who the hell is duc? :enbyfied: :verifiedcat: (@duc)

katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, preamble

What is this thread? Well, I've said some things about #thebadspace and Ro specifically that I want to correct, clarify or (often) retract. I've said things that weren't necessary and I regret. This threads purpose is:

- Understanding and analyzing what I've said that was potentially racist, wrong, insulting, insensitive etc.
- Writing my thoughts down for myself, and then publishing that for purposes of transparency and maybe for others to think about
- Clarifying my points of criticism

I'm gonna try to back up as much as I can with links to what I'm talking about and context.

Also, I will not be deleting or editing older posts that I'm mentioning here, only to add a link to this.

(This took 5h. The final post will be marked with EOF. Also yes, this is very rambly. Please only yell at me when I finished posting the whole thread lol)

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, context

Okay, so for people who have no idea what's going on, what is thebadspace and why is it controversial (to the best of my understanding):

A person named Ro (his fedi account, didn't wanna mention directly.) developed a website called The Bad Space (It's down while I'm writing this, due to it being DDoSed currently. I'll be using archive links frequently. Archive link).

The purpose of that website is basically to be a blocklist of bad actors on the fediverse, which is searchable and has an API. It works by aggregating data from multiple trusted sources, and if an instance is listed by more then two of these, it appears on The Bad Space.

As usual with blocklists, it's controversial. Commonly listed reasons for that are:

- There was a bug, which listed instances which were only listed by one source
- There's two sites, thebad.space and tweaking.thebad.space. One is apparently old, and the other is a new version in beta.
- The old version has a bunch of old mess in the database, apparently, including instances only blocked once and older experiments (Fedi)
- A lack of transparency

I'll talk about these later in this thread.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, transphobia, racism, bigotry, my biases/who i am

Now, who am I and what are my biases?

I'm a german 18yo transfem autistic agender person with ADHD from germany.

I've grown up in a very privileged but right wing household. My mother is very right-wing, transphobic and racist. My dad used to be... not exactly nice either, but at some point (after getting kicked out by my mother I believe) apparently reconsidered his life choices and opinions.

Both of them made racist and xenophobic comments, especially in my earlier life and my mother continues to still hold very racist opinions.

So I had to figure out by myself that racism, queerphobia etc. are wrong. And even after that, getting rid of bigotry you were being indoctrinated with all your life by your parents isn't exactly easy. I'm still internally struggling and fighting against that internalised bigotry.

I try to not let it affect my actions and words at all, but I'd be surprised if none of that bs ever slips through.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, fediblock meta, why am i even talking about this

As you might know, I'm hosting this instance for a few friends of mine and myself. Previously I tried helping with thekitty.zone, but that... didn't turn out well (irrelevant to this anyway).

I also used to be a user of tech.lgbt, and barely ever experienced any bigotry directly on the fediverse. Yes, I'm aware they're also apparently involved in this but I honestly barely know about what's going on, so I don't really have an opinion on that.

I put a lot of effort into understanding moderation decisions if they're not obvious (blocking openly fascist instances, for example, is obvious), like queer leftist instances blocking other queer leftist instances (see the drama about Calckey/Firefish, absturztaube, disqordia etc).

Yes, I want to at least understand both sides. No, I don't want to just trust "block them" with no receipts or single users statements being ripped out of context.

No, I won't trust random people that I've never even interacted with before to not lie, so yes I want receipts. I've been lied to and manipulated that way too often.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

So, why am I writing this? Well, I've decided to respond to this post from Ro about the The Bad Space project.

My reply was very much an attempt to politely criticize the bad space according to my current knowledge. So let's tear it apart, shall we?

If, as you say, it's a community project, then is it possible...
- for the community to overrule a decision of yours, if the general consensus is that it's wrong?
- for the community to modify and improve it?

Yes, this first point is mostly bullshit (as in, the point I originally was trying to make). Why? Well, the first point was referring to me at that point believing, that he controlled the blocklist and added instances to it according to his own judgement. That is false and I apologize for having spread that misinformation.

Is it possible for the community ask to remove a source from it? I have no idea. But I hope, that if Ro gets informed about a source acting maliciously, he'll promptly act (and he already did, see the girlcock.club incident, his statement about that linked earlier).

The second point is once again... bullshit-ish. I was criticising that it's not open source, but I was wrong. Once again, I sincerely apologise for that.

Why the "-ish" suffix to bullshit then? Well, I tried to find the source code before replying. Most open source projects have their repo links on their about pages, but I wasn't able to find it on neither the main site's about page nor the beta site's about page. I still don't know how one is supposed to find it without a direct link to the repository.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

Next part!

It's not racism if someone publically criticises you, at worst it's idiocy (I do agree that before an issue is raised in public you should try to report it privately and solve it that way).

Yeah, no. That's indeed bullshit. Racism under the guise of criticism is still racism. And if it's public, it might very well spread dangerous racist lies.

I also was hypocritical with the statement to try privately contact someone first, since I've only made one very half-hearted attempt at privately contacting Ro about helping with the frontend of the bad space and then put that monster out in a public post.

I'm very sorry for that.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

I haven't been able to find public repositories or even licensing files for The Bad Space (please link them to me if they exist and I missed them!), so how is one supposed to know why someone was blocked other then your word? I do not want to accuse you to be clear, I genuinely believe that you're trying to improve the fediverse, and I can get behind that.

The thing is, if its a community project... why can't the community participate? Why can't I download the source code, fix bugs or whatever, and open a MR?

Once again, I hope he'll make the repo more visible in the future. Also, there's still no licensing files in the repo (I hope I linked this correctly to point at the source tree with the state of the latest commit selected at the time of writing). I don't know the legal implications of that, though. My guess would be that it's all rights reserved by default?

Contributing also would involve manually sending him patch files, since forgejo doesn't support federation yet and he has signups disabled.

A lot of the criticism that I've seen towards the bad space is not from a malicious or racist standpoint, rather a standpoint of people who saw projects like yours turn against the community looking at the available info, which might be only the blocklist and seeing single user instances of leftist trans women accused of hate speech and bad moderation, and making the same kind of assumptions you make when you accuse people bringing up valid criticisms of racism.

That point is, once again, bullshit born from my white privilege. The people yelling at him or making fun of him for bad web design or just generally making small mistakes are indeed racist, and it's not my call to make if consciously or not. I have not seen proof of people having seen these earlier project collapse, just assumed that to be true.

I am however still standing behind the point about mass-blocking transfems. I don't think (and I can't check due to downtime), that the non-subdomain website updates the blocklist to remove these. Also, it not differentiating between silences and blocks is pretty bad (I've only found out about that by digging through the downloadable CSV file).

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

Now, to his response.

LOL, that's literally how it works now.

No, it's not, but jumping in my mention to act like an entitled prick for no reason is. I'm fine with criticism. What I'm not cool with is entitled bigots acting like I owe them civility when they show none.

I honestly don't understand what he meant with the "that's how it works now, jk it's not", probably the things already mentioned before.

Indeed, yes, I've been very accusatory and made wrong assumptions. Agreed. And yes, I've made assumptions that in hindsight are bullshit born from white privilege.

I'll later (in this thread) talk about the receipts topic.

LOL, because, as you said, you don't know where the repo is. You already answered your own question.

Yeah, and I was hoping for a link to the repo, because I at that point was interested in actually contributing to the bad space.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

Continuing, now with my reply to that of course.

I've just said my observations as a person (relatively) new-ish to the fediverse and maintaining communities.

Observations as a person with white privilege as well.

If I wasn't here in good faith I wouldn't have bothered directly mentioning you and wouldn't have asked for improvement.

Also, once again, I wrote that from a point of white privilege. And apparently a point of forgetting that I've seen a lot more direct-mention-hate in other places (github, for example).

I know that I as a white, privileged trans person have very different experiences then you, but please respect that other people also had different experiences and that you also might be wrong, and that if someone is trying to tell you that they aren't a malicious bigot.

Please, please try to just... listen to people. Maybe take other peoples perspective into account, and that the world isn't just good and evil.

I wish you'd just... actually listen. Actually try to improve things that you are repeatedly told are problematic.

Consider that not everynyan has malicious intent toward you. Please.

You're causing real harm.

Honestly, talking about this would rather be a lot of repeating what I said earlier. No, not everyone has malicious intent, but a lot of people do and I am terrible at detecting that.

But yes, I still stand behind the statement about the bad space causing harm. Well, not the bad space directly but:

- sources overblocking
- the main domain (which everyone thinks is the current, most up-to-date, best version) still having the old, wrong blocks

Why not just move the beta to the main domain at this point? The root domain website at the moment is causing harm by people thinking it's the main/up to date version, and switching tweaking to the root domain would solve that.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analsing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

Once again to some parts of his next reply, nothing major just that I never said he's working alone?

But oh well, my reply to that is an absolute disaster. The third paragraph, to be specific.

I still don't agree with him saying who's a bigot and who isn't.

Then I must've imagined the transphobia I've experienced from my own mother

I used that specific example because it's her transphobia that directly hurts me the most. And I don't experience much transphobia outside of home, since I mostly spend time at chaos events and at school, where my teachers are luckily accepting and supportive, keeping the transphobes of my class in check.

But yeah, bad example, honestly rather showing how lucky (and/or blind/oblivious?) I am.

or the ableism (context: I'm autistic and have adhd) of society, sorry, I'll now not get sensory overloads anymore and be a good attention paying student!

Him calling that mental health challenges is something I'm still angry about, though. I can't just turn off being autistic or "get help".

But I don't think that it's malicious/conscious ableism, rather a mix of annoyance at my idiocy I guess and just... not having put effort into researching things like autism/adhd? I have no idea

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analsing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

After that he blocked me, and I responded in a public post.

Now, the part I'm actually pissed about: My mother being transphobic isn't fucking mommy issues as you're framing them. My mother is very much being transphobic against me, and that's not mommy issues, that's fucking transphobia. And you pretending like that doesn't exist and making this personyal is also transphobic and manipulative. I didn't project that onto you, I was making an example of discriminyation I'm facing.

I explained why I used that argument already. But he's very much right to point out a terrible argument. And I regret calling him transphobic there and many other times.

Most of that post is just... me being angry, accusing and insulting. He's not responsible for the moderation, his blocklist isn't even one of the sources.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, analysing the conversation that led to all this mess for me

But wait... there's more! Another person replied (and left me in the mentions)!

I don't have much to say about that. Only to one point, that this person later mentioned:

You had a good idea, but you need help with community management and pr.

I completely understand why he's so angry. Especially after the constant shitstorm that's hitting him. But yelling at people criticising him isn't a solution. Not everyone acts in bad faith.

I think a lot of this whole mess (not only regarding me, but the general situation) could've been avoided by just... ignoring haters and then flipping out at people who just slightly let their white privilege affect their points.

Something something arguing on the internet.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, general thinkrambling

Honestly, all this mess and thinking about it made me realize how much of a sealion I am unintentionally. And how much the racist biases I try to surpress are actually affecting me.

I have a lot to work on still, true, but like... others too.

I've written this, trying to correct and point out what I did/am doing wrong where. Spent 5h tearing apart my own arguments and roasting myself.

And yet I still can't in any way discard or disprove Ro being ableist. Consciously or not. Probably not.

sigh

I don't want to just ignore this because yk, I care about the fediverse and I want people to feel safe on here. And the people trying to do that are turning the fediverse into a warzone by assuming everyone has malicious intent.

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, general thinkrambling

Guess what:

most people involved in this aren't racists that think every black person should die or transphobes thinking that about trans people. Rather people with small subconscious biases making biased arguments agains the other side and then that spiraling.

I'm pretty sure most white people have these biased, because they are so engrained in society. Yes, that's bad and we should work on improving that.

(also, I guess this made the concept of systemic racism finally actually click for me? Like I've understood the definitions and stuff but now it actually clicked.)

But also, same thing about transphobia. Transphobia is deeply engrained into society and we're just now slowly unlearning it, just like with racism.

And ableism, homophobia, sexism, antisemitism and the list goes on and on. Sure, different historic roots sometimes, but same kind of hate.

I don't think this thread will make any impact or anything to others, this is rather for myself and I'm gonna publish it for transparency reasons.

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who the hell is duc? :enbyfied: :verifiedcat: @duc@miau.jeder.pl

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, general thinkrambling

@schrottkatze yeah a lot of it is lack of awareness imo.
i will say, something like the bad space is necessary for select users. and out ot necessity, the project feels rushed. idk if we can hold that against them.
and i do feel like lack of awareness is very true for many privileged beings in this situation. not really knowing the kind of harassment that black users of fedi endure, or in some cases, not knowing the kind of language or tone to not come across in bad faith. i suppose it's nd beings' job to educate other nd beings, neurotyps are not gonna do that 😔
plus, this culture of making fun of someone for anything is way too ingrained in society (and some do bring it to fedi).

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katze @schrottkatze@ck.katzen.cafe

2y

thebadspace, meta, long, thread, general thinkrambling

@duc well. as i've said, i like the concept. but the implementation etc went terribly. and a lot of that would've been relatively easy to do better. there's also a lot of other points of criticism towards ro that i originally wanted to mention but decided against bc of various reasons

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