LucifarGundam @lucifargundam@social.cleverlibre.org

Just found Ukrainian "Vaccine" alcohol in the shop

@VictorVenema

We get about 30 - 50 new users per week. Of that we might get, at most, one nazi a year in the 5+ years we have existed. That's 1 in 2080 users that turn out to be nazis. I'd say thats a pretty good track record, especially when we are quick to block them so they never cause a problem.

The incident I speak of with the scholar instance was from the days before gab was even on the fediverse, it was some years back. But it was the start of it all. I will try to explain what happened.

The scholar instance had started blocking many of its LGBT users largely for frivilous reasons. Things revolving around personal opinions between its admin and the users. Many of them started flocking to QOTO as a result and there was a short lived movement on the server of users protesting their admin and suggesting the users come to QOTO. This was all before GAB was on the scene, so we are talking a long time now.

This caused the QOTO community to have a significant LGBT lean, which I was very happy to see in its own right. However it wasnt a huge movement, I think QOTO's numbers were well below 10% of what they are today at this point. Then came the GAB server and the isolate GAB movement which eventually led to the exodus.

At the time of GAB debates across the fediverse began regarding suspending GAB. Some people decided to suspend GAB and then suspend anyone who didnt suspend GAB, and anyone who didnt suspect them, etc... others, the ones loosely called "free speech" decided to leave that power in the hands of the users. QOTO at this point was undecided on what stance to take but our policy was still open until we decided. What we did see is that QOTO was seeing a huge surge in new traffic that I didnt understand, i later found out this surge, which lasted weeks, was mostly LGBT users, but I didnt find out why until later.

Since QOTO is a democratically run server and moderators are ellected we thought it fitting to put the policy decision up to the community. It was during this disucssion I discovered that the huge LGBT exodus we were seeing was due to LGBT users fleeing from servers employing extensive block policies on other servers. The reason, as they explained it to me, was that they wanted to be able to observe certain bad actors in the GAB community (such as milo) who might be doxxing LGBT members or otherwise doing things that put their lives at risk. They felt being able to see this (rather than having the content blocked) let them warn people of being doxxed and generally let them take actions to secure their safety. Not being able to see this information from their local server simply but their lives at risk.

The problem was, however, that most servers that took a free speech stance, as you rightfully point out, were filled with biggots of many flavors. So obviously they would feel equally unsafe going to a server like FSE. QOTO however, from the earlier incident with scholar, had a reputation among the LGBT who went through that drama of being welcoming and accepting place for LGBT. So they really saw us as the only option in the whole fediverse that was a "safe space" for LGBT while still holding open-federation policy.

This ultimately led to two things, the mass exodus of LGBT to QOTO itself, but also our policy to continue to protect that LGBT community and consider their safety in our own policy making, and that means free speech.

Why do you think it is that our about us page uses the terminology "an inclusive free speech instance"? You say free speech is a trigger word for biggots, well what about the word inclusive, how do they feel about that?

@realcaseyrollins