finally getting more time off from work versus the 60-70 hour weeks i was pulling before, so i started participating in a game jam and trying to have a presence on fedi again.

There is no should or shouldn’t, they’ve always had and been entitled to that choice. People who develop and host those platforms can make whatever choice they want.

ActivityPub/the Fediverse is only a protocol. If you philosophically disagree with how a platform makes use of that protocol, then you can (theoretically) just use another platform.

not so hot because things are tense around my house, but i’m moving out towards the end of the week so hopefully it’ll be over soon.

Genuine question: what happened last time?

Yup! If the software supports it, instance admins can usually add relays from their control panel.

It does work that way, but Mastodon and some other microblogging software like Firefish (fka Calckey), Pleroma, etc. can also use relays to populate their federated timelines.

Cloaks are really a cool idea and I miss them, not that I was ever alive for them being en vogue haha

A great look despite the obvious hazard of them getting caught on things

omg happy belated birthday!! 🤠🥳

i give my week a 4/5, been busy the past few days trying to set up a Firefish instance with my partner which has been just awesome and i’m super excited to open it up and get people on it! rly inspired by beehaw’s community-building style.

in less awesome news i’m moving back home at the end of the week and i’m not looking forward to it. moving is so stressful and i don’t want to be back home with my dad either lol.

Ok lol.

This is pretty much the position we took when clearing that comment thread — I didn’t scrutinize between ideologies, I removed a variety of comments just for not being nice or for being potentially inciting/inflammatory. I had to remove several comments in that thread by liberals as well for being unproductive or even toxic.

Only nit I have about your comment is that “sanitized space” is a term we came up with for the mod philosophy. We explicitly meant it in the context of removing “not nice” comments. It expresses the fact that we can’t perfectly clear the space of anything which an individual user might find offensive or harmful. The standards for gauging safety/harm in a space vary from user to user; our moderation has to consider our users collectively rather than just one of them. This is part of why Beehaw is not a sanitized space and aims, rather, to be what one might describe as a safe space, a brave space, an accountable space, or other similar term.

Really just putting this out there for the benefit of others, as it seems some are mistaken about the word “sanitized” and what we really meant by it.

VS Code, but may switch to VSCodium or Neovim eventually.

Not to mention that thread about Affirmative Action, in which the comments seemed to espouse a purely Black point of view, not taking into account how it may have a positive effect on Asian admissions, and completely ignoring the discussion of how admissions should be merit-based no matter what

Honestly, there was no shortage of people arguing the type of position you’re discussing, but if you see a lack of it, you’re more than welcome to post/comment.

I don’t have high hopes for any sort of meaningful discussion happening here.

Then have discussion elsewhere, nobody is forcing you to post or participate here. You already said yourself that you have an account on another instance because you feel that way. There’s no need to come here and wax poetic about how you don’t see any “real discussion” happening, and doing so isn’t going to dramatically alter moderation policy. If you disagree with a discussion, again, feel free to post or comment. If you don’t think any real discussion will come of that or you disagree with moderation policy, you’re welcome to find community elsewhere.

As an aside:

Asian students […] historically place a much higher importance on education than the rest of the world

This isn’t really historical so much as it is stereotyping. Asian people aren’t a monolith. We don’t all align culturally, and we don’t all have the same attitudes. We aren’t all treated the same as other Asian people, nor do people in Asian diasporas all have the same socioeconomic outcomes.

Respectfully, I just don’t think this is the right post for this kind of humor.

I use mostly the web app. Memmy, Mlem, Jerboa, Liftoff, etc. all look cool, but to be honest, I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to having an app on my phone like I did with Reddit. I think I want my engagement with Lemmy to be more on a “when I feel like it” basis than a “when a push notification summons me” basis.

Yeah, it’s generally the etiquette/rule on any of our news subhives to post archive links alongside any link. I appreciate this also because I feel like good journalism should rarely if ever be behind a paywall. Hopefully people on other subhives and other Lemmy instances will do the same. :)

This person’s upvoting beans, and you’re all just going to do nothing about it? What a sick world we live in.

It seems like it’s implying that the real problem is that people are too sensitive / too easily offended and not the person initiating the harmful content.

“Safe space” as a term comes from particular considerations about marginalized, especially LGBTQ+, people inhabiting academic space. The use of “safe” isn’t necessarily about the participants’ sensitivities so much as it’s in reference to a facilitator’s (such as a teacher) trustworthiness. As a queer person, can I come out to the person facilitating this space (and, possibly, to the others in this space) without fear of identity-based psychological/emotional or physical harm/violence? And can I trust that this facilitator will respect my identity and not harm me in any way?

“Sanitized space” — well, that isn’t really a term which comes from anywhere. We created it as a convenience for drawing comparison between other types of space.

Of course, the “paradox of tolerance” is something many of us are well acquainted with, and I think it’s always relevant when talking about bigotry. A space can’t be safe, sanitized, brave, accountable, tolerant, etc. unless we, as a rule, do not tolerate bigotry.

The problem with a “tolerant space” is that simple tolerance (with respect to identity) can imply some level of disagreeableness. Many people, especially queer people and people of color, don’t want to just be tolerated, as this can convey that our identities are something to be ‘put up with’ or ‘endured’ by others, when it should be bigotry that is the actual burden. In this case, what I personally want is acceptance and affirmation — to have my identity accepted, to have difference be welcomed, and to be affirmed in my experiences (especially with discrimination and bigotry).

Of course, you could say that leaving certain harmful content up makes a platform less tolerant, but as was raised in our philosophy article, what is the bar for harmful? Many of those who wrote this post, including myself, are frequent targets for bigotry, but our personal standards for ‘harmful’ aren’t universally applicable. Plus, it’s a lot harder to gauge the harm of long-form posts/comments than to moderate, say, messages in a chatroom.

The other aspect of this is: I hate having to wait on moderators and admins to take action, and I don’t want to put all the onus/responsibility for shaping the space on them. It’s glaring to me if other users don’t say or do anything about it and just leave it alone. A moderator can remove the content and ban the offending person, but it doesn’t get rid of the sour taste in my mouth that the others alongside me saw no need to do anything, which raises questions for me of their trustworthiness in handling other, more unclear instances of bigotry or more subtle prejudice.

I’ve been in spaces before which were highly vigilant in removing bigots and their speech, but even without them, what about the attitudes of others in the space? If they don’t take the right tone or approach to bigotry before the mod acts, it’s harder to trust them to listen when one of them does something less obviously harmful.

You may personally have not seen anything harmful on here, but I have seen stuff I would consider outright or subtly harmful, some of it directed at people like me. Honestly, I feel more assured when I can see that others have shown strong resistance to that kind of speech, which is what I’m really looking for to determine if a space is safe for me. Whether the content itself gets removed after that fact becomes of less consequence to me.

I’m personally more a fan of building an “accountable space”:

Accountability means being responsible for yourself, your intentions, words, and actions. It means entering a space with good intentions, but understanding that aligning your intent with action is the true test of commitment.

Accountable space guidelines allow for allies and marginalized communities to agree on a set of actionable behaviours/actions during the discussion to show allyship in real-time and after the event. It allows participants to align their well-meaning intentions with impact through a collective set of guidelines.

Accountable space guidelines do not place an unfair burden of bravery. They do not create mythical promises of safety and unicorns. They place an equal amount of onus for all to behave equitably and inclusively, to foster a deeper understanding of diverse lived experiences in real-time. (source)

With the Fediverse, you can have your biological and technological distinctiveness and eat it too! Perfection for everyone.

lemmy.blahaj.zone might have some of what you’re looking for. Not sure if they offer anything specifically filling the same niche as r/me_irlgbt, but I used to be subscribed to [email protected]. (Overloaded my feed though sadly so that’s why I unsubbed.)