the issue. It’s not “what’s in the app” but “what the developers believe”. This is about ensuring marginalized groups feel welcome in the community. From filing bug reports to asking developers for help, we need to know that we’re not gonna be treated like crap just to please some white boy’s snowflakey feelings.

And to everyone else who keeps using slippery slope fallacies and “who decides?” excuses, I already explained that too. I suggest people actually read the conversation before replying.

Lastly, to anyone complaining about censorship, I’ll repeat what I said to the first person in this thread who claimed that: Explain to me how adding information (an antifeature) is actually removing information (censoring). If anyone can do that, I’ll close this without a second thought.

Here are my 2 cents on the subject, trying to be objective and put my own opinions aside :

  • Following this thread, I see you insisting more and more that your opinions are based on what the DEVELOPER chose to do. Anti-features are not about what the DEVELOPER does. It is about what the TOOL he made actually does, and how it does it. Fdroid is not some kind of website where you rate people based on their actions. The expression “anti-feature” makes it clear. It is about features. How is a developer’s decision a feature of Fedilab ? Serious question, I don’t get it. At all.

  • Lots of great things in this world have been made by lots of really bad people. Shitty things have been made by great people. I won’t list it now, because it concerns everything we use everyday. It goes both way.

  • The decision to add an anti-feature to Fedilab, if applied, should be applied to every app that wouldn’t block Gab & others “nazi” instances. That would draw people away and encourage them to use other apps that do, which would have repercussions you naturally obfuscate because on your belief that it could effectively protect people from being harassed (which might not be the case. Source : the great history of our world, and how the denial of reality helped resolve it).

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“We don’t care.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you for admitting that the FOSS world is lacking in ethics and compassion. I’m hoping to work to transform it into one that does. I have plenty of coder friends who would enjoy working in the community at large, but are constantly pushed out by uncaring people like you.

This suggestion had proved to me just how badly my activism is needed, as so many replies to this have been of the “we don’t care” nature and have even been extremely harmful (hence the 24h lockdown earlier). I’d say the latter were from people who actually do care, but rather, they care about preserving the culture of hatred that exists in this community.

To everyone reading this: I’d be careful who you side with. I’m tired of my LGBTQ+ brethren getting kicked out of communities they have every right to be a part of. And history shows that those who support such discrimination are never the good guys. I’m here to change the culture to be more accepting, and the first step is holding developers accountable for their hatred and/or indifference towards said hatred.

Just as Google has their own Nazi problem, the FOSS community does too, and I’m here to clean it up. Tolerance of intolerance is never acceptable, so all of you claiming it should be are participating in the censorship of marginalized groups. Is making bigots face the consequences of their actions really worth silencing the numerous LGBTQ+ & even cis women that have been actively pushed out by said bigots? I think not. And I will continue to fight to allow the voices of those people to thrive. I will continue to fight to ensure technology is open and friendly to all except for the ones who “don’t care”. It’s up to you which side you want to be on, but fair warning: I do have history on my side.

Edit: @frandavid100 That’s because white men aren’t oppressed. Police will pull guns on unarmed black men, but they’ll attempt to talk down white men. LGBTQ+ people are fired and evicted every day for being LGBTQ+ but white men are not. White men often escape sentencing when raping women, or are otherwise jailed for maybe 5 years because they’re white. Black men get much, much longer sentences for the same crime. So don’t go whining about “reverse racism” because it’s not real. Y’all have everything in life handed to you, and often times fail upwards (Donald Trump), so you have no room to complain about us fighting to make sure a community is safe for us.

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Just to make sure everyone is on the same page:

  • This topic is about adding a label to some apps.
  • No app will be removed from the f-droid app list as a result of this.
  • The actions of Fedilab and Librem Social are objective and not subject to debate.
  • Drowning out the voices of LGBT people in this thread in order to sabotage an attempt to make a space safer and more transparent is an example of why we need this label.
  • The two apps in question are both sending the message that they would rather be accessible to literal Nazis than stay a safe place for LGBT people. The features that would have protected LGBT people were intentionally removed when Nazis requested them to be.
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Why does it have to be about you or the communities you’re a part of ? It is all really about your idea of adding an anti-feature.

I think you misunderstood the “FOSS world” as you call it since the beginning. The idea of it is NOT to federate people under the same flag. It is actually quite the opposite, allowing them to freely take and alter the code to make it fit their needs, besides technical benefits like security by audit and easier community contributions.

You can’t call a community toxic or lacking ethics because they choose to let the actual users decide how they should use the provided tool.

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I’m not whining about reverse racism. I’m asking some questions about bigotry, which is the term you used, and sticking to your definition too.

So please, if you don’t mind, answer the questions. I’d really like to know what you think.

  1. Is it bigotry to insult white men just for being white men?

  2. Does an instance administrator support bigotry, either explicitly or implicitly, if they vow to allow that kind of content in their instance?

  3. Does Mastodon as a network support bigotry, either explicitly or implicitly, if the Covenant quietly lets that slide?

  4. Should we, therefore, add a “promotes bigotry” to Mastodon apps in general?

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One last thing:

  • Bigotry is a systemic problem, so we need a systemic solution to combat it. By using all our resources on every level (apps, servers, etc.) we can create that systemic solution.

That is why app developers need to be held accountable. And ultimately, once we get the smaller app developers together, we can then concentrate on taking on the larger ones like browsers.

So yes, browsers are on my to-do list, but without the resources, it’s pointless to try right now. All I can do at the moment is attempt to hold the smaller ones accountable and find the ones willing to fight back against the hostility towards us y’all freeze peachers have proven exists in this thread.

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  1. The scenario you’re suggesting here is “reverse racism”, so don’t try to gaslight me into suggesting you’re not arguing about it. Bigotry is systemic (i.e. forced on everyone by the privileged/ruling class) by its very nature. The scenario you mention doesn’t happen, or at least is infrequent enough where it’s not a systemic problem and therefore isn’t bigotry.

  2. See number 1.

  3. See number 1.

  4. See number 1.

Edit: this post was hidden, flagged as off topic. So lemme clarify yet again: I’ve made my position clear. Those who start it are guilty. End of story. No one’s attacking white people for being white. Reverse racism does not exist. If it were to exist, I’d be for adding the antifeature in this way, but seeing as how it doesn’t, it’s a nonissue and therefore the questions posed in relation to the topic are indeed off topic as they’re misinformation. I’m not being hypocritical here, as the Paradox of Tolerance is very clear, so any accusations of such a thing are falsehoods designed to confuse innocent readers and damage my reputation. Such baseless attacks on marginalized groups are why we’re in this mess in the first place, so I’d appreciate it if the devs actually did something and made it clear that fascism such as the man who made these baseless accusations has no part in this community.

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Thanks for showing your hand. Usually this is much more difficult.

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So let’s go for a quick recap.

When you opened this thread you defined bigotry as the enabling of hatred towards specific groups, and told us it must be acted against. But now you’re telling us that insulting certain people merely for their race and sex is totally not bigotry, and therefore there’s no need to act against it at any level.

In other words: you’re telling us that the enabling of hatred towards some groups is bigotry, but the enabling of hatred towards other groups is fair game.

Did I get something wrong, or is that your opinion basically?

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I said towards marginalized groups. I’ve sufficiently demonstrated how white men are not marginalized, so please stop twisting my words to fit your strawman arguments.

Edit: Just to end this line of argument once and for all: White people get help from the system. Marginalized groups do not and are often held down by the system. That’s the difference. I’m looking to provide a systemic way to help marginalized groups in the same way white people already have for themselves.

So move onto the next argument because this reverse racism and cultural marxism bullshit won’t be entertained any longer.

For example, no one has still been able to explain how alerting people to bigoted developers (adding information to the public sphere) in any way “censors” more than it allows voices to prosper. Still waiting for that to be answered, but everyone seems intent on ignoring it.

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Not really. These are your literal words:

These are your literal words too:

These are the things you said, and let me tell you, they’re beautiful words. But yeah, I agree they’re not the things you meant. Those a bit uglier, aren’t they?

Let’s make sure again that I’m not getting you wrong or manipulating your words: you think that the enabling of hatred towards certain groups is not bigotry, and is therefore fair game.

Is that what you think, or is it a strawman?

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Hello David,

You haven’t answered my question yet.

Are you aware that you’re echoing Nazi talking points or is this somehow a very prolonged accident?

Straw man fallacy is strong with you

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I also recommend you reading the initial post of this discussion chain. Which mentions “since they’ve made it pretty clear that they support marginalized groups being doxxed through their instance.” and “and as such, it’s clear that they support bigotry and marginalization of non-white, non-cis, non-straight, non-Christian people.”

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