Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
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Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
The BSD Cafe is an open, inclusive and friendly community. A community of people who try to be *“pro, not against”* and *“supporters, not haters”*: enthusiasts, friends, people who come here to share, to learn, to discuss. Not to hate each other.
This does not mean that we all have to think in the same way. Quite the opposite: it means that we can have different opinions, discuss them, defend them strongly, and question each other’s ideas.
What it does not mean is that it is acceptable to insult, threaten, attack people, or pretend that there can only be one morally acceptable position on every possible subject.
Calling the BSD Cafe a "Nazi Bar" from the outside simply because we do not automatically censor people who have an opinion different from yours is offensive towards the hundreds of people who are part of this community.
People are, of course, free to criticise what happens here. But expecting us to attack, ban or silence someone because you believe they deserve it, and then accusing the whole Cafe because we do not, is something different.
And I have seen something even worse lately: actual calls for hate. The equivalent of *“hey, everyone, go and attack this person”*, simply because that person does not share your position.
No. This is not acceptable.
And, dear friends, declaring yourself anti-Nazi while organising a crowd against somebody, intimidating them and treating them as an enemy who deserves to be attacked means using exactly the kind of methods you claim to oppose.
I do not say this lightly. I come from a family, and from a country, with a very real history of fascism and of the antifascism that immediately followed it. These are not just abstract words to me.
Hate is not tolerated, at any level, inside or outside the Cafe. The same is true for threats, intimidation and aggression. Believing that our cause is right does not make those behaviours more acceptable.
You disagree with someone? Say it. Explain why. Argue against their ideas. Support yours with all the conviction you want. But do not aggressively attack. This is not tolerated.
And expecting everyone else to attack that person too, or considering them somehow complicit because they do not, is something different. And it is not what I want for this community.
On any subject.
Even pineapple on pizza (!!!).
The Fediverse is a non-place, but it is made of real people. Wonderful people, very often. Let’s not turn it into version 2.0 of traditional social media, where every discussion becomes a war and anyone who does not think exactly like us automatically becomes the enemy.
In the last few weeks I have seen people stepping away exactly because of this. On different subjects, people accused of the worst things not because of something they had done, but because they had not said what someone expected them to say. Some of them, for their own wellbeing, simply decided to take a step back.
We all lost something because of that. Nobody gained anything.
So let’s keep supporting what we believe in. Let’s do it with conviction, and with firmness when needed. But let’s discuss ideas without turning people into targets.
From experience, I have learnt that real change also requires discussion, organisation, patience and concrete actions. We can disagree deeply without stopping considering each other as people.
This is the kind of place I want the BSD Cafe to continue to be.
@stefano adding my voice to the chorus of thanks for keeping it a friendly place!
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Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
The BSD Cafe is an open, inclusive and friendly community. A community of people who try to be *“pro, not against”* and *“supporters, not haters”*: enthusiasts, friends, people who come here to share, to learn, to discuss. Not to hate each other.
This does not mean that we all have to think in the same way. Quite the opposite: it means that we can have different opinions, discuss them, defend them strongly, and question each other’s ideas.
What it does not mean is that it is acceptable to insult, threaten, attack people, or pretend that there can only be one morally acceptable position on every possible subject.
Calling the BSD Cafe a "Nazi Bar" from the outside simply because we do not automatically censor people who have an opinion different from yours is offensive towards the hundreds of people who are part of this community.
People are, of course, free to criticise what happens here. But expecting us to attack, ban or silence someone because you believe they deserve it, and then accusing the whole Cafe because we do not, is something different.
And I have seen something even worse lately: actual calls for hate. The equivalent of *“hey, everyone, go and attack this person”*, simply because that person does not share your position.
No. This is not acceptable.
And, dear friends, declaring yourself anti-Nazi while organising a crowd against somebody, intimidating them and treating them as an enemy who deserves to be attacked means using exactly the kind of methods you claim to oppose.
I do not say this lightly. I come from a family, and from a country, with a very real history of fascism and of the antifascism that immediately followed it. These are not just abstract words to me.
Hate is not tolerated, at any level, inside or outside the Cafe. The same is true for threats, intimidation and aggression. Believing that our cause is right does not make those behaviours more acceptable.
You disagree with someone? Say it. Explain why. Argue against their ideas. Support yours with all the conviction you want. But do not aggressively attack. This is not tolerated.
And expecting everyone else to attack that person too, or considering them somehow complicit because they do not, is something different. And it is not what I want for this community.
On any subject.
Even pineapple on pizza (!!!).
The Fediverse is a non-place, but it is made of real people. Wonderful people, very often. Let’s not turn it into version 2.0 of traditional social media, where every discussion becomes a war and anyone who does not think exactly like us automatically becomes the enemy.
In the last few weeks I have seen people stepping away exactly because of this. On different subjects, people accused of the worst things not because of something they had done, but because they had not said what someone expected them to say. Some of them, for their own wellbeing, simply decided to take a step back.
We all lost something because of that. Nobody gained anything.
So let’s keep supporting what we believe in. Let’s do it with conviction, and with firmness when needed. But let’s discuss ideas without turning people into targets.
From experience, I have learnt that real change also requires discussion, organisation, patience and concrete actions. We can disagree deeply without stopping considering each other as people.
This is the kind of place I want the BSD Cafe to continue to be.
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@sharpcheddargoblin My point is that fascism is not tolerated and will not be tolerated here. Still, I think we have many more common points than points we disagree. That’s what I’m trying to say.
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@rakoo ask me specific questions and I’ll be more than glad to answer
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@rakoo ask me specific questions and I’ll be more than glad to answer
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@sharpcheddargoblin My point is that fascism is not tolerated and will not be tolerated here. Still, I think we have many more common points than points we disagree. That’s what I’m trying to say.
That's not what you wrote about Stefano, you wrote about people calling your instance a "Nazi Bar" and ridiculed them for doing so saying you were not going to moderate such people.
I'm not discussing the validity of genocide or any other horrid topic with a fascist, there is no room for discussion on such topics and you seem to disagree with this statement?
Since you didn't post any of the "offending" content, I have no idea how bad the posts were and don't really have any opinions on that. I can only comment on your response to the matter.
CC: @sharpcheddargoblin@reclusive.blog
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@simondassow @benedikt_lauenburg Yes, but I think the paradox of tolerance has to be applied consistently.
We cannot tolerate intolerance, regardless of where it comes from, and regardless of whether the people expressing it happen to have an ideology close to our own.
Let me give you a real example that I have just been given permission to share, without identifying details.
A few months ago, after some encouragement from me, someone joined the Fediverse. Not the BSD Cafe, but a more general-purpose instance.
They started posting photos, thoughts and experiences, made quite a few mutual connections, and eventually almost stopped using their X account.
At some point, somebody asked why they had not deleted their X account completely. Their answer was simple: they still had a lot of content there that they wanted to keep, and some contacts who had not moved to the Fediverse yet. They hardly used it anymore, but did not want to delete it.
One morning they woke up and discovered that roughly half of their connections here had disappeared.
Then came private messages calling them a Nazi because they still had an account on X. A couple of messages contained very serious threats, including variations of "you posted photos, I know where you live", with additional details.
Then complete strangers started insulting them.
Someone had apparently posted something along the lines of: "Hey, X is a Nazi. Everyone block them."
That was enough: they tried to explain. It made no difference. Eventually they deleted everything and left, disappointed and bitter about the whole experience.
Who benefited from this?
Given time, this person would probably have brought more people to the Fediverse. They might eventually have deleted their X account too.
Instead, the exact opposite happened.
And this is precisely why I think we have to be careful when invoking the paradox of tolerance.
Being intolerant of people who threaten others, deny their rights, intimidate them or organise harassment is one thing.
Deciding that somebody belongs to a morally unacceptable category, and therefore intimidation, collective punishment or harassment against them becomes justified, is something very different.
Intolerance does not become tolerance just because we believe we are using it against the right people.
@stefano @simondassow Another phrase that might apply here: "There is no right life in the wrong one." (Horkheimer)
This is not meant to be instructive, but might rather be interpreted as a Zen-like reminder that in complex societies, esp. in those leaning towards totalitarian everyone will inevitably make compromises.
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@simondassow @benedikt_lauenburg Yes, but I think the paradox of tolerance has to be applied consistently.
We cannot tolerate intolerance, regardless of where it comes from, and regardless of whether the people expressing it happen to have an ideology close to our own.
Let me give you a real example that I have just been given permission to share, without identifying details.
A few months ago, after some encouragement from me, someone joined the Fediverse. Not the BSD Cafe, but a more general-purpose instance.
They started posting photos, thoughts and experiences, made quite a few mutual connections, and eventually almost stopped using their X account.
At some point, somebody asked why they had not deleted their X account completely. Their answer was simple: they still had a lot of content there that they wanted to keep, and some contacts who had not moved to the Fediverse yet. They hardly used it anymore, but did not want to delete it.
One morning they woke up and discovered that roughly half of their connections here had disappeared.
Then came private messages calling them a Nazi because they still had an account on X. A couple of messages contained very serious threats, including variations of "you posted photos, I know where you live", with additional details.
Then complete strangers started insulting them.
Someone had apparently posted something along the lines of: "Hey, X is a Nazi. Everyone block them."
That was enough: they tried to explain. It made no difference. Eventually they deleted everything and left, disappointed and bitter about the whole experience.
Who benefited from this?
Given time, this person would probably have brought more people to the Fediverse. They might eventually have deleted their X account too.
Instead, the exact opposite happened.
And this is precisely why I think we have to be careful when invoking the paradox of tolerance.
Being intolerant of people who threaten others, deny their rights, intimidate them or organise harassment is one thing.
Deciding that somebody belongs to a morally unacceptable category, and therefore intimidation, collective punishment or harassment against them becomes justified, is something very different.
Intolerance does not become tolerance just because we believe we are using it against the right people.
Who benefited from this?
The fediverse. The fediverse benefited from this.
It is better off without that person, who is a bad person, and running them off was the correct decision. "They might have brought more people to the Fediverse" is not important at all and certainly does not offset the fact that they are definitely still doing business with and enriching the forces that are destroying Western civilization. Why the fuck would anyone ever make that compromise? Shitheads, that's who.
"Well, democracy has been destroyed by oligarchs, but at least our MAU is up!"
"He disabled Ukrainian internet services mid-war, but I uploaded pictures to his website, so we're still besties"
Deciding that someone belongs to a morally unacceptable category and then chasing them out of your community is fucking awesome and the fact that it works is wonderful. Whether this behavior is ethical or not is rooted in how those categories are defined.
"Chooses to do business with Twitter" is a perfectly valid reason to tell someone to fuck off, or to block them, or to tell your friends to block them. Using Twitter is a decision and people are allowed to despise you for the decisions you make.
For instance, you are choosing to conflate 'holding someone accountable for their choices' with 'violent hate speech' and that's utterly despicable. You do this a lot, like when you tell a story about someone getting blocked and threatened. Those are two separate kinds of behavior. One of them is a crime. The other is completely fine ... but your post lumps them together. Why would you do that? Because your argument only holds up if you can convince readers this person is a helpless victim of some kind of unprovoked aggression, instead of a full-agency grown-ass adult who makes bad choices and suffers opprobrium for them.
Well, I don't buy it.
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@lw @rakoo Thank you for the question. Bringing up concrete examples will likely give me the opportunity to clarify things better. I'll take two specific examples, one from a while ago and one from recent days.
A user asked for information about Xlibre, stating they would install it because they didn't want to switch to Wayland. I allowed the exchange (which was civil and polite) to progress naturally until the person received several insights regarding the development team's political views. The user took note, understood, and opted for other solutions since they weren't fully aware of the situation and, upon learning this, didn't share Xlibre's team vision. In my view, this was a community success: members informing another member about something they didn't know, reasoning together, and finding an ethically valid solution - meaning that, as they didn't share that vision, they opted to change their OS and X platform. The person was grateful.
The mere fact that Xlibre was brought up sparked a lot of controversy about my lack of moderation, how I hadn't nipped the discussion in the bud, and references to the "nazi bar" because people were discussing "nazi projects" - even though the outcome was a clear and conscious realization.In recent days, I praised NetBSD for various reasons, and I was asked what NetBSD's stance on AI was. I replied - matching their official stance - that they consider AI-generated code to be tainted and therefore do not accept it. A few people, including a couple of prominent figures, started asking me privately if I would now exclude FreeBSD from the community and from my setups because it doesn't entirely reject AI by policy. I replied that I am observing the situation with keen interest, but for the moment, things remain as they are. I prefer not to go into detail, but it wasn't pleasant.
There is also another story from recent days, which I mentioned in another comment on this post, but it isn't directly tied to BSD Cafe.
The goal of BSD Cafe is to foster a serene environment where we can share the passions we have in common. Intolerant people are shown the door and are not welcome. Blocking and defederating at the first sign of dangerous behavior is right and healthy.
However, turning aggressive simply because a sensitive topic comes up is, in my opinion, wrong, just like in the first example I mentioned here.My goal with my post was simply to try and calm things down a bit, encouraging people to be active in tangibly supporting their views. Evidently, it turned into something else, and I'm sorry about that.
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Who benefited from this?
The fediverse. The fediverse benefited from this.
It is better off without that person, who is a bad person, and running them off was the correct decision. "They might have brought more people to the Fediverse" is not important at all and certainly does not offset the fact that they are definitely still doing business with and enriching the forces that are destroying Western civilization. Why the fuck would anyone ever make that compromise? Shitheads, that's who.
"Well, democracy has been destroyed by oligarchs, but at least our MAU is up!"
"He disabled Ukrainian internet services mid-war, but I uploaded pictures to his website, so we're still besties"
Deciding that someone belongs to a morally unacceptable category and then chasing them out of your community is fucking awesome and the fact that it works is wonderful. Whether this behavior is ethical or not is rooted in how those categories are defined.
"Chooses to do business with Twitter" is a perfectly valid reason to tell someone to fuck off, or to block them, or to tell your friends to block them. Using Twitter is a decision and people are allowed to despise you for the decisions you make.
For instance, you are choosing to conflate 'holding someone accountable for their choices' with 'violent hate speech' and that's utterly despicable. You do this a lot, like when you tell a story about someone getting blocked and threatened. Those are two separate kinds of behavior. One of them is a crime. The other is completely fine ... but your post lumps them together. Why would you do that? Because your argument only holds up if you can convince readers this person is a helpless victim of some kind of unprovoked aggression, instead of a full-agency grown-ass adult who makes bad choices and suffers opprobrium for them.
Well, I don't buy it.@khm I've more or less replied here: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@stefano/117202264865363473
What saddens me most is that I honestly believe our philosophies are much closer than these discussions make them seem, and I hope that over the years I have shown, through both my words and my actions, what kind of community I have always tried to build.
If you feel that defederating is the right decision for you, of course I respect that. One of the great strengths of the Fediverse is precisely that every person can make their own choices.
Personally, though, I can't help feeling a little sad about it. I'm left with a bitter taste, and also with the thought that perhaps I haven't communicated my position as clearly as I should have. If this is the impression I have given, then I probably need to reflect on that too.
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@khm I've more or less replied here: https://mastodon.bsd.cafe/@stefano/117202264865363473
What saddens me most is that I honestly believe our philosophies are much closer than these discussions make them seem, and I hope that over the years I have shown, through both my words and my actions, what kind of community I have always tried to build.
If you feel that defederating is the right decision for you, of course I respect that. One of the great strengths of the Fediverse is precisely that every person can make their own choices.
Personally, though, I can't help feeling a little sad about it. I'm left with a bitter taste, and also with the thought that perhaps I haven't communicated my position as clearly as I should have. If this is the impression I have given, then I probably need to reflect on that too.
@stefano @khm That bitterness & sadness is worth putting into context. These feelings shouldn't be from holding principles. It should come from watching the people who see the moral rot and decide their best choice is to live consequence free however it conveniences them. The lack of care about other people's humanity causes many of us deep sadness and this is exactly why many of us stand strong. It's also why these discussions matter. People often direct (real) frustration the wrong direction.
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@sharpcheddargoblin My point is that fascism is not tolerated and will not be tolerated here. Still, I think we have many more common points than points we disagree. That’s what I’m trying to say.
@stefano@bsd.cafe
I mean, look at this account's profile. This is either a rather eccentric troll or more likely an AI bot. Internet Background Radiation to be ignored.
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@stefano @khm That bitterness & sadness is worth putting into context. These feelings shouldn't be from holding principles. It should come from watching the people who see the moral rot and decide their best choice is to live consequence free however it conveniences them. The lack of care about other people's humanity causes many of us deep sadness and this is exactly why many of us stand strong. It's also why these discussions matter. People often direct (real) frustration the wrong direction.
@cararemixed @khm Your words deserve some reflection on my part. Thank you for sharing them.
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I'm just gonna highlight a couple specific places I strongly disagree:
The objective reality is that the view that twitter is a nazi bar is a minority,
Not sure how this is relevant. My opinions don't need to be popular to be right.Both happen in tandem, in response to the same action, as part of an orchestrated response.
No, that's not a fair assessment. Someone says "hey block this asshole," and people block the asshole, that's an orchestrated response. Someone says "hey block this asshole," and people send pictures of their house and "I know where you live," crime is happening and the commission of that crime is not ascribable to the orchestrator here. Someone says "hey block and/or kill this asshole" and THEN I accept that the two are part and parcel.1/3rd of everyone in the US uses twitter.
According to ... twitter. Not buying that, either.
And finally, most importantly:
You whatabouted a couple organizations in here, and that's fine in general terms, because you're addressing a broader sort of trend. but I want to be clear about something.
Twitter, specifically Twitter, is a heavily-censored platform that has been bought and subverted by a person who I believe constitutes an existential threat to democracy, and the platform is currently being used to inflate its parent company's value in order to fast-track introduction to the S&P 500 and nail down "too big to fail" status for its owner.
I get that the usual "I don't like the stuff people post on Twitter" objection is insufficient reason for this level of vitriol, but I regard this platform as specifically and particularly being used as a weapon of aggression against me, personally, and my civilization, generally. I do not give a shit what minor conveniences it provides to people, and I regard people who work to enrich that platform's owner as personal enemies who are specifically trying to destroy my country. That is the context in which I'm evaluating the decisions of Twitter collaborators.
Microsoft sucks for a million reasons but I've never had reason to believe that they were trying to destroy my nation. I believe that Google is even more evil than Microsoft but they have not so far attempted to dismantle democracy. So while I accept in general that the thrust of your argument applies to multiple businesses/platforms/technologies/whatever, in particular I do not class Twitter amongst those arguments.
CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe
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@andi @simondassow @benedikt_lauenburg Do not disregard the genius of cointelpro working, even if it is not true that anyone is actually infiltrating a group.
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Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
The BSD Cafe is an open, inclusive and friendly community. A community of people who try to be *“pro, not against”* and *“supporters, not haters”*: enthusiasts, friends, people who come here to share, to learn, to discuss. Not to hate each other.
This does not mean that we all have to think in the same way. Quite the opposite: it means that we can have different opinions, discuss them, defend them strongly, and question each other’s ideas.
What it does not mean is that it is acceptable to insult, threaten, attack people, or pretend that there can only be one morally acceptable position on every possible subject.
Calling the BSD Cafe a "Nazi Bar" from the outside simply because we do not automatically censor people who have an opinion different from yours is offensive towards the hundreds of people who are part of this community.
People are, of course, free to criticise what happens here. But expecting us to attack, ban or silence someone because you believe they deserve it, and then accusing the whole Cafe because we do not, is something different.
And I have seen something even worse lately: actual calls for hate. The equivalent of *“hey, everyone, go and attack this person”*, simply because that person does not share your position.
No. This is not acceptable.
And, dear friends, declaring yourself anti-Nazi while organising a crowd against somebody, intimidating them and treating them as an enemy who deserves to be attacked means using exactly the kind of methods you claim to oppose.
I do not say this lightly. I come from a family, and from a country, with a very real history of fascism and of the antifascism that immediately followed it. These are not just abstract words to me.
Hate is not tolerated, at any level, inside or outside the Cafe. The same is true for threats, intimidation and aggression. Believing that our cause is right does not make those behaviours more acceptable.
You disagree with someone? Say it. Explain why. Argue against their ideas. Support yours with all the conviction you want. But do not aggressively attack. This is not tolerated.
And expecting everyone else to attack that person too, or considering them somehow complicit because they do not, is something different. And it is not what I want for this community.
On any subject.
Even pineapple on pizza (!!!).
The Fediverse is a non-place, but it is made of real people. Wonderful people, very often. Let’s not turn it into version 2.0 of traditional social media, where every discussion becomes a war and anyone who does not think exactly like us automatically becomes the enemy.
In the last few weeks I have seen people stepping away exactly because of this. On different subjects, people accused of the worst things not because of something they had done, but because they had not said what someone expected them to say. Some of them, for their own wellbeing, simply decided to take a step back.
We all lost something because of that. Nobody gained anything.
So let’s keep supporting what we believe in. Let’s do it with conviction, and with firmness when needed. But let’s discuss ideas without turning people into targets.
From experience, I have learnt that real change also requires discussion, organisation, patience and concrete actions. We can disagree deeply without stopping considering each other as people.
This is the kind of place I want the BSD Cafe to continue to be.
Even pineapple on pizza ... but what about cutting spaghettis before eating them ?
ok it's a bad joke I leave the place -
Even pineapple on pizza ... but what about cutting spaghettis before eating them ?
ok it's a bad joke I leave the place@Glop_glop_pasGlop I would not cut spaghetti but...hey, your choice!
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Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
The BSD Cafe is an open, inclusive and friendly community. A community of people who try to be *“pro, not against”* and *“supporters, not haters”*: enthusiasts, friends, people who come here to share, to learn, to discuss. Not to hate each other.
This does not mean that we all have to think in the same way. Quite the opposite: it means that we can have different opinions, discuss them, defend them strongly, and question each other’s ideas.
What it does not mean is that it is acceptable to insult, threaten, attack people, or pretend that there can only be one morally acceptable position on every possible subject.
Calling the BSD Cafe a "Nazi Bar" from the outside simply because we do not automatically censor people who have an opinion different from yours is offensive towards the hundreds of people who are part of this community.
People are, of course, free to criticise what happens here. But expecting us to attack, ban or silence someone because you believe they deserve it, and then accusing the whole Cafe because we do not, is something different.
And I have seen something even worse lately: actual calls for hate. The equivalent of *“hey, everyone, go and attack this person”*, simply because that person does not share your position.
No. This is not acceptable.
And, dear friends, declaring yourself anti-Nazi while organising a crowd against somebody, intimidating them and treating them as an enemy who deserves to be attacked means using exactly the kind of methods you claim to oppose.
I do not say this lightly. I come from a family, and from a country, with a very real history of fascism and of the antifascism that immediately followed it. These are not just abstract words to me.
Hate is not tolerated, at any level, inside or outside the Cafe. The same is true for threats, intimidation and aggression. Believing that our cause is right does not make those behaviours more acceptable.
You disagree with someone? Say it. Explain why. Argue against their ideas. Support yours with all the conviction you want. But do not aggressively attack. This is not tolerated.
And expecting everyone else to attack that person too, or considering them somehow complicit because they do not, is something different. And it is not what I want for this community.
On any subject.
Even pineapple on pizza (!!!).
The Fediverse is a non-place, but it is made of real people. Wonderful people, very often. Let’s not turn it into version 2.0 of traditional social media, where every discussion becomes a war and anyone who does not think exactly like us automatically becomes the enemy.
In the last few weeks I have seen people stepping away exactly because of this. On different subjects, people accused of the worst things not because of something they had done, but because they had not said what someone expected them to say. Some of them, for their own wellbeing, simply decided to take a step back.
We all lost something because of that. Nobody gained anything.
So let’s keep supporting what we believe in. Let’s do it with conviction, and with firmness when needed. But let’s discuss ideas without turning people into targets.
From experience, I have learnt that real change also requires discussion, organisation, patience and concrete actions. We can disagree deeply without stopping considering each other as people.
This is the kind of place I want the BSD Cafe to continue to be.
I call bullshit on this is a wall of text that is weasel words.
Also lamenting emacs.ch closing isn't good.
I remember that, and it was definitely ALSO A NAZI BAR.
CC: @stefano@bsd.cafe
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Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
The BSD Cafe is an open, inclusive and friendly community. A community of people who try to be *“pro, not against”* and *“supporters, not haters”*: enthusiasts, friends, people who come here to share, to learn, to discuss. Not to hate each other.
This does not mean that we all have to think in the same way. Quite the opposite: it means that we can have different opinions, discuss them, defend them strongly, and question each other’s ideas.
What it does not mean is that it is acceptable to insult, threaten, attack people, or pretend that there can only be one morally acceptable position on every possible subject.
Calling the BSD Cafe a "Nazi Bar" from the outside simply because we do not automatically censor people who have an opinion different from yours is offensive towards the hundreds of people who are part of this community.
People are, of course, free to criticise what happens here. But expecting us to attack, ban or silence someone because you believe they deserve it, and then accusing the whole Cafe because we do not, is something different.
And I have seen something even worse lately: actual calls for hate. The equivalent of *“hey, everyone, go and attack this person”*, simply because that person does not share your position.
No. This is not acceptable.
And, dear friends, declaring yourself anti-Nazi while organising a crowd against somebody, intimidating them and treating them as an enemy who deserves to be attacked means using exactly the kind of methods you claim to oppose.
I do not say this lightly. I come from a family, and from a country, with a very real history of fascism and of the antifascism that immediately followed it. These are not just abstract words to me.
Hate is not tolerated, at any level, inside or outside the Cafe. The same is true for threats, intimidation and aggression. Believing that our cause is right does not make those behaviours more acceptable.
You disagree with someone? Say it. Explain why. Argue against their ideas. Support yours with all the conviction you want. But do not aggressively attack. This is not tolerated.
And expecting everyone else to attack that person too, or considering them somehow complicit because they do not, is something different. And it is not what I want for this community.
On any subject.
Even pineapple on pizza (!!!).
The Fediverse is a non-place, but it is made of real people. Wonderful people, very often. Let’s not turn it into version 2.0 of traditional social media, where every discussion becomes a war and anyone who does not think exactly like us automatically becomes the enemy.
In the last few weeks I have seen people stepping away exactly because of this. On different subjects, people accused of the worst things not because of something they had done, but because they had not said what someone expected them to say. Some of them, for their own wellbeing, simply decided to take a step back.
We all lost something because of that. Nobody gained anything.
So let’s keep supporting what we believe in. Let’s do it with conviction, and with firmness when needed. But let’s discuss ideas without turning people into targets.
From experience, I have learnt that real change also requires discussion, organisation, patience and concrete actions. We can disagree deeply without stopping considering each other as people.
This is the kind of place I want the BSD Cafe to continue to be.
my instance is going to block yours, and i'm going to lose contact with your users, this drives a stake through my heart and i wish you could just take this back and do it right
Ciao! Sembra che tu sia interessato a questa conversazione, ma non hai ancora un account.
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