Imagine a stranger spreads lies about you. They tell everyone you're doing horrible stuff, the worst crimes imaginable. They make videos, articles, livestreams, all pushing the same lies designed to make everyone hate and fear you.
Would you "just block them"?
What happens when other people don't block them? When other people believe them, follow them, share their lies?
What if this turns into real life abuse? If someone attacks you or your family?
This is what vulnerable minorities face because of badly-moderated social media:
thebureauinvestigates.com/stor…
Please defederate threads.net or ask your server admin to do so.
Facebook accused by survivors of letting activists incite ethnic massacres with hate and misinformation in Ethiopia
Fact checkers and civil society organisations describe company's virtually 'non-existent' support for their work tackling misinformationJasper Jackson (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism)
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Mrco
in reply to FediThing • • •FediThing
in reply to Mrco • • •@willi
It's the opposite of "light" to allow bigoted lies to spread.
The lies themselves bring darkness, they twist society out of shape and cause innocent people to be threatened, beaten and murdered.
Mrco
in reply to FediThing • • •They will spread no matter if a few people will cancel them. I'd even argue that ESPECIALLY that kind of people who realise the bad stuff are the ones who could bring some light while majority does not care or not realise and are being left alone in dark places.
My humble opinion.
FediThing
in reply to Mrco • • •"They will spread no matter if a few people will cancel them."
That's why instances carrying such lies need to be defederated, so that their lies cannot reach your platform at all.
Fascists thrive on reaching an audience, even if the audience is hostile, because they know a certain percentage will be receptive to their message. Even being on the platform normalises fascists in a way that is really dangerous.
Fascists need to be kicked off platforms, and any platform that allows them needs to be abandoned and isolated.
We are seeing fascists being mainstreamed right now and that's because they are being given a platform.
Lien Rag
in reply to FediThing • • •Well, the point of the original post is that it doesn't matter that much whether it reaches your platform at all or not.
It's true that deplatforming fascists and nazis seriously limits their spread and their harm, but it's extremely unclear that defederating from Threads or Bluesky or whatever does anything in that direction past the performative.
@willi
FediThing
in reply to Lien Rag • • •@lienrag @willi
"does anything in that direction past the performative."
...every tiny bit of action against fascists helps.
No single action will solve things by itself, but that doesn't mean you give up and allow the fascists to spread their hate even further.
At the very least it provides an alternative way of doing things, showing it is possible.