Bye
You crazies won and proved me wrong. The fediverse isn't worth saving after all.
Over the course of the last several days, I have received a constant stream of harassing messages, death threats, and threats of doxxing over DM, Matrix, Github, and Codeberg. All of it instigated and eggged on by another instance's top admin. This is unacceptable for all of the reasons in the world, and while I won't give you the personal satisfaction of having won, you've definitely proven me wrong about the fediverse being something that even can be saved from itself.
Even people around here I'd interacted with positively for years and had grown to respect because they seemed level headed and above the immature and sociopathic bullshit that dominates this platform showed their true selves. That completely shattered any and all illusions I had that this place has a hidden core of users that I should try to make more visible amongst all the rage, rage baiting, propaganda, harassment, rumor mongering, trolls, conspiracies, purity testing, and violent rhetoric.
Like many of the rational people before me who called this place home, I'm done with this place.
I tried to carve out a space where those people and other rougher edges were not drowning out niche communities and hobbies and where people who choose to use the platform to harass others were also out of sight, out of mind. Apparently only three people who aren't me actually want a place that's not just a circle-jerk of rage and hate. Thus sayeth the mob.
Then you have entire instances whose admins call for the death of others, harass other users, and lead harassment, brigading, and DARVO campaigns against those who dare call out their bullshit or decide to disassociate themselves and their work from them.
Lemmy.World was so close to doing the right thing after instance-that-will-not-be named's admins were calling for the death of LW's admins while spreading rumours and labeling others in such a way that painted them as targets for murder. All of that, mind you, with absoultey no evidence other than specuation and their own cooked-up conspiracies about modlog actions or taking and twisting things wildly out of context to fit their made-up narratives so they had someone to say they 'caught' and should be killed.
.world was on the precipice of doing the right thing and disaccociating themselves from that psychotic shit show, but silently dropped the issue and carried on as usual after wringing their hands for maybe two weeks.
"We have to worry about the optics or the politics of it." they probably said.
Bullshit.
I'm one person and have held my fucking ground, mostly with dignity and grace, in the heat of my own shitstorm of trying to disaccociate from the extremist elements of the fediverse. If I can stand up for what's right and deal with the blowback, so can you.
Fuck lemmy world's admin team for condoning that behavior and letting the human skidmark db0 DARVO his way out of the situation while brigading with his army of malcontents whom he wields like a cult leader. He knows exactly what he is doing, and you all continue to allow him to get away with it.
Nah, fuck this whole place. I've let too many things fall by the wayside IRL because of dealing with all this fediverse bullshit and trying to give it the slightest bit of polish both visually and atmospherically. Mythbusters may have proven that you can, in fact, polish a turd, but at the end of the day, it's still a shiny ball of shit.
For the few people left who didn't turn out to be psychotic, I'll think of you from time to time when recalling something you've posted or commented that genuinely made me laugh, made me think, or otherwise put a smile on my face or in my heart.
Everyone else, though, enjoy your toxic, xenophobic, knee-jerk-to-violence, purity-testing, and harassing-anyone-who-doesn't-fall-in-line cess pit. One day you, too, will do or say something that doesn't toe the line and you'll be right where I am.
P.S. Rimu, you owe me a beer. No one is talking about the Piefed vote quotas anymore, so you're welcome.
EDIT: forgot to add:
EDIT2:
Removed the link to the original message because the douche included a Javascript on the page to DDOS Dbzero0
Only because Tesseract drama is more recent. People were showing their anger all over the place when both blocklists and vote limits were implemented. A drama there was arguably bigger than the current one.
Defaults is something that is easily changed through the same avenue as all the other settings, and comes from technical necessity. This is a deliberate attempt to manipulate visibility of content on the Fediverse, strongarming the dev position.
For all I know, there is exactly one PieFed instance cleared of this, quokk.au. For that, they had to fork the project, because not all of the changes are as easily reversed as the blocklist. For ideological reasons, plenty of users would rather avoid it, and so boom - they're out of options. Most PieFed instances wouldn't be able to maintain a forked project by themselves.
Did you consider the Fediverse demographic? I wouldn't say most people here necessarily share Rimu's points, and his attempts to bulldoze it in favor of his views are rightfully seen as a deliberate attack. He uses his power to project his view on a community which, at large, doesn't stand for the same values.
You still try to build equality between your (and Rimu's) views and sanity. Plenty here would disagree.
Which only admins can manage. And let's not forget the blocklist is not the only controversial decision. As I already mentioned, some require forking the project outright, and it's a giant mess. Admins do not know what to expect of Rimu next, either.
And this is the gist of it that I was trying to highlight to you. As long as you align in views with Rimu, you don't see it as that much of a problem. But remember this can be turned against you the second you don't agree on something. Shutting people up always ends up poorly, especially for those supporting it. Don't be surprised when it happens.
And that's why such list should exist. The problematic difference is not the existence of the blocklist, it's the fact it's forced upon everyone. A perfect option is making a block list opt-in on a user level. You want to cut out whatever you find unpleasant about the Fediverse? Power to you, here's a list, just agree to use it and enjoy the same amazing experience. But if you want to see something Rimu doesn't approve of, you'd rather be able to. Let's not willfully give up user freedom to the whims of random people.
That's a...heavily opinionated take. To provide a politically neutral example, how did WikiLeaks make it into the list? Did it not do any good, forcing accountability and opening up human rights violations, genocide, and more? There's so much more to unpack about the list, but it will inevitably result in us going through polarizing political opinions, and, as you mentioned, it won't get us anywhere.
And if there is one, single take I want you to carry from this conversation: supporting censorship and giving someone to decide what other people can see always ends up very badly, even if that censorship (for now) aligns with your views. People fall for this trap over and over, and never seem to learn.
Farewell.