Ugh, the comments here are so full of BS and distortions of what really happened 🤦
So here is the actual tl;dr: Some people asked the main Fosstodon admins what they think about having an openly Trump supporting, islamo- and transphobic moderator in their team and their response was “not here on Fosstodon and not our problem” (paraphrased, but close to their actual response).
That is pretty much like this scenario: lets say you get (credibly) informed about someone openly corrupt in your organization. If your response is: I have not seen them steal money in our organization and our processes should prevent any theft happening, then you are missing the forest for the trees.
If an organization can’t get such basic governance issues right and prefers to hide behind a “neutral” stance on something that is really concerning to a large percentage of their members than they irrevocably lose a lot of trust and that is more than justified.
Thanks
Feel like Im missing a lot of context.
Some kind of mod drama
In recent days, there has been a minor furor across the fediverse related to one of the moderators at fosstodon
From the link in the link
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
hometo Bluesky”
- 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?
I don’t know if your changed your view on the issue after getting more context on carrotcypher’s histoy on Reddit but I’d like to share some of my quick thoughts
-
I don’t think it’s probably fair to characterize him as a nazi but I do think it’s fair to find some of his views objectionable
-
He let his personal politics influence his moderation decisions outside of posted community rules. It’s bad moderation when Lemmy.ml doesn’t it and it’s bad when he does it,
-
Removing him as moderator is appropriate based on number 2 moreso than number 1
-
Defederation from FOSStodon is a nuclear reaction that I don’t personally agree with but it’s a freedom that the fediverse is built on. Zealously demanding all (non-malicious) instances remain federated is a bad thing as much as zealously defederating from instances that don’t have the right politics.
I often find myself outside the “acceptable viewpoints” on the fediverse and it hasn’t really affected me other than getting a few downvotes once in a while. The fediverse isn’t actually as ideologically pure as we think it is, I think the constant tankie/liberal drama is proof of that.
-
So, the usual “on the Fediverse you shalln’t be anything less than immaculately perfect” crap?
there’s a difference between not being perfect and supporting outing trans children.
don’t openly be a biggot doesn’t seem that hard
I understand the concern to be honest. The problem here is that when someone is a bigot and they are at least reasonable enough to walk themselves out, the response of the community is to stain everyone else by association.
Trust is not associative, and tbh distrust probably should also not be.
almost any time I see someone complaining about a community at large, either that individual is a bigot or said community is and it shouldn’t be difficult to infer my opinion on which is more common
the age of ‘I’m just asking questions bro’ is over and concern trolling bigots killed it
we should all well know by now how the paradox of tolerance plays out, one way or the other
and holy fuck is don’t be a bigot or support them a low bar
use factual statements and don’t complain about having your face chewed off if you don’t or pull out some tired old argument that anyone honestly engaging by now should know is bs
most of us are just so tired of social media giving these fuckers a megaphone
We just can’t have nice things…
In this economy???
Alas, not everyone on the fediverse is so friendly and welcoming towards people who “express certain political views” by using a position of power to suppress those they disagree with.
I’m having trouble parsing your sentence. Do you mean that the mods/admins of fosstodon were using their position of power to suppress anyone?
That is what their mod was accused of having done, albeit on reddit. If Kev believes those allegations to be unfounded, he’s done a poor job of expressing that.
That is what their mod was accused of having done
He was accused of lots of things. But was there any concrete evidence of that? All I saw was a comment from reddit where he said something stupid.
It’s not as if I did an exhaustive search to sift through all the evidence, but what I found was this: https://lemm.ee/post/60365167
Thank you. I wouldn’t take it hard evidence of anything, but I did miss the part where he was actually a mod on Reddit as well.
As a moderator myself, it’s a pretty thankless job. It’s a bit like being a politician in that no matter what you do, there are lots of people that are going to hate you.
It depends on the community. Larger general purpose communities tend towards that, the people who acknowledge you are typically people disputing a ban or who took it personally. On the other hand, for a Lemmy example, look at the admin Ada (and similar examples) who have reasons to regularly communicate their decisions and achievements and are clearly in line with their general community’s values – their community won’t have as many people crying about censorship because the community doesn’t pretend that they will tolerate bigotry.
Mods who just delete garbage posts (sometimes called “janitors” on other platforms) are typically faceless thankless volunteers, or abusive personalities powertripping. It’s a tough job, and someone has to put their hand up for it.
I have to ask, then: what motivates people to do it?
If mods are not financially compensated for it, the only rational explanation is that they are either getting some form of benefit (soft power, access to privileged information) or they are getting some pleasure out of it, i.e, power tripping.
I get the pleasure of hanging out in well moderated communities where I feel like I am doing my part. Doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
Let’s please not forget that some people donate time and money because it gives them personal satisfaction to help out with something that is meaningful to them.
Yes, which is exactly why it’s particularly devastating when they receive animosity and hate in exchange.
it gives them personal satisfaction to help out with something that is meaningful to them.
What about the cases where “what is meaningful to them” conflicts with “what is meaningful to the others”?
I said on a sibling comment but it bears repeating: I am not talking about someone who enjoys a hobby and goes on to create/mod a community about it. I am thinking about the cases where someone finds themselves as part of a large community and realizes that the majority of the members keep pushing you to things you either don’t want to or disagree with.
deleted by creator
It is a broader issue, namely: there is no such thing as doing a “thankless” job for purely altrustic reasons. This is not an issue on a small scale, but once it reaches it some critical mass we should wonder what motivates those who keep a position of authority.
(And before I get another barrage of people saying “I do it because I care about it/ I want to help / someone needs to do it”… yeah, sure, but if you are cultivating something because you happen to like the thing at hand , then you are doing for your own personal interest and it is not entirely altruistic. And that is totally fine.)
deleted by creator
I legitimately did it because I had been a member of the community for years and really felt passionate about keeping its standards and making sure it remained safe for the community.
Would you do it for a community you didn’t care about?
Do you think that doing something because you “really felt passionate about it” is “selfless”?
