Honestly, I don’t need to see reasons. Or rather, I already see the reasons. What I don’t see any reason for is staying unless you’re a fascist.

Every time someone posts something on that place or a link to there, I just assume they are the sort of person who is fine being in the room with Nazis.

AI isn’t the enemy, though, and we aren’t the ones being grifted—that would be companies who think they can make tons of money replacing people with AI. It’s a reasonable useful tool/fun toy/interesting curiosity in certain circumstances. And for an end user it doesn’t use any more power than a video game. But it’s a tool for craftsmen and folks who understand the limitations, not a replacement for workers. And it sure as hell isn’t a production feature. Anyone looking to make money baking AI into consumer products is an idiot and going to lose their hat.

That’s not the monster model, though. But yes, I run AI locally (barely on my 1660). What I can run locally is pretty decent in limited ways, but I want to see the o1 competitor.

Cheaper AI isn’t the pop we want. We want companies to stop trying to use AI for every god damn thing it is terrible at. We don’t want cheaper AI that’s just going to be baked into more stuff.

I went to go install it this morning to check it out, but I had to decline when I read the privacy policy. I might check it out on my desktop where I have a lot more tools to ensure my anonymity, but I’m not installing it on my phone. There is not one scrap of data you generate that they aren’t going to hoover up, combine with data they get from anyone who will sell it to them, and then turn around and resell it.

I’m sure other apps are just as egregious, which is one reason I’ve been deliberately moving away from native apps to WPAs. Yes, everything you can possibly do on the internet is a travesty for privacy, but I’m not going to be on the leading edge of giving myself to be sold.

I’m not a mod and there was a lot more context in the thread. I didn’t look at any other history, but as a user I’d’ve ignored it and moved on. I also disagree with your stance and I have to separate my dislike of what you have to say with whether I think it crosses a line, but also making sure I’m not erring too far the other way.

At the end of the day, you were arguing in favor of a fascist policy and it’s not at all clear from the context I saw that you argued in good faith. I can see why a mod might make that call, but permanent ban is not one I’d’ve made. But also I can’t see how many other reports folks have made. I don’t know how many times they’ve been borderline and decided not to act.

Mods aren’t just enforcers of civility, they are curators of a social space. I have frequently supported mod actions that others saw as capricious or uneven just because someone was a big asshole in a space and I thought they made everything a worse place to hang out. In fact, on those occasions it was generally someone I’d blocked myself already.

So if you are frequently an argumentative asshole in that space, I’d have banned. If you were just having a bad day, I’d have let it go with at most a cooldown. But if I modded a large board where people are frequently contentious and I had a large backlog and I didn’t recognize you, there’s every chance I’d have glanced at that thread, wanted to keep everything calm and happy, and booted the person arguing pro-fasc talking points out of caution and mistrust.

I’m trying to give both sides a little grace here. I’ve never been a mod. I have no idea what it’s like. But I do support folks curating a space they think people will enjoy discussion and reading, and in the fediverse there are plenty of other places to go or you could start a new one of your own. You have infinite options and have been booted from one. Because the scope of a ban is limited in a way it wouldn’t be in a non-federated platform, I’m giving more leeway to the mods here.

Which comes back to my original point. You got removed from one space. That’s society warning you that you’re stepping into that gray area. That’s okay. Being opinionated and disagreeing with the zeitgeist are things I respect. I am not afraid to register my own disagreement, but I do it and take my downvotes and move on. I don’t stick around and argue the point when clearly folks aren’t having it. I made the point to readers who might not have a dog in the fight that it’s okay to disagree and in the end those are the only people you’re ever going to reach. You’re not going to argue me into agreeing DEI needs to be abolished, though I’d here arguments about how you’d do it better if you had a more cogent and novel than the fascist “do nothing and everything will be fine.” You’re not disagreeing to win me over, you’re disagreeing to not let the group-think go unchallenged. So you challenge it and move on, and I think you avoid bans and prevent an echo chamber.

Normally I’d try to edit this down in size as I’m sure I rambled a bit, but I don’t have time. FWIW I haven’t downvoted you because I don’t think you’ve been an asshole here, even if I disagree with you. Good luck, mate.

Or rainbows. There are all kinds of flight attendants.

I addressed the slippery slope argument exactly as I meant to. If you find yourself repeatedly getting censored due to anti-Nazi sentiment, either go somewhere with looser tolerance or check yourself and ask what you are doing that crosses the line. I don’t see a problem here. An echo chamber is a problem when that’s the only information you are getting. Sometimes, it’s just a reprieve from spending time in uncomfortable spaces.

Regarding your specific case, I looked at the modlog for that and that doesn’t change my response at all. Right now, fascism is ascendant and you are an apologist for one of their policies.

Frankly, this is not the environment to be splitting hairs. For example, one can be anti-Islam (either as an atheist or adherent of another faith) but specifically attacking Palestinians over their faith while Israel is committing genocide against them is obviously going to be seen as taking a fascist/Zionist/pro-genocide (take your pick) stance.

Every battle doesn’t need to be fought all the time, and for anyone who struggles with that, it’s not surprising that such contributions are going to be unwelcome.

This might seem like a personal attack, and if so I apologize for lacking the skill to say this more gently. I assure you I put effort into trying to be neutral and helpful.

I used to think this way, but no. Nazis should be shunned and banned and feel unwelcome everywhere. No one should ever think their rhetoric is harmless or ignorable. Those who tolerate Nazis enable them.

And yeah, folks can wring their hands about slippery slopes and where we draw lines, but the beauty of federation is that if someone is too loose or too draconian, we can go somewhere with more agreeable policies. We can decide as a society where the line is drawn, and it’ll be fuzzy but as speech gets closer to Naziism, it will be rejected more and more places, as it should be.

In America, we believe ignorance is just as valid as education. They are simply alternate points of view. Furthermore, validating—even celebrating—one another’s ignorance is vital to our culture. We will beat facts into submission through sheer force of will or die trying.