90
Mastodon.world cancels famous German author Kazim's posts - now he left Mastodon completely (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/fediverse@lemmy.world
99 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

If I understand it right, the moderator of the mastodon.world instance has blocked several posts by Hasnain Kazim, as Kazim reported yesterday on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/661473263/posts/10163657720033264/

Kazim is a quite famous and successful book author in Germany and something between left, conservative and liberal. He was journalist for the most important German weekly news magazine Spiegel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasnain_Kazim?wprov=sfla1

Canceling his posts is stupid and certainly completely exaggerated. To me from the external perspective it seems that the moderator is abusing his power. He is damaging free and respectful discussion. Furthermore, when a famous person like Kazim reports those experiences to his broad audience, who do not understand the functioning of the fediverse, the moderator also damages Mastodon in general significantly, it seems to me.

What do you think about this case ?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 24 points 3 months ago (8 children)

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding still of how the Fediverse works.

Any instance, mastodon.world for instance, is NOT Mastodon itself. Mastodon is JUST the software that was chosen. Each instance is allowed their own rules. Each community is allowed their own rules within the instance. If you get banned, think of it more that someone has asked you to leave their home and doesn't want you there.

We have to get away from these ideas of that every instance of Mastodon or Lemmy or whatever completely reflects the entire Fediverse.

This comes with a big caveat. I think the world still sees us this way. And I think we HAVE to do a better job of, "This is a platform and if you're banned you're gone." Instead we should help folks understand, if you're kicked off an instance, there are a dozen others. There is a community for everyone. Hell, run your own or ask and folks can run one for you.

I will 100% disagree with a LOT of folks on a LOT of issues and I'd never want to host socials for the majority of folks. BUT I will absolutely defend your right to exist on the Fediverse and even help you, to a point, set up your own instance. But everyone needs to be mindful, that those places can and will still ban you. But you can at least get your message out to your community.

I don't know what was said as I don't speak German. I also don't know why he was banned. But that is .world's right to eject anyone from their community they don't want. If the person decides to leave and not come back at all, that really sucks. But they also have the right to start their own community and continue interacting.

I've banned someone from TubeFree.org. I've blocked folks. I've refused to allow someone to create an account on TubeFree.org. Am I censoring someone? Maybe, but I'm attempting to build a specific community.

I'd absolutely LOVE to see any of these big instances have communities start their own instance. We shouldn't have monoliths in the fediverse. The more diverse the network, the better. Honestly I'm trying to help communities run their own for their own community. I've even been talking with folks and attempting to work with folks on a spin up your own image to run from a business or home that is plug and play.

We NEED people to run their own, control their data, manage this themselves. We're not there yet, but I honestly think someday we will be and everyone will just have a presence on the Fediverse. A community blocks you? You won't even notice because YOU control YOUR digital identity.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 8 child comments
    •
  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    Any instance, mastodon.world for instance, is NOT Mastodon itself.

    It's this very thing that especially those who only came to Mastodon for reach often don't understand.

    All Fediverse newbies, except for those who escape from Reddit to Lemmy those very few who escape from Instagram to Pixelfed, are being railroaded to Mastodon without being told a thing about the Fediverse outside of Mastodon. That's because those who on-board them either think that Mastodon is hard to understand already, what with being decentralised and having "instances" and stuff, and the Fediverse, as a network of tons of wholly different stuff, is incomprehensible level: eldritch. Or they don't know about the Fediverse outside Mastodon itself.

    In fact, most Mastodon newbies seem to not even be told about Mastodon being a network of lots of independent websites. They may think that Mastodon is a network in the same sense as Facebook being a network.

    So for those who joined via the Web interface, Mastodon tends to be a website. Namely the server that they've joined.

    For them, mastodon.social = Mastodon = the Fediverse. Or mastodon.world = Mastodon = the Fediverse.

    For those who joined by loading and using the official app without taking a glance at any Mastodon server's website even only once, Mastodon is a phone app, just like Telegram is a phone app, and Facebook is a phone app. They don't know fuck all about what's happening behind the app, and they don't care as long as it works.

    For them, the Mastodon app on their phone = Mastodon = the Fediverse.

    Private, spare-time Mastodon users will eventually learn that Mastodon is, in fact, not one website or simply an app, but made up of many such websites called "servers" or "instances".

    The next step will be for them to learn that the Fediverse is, in fact, not only Mastodon. That all these Mastodon "servers" are fully connected to other wholly different websites a.k.a. "servers" (or whatever the respective Fediverse server application calls its servers). For example, this happens when they receive an answer to one of their toots that's way over 500 characters long (which they deem technologically impossible in the Fediverse because Mastodon can't do it), and that contains stuff like text formatting (which they deem technologically impossible in the Fediverse because Mastodon can't do it).

    Even private, spare-time Mastodon users may be stuck in such a Mastodon-only bubble that they take two years or more to learn the latter.

    Now, professionals, that's a wholly different matter. They don't have time to engage with the community. They can barely catch up with the comments on their posts. If they read them at all, that is. They don't read what the community has to say outside these comments either because they don't follow anyone who's really engaged in the community.

    Thus, they never come across a message that even only gives them a hint on what the Fediverse actually is. Nothing that they actually pay attention to on Mastodon tells them that Mastodon is not just one website or a phone app that neatly hides what's happening behind itself.

    They can have joined in early November, 2022, days after Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and still think that Mastodon is one website. And either they've never heard the term "Fediverse", or they think that "Fediverse" is another name for Mastodon, i.e. that one website that they think is Mastodon.

    Kazim probably was too professional and too busy to see what the community was posting about. So he kept on "knowing" that mastodon.world = the Mastodon website = the Fediverse.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] [S] 1 point 3 months ago* (3 children)

    💯 exactly. Question remains: what is the consequence of this detailed (and in my eyes correct) analysis? Well, maybe this very generalized discussion goes too far beyond the concrete case. But those questions have been on my mind too for a few months; Is the fediverse good but too complicated for this world?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    But those questions have been on my mind too for a few months; Is the fediverse good but too complicated for this world?

    Probably.

    Let's face it: Hardly anyone has an actual computer anymore. People do everything with phones nowadays. For them, everything is an app. They don't know what's happening behind the app, like, whether that app is just a remote control for a website. They don't want to know. And they don't care. It works. That's all.

    This may be why Google is putting all bets on Gemini. Nobody Googles anymore when nobody uses the Web anymore because everybody uses dedicated apps for everything.

    These people are often easy to spot on Mastodon because they hold on to Mastodon's official app for their dear lives. It's the most lack-lustre Mastodon app of all. But they don't know because they've never tried anything else. Above all, however, they couldn't use Mastodon with an app that isn't named "Mastodon".

    Then there are the more old-school people who do still use the Web. Most of them still actually have a desktop or laptop computer.

    But they are caught in a principle that has ruled over the Web from 1994 to today: One service, one up-front website. And that website is usually www..com or www..org or maybe www..net.

    And if it's a "network", it's one network, one service, one up-front website.

    The concept of one network, one service, many websites that are also connected to each other and communicate with each other is incomprehensible to them. You keep seeing this with Lemmy newbies. Although e-mail is literally this. But then again, for what appears to be the vast majority of people out there, e-mail = Google Mail.

    The concept of one network, multiple services is just as incomprehensible. Following a YouTube channel or a Facebook user or a subreddit from Twitter? Impossibru!

    Consequentially, the concept of one network, many different services, each in turn with many websites, all of which are connected to each other and communicate with each other is nothing short of eldritch to them.

    "You mean... like... there's... like... 9,000 Twitters? And you can be on one Twitter website and follow someone on another Twitter website? How's that even possible?! And... like... there's 400 Facebooks? And you can be on one Facebook website and befriend someone on another Facebook website? And... you can follow... Facebook users? From, like, Twitter?!?" Minds equal blown. Like, heads a sploding.

    This is why estimated 50% of all Mastodon users are geeks, and so are estimated 99% of all non-Mastodon, non-commercial-silos Fediverse users.

    Seriously: Mastodon on-boarding is already for dumb-dumbs in practice. Load the app. Name. Password. Go. Toot away. You may or may not know that you're on a website named "mastodon.social" now (the official app defaults to mastodon.social). You may or may not know that it's only one of over 9,000 Mastodon "servers". Doesn't matter for getting on board.

    Still, there are many many calls for making Fediverse on-boarding even easier, even more "for dumb-dumbs". Either whoever calls for this hasn't seen the official Mastodon phone app from up close and the way it railroads everyone to mastodon.social. Either they think that it's still a hard requirement to manually, consciously choose a server. Or they still find the way the Mastodon app handles it too complicated, too confusing, too scary.

    Seriously, if the Fediverse needs to be simplified even further and made more comfortable for those who are scared of any technology beyond a toaster, those who need ChatGPT to work a washing-machine, it has to become like in my Chirper proposal: presenting itself as a centralised silo to the point of sanitising or culling any and all content that hints at the technology behind it.

    Then all newbies will be Kazims as far as Fediverse knowledge goes because the software won't let them look behind itself. But it'll be as easy-peasy as joining and using WhatsApp.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    If i may summarize:

    The Fediverse is great for everyone who wants to engage with the medium they are using for real. People who don't give a fuck are not willing to invest the minimum time to understand the underlying structure, which makes the Fediverse completely opaque to them.

    I will now extrapolate:

    This is also what makes the Fediverse great: we are a collection basin of people who want to look behind the mirror, who are not satisfied with easy answers and shallow slogans. We want to know how shit works and are not satisfied when we realize that we are getting a raw deal.

    Therefore the Fediverse itself is a great platform for connecting people who are bound to have ideas and are open to critizism. Even if we never reach critical mass (which would only mean an eternal september for most of us), we still are the fraction of society that interacts with technology and people critically - we don't accept black boxes, and we don't accept things that go against logical analysis (for the most part - we are still humans, and we all are fallable).

    I would not be surprised if in the next decade there would be at least (i'd say even more, but it's the question of if we ever hear of it, because we tend to protect the fediverse in general to not become a target from outside forces) one political movement rooted in the fediverse that becomes at least a painful thorn in the side of an established government.

    This network is not for everyone, but it is here for the people who actually wanna engage with technology, society, politics and the crosssections of those areas.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago*

    Yeah, the "mastodon.world" framing is.... not good.

    When I first made MULTIVERSE, I made the URL piefed.soulism.net. Then, I changed My mind. Now it's multiverse.soulism.net. I am not offering people piefed. I'm offering people MULTIVERSE. We have our own branding, our own mission, our own values, our own rules. I have no interest on selling normies on the idea of Piefed. I wanna sell them on MULTIVERSE. MULTIVERSE is not piefed.

    But lemmy.world is lemmy. Mastodon.world is mastodon. They do not represent themselves, their own values, their own meaning-making. They represent other projects. And I think that's dishonest and kinda boring, and kinda bad for the fediverse.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent