Oddbean new post about login | logout That's why we have Nostr. But I'm so tired of the anti-censorship whiners on here, that I'm fixing to just mute all of them, so that I can focus on talking to frens and builders and builder frens. And WOMEN. That is also freedom. https://image.nostr.build/1f53662e9b197bbfb78f241125fc541512234ee3604ae1ac1b3b84c5cd40eb74.gif
Stella, I find your account to be one of the best and most valuable on this entire protocol. You are a big draw IMO for people using it.I would hate to see you leave due to harassment from idiots. But I would way way way rather you leave than agree to some centralized group of woke imbeciles deciding what’s acceptable and unacceptable speech. Hopefully, we build effective tools allowing you to mute, block, get rid of the idiots as you see fit. But free speech not mediated by central authority is axiomatic if nostr is going to be worth using.
The protocol is specifically designed to make centralized bans ineffective. If you want to keep it that way, focus less on telling women to lie back and think of free speech, and more on ensuring that there is a large number of clients, controllers, servers, and relays. Then people can choose to read different things and have different levels of moderation and different types of content, and no one entity can unilaterally block anyone else. Then it is a new Internet. Free speech is an artefact of DECENTRALIZATION OF AUTHORITY and nothing else.
You are a coder and can build decentralized tools toward that end. I’m glad you are doing that, but that is not my role. I studied philosophy and law and have thought intently about the axioms for a just and livable society, especially in the last few years as people were deplatformed for “harmful” speech like suggesting maybe conditioning participation in society on injecting oneself with pharmaceutical conglomerate chemicals wasn’t a good idea.” IMO we need both. And please don’t make this about some kind of sexist thing. That’s beneath someone of your obvious intelligence.
No, it's definitely a sexist thing. It's very much "This is a man's protocol, if you can't handle that, girly, get lost." https://image.nostr.build/8165f1b26ebb802e93ae09b45b7495cc699e2f0a11eb395a66bbca7a0734fb03.gif
It is a sexist thing. Women generally don't want freedom. They want walled gardens. You've already started to build walled gardens. Until then, women should take what they dish out. If they can't, then they are too weak for the current environment until it becomes "civilized" enough for them. Trying to use collectivist BS to defend one's self should not be tolerated here. That's all I see in the latest conflagration, and I'm trying to ignore it, but... It's annoying that you're kinda taking the side of the group that I think is wrong in how they are handling something that should never have escalated in the first place.
I hate to be the one to tell you this, but almost all men also don't want your "freedom". Raise your hands, all the men who would show up here to see a feed full of beheadings, kiddie porn, Neonazi propaganda, and rape threats, with no way to silence any of it. This protocol is only useable because the admins hide that stuff. Everyone wants to curate their feed because otherwise the feed is NOT WORTH THE TIME. Some more and some less. And it's not only women who would curate more selectively, if they could.
Sure. But, I don't see any of that stuff. I intentionally don't follow too many people and trim my follow list every so often. And still, what you're talking about is fine, it's the attitude of some that "I should never be exposed to anything other than what I want because I am XYZ" that is the problem. The desire to be protected from is not the same as the desire to have tools to curate a worthy feed. The first leads to collectivist, centralizing BS. The second will hopefully lead to more and better tools for everyone's use, even those that want more nazi loli scat porn. 🤷♂️
A problem can be gender-disparate even if the solution shouldn't be. I think about 10% of men have the emotional regulation skills and the discussion skills to thrive in a free speech environment. And maybe 2% of women. We can: 1 - Attempt to upskill other users, by example and by providing useful references. 2 - Provide walled gardens, and gatekeep them 3 - Provide tools for users to create their own personal walled gardens I have to admit my preference is always for (1), but its never going to be enough. I joined the Internet after Eternal September had already begun. Its not ending. If (1) fails too many users, we need to either gatekeep THEM out, or provide (2) or (3). (3) is hard. But i'm working on it...
As usual, your approach and framing is truly excellent.
Is there a difference between gate-kept walled gardens and platforms? Seems like it’s (1) and (3) only if you don’t want this to become Twitter.
Pretty much...
My assumption is smart people can understand the principle that centralized control over speech is more harmful than any particular instance of harmful speech. If it turns out to be the case (I have no idea) that women generally are more hostile to that historically incontrovertible fact, that’s fine, but I’m not really interested so much in that. Either way, I’m going to hammer this principle relentlessly in the face of increasingly short-sighted calls for centralized authorities I’m seeing lately. I don’t really care who clutches his or her pearls about it.
Women have a much different way to handle conflict than men. Stunningly, confoundingly different. That's the real issue in the current context. I have zero wish to bring that passive-aggressive mob mentality to the core of nostr. It's gross and goes against an open protocol. Especially with the juvenile name calling and nearly endless ad hominem BS.
That’s probably true to an extent, but I try to avoid generalizing because it’s over*broad* (pun intended). Always prefer to focus on the individual, assume full agency over their behavior, hold them all to the same standards.
I always want to focus on the individuals. I hate collectivism. A community can drive itself to collectivist patterns rather quickly, as we are currently seeing.
Yea I don't care how much I liked you in previous interactions, if I disagree with you, I'm going to be honest. A lot of people just think they know someone they've never met butl liked a few things they said in the past, so they parrot everything they say without thinking about the statement themselves.
IMO this is also the primary reason politics has become an exercise in female antisocial behavior over the past 70 years. All the identity politics, victim mentality, cancel culture, censorship, collectivist action, safety over freedom, emotionally driven patterns that make up the "nanny state" seem to reflect a fundamentally feminine temperament and method of relating to the world. If people want to be treated as individuals, they have to take individual responsibility themselves and also treat others as individuals, not immediately appeal to group identity versus group identity when they encounter obstacles. nostr:note1cpmshwcc3x9fleg3vc8du4w4zg3rzjcpc9qk98gapt2z6svadtks8nv7nl
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by walled gardens here. The way I use Nostr is that I mostly stick to the people I follow since I know it's much more likely they will have something interesting to say. If I'm bored I will switch to general and see if I can find more people to follow. I won't pick arguments with people in general and I won't put anyone on my blocklist unless they specifically tag me with something I find abusive. I am a woman. How does this correspond to the ideas of "freedom" and "walled garden" you're talking about? I don't want a feed that is curated by anyone except me, I don't want anyone else to be censored on my behalf. Nobody can make that decision except me.
The concept of the walled garden is pretty much what you want, just with tools to help curate your feed. It also might imply some automated filtering, especially with Low Information Voter's tool. For example, I'm pretty sure you'd rather not see tyranny porn, and it's possible for you to preemptively filter that. But, again, this is a tool that you would use and set to your own preferences, not something externally imposed on you.
So that's freedom no? Because it gives me the maximal capacity to choose. To me walled garden suggests that someone else is keeping out undesirable stuff on my behalf, whether I want it or no. It's a closed platform I have to specifically subscribe to and probably pay for the privilege, that doesn't interoperate with other systems. That's how AOL worked and largely how Apple works nowadays.
nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqp5fmavy02xnxa5f9k3fvgkhcr7urmcetr6tc3r3myykd2s7e20jqqszesdtq476q0l580w64cmqf5vqql96huwm9dnmrzu68z6v35xl82gkut3r2 https://c.tenor.com/fPiUH7swQEIAAAAd/slow-clap-bravo.gif
And it was escalated by Marie by hijacking the guy's thread (so that she could defend a leftist's pro-censorship modifications of the protocol) and then trying to dogpile on him. She first escalated, then she pulled the victim card.
I don't see her posts, but that tracks with what others have told me. I could have told you that would happen, and that's one of the reasons why I've had her blocked for months. That's why I said "dishing it out but can't take it" then crying to be defended. Very typical passive aggressive response to a situation and that kind of thing isn't anything I tolerate. If that's the kind of woman I, as a man, an supposed to defend, unconditionally, then I, as a man, would also be a trashy collectivist numpty. I do not defend bad behavior from anyone, even if they are popular. Possibly especially if they are popular. If you have some kind of pull and you use it to get your way even if you're being douchey, then you are doubly culpable. Again: gross. Again: don't start none if ya can't finish none. On your own. Without simpy hoardes to dog pile people you don't like.
This is fully accurate and anyone that disagrees with you is willfully blind.
The one dev pushing for these orwellian modifications of the protocol to turn it into Bluesky is "Rabble" a woke leftist pronoun person.
Don’t know anything about him except that he was building a bot to report people, and that was contrary to the ethos of a free speech protocol IMO. And then I saw him trying to argue that nostr will grow if we only restrict speech more. Nothing personal, but that kind of midwit busybodyjng “for the greater good,” “for safety”, “for growth” is a cancer.
He can make any bot he wants and you are free to mute it and report it. Goes both ways, sir.
Disagree. Big difference between muting individually and building software to tag and report people at scale. One is self-defense. The other offense, against the ethos of a free-speech protocol, more like a platform. Like creating a list of communists (or fill in the blank) and circulating it.
I've had bots and npubs doing that to me the whole time. You told me to just mute and report. So, mute and report. Tag, you're it.
Not following
Yes, they follow me around and generate a bunch of new npubs to report me. That's where most of my reports are from: bots and trolls.
That sucks. I’m sorry to hear it. I’d say spam bots (like those and the one that guy Rabble was trying to build) is a different category than reports for content. Were they reporting you for ideological reasons? What was the issue?
All npubs are equal. There is no censorship on Nostr, so don't ask for it, regardless of the reason. That isn't how Nostr works. If someone wants to make a list called "Stupid Commies" and troll everyone on it with bots, they are free to do that. There is only mute and report and people freely controlling their own feed or walling themselves into gardens.
Think the 1st Amendment is a good model. Speech cannot be censored for ideological content, but you have no right to libel someone. So if you destroy my reputation by putting me on a list, I could sue you. For nostr, obviously I cannot *prevent* thought-police from putting me on a list because the protocol allows that. But freedom software is necessary but not sufficient. It’s also the people that use it who help determine its free-ness. I don’t know the exact solution to what happened to you (beyond muting the npubs should I ever come across them), but giving some person authority to manage the “good” and “bad” lists is not it.
Nobody needs to give anyone authority to write a list, on Nostr. You could start an army of WeHateRabble bots and retaliate. He can't stop you. He can only mute and report. And this is a good thing. Otherwise, we really would need a central authority deciding which npubs could write.
Yeah, I’m not talking about the code. I’m talking about the ethos. You want to libel people with a list, no one can stop you. But that should be instant reputational suicide. And this should be well known and part of the ethos (the code, In a different sense of that word.) I wouldn’t need to spam the protocol with those bots because in trying to destroy its free speech ethos (by essentially trying to excommunicate or “deplatform” others for their views) he would excommunicate himself. You can build whatever tools you like to help on the spam front (and you should!), but I’m going to advocate for an ethos in the spirit of free speech, which is the free expression of ideas. It’s like Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance: the only thing we can’t tolerate is intolerance because that’s the end to tolerance.
Why should it be suicide? What is my report list or mute list? Same sort of list. Anyone can write any list and publish it. I'm probably on lots of lists. 😂 I don't know and don't care. We have to get over trying to control what other people write.
Your mute list is just a collection of npubs you personally don’t want to encounter. Not remotely the same thing as someone building a bot/team to monitor bad/unworthy accounts and to serve on purpose as a signal to others to avoid. Sure, those lists are a bunch of randos now that don’t affect you, but if you get put on the “bad” list and suddenly you’re reaching 1/10th of your former audience, you might care quite a bit. It’s Linda Yaccarino saying, “Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach to justify Twitter throttling certain accounts.” It *should* be reputational suicide IMO to try to turn nostr into that, no matter the ostensible greater good of the purported motivation.
anti-censorship types tend to be morbidly obsessed with loli anime and hentai and gross things in general... i'm of the opinion at least some of them are plants, sent to discredit the rest of us like rotten apples
I think some of the racists aren't real, as well. They're cheesy caricatures of actual racists. Trolls and glowies and the mentally ill.
I'm anti-censorship but not obsessed with loli or hentai. (I one Isekai and mecha, though... 😅)
i'm anti-censorship too but i'm also anti-not having control over my own physical possessions through which i fetch data from remote servers on the internet when i learned that people pay for cable and then sit through ads i was like "but i thought you pay so they don't put ads?" i don't want to tell other people what they can or cannot say nor do i want anyone to tell me what i must listen to and watch forced exposure to media is a mark of indoctrination systems, just as censorship is a mark of totalitarianism... they are both toxic behaviours that lie at the heart of the two main motivations of psychopaths - to have everyone agree with their psychotic world view and to smile and nod instead of getting the fuck away from them when they start their psychotic rants
I can agree with this. But no one is forcing anything on you here. Yeah, you might see some gross stuff on occasion, but that's easy enough to deal with so you don't see it again. 🤷♂️
Welcome to Nostr. The trannies are here ruining it like Mastodon nostr:nevent1qqsrdtcwmk0guzu8uvu62egx6px7jp9363vas5wcd50ew9rpamxf5fqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzptw4ry97geehdp2xcx94vhdr56vjg8cwq6n4utduq0ccvc73k7e8qvzqqqq8cq6qlhnf
