Also https://reclaimthenet.org/mastodon-blocks-gab/

‘Decentralized’ Social Network Mastodon Moves to Censor Free Speech Platform Gab
14
European Council
PAUL ELLIS/AFP/Getty
Allum Bokhari9 Jul 20190
3:37
Mastodon, a theoretically decentralized online platform, is moving to limit the activities of Gab, a social network that closely adheres to First Amendment principles.

Mastodon is an open-source social network that theoretically enables a decentralized network of online communities to thrive. Anyone can set up a Mastodon server, appoint moderators, and add it to the network of communities known as the “Fediverse.”

However, although its technology is built around the principles of decentralization and federated content moderation, Mastodon’s leadership leans to the left.

The project was set up in part because left-wing techies thought content moderation on platforms like Twitter didn’t go far enough, and wanted to allow left-wingers to create their own decentralized versions of it with tighter banning policies. “Mastodon is like Twitter without the Nazis,” declared Sarah Jeong (famous for her racist tweets about white people) in 2017.

However, the very decentralized principles that allowed SJWs to set up Mastodon-based communities with trigger warnings and censorship on steroids also allowed free speech platform Gab to create a community based on First Amendment principles. By using Mastodon’s open source technology to provide a new mobile app to its users, Gab would theoretically be able to bypass Apple and Google’s anti-competitive bans of its original smartphone app.

The left-wingers behind Mastodon and many of the smartphone-based platforms built with the project’s software have swiftly acted to contain Gab.

Via ReclaimTheNet:

    “Tusky (Android) and Toot! (iOS) have blacklisted Gab’s domains from their login screens. Gab users will not be able to use these apps to access or post from Gab. We do not currently know if any other apps are doing the same. Mastodon itself allows instance owners to decide which domains to block. Most servers in the Fediverse are already blocking the Gab domains and we have done the same a mastodon.social.”

    All this comes as Gab has tried to work around the blocks it had faced in launching its apps on Apple’s and Google’s app stores – by releasing a new, open-source, Mastodon-based version on July 4 – and making use of the common protocol underlying the open technologies to allow its users to sign onto the platform and use it on their phones, as well as on the web.

    Reacting to Mastodon’s restrictive move, Gab’s Twitter account said that the Mastodon community was “sabotaging their own app developers with mass flagging/reporting of any app that does not block Gab’s domain.”

Because Mastodon is an open source software project, spread out among a myriad of independent servers, attempting to censor Gab across the Fediverse is much like attempting to censor Gab across the Internet — to remove Gab from the web, every nameserver and hosting provider would have to agree to shut them down (and many have).

To remove Gab from the Fediverse, every host of a Mastodon server would have to agree to ban Gab — as a result, panicked left-wing Mastodon users are flagging and reporting any Mastodon-based app that doesn’t agree to ban Gab. Merely by existing on the network, Gab has triggered a civil war within it.

Thanks to Gab, the people behind the Mastodon project are now at war with their own founding principles of decentralization. In abandoning their founding principles to pursue a strategy of censorship, they follow in the footsteps of the “Good Censors” at Google.

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Posted on Rocksolid Light

AnonUser wrote on Tue, 09 July 2019 22:03

Thanks to Gab, the people behind the Mastodon project are now at war with their own founding principles of decentralization. In abandoning their founding principles to pursue a strategy of censorship, they follow in the footsteps of the "Good Censors" at Google.

-- Posted on Rocksolid Light

Projects and companies can do what they want they're not restricted by any free speech laws but it's still a stupid idea to censor based on politics views.
If you can't handle reading or just skipping words from people you disagree with maybe that's something you need to work on with yourself.

two related good reads on the subject discussed:

http://opal.i2p/blog/federated-social-networking.xht
http://opal.i2p/fediverse.xht

i don't agree with everything written, but it reads well and has some good infos.
Posted on def2

( www.codito.de ) & eric ( www.snake-basket.de )

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Posted on def2

Projects and companies can do what they want they're not restricted by any free speech laws

Exactly this. If I run a service, it is my call who gets to use it and who doesn't. This has nothing to do with free speech.
Also: censoring a federated service ? Srsly ? So the complaint here is that Mastodon does not let Gab use its infrastructure ? Come on, get real.

but it's still a stupid idea to censor based on politics views. If you can't handle reading or just skipping words from people you disagree with maybe that's something you need to work on with yourself.

I would agree if this was actually about politics. But quite a lot of these people do not voice political opinions, they are just gangsters, thugs of the worst kind, and Gab was built as a safe haven for them.
Common statements include the call for violence against individuals or groups, praising the glory of the 3rd Reich, defamation of whole groups of people (the muslims, the jews, the $target group) and so on. This is not politics, it is just good old hate speech, coming from a couple of good old dickheads (look at the end of the text for the list of prominent people using this service, and check out their speeches and texts, if you don't believe me).

If those people ever come to a relevant power position, free speech is usually the first thing that they get rid of.

See the picture attached to illustrate how this works, and why, if you are into free speech, it is in your interest to keep them at bay.

trw

List of Gab users taken from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network

High-profile participants include former Breitbart writer and polemicist Milo Yiannopoulos,[82] former British National Party leader Nick Griffin,[83] Australian Neo-Nazis Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson,[22] formerly anonymous Twitter user Douglass Mackey (pseudonym "Ricky Vaughn"),[5][37][84] white supremacists Richard B. Spencer,[13][5] Tila Tequila,[38] Vox Day,[85] and Christopher Cantwell.[86] Far-right political parties and party candidates including Britain First[87] and UKIP candidates such as Mark Meechan[8] and Carl Benjamin[88] are other prominent participants.

Posted on def4



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