> I never once said you were dumb.
I was treating the "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING YOU ARE IGNORANT OF HISTORY" stuff glibly, and treating it as equivalent. Mea culpa.
How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us.Good point, Alex Jones, I'll keep that in mind.
Like this stuff:
> Its tiring thatI need to spend most of my time in any discussionw ith you correcting invalid assumption you make
> Yes, that's how conversation works
> My point was that the absolutist thinking that you are promoting when talking about this subject is ultimately harmful
I also said that I would like to hear your proposal and in positive terms, i.e., not defined by opposition to another proposal. Tell me what it is, I'll take it as a given that what it *isn't* is the stuff I said. Your first post was vague and included a lot of phrases like this, from the post I'm replying to:
> My case was that we should stop
Here is my proposed course of action: I would like to be able to say what I want to say and listen to whatever anyone else is saying. I intend to build things that make this easier for me and for everyone else, and that will make it harder for anyone to stop that.
I was able to say this concisely and without reference to what it is not.
> trying to sell the narrative
This, in my view, sounds like you think I am saying things I do not believe. I am not selling anything, and this is not a narrative. I'd be happier if people agreed with my proposed course of action, but I believe that enough people already do that the objectives can be achieved. I am not concerned that people disagree with me; I expect that in life. I have no reason to "sell a narrative" and if that's what you're doing, I'm not buying, try the next house. If you've got a course of action you want to propose, that I'd be interested in.
> we must look past it if we are to have a positive impact
Look past it at what? Please just propose something.
🇳🇱
Another post with more energy into telling me that I'm saying something I didnt say (and now reiterated that I didnt say it) than actually bothering to discuss the topic, mostly.
I never said you didnt understand anything, nor that you were ignorant of history. I have pointed out the assertions you have made that were wrong, but made no sweeping accusations of your ability or knowledge beyond that.
None of the quotes you provided are contrary to that and I think thats rather obvious to the reader so I wont break it down piece by piece.
I have also already told you what my proposal is, multiple time now. It mostly boils down to changing public sentiment and acting as an example.
That means drawing respectful, well spoken, people who tend to draw in others to hear their message under a free speech banner as well as demonstrating the harm such censorship has, again by concrete example.
Usually when we look back at history where some form of censorship runs rampant, when and if that winds up being overturned, is due to societies that promote free speech as a legal principle but themselves mostly foster selective forms of speech, not through censorship, but through a moral consensus that tends to outcase people who are otherwise being harmful.
Generally when free speech is curtailed it tends to be in response to groups like the neo-Nazis, which tend to have deplorable messages that serve as a beacon for what people want to silence. If a person stands up and respectfully disscents at a neo-nazi meeting you will likely be confronted with very childish hatred, attacks, and maybe even violence.
Compare that to organizations that have been free-speech in nature and have pushed for acceptance of a free-speech mentality where it may have been previously lacking. If one reads, for examples, the discussions and notes we have left over from meetings of the Sons of Liberty we often see that as long as respectful discourse is maintained dissenting ideas are allowed. Those of a deplorable nature tend to be outcast by the group, and thus creates a social pressure, but otherwise the rebuttals to them are well thought out, educated, and respectful. In the end this combination caused the people to rally behind the idea of free speech as a good force. This of course carried on into the process of defining those civil liberties and the USA's first congress.
So the solution is simple, promote free speech in the groups (informal or otherwise) you are part of, while being a shining beacon of respect and admiration, and you can convince people, it wouldnt be the first time in history for sure.
What doesnt help is an absolutist approach. Free speech of any kind no matter how deplorable or disrespectful gets a stage, and a voice, and is socially accepted among the peers. Legally one should have such a right, but only when the morality of the group is mature enough to ensure the respectful voices are the ones we hear and survive within the group dynamic.
As with most problems of this nature it is a social problem. It isnt solved so much at the legal level, thats just the final step, it is solved at the social one.
> I never said you didnt understand anything, nor that you were ignorant of history. I have pointed out the assertions you have made that were wrong,
Let's just say that any details about the conversation are not important and I'll just concede every point you care to make about who said what. Not relevant, not interesting.
> It mostly boils down to changing public sentiment and acting as an example.
Changing public sentiment to *what* and *why*? What's your objective and how are you going to get there? What does it have to do with me?
> So the solution is simple, promote free speech in the groups (informal or otherwise) you are part of, while being a shining beacon of respect and admiration, and you can convince people, it wouldnt be the first time in history for sure.
All right. I think this is fine to do. I won't get in your way, and I intend to do similar, but I don't think I'm going to be a beacon of anything, I don't plan to do that.
I think you'll have a much easier time giving people free speech than convincing them that they'd like it if they had it.
> What doesnt help is an absolutist approach.
Absolutism is forbidden forever! Absolutely no absolutism!
You're free to advocate against absolutism, but I don't give a damn what's helpful. I intend to say the things that I believe to be true.
If you're selling clothes, you can always say either "You're too fat for these pants" or "These pants are too small for you", don't get me wrong. There's a huge difference, though, between exercising tact and crafting a message.
But if I perceive that something is the overwhelmingly likely case, I will say so. I'm not selling anything. If you think I'm wrong, you're free to point it out, but if you think I'm saying something unhelpful to your goals, it's a non-starter. I'm not a salesman, I'm a hacker.
> Legally one should have such a right, but only when the morality of the group is mature enough to ensure the respectful voices are the ones we hear and survive within the group dynamic.
Did I read correctly that you feel the right is contingent on respectful voices being prioritized? (By some standard of respectfulness, which standard I do not know.) I think this is a bad approach, but maybe it was a phrasing artifact, so I'll hold off on that until you confirm.
> As with most problems of this nature it is a social problem.
Great. I'm building a home defense system, not trying to convince people to stop robbing other people. Go solve society if you like.
> Changing public sentiment to *what*
To a sentiment that feels free speech should be an important legal right which is preserved and exercized.
> What does it have to do with me?
I dont recall saying **you** had anything to do with it either way, aside from the mentality you espouse at times sometimes getting in the way of that intended goal perhaps. but the focus has mostly been a general one and not directed at you specifically, you just happened to respond.
> Did I read correctly that you feel the right is contingent on respectful voices being prioritized?
No, to be more clear. The right from a legal sense should be absolute. However a legal right does not imply a moral right on an individual basis. Individuals should shun members of a group who exercize harmful freedom of speech, but the right to make such speech legally speaking should be preserved regardless.
Yea P has seemed to be confrontational and had an issue with me ever since one of the members from his server started threatening to kill me and opening multiple accounts across multiple servers to harass me. It led to us almost silencing his server on QOTO but ultimately even though the other moderators approved the silence I blocked it and choose an alternative approach (a new feature in the works).
He unfollowed me and became antagonistic in all our communications ever since. Usually anytime he is in a thread with me it is, sadly, mostly him accusing me of things I never said and me needing to waste most of my effort correcting him.
I have no issue with him, I think he means well. So my hope is eventually it will die down and he will go back to acting normal, but for now this is usually the response i get anytime he is in a thread where I have a comment, we will see how long he keeps it up I guess.
For the most part I'm just going to try to ignore it, address it when he does it, and hope eventually the maturity he is otherwise capable of comes back to the surface. He may not even mean it that way, ::shrug:: I suspect in time it will die down on his part.
@freemo >one of the members from his server started threatening to kill me and opening multiple accounts across multiple servers to harass me Sounds like a certain somebody we all know. :gyate_hina_amused: Bu-ut the one in question has been well-behaved as of late AFAIK. @realcaseyrollins @p
In the end he caused little more than noise for me. the bigger issue we had to face was how to empower our users to handle such situations in the future.
> In the end he caused little more than noise for me.
You said you were going to call the cops if he tried to sign up for an account on qoto, and later said you were preparing to call your lawyer. Where'd that go?
Mostly because P is lying. I **did** say something similar in a private conversation to P, but did not make such threats to him directly... I mentioned that we had a lawyer and that when legal issues have come up (threats on a persons life) we have invoked it in the past to protect our members.
I did **not** however suggest that was going to be done againt p, or the offending person here. P had asked what I would do if he continued his assault, used VPN, opening multiple accounts, and continued to threaten the life of people. I mentioned if it escalated to that point that there are legal remedies that could be employed.
P has a habit of putting words in peoples mouth it seems and today he seems to be far worse than usual.
Yes except P seemed to suggest I was "preparing to callyour lawyer"
I never called the lawyer or threatened to do so to handle the istuation with P, I only said I would do so should the user start to attack QOTO directly.
Well I cant predict the future. But I gave no indication a lawyer was going to be involved against P in any way.
I told you, because I was asked what I would do if MKULTRA decided to start using VPNS on our server to continue death threats against me or others... I suggested lawyers might get involed against MKULTRA should he exhibit violence **on** the QOTO server. I never suggested a lawyer would be involved against P in anyway.
Let's not forget the time that @freemo, God among men, silenced the Spinster server and then threatened to sue me personally because an intersex woman disagreed with him about intersex issues.
Seems like antagonizing people on the Fediverse and making legal threats is a recurring issue with Freemo.
No we never threatened to sue you. Are you not going to even provide the follow up where I reassured you that the comment I made was not a threat of being sued or any legal action? One moment ill screen shot it.
@alex @freemo @p @cowanon I did remember that one, lol.
I'm just surprised because this is a side I've never seen of him. Apart from calling me a bigot for my "muh chromosomes" post, he's been pretty cordial with me and stood by me in the face of opposition, at the risk of the reputation of #QOTO, despite the fact that we disagree on quite a lot of issues.
Here you can see where I responded shortly after to reassure him my comment was **not** a threat to sue. Our lawyer told us to not engage in the conversation and that we needed to revise our ToS, our lawyer was also extended to help alex, if he wished, be informed about what part of his ToS is against US law.
But as can be seen from my follow up I made it very clear that my comment did **not** imply any legal action was going to be taken
Notice the time stamp is only about an hour later, so we very quickly made it clear it was not a threat of legal action.
I did mute the thread. over the course of several days the individually continually opened new threads to harassed, got several dozen other people to open new threads to harass, etc.
At one point I did a personal block ont he whole server for 24 hours, then when I removed the block the flooding instantly picked up again.
The only reason we had to silence the whole server is exactly because muting was not effective.
As we discussed at the time, I could not have a mute on an entire server since I'm an administrator. I have to evaluate and rule on accusations made and to do that I have to be able to view threads and potential harassment.
So I muted the whole server personally for 24 hours to let it die down but as a rule neither me nor the other moderators can keep any server on personal mute indefinately.
Because the hope was that in knowing that clair was acting illegal (contrary to the CAN-SPAM) act, and others on their server they may wish to respond accordingly.
Our lawyer asked us to disengage and i asked our lawyer if they could contact alex and help them with their ToS if Alex wished to help them come in compliance with the law.
I made this very clear in my follow up message.
@freemo @alex @p @cowanon Fair enough.
This seems to match the law, too.
https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business
Its really our only rule WRT federation. If a user asks to opt-out of a conversation then a user must honor it.
Spinster as a whole didnt honor that rule, and even after over 24 hours of being muted the harassment continued. Thus they got a silence, and like i said it was well deserved.
As was stated at the time and multiple times now. I had muted the conversation for over 24 hours and harassment continued, to the poitn clair even got other people to contact me on her behalf on spinster...
Again this is why you got silenced as a server, specifcally because clair avoided a mute over the course of more than 24 hours.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but would there be an obstacle to personally muting the server while leaving it unblocked on the account listed as site admin? Seems to be the best of both worlds - you get to ignore instances as you please, but you can still see the full context if someone reports me in a thread involving users from those instances.
That account isnt actually used for moderating. We use it for announcements only, its an unmonitored account.
In theory i suppose we could have every moderator have their own sock puppet for that purpose though. But its tricky, moderation is ideally pro-active and not just reactive. In other words we dont just respond to reports but try to defuse situations as they develop ideally.
It would be worth considering, but it also means that we would open our userbase up to all sorts of spam and attacks if we made that a general rule, at least in theory.
Keep in mind it is only a silence not a suspension. Our users are still free to follow spinster.xyz accounts if they wish. It just means that if you arent following an account or a specific conversation then a spinster account can not show up in a users notifications without the user responding to or following the spinster account first.
you have to keep in mind our only rule is users of a server must respect the "right to disengage". We have that federation rule for reasons that go well beyond anything to do with administrators or mods (that only played a role in this particularly instance).
Its mostly a rule about ban evasion. If someone blocks you or exits a conversation then there is an expectation a user from another server wont try to evade that block.
If this were simply a single user harassing me I likely would have just muted that user until it was over. but this was orchastrated across dozens of users with an attempt to evade the mute I put in place and insert themselves into my notifications after I asked to be left alone.
If this had happened to a user rather than a moderator the consequence would have been the same, defederation if the server admins didnt intervene.
@freemo @realcaseyrollins My main dissatisfaction with it is that I can (1) follow a user on such a site, (2) click on a post of his, and even after these two active, affirmative-consent things I have done, any reply-threads are cut off once another user I haven't followed comments (i.e. that comment and any children are suppressed). A QOTO user really can't be part of the conversation with even a silence in effect.
cut off in what sense? As far as I know you should be able to still see replies you just wont get notified about replies if the reply is from a user on a silenced server.
There is a solution in the works (I suggested it upstream) to better handle muting in a way that users could override it at a server level. I need to check in to see how thats coming along.
In the sense that if you visit a post from within QOTO, say, https://spinster.xyz/@TatsuyaIshida/posts/104158509568722634 you only see one reply (even if following the post author). But if you go to the Spinster site, there are more - it's just that any branch of the tree of replies is pruned where the author is a Spinster user you're *not* following.
Interesting. I did not know it would actively prune the replies like that when explicitly viewing them. I dont like that...
@freemo Claire kept responding to you because YOU kept responding to her. YOU wanted to have the final word, but guess what? It doesn't work that way. If you wanted to stop receiving notifications, you should taken your own advice and stepped away from the conversation instead of blaming it on a whole server and threatening to sue them.
Yes @realcaseyrollins, I believe it's absolutely an ego issue.
At first there was a back and forth, Claire responding to me or me to her in the early parts of the conversation was not the issue in the least.
Then at one point I said I was exiting the conversation and asked to no longer be tagged. At that point I did not respond to Clair for several days (as she was muted) yet she continued to tag and harass me through dozens of threads and encouraging other people to do the same.
It is only the period after I disengaged with clair (which as i said was over 24 hours later) and the harassment continued that it was even an issue.
@freemo Hahaha you sneaky fuck. True narcissistic behavior. You posted that *after* I publicly outed you for threatening to sue me. You were clearly trying to shut me up, just like you were trying to shut up Claire Graham for disagreeing with you about intersex issues.
Then you claimed it was "spam" when she chose not to untag you from HER post, which YOU commented on. Meanwhile, here you say "I comment on whatever I want", but when Claire does the same thing you silence the whole server.
Does it have something to do with the fact you had an open application to be listed on joinmastodon.org? It absolutely does. You wanted to prove to them how progressive and pro-trans your server is so you could join "the blue team."
The idea that this falls under the CAN-SPAM act is such a stretch in the first place, and threatening to sue people on the Fediverse for minor disagreements is hostile and only does harm to the Fediverse.
Your website says "Jeffrey Freemo is the leader you need!" but your behavior says the exact opposite.
Please stop mis representing the situation. clair opened several dozen threads once I muted hers and got ddozens of people from your server to also continue the harassment once It was asked to be left alone.
It constituted spam in every respect, it wasnt a single user. Even after a personal mute on your server for over 24 hours ocne I unmuted the server the harassment was continuing. Which ultimately led to your whole server being defederated.
@freemo In other words: yet another cancellation witch-hunt by the creepy vagina cult.
@alex @realcaseyrollins @p
Yup we have only ever silenced two instances, and spinster.xyz is one of them, and with good cause.
> I suggested lawyers might get involed against MKULTRA should he exhibit violence **on** the QOTO server.
You said you would sue him and release his IP addresses and email address if he tried to sign up. It's right there.
I forgot the part where you said you took legal action against QOTO users.
coom.png
Where was an IP address posted?
Oh nvm i see what you were refering to. You mean MKULTRA's IP... Yea I guess that could be doxing.. i dunno, if a mail server is spamming and you release the IP address for blacklisting, is that doxxing too?
I dunno if your threatening to kill people and asked to stop and continue anyway I'd say releasing their ip address and email in an attempt to block them and warn others is acceptable.
That's like saying giving away the identity of someone who murders someone is doxxing. I mean technically sure. But I'd say once you actually start threatening peoples lives, and warned multiple times but continue, then you really dont get protection anymore.
Yes the authorities would have been the first to get the IP addresses im sure.
But I do see an advantage for server admins to be able to share ip/email to enact blocks on people in these extream circumstances as well.
In my eyes it serves a functional purpose (to block the person). The reason i wouldnt dull on dox (release address information) would be because that serves no functional purpose and really is only relevant for authorities, and might be abused.
@freemo @p @cowanon Correct. And, if you were only going to give it to admins, that would probably be okay. But there is a difference between giving it to admins privately and "publishing" it, as you threatened to do.
No, an IP address is not the same as a physical address, but it can be used to track someone to a physical location.
That said, is the IP address that of a mail server? If so, that wouldn't lead to doxxing at all, I don't think, as that would lead to the mail provider, not the user
Remember we are talking someone who said they were **literally** going to kill me (explicit use of the word literally).
P ultimately reprimanded him and forced that post to be deleted so he could stay out of legal trouble. But I had no intention of enacting any legal troubles on P anyway. But yea if MKULTRA intended to continue going around threatening to kill people I would have probably escalated it.
> When did I threaten to make a IP address public?
See attached image.
coom.png
Yea what i already said on thread, if the dude threatening to kill people showed up on our server, in another attempt to block a ban, then I could get a lawyer involved. Particularly if that user is opening multiple accounts as they are being banned (which was the scenario we were discussing).
As I stated earlier in the thread and already screen shotted and quoted, the only user we ever have engaged in legal action against before was one who was engaging in a DDoS. Yes we will enact legal action against people who deploy DDoS or similar attacks. Though in that case it wasnt a regular user of QOTO, thought hey did open a qoto account we were only able to match the two up because they used the same IP as one of the DDoS sources, so it was easy to track.
But in short, yes I certainly dont feel bad for enacting legal action against anyone who threatens to kill people, obviously.
Context is everything. This was at the point int he DM where you were asking me how i would handle it if he continues to threaten people's lives, opening multiple acounts, using VPN and even opening QOTO accounts to continue harassing people.
I was pointing out that if he opened a QOTO account it would give me access to his IP address and therefore able to take legal action.
Obviously it is about the threats of violence because if he wasnt threatening violence then why would i even care if he opened a QOTO account in the first place.
I tried to end this conversation ages ago, I dont mind continuing it, but I would think you are sick of it by this point, you were when it was first brought up, as am I, yet you keep rehashing it. I will happily respond to anything you have to bring up about it, so no worries if you wish to continue, but its getting tiring to have to keep repeating myself.
Like I said before, I just hope you get over it sooner rather than later and go back to being mature in your engagements. You literally have a dude on your server going around telling random people over and over again he is going to kill them and I've had to deal with him multiple times already... like you cant be surprised people are going to respond to that and potentially take action. I was pretty generous in letting you know that I would go out of my way to protect your server, both from a silence and legal action.
Thats pretty much what i suggested you do in the post (walk away, dont read).. .so ... good? Thanks for understanding :)
> Thats pretty much what i suggested you do in the post (walk away, dont read)..
I'm sorry to not treat your shit like a full-time job but I have actual shit to do and I told you I didn't want to do this at the beginning. I probably should have ignored it when you started on the obvious deliberate provocations, but I don't give a damn, I'm gonna just mute you, and then I'm gonna DM the admins and drag them through six hours of Inquisition about you and yell at them about "ban evasion".
I exited the conversation hours ago, you continued.. I tried exiting again a few moments ago and your response was "I didnt read"...
I dont care if you read it or respond, its over, im glad, thats what I asked for, good day.
@realcaseyrollins
True, though I gave no indication i was "getting ready" to either. In no way did I suggest I was getting the lawyer involved yet.
@p @cowanon