Fediverse Bans/Deplatforms Users Whose Views Are Deemed 'Edgy' and When They Set Up Their Own Instances Those Too Get Blocked

Dr. Roy Schestowitz

2021-01-29 12:26:40 UTC
Modified: 2021-01-29 12:32:17 UTC

Some road art

Summary: The old lie that freedom (including freedom of speech) would be facilitated by the Fediverse is repeatedly being debunked, even by recent and relatively high-profile examples

The Web is far too centralised and governments like it that way. So do monopolistic corporations, ranging from ISPs to 'Clown Computing' webhosts (who report to governments). They love to spy, censor, and manipulate. It's all about control... social control or oppression. This is a topic we'll be covering a lot more in the coming weeks as I shall consider my formal complaint about BT (to British ombudsman/Ofcom), seeing that it's trying to punish me or restrict my Internet access for 'daring' to put Techrights on IPFS (just to maintain copies of everything -- in a decentralised fashion -- in case the site goes offline, as it did yesterday evening due to a major DDOS attack, as well as to discourage censorship/SLAPP attempts).

Work at laptop Yesterday we showed how Twitter is manipulating perceptions by hiding users, topics, and even whole sites. In yesterday's case, that was myself, the "delete github" campaign, and Techrights as a whole (the domain, the whole site!). Welcome to the Wild Wide Web. Benjamin Henrion (FFII) asked me yesterday: "Time for a "blockchain based social network"?" Well, we're trying with IPFS, but Internet monopolies punish us for it. If we had something like a truly decentralised Twitter (like P2P, which ISPs such as BT retaliate against and throttle), it would probably get painted as terrorism or illegal pornography or something. Are the 'Free' alternatives to Twitter the answer? No. We said it many times before. They're flawed by topological design.

"...we're trying with IPFS, but Internet monopolies punish us for it."Case of point: DistroTube. The channel talks about Free software such as LibreWolf (an hours-old example) and it is already deplatformed by one Fediverse/Mastodon instance. It happened weeks ago. When it set up another instance, one of its own (Fediverse "distrotoot" for DistroTube, based Mastodon) it got banned or blocked by several others, as noted yesterday by another YouTuber: "Twitter is a mess right now so there's no better time to leave it and join the Fediverse and one popular way to do so is with Mastodon, which works very similar to other micro bloggers but has some great advantages I've moved instances since recording to linuxrocks.online as mstdn social have got a little ban crazy and even blocked DistroTube's instance..." Controversial voices or dissenting views are often what drives change in society, sometimes progressively. We've seen over the years whose views get suppress and who by... Video download link

[video width="480" height="340" webm="http://techrights.org/videos/social-control-media-federated.webm"][/video]

Well, "distrotoot" isn't anything radical; but as we've pointed out before, even federated and Free software-based Twitter alternatives aren't made to respect free speech. They're simply not designed for that, either. ⬆

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Fediverse Bans/Deplatforms Users Whose Views Are Deemed 'Edgy' and When They Set Up Their Own Instances Those Too Get Blocked

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