Why Block Meta?
by vanta black (she/her, they/them)
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FOREWORD:
i'll be honest
the actual text of The Pact was written hastily in like two minutes with not a lotta thought put into it (though the sentiment itself has festered for ages)
i came up with the idea after the march leaks and posted about it later but didn't actually make it for like a week til i saw peeps starting to ask if it existed
i felt the need to get it out the door as quickly as possible before anyone else tried making it, so i rushed lmao
i figured, nobody needs a long-winded wall of text explaining why meta is bad anyway. it's just a known fact. this is fedi, after all. but i underestimated people's capacity and tolerance for bullshit lol
if i could do it again knowing what i know now i would've done it the moment i had the idea and taken the time to really hammer out something solid and cite my fucking sources and all that
so here's a longer post, explaining why you should block the shit outta project92
this post only explains my personal reasoning, those who signed The Pact may have differing opinions
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WHY BLOCK META?
tl;dr
1. they won't moderate effectively, there is precedent with facebook being a toxic cesspit of hate
2. they have a long track record of pure evil and we have no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt
3. to protect the existing communities of marginalized people on the fediverse, many of whom rely on it to survive
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okay, first off. before we get started. let's define a clear purpose for The Pact
the purpose of The Pact is to embolden instances to commit to blocking project92/barcelona/threads. a lotta peeps were already talking bout preemptively blocking it since the march leaks, me included. and the idea popped into my head that maybe if we had like, y'know, a thingy peeps could sign to show their support for it... it might weaken that argument that it's like pointless or whatever, and might make that choice easier to make
but why make it?
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1. PROJECT92 WILL BE A MODERATION NIGHTMARE
at the end of the day the whole thing with The Pact blocking meta, for me at least, comes down to one fact: they are absolutely NOT going to moderate their shit properly
setting aside all the genocide and behavioral experimentation and election rigging, why would you give them special privileges just because they're some big tech giant? why should we trust them? they've given us absolutely no reason to and every reason to not. their crimes (see below) and unwillingness to do adequate moderation are well-documented
if they were any other instance they'd be defederated immediately for the shit they've aided and abbetted in and allowed to exist on their platform. fuck em
but what have they done?
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2. THEIR LONG TRACK RECORD OF PURE EVIL
i'm just gonna paste some links here because there's no point in paraphrasing what others have already said more eloquently
(if you're wondering why i'm using archive.org it's to break the fucking paywalls on these articles because fuck that, information wants to be free)
that time they helped facilitate a genocide
that time they helped try to rig an election
that time they did creepy behavioral experimentation on their users
so, yeah. there's legiterally shitloads of precedent here. not to mention all the privacy concerns. which brings us to the need many feel to protect ourselves from this insidious megacorp...
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3. PROTECTION OF MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES
there's been some real victim blamey vibes coming from the people getting mad at us for trying to defend our communities from the inevitable harassment shitstorm
look, it's not OUR fault meta is trying to pull some shit, okay
like holy hell, have you BEEN on facebook? it's a total wasteland of every sort of vile bigotry imaginable, and nobody who runs it gives any semblance of a fuck
oh, right, it never affected you at all so it's nonexistent. right
try listening to the people who will be most affected by this
instead of, y'know, just not giving a fuck. or assuming you know better than us. when we've done the whole harassment song and dance a million times on social media
the fediverse is good precisely because distributed moderation makes it possible to filter out bad shit easier. that all goes out the window the moment meta sets foot here and people refuse to block them because "that's where everyone is"
they'll set the standard from then on
try being trans and on facebook, having a list of common suicide methods sent to you by a bigot, and reporting it. they'll do goddamn nothing. a real, personal, and depressingly common example
being okay with meta joining the fediverse is being okay with cosigning every goddamn trans person who chooses to remain on here to a future of constant harassment
not to mention, many marginalized folks rely on donations they recieve on the fediverse to survive. try checking the #MutualAid hashtag sometime if you don't believe me. we already get harassed enough for it as-is. letting meta come in and bulldoze shit may very well probably actually literally kill some people by making them too afraid of large waves of harassment to even make donation request posts
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and now, let's refute some common criticisms of preemptively blocking meta
REFUTATIONS:
🖤 but the purpose of the fediverse is openness!
openness for the sake of openness is meaningless. two things that are very valued on fedi are consent and freedom of association. the whole point of the fediverse is that instances are free to choose who they talk to. we don't have to federate with the likes of gab, for example. growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, chasing a capitalist pipe dream
🖤 it's hopeless because the big instances won't block them, there's nothing we can do
that doesn't mean we shouldn't TRY. it's not black-and-white, win-or-lose. there's degrees of this shit. i wanna do everything i can to keep as many people as possible safe from meta's horrible bullshit. it doesn't matter if the then-larger portions of fedi end up dwarfing The Pact in size. we'll be safer -- that's victory enough to me. it's all we can hope for short of meta cancelling project92 due to backlash
🖤 you're just gatekeeping/want to keep fedi small
the fediverse isn't perfect by any means. but serving ourselves up on a silver platter to one of the biggest evillest megacorporations on the planet isn't the path to meaningful positive change, or anything besides the utter destruction of our communities. there are other, natural ways for it to grow
🖤 you're just a bunch of radical extremists
yeah come to think of it The Pact IS extremely radical, huh? and tubular, and way cool, not to mention gnarly as fuck
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soooooo yeah. that's all my reasons for suggesting and furthermore organizing a preemptive block of any instance ran by meta. i hope maybe this helped some peeps gain a new perspective on the situation. if it changed legiterally even one mind it would've been worth writing
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a closing sentiment:
"and if we decide that freedom is impossible, then we'll prove ourselves right. but if that is the truth, well then i think that there's worse things in this world than being wrong." --pat the bunny
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did you enjoy this article? the work i've been doing generally on The Pact? the cool clothes i DIY together? the awesome videos i edit? my amazing selfies? or just wanna send a trans gal a nice gift?
well i'm broke and unemployed and surviving solely off donations i get on fedi atm, so if you wanna support me anything helps keep me afloat 🖤
paypal
cashapp
venmo
liberapay
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thanks for reading 🖤