I’ve been trying to get on Bluesky for ages. Unfortunately they’re really stingy with invite links. I know it’s gonna sound really bad, but… you don’t happen to have one you could give away?

I get your point about the trans community. We absolutely need safe spaces for trans people. I’m not opposed to the idea of a sheltered community for vulnerable or harassed people (and in fact, for years, Mastodon was mainly a safe haven for trans people who were harassed on Twitter: Mastodon’s history is steeped in trans culture).

But I would understand this kind of aggressive defederation from an hypothetical mastodon.trans or from an explicitly lgbtq instance. Just not from mastodon.art, that’s it.

Then there’s Beehaw here on Lemmy. Some observations could apply to it too, but the situation is kind of different

Merriam Webster - “Gimp”

I’m triggered by it the same way you are triggered by lots of stuff that does not affect you directly: I just care about some things.

OK just a couple of points here. I’m not gonna be brief because I care about all this. Sorry.

De-federating from Threads is not the same thing as de-federating from the BBC, it’s another issue entirely. Those who did it explained their choice with the fear that Meta could somehow “embrace, extend, and extinguish” Mastodon, plus with the fear of data collection etc etc. Now I’m not saying they are right (I don’t even know where I stand on this), but if those are their fears, we’re talking about the destruction of Mastodon itself. Which is not even comparable to what the BBC’s instance could do.

About the trasphobia itself: what the BBC did or did not do is besides the point: the BBC is too relevant to just block it willy-nilly, and also very reductive. If you block it, you throw away the baby with the bath water.

I would also dispute the idea that the BBC is “largely conservative”, but even that’s beside the point. Let’s pretend that it is: so what? Being conservative is not a crime and not all conservatives are Trump. I’m not conservative by any means, but I still want to see and hear what conservatives think. As a left-leaning dude, I WANT to know what they are up to.

My fear is that we’re weaponizing the Fediverse to create communities which are completely sheltered by the actual world. For all its flaws, Twitter was great in that it showed you a bit of everything. I don’t want to see the Fediverse become a series of spaces where people only agree with each other and don’t even want to engage in a discussion with someone they don’t agree with. What we’re both doing right now (disagreeing and debating) is so much more valuable that people think.

Lastly: being on it since 2017, I know full well how the fediverse works. And no, migrating from one Mastodon instance to another is not easy by any means. This article gained some traction recently and it explains why. But even this is besides the point. First, because ideally, you should not have to migrate to another instance. It’s possible, but is sucks. Second, because I’m talking about some cultural aspects of the Fediverse, and bringing the discussion to a technical level is a moot point.

My question and my whole point is this: is there a risk that the Fediverse is becoming an instrument to isolate ourselves from everything we don’t agree with? I.e. an instrrument of isolation instead of an instrument of federation?

I’ve tried to explain why I think it does not make sense, but thanks for your comment I guess, I had not thought about it /s

I get it, but picture this: a person wants to join mastodon.art because they like art. They see the rules that go “no transphobia” or whatever and they go: “OK, seems reasonable”. So they join, they invest their time and energy into the instance, and one day the admin decides that the whole national broadcasting network is someway evil and transphobic and must be blocked. I’d honestly be sooo pissed.

And not because the BBC’s account is absolutely necessary to a good Mastodon experience, but because blocking a whole instance for shit like this does not make sense. It’s not like the BBC goes around the Fediverse harassing trans people. The idea that you must block something so huge and valuable because it is - admittedly - partly dysfunctional is fucking mental. It’s the BBC, for God’s sake, not the KKK.

The Fediverse only works if we stop digging trenches and we start communicating more. It’s called the Fediverse, not the De-fediverse. It’s autonomous communities that talk to each other, not little fiefdoms at war with one another

It’s an instance with all the EU governmental bodies. It’s social.network.europa.eu

Also the EU: social.network.europa.eu

When I see this shit I lose all hope in the Fediverse’s success

…to make the fediverse useless, yes

Microwaves are just quicker and more convenient. That’s their whole selling point

Yep. In-vitro studies are often unreliable. I remember a company that made natural extracts from plants claiming that their extracts killed coronavirus: they had put some coronavirus cells in a vat in contact with the their extract and it killed them.

Still, lots of people care about the NYT and Fox News. And I mean LOTS of them

My bad! The article on my RSS reader was not paywalled

That was the idea. Now it’s pretty much a ghost town, though. It never had a real breakthrough

You know, I used to be very skeptical about this whole thing, like you are. But this is not the first report of this type I see, and I’m not so sure about it being a coincidence anymore

one of the test participants, who talked repeatedly about Volvo, did report that they were bombarded by advertising for the brand. This person did not even own a car, nor had they searched the Internet to buy a Volvo or any other kind of car.

I reeeeeaally don’t want to go into that, but no: masks have been proven to be effective, if worn correctly, even non-n95 ones. It’s not a mystery that, if something is in the way of your spit, you’re not going to infect as many people. As for the whole outbreak origin debate, scientists went back and forth between the “wet market” theory and the “lab escape” theory. The last research I’ve seen was pretty confident in the “wet market” theory. No Fauci involved there.

There are controversies around Brave itself and also its CEO, Brendan Eich (also inventor of JavaScript and also former Mozilla CEO).

• Brave was altering search results by adding crypto redirects to links. Source.
• Eich was forced to resign from Mozilla CEO because he made donations against gay marriage. Also, he basically is a covid conspiracy theorist. Source

You might not care about a company’s CEO behavior, as long as they do a good job. I usually do not. In this case, I can’t help but feel that the whole project is kinda shady.