@Ryle i'm sorry, but to echo many comments: this is just a smokescreen for qoto bullshit. you are actively promoting a group of people that hurts others and is gleeful about it. nobody is thrilled to eat this poison pill. it does not matter how many uwus it gets packaged in. UFoI has been poison from the beginning.

qoto is a known instance of harassers who get around blocks and employ kiwifarm tactics by default. it is not just asking one person to step down that will fix it - it is the entire ecosystem upon which UFoI is based upon.

if you ally yourself with such people, all UFoI will be is a blocklist for instances who already know qoto is harmful and don't wish to further endanger their users. this is not a misunderstanding. this is not something already addressed in the FAQ. this is not something that can even be addressed with more red tape in the UFoI charter. this is inherent to UFoI's character, and also the character of those associating with them.

if you are pretending to say you are listening, ACTUALLY LISTEN.

this is not a misunderstanding. this is straight-up you getting snookered by a hustler and not wanting to admit it.

for further information on why qoto, and thus ufoi, sucks, please see:

https://elekk.xyz/@wigglytuffitout/109485960016879391 , https://elekk.xyz/@wigglytuffitout/109486010723247054 , https://elekk.xyz/@wigglytuffitout/109486047397382424

let me also be blunt to the point of near-cruelty:

do you really think after adopting kiwifarms tactics, gleefully violating consent, using trolling tactics, and demanding that everyone justify their existences while being continually exposed to harmful content...

is going to stop at just what you find acceptable targets?

you're a furry leading a furry instance. do you want to go ask kiwifarms what they think about furries? they make the ol' 4chan standby of "yiff in hell, furfag" seem like a charmingly quaint slogan. it is not a matter of IF this viciousness will be turned against you and your users. it is WHEN.

heed the warnings of those already hurt by these bad actors, or find yourself torn to shreds by them. and when you do, you will realize that you have been the boy crying wolf this whole time - anyone willing to rescue you will have long stopped listening, because you explicitly alienated them and told them to stop caring. these people glorify the deaths of not-like-us. guess what having a fursona makes you to them? Not-Like-Us. you can choose your own doom if you like, but when they cheer on your suicide, do not expect to be saved by those you are currently signing up to be co-abuser to.

after all, you've signed up to be part of their abuse.

@Ryle at the very least, please can this sanctimonious false-confusion. you know very well why people don't like this endeavor.

it is, at best, unnecessary red tape that makes the entire process more confusing, while meaning there is no fast response of moderator actions, in essence giving us all the downsides of centralization while there are none of the upsides.

at worst, it is a deliberate channel for harassers, bigots, and bad actors to make sure they have their claws in their victims for as long as possible. ("oh, you want me to stop calling you a cunt while chanting how you should slit your wrists? you didn't fill out the correct form in triplicate, so now the governing body is mad at you. remember it's up the road not across the street, bitch! hey guys, let's keep going until she stops posting! we need to keep up our numbers for how many people we've killed with our harassment!" - literally the modus operandi of those who you are seeking to champion, and literally what is emboldened by the must-follow-procedure nature of the organization you are promoting.)

stop being surprised people don't want any of that.

it's not misunderstanding. it's not something that you can say 'read the FAQ' about. it's not something that can even be solved by one or two people stepping down. it is not other people being unreasonable with snap judgements. it is not so inexplicable as to how you're getting misunderstood.

there's no misunderstandings. there's just people fully understanding what's going on.

while you pretend to not.

hey, did i mention that qoto as an instance is built upon sealioning as harassment? going "i'm just asking questions, why are you mad" so hard that one becomes simply JAQing off? if you're trying to convince us that you're not following qoto's harassment policies, then why are you employing them so hard?

stop doing this little pantomime of being shocked and confused as to why people don't like it. you know why they don't. they've explained, numerous times, here and on reddit. you even have the downvotes to prove it. you know what the community thinks of this initiative. you know the objections they have, because you don't have answers for those.

stop pretending that you were going to get anything else.

and for god's sake, quit tagging this in the fediblock tag. all you are doing is showing that you are more dedicated to your own trolling tactics of false bafflement than actually listening - and actually respecting that this is a space you share with people, not one where you can vote yourself king of the process then be surprised when there are peasant revolts.

this outcome was inevitable and you are actively causing it with your approach. can the fake shock and horror, and quit complaining about how you're so misunderstood.

@Ryle you also need to explicitly alert your users to what you're doing.

joining a group where the purpose is to explicitly mantain connections to those who are, say, homophobic, for the sake of "fairness" and "good debate", is antithetical to a "furry good-feel instance".

it does not feel good to have to constantly deal with people coming up to question why you get to live, and to be expected to drop everything and be patient with them, because their fun is more important than your very being.

again. pull up the Sartre quote. the antisemite gets to play. everyone else gets to die.

do you want to run an instance where "this is a feel-good space that is inclusive" actually means "strangers are free to harass you, and i believe this so much that i'm spearheading a group to make sure this is the case, because fuck your safe space, fuck your good times, fuck your feel-good, fuck the notion that we are anything more than entertainment for someone who is privileged, we all must know our place and that is to die for their amusement"?

because that is what you are doing. right now.

i will again repeat: do you think the people who championed UFoI by looking at my complaints of qoto's transphobia, and then saying they were sick and tired of "the gays ramming their sexuality down everyone's throats", are going to be great allies for you? do you think that this is something your users will love? do you think that these sort of posts are going to create a happy feel-good space?

do you really think that YOU will be spared when they start complaining about the damn queers obsessed with cocks in asses?

because this is UFoI. this is their defenders. this is the group you are actively courting and trying to save... over your own instance's safety. over YOUR own safety.

the more you do that, the less of an innocent bystander you become. you have now upgraded to co-abuser. congrats. is this a role you are happy and proud of?

so either be honest with your users and let them decide if they want to sign up to be abused, or stop being surprised when people go "well i don't want any of this dangerous stuff, let's just fediblock them".

@Ryle please note: if you reply with a whimper of "but the FAQ", let us be honest with ourselves.

nobody cares.

you still have the poison pill of qoto troll marching around saying he is answering the questions because he founded the movement. you still have all the problems of how UFoI was developed and made explicitly to protect and extend the reach of that harassment. you still have every single reason in play for people to look at UFoI as "a bunch of idiots self-selecting as to tell us easily who to block". you still have all the downsides of centralization and none of the upsides, explicitly going against the point of a defederated social network. you still have all of the moderation work being done by people who aren't cis upper-middle-class white men with computer science degrees being ignored, at best, or thought of as something that is incredibly dangerous and must be silenced at worse.

you are participating in this, too. "scholar social is awful, they have calls for violence!" ok then, you should tell your users that they aren't allowed to say things like "fuck TERFs" or "i wish homophobes would die" after getting harassed. let them know that rainbow flag in your name stands for "it's unfair of us to not want cops at pride, and really, we should apologise for stonewall - violence is bad!". let them know that the feel-good space you are developing is actually a space where it's the oppressors that must feel good - not them.

if you want accountability, start with yourself.

unfortunately, you haven't. and every time you have promised that you have, all i see is dodging the point and deliberately not addressing concerns while trotting out bad faith arguments... and letting a known troll and harasser still call the shots, even if you promise he's totally for realsies stepped down so everything's fine now.

your silence on what matters speaks like thunder. THAT is what is getting you defederated.

accept the consequences of your actions. take the L. do better. actually listen. or stop being surprised when you get blocked with extreme prejudice by the rest of the fediverse who knows full well the toxic little tricks you're trying.

I'm a user from Ryle's instance.

I took your warning seriously, so I went to see the problem first hand and gather evidence. I created an account on Qoto.

It's literally nothing like you described or inferred it to be like. Loads of science discussions, science memes, pro-LGBT content occasionally, personal updates. I dug really hard, but I really couldn't find anything particularly from Qoto. I couldn't find people being harassed. I found a few heated debates about how some physics stuff worked but it was way above my head. If this is the world we'd end up in, I don't really have a problem with it. The fediverse feed was also pretty clean, ironically the only nasty stuff I saw coming from it, came from mastodon.social.

I don't want to create a new conflict, but having this first hand experience makes me now distrust what you have to say, maybe Qoto was worst in the past? I don't know, but it's clearly nothing like you describe the fediverse would be on it.

@Ash @Ryle qoto talks itself up to look professional. that's part of its gig.

search for qoto in the fediblock hashtag and you will be able to see the explicit racism, homophobia, transphobia, et cetera that they stand for, as well as the kiwifarms style nastygrams.

i would also urge you to pay attention to qoto's degeneration policy. they believe that you can simply debate the nazis and that the nazis deserve to be heard. that is why people have defederated from them.

you don't have to take my word for it - many of the same points are brought up in the Reddit thread's comments. and people are receiving the same spectacular nothingburgers of answers.

if you want evidence firsthand, don't take the word of abusers as gospel. go listen to their victims. if you're not interested in listening to victims, or even looking at the damn screenshots of homophobia-in-defense-of-ufoi i posted, then please don't pretend you are searching for truth or trying to not create another conflict.

@Ash @Ryle here, it was perhaps two clicks away. here's a nice juicy thread with receipts about just the latest bout with this. https://scholar.social/@researchfairy/109479230076687069 easily linked as a reply in the reddit thread posted.

on said reddit thread, you will also find those concerns being soundly dismissed.

you will also see both the leader of qoto, who is still very much going around acting like the leader of ufoi and demanding respect for it, being caught in a very obvious lie about this incident. one is that he did not notice this until it was pointed out. two is that he immediately went back on his promises of 'due process'. three is that he has then tried to change the narrative to say that the incident never happened and the nazis were never ufoi members - when people have the logs showing the opposite is true.

here is another point to consider:

if qoto were a bunch of sweet angels, then why, exactly, is the head of qoto having to step down to gain legitimacy to this project? and why are people so very against him being there?

i am begging you to use your critical thinking skills for just a moment. you can believe it is a vast conspiracy all you like. however, the much simpler answer is right in front of you: that qoto has burned through all goodwill to the point where they are widely known as an instance of harassers, and ufoi is being regarded as giving the patients rule of the asylum at best.

if i have to go trot out my fursona and start humming furcadia's opening midi theme to be listened to as a legitimate source, i fucking will. or, in all honesty, i will probably just let you go throw yourself into the meatgrinder, because someone this enthusiastic about ignoring minority voices right in front of them is making a hell they perfectly deserve.

I didn't listen to what Qoto said about Qoto, I listened to what you said. Which was that Qoto is a known instance of harassers who get around blocks and employ kiwifarm tactics by default.

The easiest thing to validate if there is the problem that you've described is to create an account on Qoto and look at the local feeds, show the harassers or people being harassed on Qoto. That's what I did and I failed to identify. I found the opposite, which was pro-LGBT sentiment. The fact you don't even slighly find this surprising or try to address it directly is kind of weird TBH.

The content you linked does not appear in Awoo's feeds (although not surprising since according to the public federation restrictions list, that server is set to followers only has been for a while), I just searched for it on the Qoto account I created because of your thread and it also does not show up there either.

The problem you describe and keeping showing just doesn't seem to be there for us, do you not find that strange at all?

I'm not saying it won't happen, but I think perhaps the reason these comments fall on deaf ears with some people is that the people who are here aren't see what you're describing as actively doing anything on their instance.

@Ash @Ryle i'm sorry, but this argument just shows you don't actually know how the fediverse works:

your instance has become the new flagship for qoto-led endeavors, and your admin is throwing support behind a known bad actor.

it's not that it doesn't exist.

it's that the majority of the fediverse has decided awoo.fyi is toxic.

the arguments you make are, in fact, addressed explicitly - by actual queer people! - in the receipts. the many, many, many, many, many receipts. there is a whitewashing of the narrative that people have spotted, and have also explicitly pointed out how easily it is to find proof of the opposite - pronouns in bio is a "funny joke", the qoto admin saying that "unpopular political opinions" are welcome as long as they are "respectful" and that includes "unpopular opinions" about if queer people can exist, and the screenshot i specifically left here about ufoi's defenders going straight to homophobia.

I'm really sorry, I really shouldn't have joined this thread; I think I've just made things worse.

Knowing almost everyone on this instance, I don't think there is anyone that isn't queer on here. The fact you're cis and have been telling non-cis people (that includes Ryle btw) just makes these comments somewhat absurd. You are being told by a queer person that they aren't seeing what you're saying is a problem on their home instance and then went as far as to trust you and checked the "bad actor" instance to convince Ryle.

I asked you if you thought it was strange that I couldn't find the harassers you described as if it were some huge wide spread problem that wasn't handled. Instead you're throwing strawmans and red herrings for issues that again, had zero impact or notice by users.

I have been trying to assume the sealioning with all these multi post responses is really just you being passionate about the subject. The talking down to me, making appeals to authority, make me feel you're emotionally invested in an argument rather than really caring about the realities those of us here are actually experiencing is starting to make me feel awful, which isn't why I'm here. I'll stop conversing now.