With toxicity I was referring to the ill-fated activist groups sh*tposting things about each other and newspaper headlines crafted to produce anger-driven traffic. Something, which doesn't give me anything but depressions.
I do agree there is less shitposting, but there's a fair amount of it nonetheless. Many other of those activist posts are toned down here... because I expect their expectations are they are largely preaching to the choir.
But just scrolling through the "toots" (again, at mastodon.social) on the main landing page I get...:
"New Yorkers yelling at nazis is fun.
Proud Boys bloodied and jailed during NYC drag queen story hour protest"
(https://mastodon.world/@StillIRise1963/110051510087068465)
"Nate Silver's brain seems to be broken. The "data guy" is literally citing a Twitter poll as if it's meaningful in a political context.
No wonder ABC News is trying to sell off FiveThirtyEight."
(https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/110052597467670093)
"Yet another wealthy #GOP donor turns out to be an accused pedophile, groomer, and sex trafficker. You'd almost think the party's obsessive focus on demonizing drag queens and library books was a crude act of misdirection. #USpolitics https://apnews.com/article/lazzaro-rep"
(https://newsie.social/@stevesilberman/110050892922689946 ... mastodon.social showed this to me while scrolling, but clearly this is an example of federated content)
"The neo-Nazis are creeping around, kids.
Remember, every neo-Nazi/MAGA chud/Jordan Peterson fan is a real person with feelings and gross insecurities who is also a loathsome cnt undeserving of a second of your time or attention unless you are a law enforcement agent working in counter-terrorism. Block immediately, report often.*"
(https://beige.party/@GrimmReality/110051420547135356 again, federation at work).
And the replies are, as far as I could tell while casually browsing, all reinforcing.... none at all trying to moderate the severity or civility of the points being made.
This isn't that different than what I saw I Twitter over the years, except there you saw it from many different sides of various debates. And note that my comments aren't about the issues being discussed: it's chiefly about the way they are discussed: toxically.
So I'm sorry, I don't doubt your intentions and that you really do feel more at home and welcome on Mastodon. But it's not because federation has solved the problem of Twitter-like toxicity: it hasn't, not at all. It's maybe reduced it a bit because the filters for ideology are greater (whether those filters are implemented by administrators refusing users or federating to certain servers or because Mastodon is only attracting people of a certain mindset).
- As said, I'm hosting my own instance, and I understood in the beginning that I don't just want to see the federated stuff (mostly weird sexualized anime images with way-too-young characters).
- So I manually searched through catalogs of instances listed at the website.
- I went through most of those instances, searched for users with followers and read their first couple of posts to see if they're human and interesting by any means (e.g. I happened to stumble upon a librarian instance and have learned so much about their day-to-day worklife and tools).
- Now I'm following like 900 people and have ~270 followers. That's more than enough to fill the no-algo timeline with interesting stuff.
- I'm only using the Home timeline and almost never the federated one, sometimes searching, hashtags etc.
And to be fair I've even toyed with the idea of setting up Mastodon instances (though probably using different server software) focused on strictly civil/professional discussions as part of the rule set. But of course this leaves most of the "federating" part of the equation off the table and leads me to my next observation. The only social networking that I've found that is genuinely warm and cozy, by default, are some of the Discourse communities. They are absolutely small, disconnected islands of community, but by being topical and smaller I think they avoid the toxic by default characteristics that broadly generalized communities devolve into. Of course, Discourse communities can be built around toxic content, too, but you just don't sign up: what you see is what you get. I think this more topically focused social media is really the best way to avoid the cruft compared to the open community approach.
I find this happens most often to people with a worldview that is objectively incompatible with civilization.
In case that is going to turn out to correlate with “worldview[s] that [are] objectively incompatible with [the other] civilization”, … what could it mean …
I haven't opened Gab in a while so I just loaded the front page, and I can see why Mastodon moderators don't want to deal with them either. The content is not as blatantly illegal as many other blacklisted sites, but the front page is incredibly toxic and hateful. I would block most of those posts if they woulf ever hit my personal instance.
Feel free to join (or set up) an instance that doesn't employ blacklists, though. The default Mastodon configuration comes with an empty blacklist so I'm sure there are servers out there that will let you access Gab and other blacklisted servers if you wish.
However, other servers are allowed to block you or your server at their digression if you're boosting or posting content they don't care for. After all, freedom of speech does not imply any obligation to be heard.
Nah. It tends to include neo-nazis, neo-confederates, racists, sexists, white supremacists, kiddy diddlers, and the like. It's not a particularly difficult group to not be a part of.
You might consider being concerned if your ideas and attitudes align with those of the aforementioned deplorables. And yes, that would be the correct term.
Edit: Calling people by the correct descriptive terms is not smearing. I'm sorry you are confused.
It all just boils down to a fig-leaf for your hatred.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I think that illustrates the way these things work pretty clearly.
With some charity, you could say Gab has a different worldview. However, there are also people who think sex with children is ok. That is also technically 'a different worldview'. You see, there is a reason Gab has been cut off, and it is not just that he has a different worldview.
If you don't list the specific reason, you distort the most important part of this particular moderation. I noticed this is a fairly common myth in what seems like a right-wing frame of 'progressive politics trying to limit freedom of speech'.
But, wanting to give your point a chance... I went to the first 10 servers that were suggested by joinmastodon. There was very little difference just scrolling their landing pages in terms of content than that of mastodon.social. Not surprising: Federation is suppose to allow this sort of decentralized sharing of the exact same content across instances. Of those, only really the instance run by the makers of the Vivaldi Browser seems to be notably toned down on the political muck.. and they probably for business reasons.
Then I went different interest specific group servers and scrolled through their landing page content. And they were also very reflective of my mastodon.social experience... many of the same Toots. The kind of community didn't really matter so much for the most part (I'm guessing a fair amount of lazy configuration to be honest).
Here's an example: birds.town which bills itself as...
"A server primarily meant for people who like birds, birding and nature in general, but obviously everyone is equally welcome here! Have fun cawing about "
And I almost was happily surprised. The top Toots of the feed (or whatever it's called in Mastodon-land) were, in fact, about birding! Unfortunately I kept scrolling. Oh dear.
"I'd find conservatives attacks on “woke” funny if they weren't so dangerous.
Woke people fought and won the battle against slavery.
Woke people went to war and defeated fascism in WWII.
Woke people fought for and won equal rights for women and people of color.
Woke people battled for rights for workers like 40-hour workweeks and safety protections."
https://birds.town/@[email protected]/110049850172355...
Yes, because that's what I want to know when participating in a social network focusing on bird watching.
And generally, whenever there's people annoying me, I just unfollow/mute/block them - problem solved.
The point I was answering was that I saw what I saw because I used a single instance of a Federated service (mastodon.social)... my counter-point here was that the instance really didn't matter. I was served, by default, largely the same toxic content across the 20 or so servers I ended up landing on.
Yes, I can unfollow, mute, block, etc. anyone that I decide isn't someone I want in my life. But I'm pretty sure I could do that on Twitter, too (could be wrong, I've not been there for a long time). Life's too short. Maybe the local feed would have been much better... or maybe the warm cozy Mastodon isn't that which competes with Twitter, but that which competes with Discourse or Discord.
In the case of Pleroma, it was much the same, but with way more fringe lunatics and right wingers. I don't want to find a community "aligned with my worldview" that shuts out people unaligned with them, I want to find a community of mentally healthy adults, and that does not seem to exist in the larger Mastodon or Pleroma fediverse, unless your hobbies include pearl clutching about perceived racism or making infographics about white genocide.
Much better, I think, is to have a truth finding conversation together. Perhaps coming from different sides of the story, but always on the search for trying to find common ground, the truth, science, and an open mind to be changed by those things.
And not see the whole thing as a match to be won you know?
I’m a German, back in school (20+ years ago) I was taught that arguing, when done in good faith, helps everyone. So I disagree heavily with your characterization of arguing as American.
The New Left has become unrecognizable to me as a mode of liberal thinking and both sides of the political fence in the US appear to have escaped into a hole of myopic beliefs that mirror each other in their intensity and desire for control.
> As someone who'd consider themselves progressive by the yardstick of 10 years ago but not measured to the new progressives of today ...
> The New Left has become unrecognizable to me
That's an expected phenomenon. What was progressive yesterday becomes conservative today - think of women's rights, interracial marriage, etc. The same goes for 'who' was progressive.
When people are young, they challenge the corrupt system. As those changes are enacted, those young people grow older and become the system. Then a new generation sees that 'progress' of your youth as the old, corrupt, scelerotic system; they have nothing invested in your achievements; they see the system's flaws and push to change them.
The formerly-young-challengers, now old-system-members, say 'that's crazy, outlandish, outrageous, etc.' - exactly what was said to them when they were young.
Oh yes, I know, 'this time it's different'. 'These kids really are outrageous.' Those words are also exactly the same as before.
If you want to be progressive, you need to keep seeing the flaws, not accepting them, and keep pushing for change. The moment you stop, say 'far enough we've done a good job', you cease being progressive.
It's one of the larger instances but the top heaviest constitute the majority by far and they all enshrine these policies.
I don't think you're really answering my criticism. You're lumping my "retrograde" progressiveness in with the well-worn wheel of timely revolts against the corruption of the past. I'm saying that both sides of the political aisle have become hives of extremism and that the left, particularly, has become the thing it once hated, an instrument of control in the service of the few.
There seems to be no middle ground anymore for white males that exclusively want to address labor issues. Perhaps it is true that to push for progress in labor, the root problem of the power dynamics must be addressed (i.e. you can't be colorblind here).
> You have made your decision, then.
Is this something the hero says? To me, it looks like something the villain says.
Can you give examples of that happening? I don't see any at all. I mean actual violence and terror.
These wild claims are becoming comical. The other day, it was the Cambodian genocide. Are we just picking catastrophes and arbitrarily saying they are happening? What's next? The Fall or Rome? The 10 Plagues from the Bible?
If you want to talk about instruments of control in the service of the few, how about we talk about the forces that keep healthcare expensive and poorly distributed in the U.S.? Or are working to ban books and art performances in Florida (and elsewhere)? How about the instruments of control that have been invading Ukraine for over a year? These seem much more tangible and consequential than moderation decisions on a website no one has to use. Perspective is very important, lest we fall into the false equivalency trap.
The instruments of control are distributed in a very lopsided manner, to my eyes. "The Left is CONTROLLING PEOPLE on Mastodon" doesn't really cut it. If you don't the policies of one instance, join a different one. Or make your own, and you can make your own policies. You can decide what level of control you want on the social media you choose to interact with. And if some instances have rules you don't like? My advice would be, ignore those instances and don't worry about their rules. They only affect you if you allow them to.
So can you provide any evidence? Name this instance?
> both sides of the political aisle have become hives of extremism
It's laughable. Look at the people in power. What progressive is in any major office: Look at the President, the Minority Leader of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, Democratic Governors, etc. etc. All are mainstream Dems, hardly a progressive to be seen. Meanwhile, a majority of the GOP in Washington voted to overturn democracy and as sided with the rioters who attempted a coup.
> the left, particularly, has become the thing it once hated, an instrument of control in the service of the few
What has the left controlled? The right wing has used governmet power to ban books, educational topics, political freedom for teachers, criminalized gender choices, protests, etc. etc. Even in colleges, the right has shut down dissent, including among faculty (e.g., at UNC, in Florida, Harvard, Yale, etc.). The right is trying to eliminate tenure and academic freedom.
The left is trying to break the control of a few. Whether you like their tactics or not, they are trying to give power to minorities and other vulnerable people.
I've already shared the specifics I'm comfortable sharing. I have zero desire to start a witch hunt.
> What has the left controlled? The right wing has used governmet power to ban books, educational topics, political freedom for teachers, criminalized gender choices, protests, etc. etc. Even in colleges, the right has shut down dissent, including among faculty (e.g., at UNC, in Florida, Harvard, Yale, etc.). The right is trying to eliminate tenure and academic freedom.
You're perfectly demonstrating exactly the behavior I intended to point out. "Other-ing" the opposition into the Sith is not productive and the Left is as guilty of this as the Right.
> The left is trying to break the control of a few. Whether you like their tactics or not, they are trying to give power to minorities and other vulnerable people.
Through race essentialism? Or by what means are you specifically referring to? The common platform of the new left is that all white people are guilty of the original sin of their skin color. A platform based on enforced shame is not a platform for collaboration.
I would even argue most progressives are seeing flaws and don’t accept them and push for change but you don’t need to be “radical”(as in further from the status quo) in your views to do that and it doesn’t make you less of a progressive - you are just trying to push to a different spot on the manifold.
The big divide isn't over specific beliefs and policies as much as whether you believe the current system tends to favour you or not.
I'm not sure about that. I know some conservatives (which I'd consider myself as well, though leaning libertarian) who are very well off but didn't start that way, and their political ideas remained constant. I know others who aren't particularly wealthy, but hold the same ideas.
Fundamentally, I believe it's more about "what will work?", in essence "if we organized our society along these lines, would it still function, or would it fall apart", and progressives and conservatives have vastly different opinions on that.
For a single issue: conservatives generally believe that "if you pay people to do nothing, that's exactly what they'll do" and thus are opposed to high welfare (because people will stop working, and without people working, nothing gets produced), while progressives believe that people will be freed by not worrying about their income and will voluntarily work and become very productive, which is why they're very much in favor of high welfare (e.g. UBI). It's one side saying "don't change this, you'll break everything" and the other side saying "no, we need to change this, it'll get better".
But it's not about your current status in the system. My political convictions haven't changed much since when I was pretty much poor vs now that I'm doing very well (though they've become calmer, but I'd attribute that mostly to age).
Which is by and large the entire problem. The right is rarely interested in solving problems.
So I could find minor points of agreement -- there's certainly people out there who are a tad too radical for my taste. The problem is that in general though I'm very much in favor of change, and the right isn't.
The right are very interested in solving problems; but they are defined by identifying the plans of the left as the biggest problem. That is basically why they pick up the label "conservative", the right only exists as a political unit to resist threats from the left. Otherwise the right generally favours non-government approaches to problem solving (partially in an attempt to stop empowering leftists who tend to infest bureaucracies). And every faction generally keeps busy dealing with their own perceived problems.
That's not so much problem solving as just obstructionism. Surely there are things to be done that don't depend at all on what the competition is doing.
> Otherwise the right generally favours non-government approaches to problem solving (partially in an attempt to stop empowering leftists who tend to infest bureaucracies).
No, the right favors non-government approaches because they want to pick and choose. They for instance heavily endorse personal charity because you get to pick who you help.
I on the other hand think there should be a floor in society below which nobody is allowed to fall, and that it ideally should be implemented in a fully blind and dispassionate manner, eg, UBI. Everyone gets it automatically no questions asked, without needing to be liked by the local community.
My government have made it very difficult for me to take my own health, retirement savings, home improvement and often financial decisions into my own hands. Typically the way his happens is that some leftist will be responsible although in the case of the financial stuff it tends to be nonpartisan corruption. If I am too effective at savings then there will also be attempts to gain control of the savings and funnel them into causes I usually think are poorly chosen. Ignoring the left is not really an option; they'll identify resources and come for them to fund their own plans. Otherwise the awkward truth is that controlling government wouldn't be such a big deal.
> ...
> If I am too effective at savings then there will also be attempts to gain control of the savings and funnel them into causes I usually think are poorly chosen
Right, that's exactly what I was talking about. We can agree on the surface about some things, but underlying priorities and views aren't really compatible even when things happen to align by accident.
Eg, my desire for having guaranteed social minimums isn't really compatible with your desire to personally control what your tax money gets spent on.
I put it to you that it isn't 'obstructionism', it is plain old disagreement. Or if you prefer, the left is being just as obstructionist in blocking the right from making their own decisions. The only difference is where the obstructions are happening.
There's different things being discussed. I started answering the "If you want to set yourself an interesting challenge, try to figure out why it is you think being on the right wing of politics is incompatible with those opinions" bit.
My answer to that is that there are genuine underlying incompatibilities, and so even if there's a superficial agreement on something once in a while (eg, we both agree some policy goes a tad too far), it still makes no sense for me to switch camps.
The obstructionism is a tangential side point: that the right seems to have no policy other than being anti-left, and so far you've done nothing to convince me otherwise.
One 2019 UK report (https://www.icax.co.uk/pdf/Absolute_Zero_Report.pdf) proposes a timeline that's been circulating on Twitter, involving the closure of all airports and shutting down all international shipping by 2050, while pricing 40% of traffic off the roads and banning beef+lamb. That (along with many more less-drastic but still significant restrictions) is what it would take to reach 'net zero' with current technology.
And that was written in 2019, when people were generally a lot more reasonable than they are in the post-Covid world.
(Do they even realise what they're proposing by 'no international shipping'... Amongst many other things, that means zero microchips for the UK, let alone complete technology products such as phones, TVs, or EVs)
Meanwhile in the real world (here in the UK), we've got a massive cost-of-living crisis, a collapsing healthcare system, a disaster of a property market, and a rising population that we're failing to build infrastructure to cope with. We have a a terribly incompetent government, and an opposition that seems no better. And we're living with the threat of WW3, the tail end of the pandemic, and now a banking crisis too.
> We currently have no non-emitting freight ships, so there is an urgent need for exploration of means to electrify ship power
It seems like you are the one "catastrophising".
What if it is a catastrophe? Should we pretend otherwise?
The word 'catastrophize' implies that the speaker is creating the catastrophe. Climate change sure seems like one to me, whether anyone says it or not.
While I don't want to try and defend every right wing policy, the crowd who think global warming is the biggest challenge we face have been outplayed by the very real disasters and escalations we've been facing since 2020. The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
All the evidence I see is I'm more likely to die in a fire caused by soldiers than power plants.
That's why it will be very difficult for us to find any common ground. Even though I am very much a free market guy and definitely don't agree with every policy on the left. The right down plays, ignores or ridicules global warming. How one can read the IPCC report and doesn't feel any sense of urgency is beyond me. This shouldn't even be a left or right issue.
1. Attacking the left brings them support
2. Their carbon industry supporters.
Your argument is assumptions - that climate change isn't the biggest challenge, that others are bigger.
> The well resourced anti-US axis that is developing between Russia and China is a much bigger threat than difficulties adjusting to climate change. Which have generally been fairly minor challenges in the official reporting.
What is "official reporting"?
China and Russia feature quite largely in the news. It's hard to imagine them getting more coverage.
What makes you believe we have any control over the climate?
What makes you believe that in a sham democracy, your vote makes any difference?
CO2 has two vibrational modes that are IR active. We release carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere that was previously bound inside the earth's crust. Humans increased the CO2 concentration from 280ppm to 420ppm (pre-industrial -> today). The science is settled. Whether you believe in it or not: Global warming is happening and humans are causing it. I understand that it is something you don't want to be true (and trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong). But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
Well, we'll see. There are predictions of global devastation within the next decade.
> But physics doesn't care if you want it to be true or not.
It's not about that. Rather it's about the law of slow-moving disasters.
For example, what if I told you there was a train coming down the tracks that is about to flatten you. Would you be scared? What if I told you it was coming at you at 1cm/year. Would you be scared then?
This is the law of slow-moving disasters. We tend not to notice them in practice. If the weather changes year to year on the time-scale of decades or centuries, the rate of change is so low that buildings will simply be replaced over time. In extreme cases, populations will migrate.
Ancient humans have lived in climates both much warmer, and much cooler than those we currently experience.
> trust me, I would also love if it turned out to be wrong
I think I trust you. You seem like a stand-up guy, but understand that there is a huge amount of power to be distilled out of this. So there are a great number of people who are heavily incentivised to look the other way if there are any unanswered questions.
For a parallel example, see the refusal to acknowledge side effects including mycardiatus from COVID vaccinations.
I never really got this argument: There are even more powerful and even richer people that have incentives that nothing changes: ExxonMobile, Koch Industries, BP, Volkswagen, BMW, GM, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc.
We've already 'seen'. The science is, of course, based on an enormous amount of empirical evidence. We can always just say, 'we'll see what happens next', but it's a bizarre argument - on that basis you never act.
Speaking this way breaks the conversation.
That's really not what's been happening here, though, and the extremely online activists are not simply people who are ahead of the curve on pushing to fix society's flaws. For example, take trans rights, the main weapon currently used to demand people get in line - in reality it was the boring, normie mainstream liberals who dragged the online activists into supporting that in the first place, not the other way around. Until just a few years ago they supported anti-trans viewpoints that were way out of kilter with mainstream society and demanded trans women shut up about harassment campaigns that went just as much against mainstream norms and values as the harassment that the online left is apologists for today. There's a good chance this changed through younger people with different views coming in, but they had those views in the first place because society as a whole had already shifted.
The difference really, genuinely, and consistently is just toxicity, extremism, and a refusal to accept that anyone who deviates even an inch from their views is a decent person. Those are the things that have stayed constant even as the arguments and the targets have shifted. The culture shifts easily from expecting trans women to shut up about TERF harassment campaigns to justifying harassment of streamers who play a game based on a franchise by someone who liked tweets containing TERF views because the cruelty is the point. While the views go beyond what mainstream society is willing to accept, the direction is extremely questionable. (For example, there have been multiple ugly Mastodon disputes involving server operators trying to shut people up about the long trail of rape allegations that follow one specific trans woman around, pretty much all from other trans women. Paying attention to them is supposedly hateful and an attack on trans women. Again, this is one specific person who's allegedly doing it, the same one every single time - not trans women as a whole.)
The word "TERF" to describe the people and worldview that wanted to exclude trans people and trans rights from social justice activism wasn't even recorded as existing until 15 years ago, not because those views didn't exist - they're traceable in basically their modern form all the way back to like the seventies and are oddly pervasive - but because they succeeded well enough that even discussing the idea that this was a bad thing didn't start to become a part of activist discussion until then. This whole shift in viewpoint to that becoming unacceptable is incredibly recent.
Also, in general ordinary non-terminally-online people were much, much less anti-trans than both the "attack helecopter" anti-SJW side and the anti-trans campaigners that social justice activists were meant to sympathise with, though that may not have been obvious since one of the big things that was unacceptable was actually talking about what anti-trans people on the same side were doing and the real-world consequences (including stuff like laws they lobbied for). Admittedly, I'm from the UK so my experiences may not be representative of the US and other countries, but we are supposedly "TERF island" so that cuts both ways.
I think it would have been worth it to give this more than a moments thought. A quick glance at 20th century events shows fascism and communist dictatorships being seen as more fashionable and modern than flaky Weimar republics and crumbling empires. The next 50-80 years nevertheless showed history bending haphazaradly away from these trends. In the least, taking for granted that what follows is inevitably more progressive seems a tad rash.
What's far more interesting is examining the thoughts and actions of the inglorious bastards, both young and old, who at the time recognized early on that This Was Not The Way, and with what critera they did so.
This is where modern Progressives (or wokes) diverge from Liberalism. It is a politics of radical egalitarianism and fundamentalism. The idea that certain people have access to certain knowledge and "other ways of knowing" that makes them the authority on a subject and them and only them should be listened to. And of course, using unfalsifiable methods to achieve this as evidenced in their most popular literature that states "All white people are racist and denial of this is evidence of their fragility, which is racist". This language trick is used over and over. And of course, creating a grievance hierarchy that intends to flip Liberalism on its head since clearly the Liberal intellectual tradition was created by and for white men to maintain their power over everyone else. Of course ignoring that all of the so-called "progress" we've made (women's right, gay rights, civil rights, etc) are from the Liberal tradition.
Some people are bigots. But many people that are labeled bigots are simply skeptical liberals, which are often called fascists now.
Wise people should fear times when people on the ends of the political spectrum do not talk _to_ each other, but only _about_ each other. It should be VERY apparent that we seem to be getting to such a social time (exacerbated by technology driven bubbles), and anyone who dreads the next Burning Times is a wise person.
> The reason given was that white people must not be able to opt out of the BIPOC experience of political outrage.
...or the modern left being by far the most racist ones out there
My memory of the 2003 to 2008 time frame is different.
I recall mainstream complaints about GTA 3, released 2001. Famously, Senator Clinton asked the FTC to investigate GTA 3 over the "hot coffee" mod in 2005.
There was also the 2005 California Law [0] that banned the sale of violent video games to minors.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Entertainment_Merchan...
And for many years (still rears its ugly head from time to time) "the game violence causes real violence" garbage.
Ahh, ok. So the moral panic of the early 80s, about 40 years ago.
The "video games cause real violence" argument was personified by Tipper Gore in the 90s, more than 30 years ago.
I don't recall anything from 15-20 years ago particular to conservatives. It has been mainstream since the 90s.
These days, any social media that allows "silos" eventually settles into such, and they are gate-kept. The strong silo-ing is also IMHO a byproduct of the modern social web of binary upvote / downvotes that fuel algorithmic feeds, a feature not present in the early days of the web, and (my theory) one that tends to reward the "strongest" opinions, which also tend to be the most extreme. "Left" or "right" isn't the problem I see regarding social media, instead it's the overall design. I don't know if Mastodon has avoided this (IMHO) cardinal sin or not.
I'm not sure which mastodon server you are on, or which ones you're linked with, but I'm on Universeodon and I've frankly seen nothing of the sort.
You do have a point of course, but I haven't seen any sort of toxic behaviour. Toxic and hateful people simply get banned, and the servers that house them get blacklisted. Which isn't too dissimilar to how the world used to function before centralized social media made it harder to moderate which people you want to spend your time on.
I'm progressive of course, so it's easy for me. But the thing is, if you came up to me in the real world and started to talk about how wrong it is for people to be gay, then I'd frankly walk away from you. This is what becomes possible with decentralized social media, but I'm not sure I'd call it a bubble or safespace, it's simply going back to the world before Facebook and Twitter, to when it was much easier to ignore people.
I don't know if that's supposed to sound like a good thing, but to me this sounds like a distopian place where anyone that does not align with the "correct worldview" is made to disappear and never be heard of again.
If you think "only bad people are toxic", you probably haven't been to many debates where your viewpoint happens to be the minority viewpoint.
Your right to freedom of speech is between you and the government. People aren’t required to publish your work just because you complain.
The difference here is you can just hook into the same decentralized system the publisher is using, and subvert them by finding another instance to use or even making your own! With no difference in reach or power.
Why is that bad? The seems to MUCH better for you.
This is a strawman. Commenter said anything about the right to free speech, only about the willingness to be exposed to opposing viewpoints.
We all know that Bob is not obligated to listen to Alice, and he is not required to host a venue for her opinions. But Bob's eagerness to run away to a place where there is no risk of seeing Alice's view, while not necessarily bad (if you want to live in a bubble, live in a bubble), it is _not_ a virtue.
Let me try to help: one is not illegal so it should in principle be allowed on a platform that is seeking an honest discussion. The other is a crime and can be dealt withing the framework of the law. If the person commiting crimes is behind an anonymous identity, I think that's where the problem actually lies - perhaps the administrator should be compelled by law to disclose the real person behind the anonymous profile (is the Mastodon community against that)?! If what they've done is indeed against the law, then a ban is definitely justified (and may be required by law - i.e. we're back to the rule of law, not mob rules), no one will argue against that... but what I am against is banning people simply for having opposing views, which is what we actually see happening. Do you see people complaining that someone who commits crimes online should not be banned from anything? That's not my argument or anyone else's argument, so your response comes as a complete strawman.
Frankly, if Alice is seeking honest disagreement discussion, Alice should seek to talk with people who consent to that kind of engagement with her, instead of chasing after Bob who would rather not engage. If Alice is having difficulty finding those people, maybe her source selection is simply quite uncommon; lots of highly controversial subject matter applies almost exclusively to small parts of the population, and a minority of that minority is generally available to debate on that subject.
I’m sure Alice can have spirited debate about toppings on pizza, a subject that a larger set of people are usually willing to disagree and discuss about. If she insists on trying to force a minority of a minority to debate with her, I think a friend group is fairly justified in defending Bob by ousting Alice, as Alice is unable to respect people’s basic boundaries like “can we change the subject”.
This is a commonly parroted error. The First Amendment to the US Constitution which protects freedom of expression is mostly between the gov't and you...
...but the CONCEPT of freedom of speech is an ethical concept that goes well beyond the roll of government. It is about ensuring the rights of minority speech and controversial opinions.
Speech that makes you uncomfortable can be some of the most valuable speech people need to hear.
I often find it telling when you ask someone who favors social media censorship if they would prefer themselves be shielded from uncomfortable speech, or if they specifically want everyone to be shielded.
Without fail, they want censorship for everyone else - not themselves.
If you went to your local community newsletter, asked to put in an article saying “this community is full of bigots, and none of you want to hear about it” and they deny including your article, there’s no legal recourse for you.
Sure, there’s the ideals of the marketplace of ideas, but there’s also very real restrictions on speech because society wouldn’t function if everyone was required to hear and consider every voice.
I’m also not American, so I’m no expert here obviously. I could be totally wrong on this and maybe there is legal precedent for forcing a private publication to publish something after some sort of legal free speech complaint.
In 1776, a person shouting obscenities in a pub, would get duly thrown out. He had the freedom to shout in the park, at a coffee shop, in the library, or in any of a thousand other places in town.
Today, political discourse takes places almost entirely online and via private corporations. Google isn't a pub on 2nd ave and 54th street. It's ALL THE ESTABLISHMENTS IN TOWN. ...or at least it, along with 3-4 other of the global tech oligopolies. It's important to note that while massive global tech companies are not formally part of government, they are very integrated with gov't through lobbying, gov't contracts, and direct political sponsorship, and a variety of other individual contacts and arrangements.
As a result of their SCALE of their control, they implicitly inherit some ethical obligations to allow uncomfortable speech to occur.
I don't believe in limitless speech rights - but the current limits are vague and selectively enforced and thus easily susceptible to political bias - which is the most dangerous kind of censorship.
Mastodon is decentralized at the protocol level. It's the opposite of that at the social level. The mob rule may be "decentralized", but it turns out it still sucks. Cross one extremist and get accused of being a bigot / -ist du jour, and them and their friend will run you out of town. No big deal, you say, you can always switch towns? Except no, because the extremists will follow and denounce you for your "bigotry" / -ism, and threaten to do the same to anyone willing to harbor you, and then no town will want you in, because none of them want to be cut off of everyone else. On the main subnet, it's every instance pointing a gun at every other one - even if most believe the common rules are extreme, no one trusts others enough to challenge them.
The irony is, this is basically rediscovering the lessons of past thousand years of civilization. Mastodon is the digital equivalent of a sea of towns afraid of their own people and other towns alike, due to roving parties of political officers executing criminals and wrongthinkers alike. Somewhere along the way people figured that rule of law, presumption of innocence, due process, proportionality of punishment, civilization, are nice things to have.
Anyway. Been there, done that, tried to enjoy it while pretending there is no problem, until the admin retired the instance. I don't feel like participating again. I'm off both Twitter and Mastodon. As much as I hate corporate ad-poisoned Internet, I do have to grant it that it's the more honest one - people will do bad things to each other in pursuit of ad revenue (or revenue in general), but at least they're not pretending too much. They're not bending their own minds past breaking point to feel OK with delivering mob punishment and signalling allegiance to not become targets themselves.
If the group-think and witch hunting is as hard on you as you seem to describe, I can assure you there are MANY others in the same position.
So make your own thing.
Why’s that bad? Why are you responsible for expanding the minds and exposing the group-think sheep to new viewpoints? Live in your own rebel communities. Basically like the internet has operated for the last 30 years.
The adventurous among them will venture over when they want.
Maybe. And maybe it's my age showing. But there's one other thing - the modern social media solve for a different problem than the forums and boards of yore: they're all-encompassing, topic-agnostic. They're social, as in, one identity, for everything, with everyone.
Back in the day, topical, isolated cliques were all we had. All the different mailing groups, IRC servers, phpBB boards, etc. were entirely independent of each other. Sure, I may have used the same handle on a bunch of them, but reputation - good or bad, pristine or smeared - did not propagate through the boundaries. Then social media happened, and we got used to having centralized platforms, with a single identity, for all aspects of life. That's the world of Facebook, Twitter, et al. Mastodon is just decentralizing Twitter on a protocol level - it's carrying over the expectation of single identity, of a topic-agnostic, all-encompassing platform.
> Why’s that bad? Why are you responsible for expanding their minds and exposing the group-think sheep to new viewpoints? Live in your own rebel communities. Basically like the internet has operated for the last 30 years.
Because the Internet isn't a niche hobby anymore. It is life. There's no on-line vs. off-line anymore, they're both intertwined in almost everything we do daily. In other words, it's serious. Serious, as in, standing up to worst cases of dishonesty and hatred on some board may suddenly cost you your actual job, and your family a roof over their heads.
People have tried to create more sensible set of community rules on Mastodon. Last I checked, none of those attempts were successful - mostly because anyone who tries or is seen supporting the attempt, gets shot on sight^W^W^Waccused of being hateful racist bigot wanting to harbor literal nazis. There's an inherent asymmetry here; it's the same kind of play as "would someone think of the children", except the society doesn't have antibodies for the former just yet, like it has for the latter.
You misunderstand. Being banned from a Mastodon instance doesn't mean you disappear never to be heard from again. No one is going to try to murder you. You're still allowed to participate in society and communicate. Also, the "correct worldview" in this context means not being a racist, bigoted, anti-Semitic asshole. If you find that too much of a straitjacket on your personal liberties or radically free-thinking beliefs, there are Mastodon instances that will happily accept you.
Of course, not everyone, everywhere is compelled to accept you and your speech with open arms, nor should they be. Freedom of speech and freedom of association are equal and opposite.
I agree with your point about freedom of association, but let's not pretend this is just limited to racism.
And if you support the concept of free association, what do you do when it collides with civil rights law?
What if this happens more than once? Should I reregister every month and refollow the same people again and again?
What if I set up my own server and people will decide that some of my toots are not "left" or "progressive" enough?
I'm not a sexist. I love women which is why I don't want them to be killed in the womb.
I didn't do anything in his living room. He said "we don't serve your kind here", so I left.
OK if that's the rules - fine, but don't then complain about your friends being refused service. We either have freedom of association or we don't.
Reading your own comment history here, I see you self-identify as a "honkler", which is an explicitly neo-nazi, anti-woke political identity. It's not surprising you wouldn't get along on a pro-choice instance, or even be able to refrain from trolling it. I can imagine plenty of private opinions others have that you likely object to, and that you just as likely wouldn't tolerate on your own instance if you had one - which you're free to make, as well as find a community more tolerant to your beliefs.
And that's fine. Freedom of speech means you can have yours and I can have mine, and that good fences make good neighbors.
>And if you support the concept of free association, what do you do when it collides with civil rights law?
If this has to do with a baker and a cake I'm going to be very disappointed. Your lot really needs to find new material.
> It's not surprising you wouldn't get along on a pro-choice instance, or even be able to refrain from trolling it.
If I had spoken forbidden things, I would have been kicked out. I left voluntarily.
> If this has to do with a baker and a cake I'm going to be very disappointed. Your lot really needs to find new material.
No I don't think we do. That one will serve just fine.
Civil rights trumps freedom of association, and indeed all other rights.
Wait, I can't ask you to leave my property because I don't like what you're saying? Also, freedom of association is explicitly a civil right.
As a Russian who is lost in modern english langauge: does this "honkler" thing has anything to do with https://humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk? Also a golang fediverse project.
One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.
This is why all leftists started leaving twitter when Musk took over and promised free speech (not freedom of reach), they knew instantly that the gig was up.
All censorship-based platforms, such as reddit or mastodon that has _mods_, are left wing.
Secondly, the woke left is the same in the US as it is in Europe. The west is one global entity these days. JK Rowling is hated by swedish leftists and california leftists.
Third, "it's simply not true" is not a convincing argument in the face of millions of examples. Why do you think all the biggest comedians in the US avoid colleges?
> All censorship-based platforms, such as reddit or mastodon that has _mods_, are left wing.
This seems to be relying on popular belief rather than facts, and making a lot of assumptions in regards to why particular groups would prefer particular forums. If we're drawing spurious correlations 4chan also seems to enjoy a lot more violent and illegal pornography than say reddit - can we draw conclusions from that regarding the right as well?
> Secondly, the woke left is the same in the US as it is in Europe.
You're now defining a sub group of the left. What separates the "woke" left from the regular left. or are they all one and the same in your eyes? And if so, do you think that actually aligns with everyone who calls identifies as left?
> The west is one global entity these days.
Are you American? As a Canadian I say it definitely is not, we're now at an impasse I guess?
> Why do you think all the biggest comedians in the US avoid colleges?
Who are the biggest comedians? And if they are the biggest why would they go to a college when they can fill a stadium.
If you think modern leftism is being mad about people being racist, that says more about you.
This is oversimplifying things.
Here is the example: https://gts.superseriousbusiness.org/@gotosocial/statuses/01...
>We do not work with transphobes/fascists/racists. If you open an issue or PR on our git repo and we see you are one of those things, or hang out with people like that
So I can't really be part of the team if a person whom I follow on github or somewhere else is somehow "correct worldview". I may even not be aware of this.
Not to mention that many people actually have no idea what they are talking about and use words like "nazis" only to describe abstract "bad people" as opposed to their image of "good people"
Example from the same link:
>we are a strictly antifascist organization. we have zero tolerance for fascism or anything that enables or allows it. (yes that includes capitalism)
Apparently I won't be able to participate if I follow Bill Gates blog.
If you are against gay marriage there’s nothing at all toxic or hateful about that. Hell, I know gay people who were against gay marriage when the public debate was at its peak.
Where it’s toxic is if any time a gay person talks about wedding planning, posts a meme about the phrase “her wife” having good energy, or shares art of two guys at the altar you appear in the replies to get on your soapbox and start an argument about gay marriage. Nobody asked. Alternatively, just like HN, if your account is entirely flamebait about gay marriage nobody wants to see that and you’ll get the hammer.
Where it’s hate is when you express the that you’re against gay marriage because you don’t want to see gay people to be out in public, you think affection between two men is disgusting and unnatural, you call their sexual orientation a lifestyle choice, call gay people pedos, or otherwise pick on, doxx, belittle, or dehumanize gay people.
Like y’all, it isn’t that hard to expressly minority opinions without being toxic or hateful. I express minority opinions constantly and have never once even been worried about the banhammer.
<< Like y’all, it isn’t that hard to expressly minority opinions without being toxic or hateful.
You can, but it becomes a game of using language that it is harder to pinpoint ( hence silliness like Xi banning 8 for infinity ). All the while majority opinion can be as hateful as is deemed necessary ( and no one complains because it is the majority ) creating yet another echo-chamber we so sorely need.
FWIW, this trend is now being challenged.
edit: I like calling spade a spade. You can dislike it all you want, but I am personally less and less willing to comply with other person's sensibilities[1].
[1]https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/09/19/224183763...
Which is why dirty commie liberals like me want to get a national hate speech law passed just like other countries have.
Canada (which passed in the 1989)
Ireland (passed in 1989)
New Zeland (passed in 1993)
Germany, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, UK, Iceland, Denmark
I moved from the old country partly cuz of Lèse-majesté laws regarding ruling elite and clergy. Forgive me, but other countries having X type laws does not automatically constitute a valid argument to enact anything similar here. I now personally see it as an indirect way to circumvent original framework of this country having failed to do it directly.
In short, I am going to use a very, very old argument. If everyone jumped off of a bridge, would you do it too?
<< is more free when it's not stifled by hate.
Fascinating statement and I would love you to elaborate further, because to me it is contradictory.
Freedom of speech is called freedom of speech for a reason. It is not called freedom with asterisk to account for other person's perception of your communication. That is not freedom. It is the opposite of freedom. Frankly, what you are proposing inevitably results in an echo chamber. It is cool if that if it is what you want. It is not what I want.
You seem reasonable. I am willing to engage. Convince me 'free speech' is more free when it is restricted.
Both sides actually want free speech, the blue side just argues that speech is more free when it's not stifled by hate.
Is the most alarming doublethink I have seen in some time.
I don't really see it as doublethink. There's plenty of examples were rules make people more free. Our whole system of laws is based on that idea.
I can drive on public roads and get where I want to quickly and safely because we all follow traffic laws. I have greater freedom to travel because there are rules.
I can mostly (well during the day at least, give it up for being a woman) walk around freely and completely defenseless because of the laws about assault, murder, and theft.
Right now we're on a forum where good discussion can be had because the mods will drop the banhammer if you start posting hate. If you know that posting anything about a controversial topic or just being a person who's identity is controversial at the moment will bring out a tidal wave of green accounts hurling insults against, you likely wouldn't post. Would you feel comfortable existing in the public sphere as a trans person if when you tweet you about any topic you got a hundred replies telling you to kill yourself already? Would you want to hang out in an IRC channel where any time you talk someone says, "shut up woman, get back to the kitchen?"
If you believe your right to swing your arm ends where my face begins then whether you think it's right to restrict hate speech or not I think there should at least be some recognition that my position is at least logically consistent because I see hate speech as an act that restricts others' speech.
You, an individual who does not want to see this can set ignore on that someone.
<< logically consistent because I see hate speech as an act that restricts others' speech.
It is consistent if you accept the logic leap made to assume restriction on speech somehow enhances it. Personally, I am not convinced, because I think you confuse safety ( or mental comfort ) with freedom.
Maybe the word freedom has become too overloaded with meaning in English language. Maybe we should use something else:
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
Also, as a very practical measure, even if we do assume that hate speech actually does what it is supposed to do ( identify hate and remove hateful content ), do you really think it is smart to hide it from public view? And we did not even touch that 'hate speech' has recently come, not unlike nazis' to mean 'anything I don't like'.
[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/corruption-index?c... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Brigade
I didn't use being against "gay marriage" as the example though. I used being against "gay people" as the example.
I've been banned from several subreddits for simply disagreeing with majority views, and pretty much every time it was in a neutral or respectful tone.
-----
PS: the entire concept of "toxic" seems "new age-y" and pseudo-religious. People refer to things being toxic as a substitute for "evil" and "taboo" - stuff that brings uncomfortable or negative associations, and in this manner they are embedding their projection of a civil religion onto others, which is an act of aggression in itself in a medium that is supposed not to have such rules.
Note that they say "toxic" and not just "rude" which would imply a certain common, traditional culture that most people would be expected to know and to some extent abide by. Toxic takes the place of the figure of "rudeness", "bad manners" and "heresy" but instead of based off a longstanding tradition, culture and religion, based of a newfangled atheist civil religion that a lot of people simply don't accept or don't want to play ball with. Their very presence and their discourse is seen as contaminating society, thus "toxic" - this is exactly equivalent to the moral worldview of a religious fanatic.
And those "heretics" are dealt with with medieval intolerance as there is no discussion to be had on these "values" from their point of view. You see in this people the fervour, hatred and emotional response you'd expect from an inquisitor who just witnessed wanton heresy or a taboo being broken, and that is exactly how more often than not mods behave in these platforms. Their interest in expanding their ideology and protecting themselves and others from heretics motivates them to put a lot of free labour in these endeavours, which is hard to compete with.
Trans person: *exists and makes a post*
"Honest debater": I don't think you should...
And they get banned. Not everything is or was an invitation to "debate".
Like, if you're only there to argue, nobody is going to want to hang out with you, sorry. Plenty of good debates happen, including people with differing political views, but you have to bring something besides hate to the table.
Of course, then those people claim they were "censored" for "being conservative" or whatever, but more than likely they were just banned because their only point in registering was to attack other people.
[1] https://mashable.com/article/twitter-reply-guys
[2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sealioning-int...
People said exactly the same thing about open relays and spam filters some twenty years ago. A very famous Internet personality kept an open relay around for many years until there was literally no one left to federate with. I worked at a place who thought themselves obligated to keep around copies of all incoming messages for some period of time.
Who are you to decide between signal and noise, and so on, the discussion went. Turns out that's useless discourse. Because similar logic goes the other way around, who are you to decide what I keep?
I am not obliged to read email from all senders, and above all, I do not have to explain myself and I don't have to keep them stored as to not infringe their right of expression.
Every decentralized protocol with any real world traction allows every actor to filter traffic in a permissionless manner. You can call it righteousness or as amoral as you'd like, but until you can present an alternative system that's how it's going to work.
1. Spam is filtered, not censored. I can still see spam in my "Spam" folder if I want to. Mastodon doesn't merely filter "bad" content; it prevents you from seeing it even if you want to. It would be the equivalent of email actively deleting spam, and "spam" includes an email that suggests vaccines have side effects.
2. It's easy to see that it's not for the benefit of users. They could easily mark things as toxic (perhaps by category, or by who marked it as toxic), and let users filter out what they want. It's not about helping users. It's about controlling users.
3. "Spam" does not include contrary political viewpoints. There's a difference between a viagra ad. I don't want my uncle sending me political rants, but I certainly don't want google deciding I can't read them.
You can pick a different server if you don't like the censorship on the one you're on, that's the whole point
To the spammers it's all great content you should be getting. No one's deleting your messages on your own Mastodon server, they're just not copying it to their server, what's the problem?
Today, social media are all-encompassing, and Internet is now a critical part of normal life. Getting banned from one modern discussion board can easily get you banned from every other one too, and/or the fallout may impact "offline" aspects of your life. At best, it'll make a bunch if things inconvenient. At worst, it may destroy your relationships, your career, and push you into poverty.
Or, in other words: getting banned from a group in the 1990s or early 2000s was like getting a formal reprimand in your record at school. Today, it's starting to look more like getting a criminal record in the police database.
Who are these people? The protocol is decentralised, if you don't like it, spin your own instance! 5-10$ a month and you get more than enough for a few thousand people.
Just so we’re clear here, Florida wants to ban children from discussing their periods but also wants student athletes to report their periods, in case you were still unclear about how fucking dumb these people are.
I run a politics forum and the one rule is no name calling/insulting people (famous or a forum member), groups, ideology etc. It is incredibly civil. It turns out 1) that is the only rule you need to keep civility 2) it makes for a really boring place as most people just want to name call and not actually discuss politics.
To me there are basically two sides to this, and I'll outline them with two examples.
One is when people decide to have a debate on whether or not trans women should be allowed in women sports. In this case, banning people who have the "wrong" opinion is sort of dystopian. At least with the decentralized social network, you can't really ban them, just silence them on your particular server, so in a sense it's less dystopian than centralized social media. But I frankly agree with you on this, because it makes having discussions on certain subjects impossible, which isn't great.
The other example is when someone posts pictures of Warhammer models they have painted, and someone starts commenting on their gender, race, religion or whatever that is completely unrelated to the original post. Or when someone is being plain hateful in any context. In those cases, the way I see it is that the hateful person is breaking the social contract in which we all agree to be respectful to each other. Once you break that contract, then it no longer applies to you. This is the way the real world functions, and it's how the internet used to function before the ability to moderate assholes was centralized and sort of removed.
Specifically, for the "sin" of defending people who choose to also remain at Twitter because we still have some people we care about over there (in my case, lots of Black folks who haven't made the switch.)
And for that, I've been called, e.g. a Nazi.
Oh stop with the wo is me… you could always change your views. I mean who doesn’t like the progressive ideals of inclusion and fairness? (And no, inclusion doesn’t mean I have to accommodate racists or nazis or other alt-right trolls, it also means though, that the crazies on the left spewing hate shouldn’t apply either).
I'm not sure what your definition of 'town square' is: are you sure you're not looking for a town Coliseum?
Most people are not online to debate controversial topics with anonymous strangers.
the very format is useless for anything other than flame wars and bait, culture wars and the occasional announcement - for all of that, going to a smaller network is pointless, it just reduces your reach and your scope; if it's worth the effort, you maintain accounts side by side
of course the most important thing to keep "meaningful conversations" is to have not the biggest but "the adequate" group of people participating, and for this... well, it's entirely specific on the topics and demographics you are interested in, the platform is almost irrelevant in the technical sense, even in the sense of its general policies to some extent as people move from platform to platform in such chaotic fashion
Here’s the thing though: not all ideas are created equal. You want equal airtime for contrary views, but those contrary views are
1. less popular statistically
2. against the interests of the working class
The alternative worldview to progressivism is basically pro-capital, anti-minority, anti-equality nonsense.
You’re unhappy that progressives hurl insults at regressives, but it should be noted that they are not falling into the trap of the paradox of tolerance.
When one breaks the social contract, they’re no longer under the protections of that contract, and that’s what happens when the regressive ideology sends hate toward the poor, women, LGBTQ+ people, immigrants, and other similarly disenfranchised groups.
The alternative to progressive taxation is regressive taxation. The alternative to equal rights is unequal rights. The alternative to workers’ rights are corporations’ rights. The alternative to freedom of religion is theocracy. The alternative to body autonomy is control by others. The alternative to the scientific method is assumption and ignorance. The alternative to environmental protection is environmental destruction. These contrasting ideologies are not of equal value, objectively.
In other words, if I make a statement like “people shouldn’t own slaves” there is no contrary view that should be entertained.
You want someone to tolerate the intolerance of your desired contrary worldview, but again, you should know that it’s not hypocritical for the tolerant and accepting people to not accept your views.
So long as you lean to progressive worldviews and see insult slinging at those that don't see your way not as being toxic, but rather just expressions of righteous indignation... sure, I could buy that line. A quick perusal on the front page of mastodon.social had only of either relatively neutral topics or various progressive tropes on the news of the day. No contrary views were there at all. Perhaps this is what you mean: it's your bubble, so it's cozy and non-toxic. A safe-space of sorts for all right minded people.
I do agree with you: Twitter is a digital hellscape. Of course, I deleted my account half a decade or so ago for this reason and to be fair, it's not changed. It might now have a different flavor with Musk, but still as toxic a place as it was before him. I can't see Mastodon as being much different and with that I'll do us both a favor a stay away from there as well.