Periodic official communication, just to clarify a few things.
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@release_candidate Is it possible to install Xlibre on Omarchy? Please paste your prompt /s @stefano
@ricardo @release_candidate no trolling, guys, please. We've had enough problems in the last days... 😉
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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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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.
Good grief! What a blow up in response to your very considered and reasonable post.
Thank you for offering a bastion of civility and decency. Even though I'm not on the bsd.cafe instance, I still appreciate the work you and the community put in. -
@benedikt_lauenburg @stefano This. Tolerance for intolerance breaks the social contract that it tries to establish. Fascists, narcissists, and other bad actors have to be exposed and expelled for they will corrupt everything otherwise.
@simondassow@masto.ai
Did you actually read #Popper's words?If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.
First, it has a pretty narrow scope: it's about movements (not individuals) who preach intolerance and avoid rational arguments.
Second, it's application is reserved to societies at large that to protect democracy should outlaw such movement or political parties.
To be clear, according to Popper #ParadoxOfTolerance, the #USA should outlaw Republicans jailing them as criminals, not simply censor #Trump or #Musk.
But using the Popper's words to justify the isolation of intollerant individuals as such is misguided as he said explicitly:as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise
Thus in the context of the #Fediverse that is a public square, using defederation as a way to punish not just intollerant groups but those who don't defederate them for whatever reason is the opposite of what Popper suggested.
Nobody should be forced to debate with a fascist, but those who do should be supported as they are protecting democracy with the weapons of democracy (dialogue, information, public debate...), not isolated through defederation.
@benedikt_lauenburg@norden.social @stefano@bsd.cafe
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