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Cake day: February 4th, 2024

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  • “Bluesky has managed to grow significantly bigger than the fediverse at this point, with around 5 times as many monthly active users, as well as onboarding the Brazilian community. It seems to me that it is worth reflecting on why that is, and how the fediverse can better show itself as a good, ethical social network that people would like to join.”

    Yeah, why is that? On the one hand, LGBTQ is strong in the Fediverse, and tech nerds of course. But other than that … the Fediverse never had this kind of cultural momentum.





  • Ok, but can they also delete it once its through? Either all incoming messages are checked beforehand and are filtered by the admin, which is even worse of the bad censorship in the Fediverse nostr fans keep crying about, or its passed through and the user has to deal with toxic content. I’m not sure how that should work. The moderation has to happen somewhere, it sounds like nostr is heaving that onto the user.

    Usually, if people say “its the best from both worlds” actually means “there is a tradeoff, but I like this adjustment of the tradeoff more”. If you want less “censorship”, which is ok, you use nostr, but have to live with a worse moderation situation.



  • Ok, so she allies with some weird people. Didn’t know that and its not great, but it doesn’t make her a fascist. Being a fascist corresponds to a fascist mindset. I think her books, opinions and also the fantastic beast films show that she has liberal mindset, and she is strongly against fascism.

    But I hear you, I guess the whole cultural fight has a bigger urgency for you. I’m also panicking that we really drift towards fascism again. But for me, I analyze the problem different and therefore draw different conclusions.

    For me, this is about a bigger conflict within the democratic forces in general and especially within the Left. For years now, the common mindset was that of deconstruction, that of dismanteling structures and hierarchies. However, turns out that if you see in every structure and hierarchy the possibility for “colonialism” and “micro-aggressions” and you dismantel that on and on, you end up with no structures, which, surprise: leads to evil, anti-democratic structures to develop. For me, the Post-Colonialist-Left has lost all credibility after the terrorist attack by the Hamas on Israel, because many of them openly appreciated or at least downplayed it. Antisemitism is a problem on the left.

    So yeah, Rowling has a point that anti-liberal-tendencies have grown over the years, as holds for a limiting of free speech (Salman Rushdie also signed the letter that she signed a few years ago calling for more free speech). But for me, this comes from the post-colonalist-left, which is currently kind of shattered anyways (and also right-wing-populism, of course). However, Rowling argues that the queer/trans movement is anti-liberal and that’s also were she loses me, because thats a talking-point of the right, on which, like you said, they only too eagerly jump on. In russia, they have declared LGBTQ as a terrorist group, which is really bad for the people there.

    But the forces that are pro-democracy quickly need to unite again. In this sense, from my point of view, by building something that is not perfect from the beginning, I do something to strengthen liberal democracy, which is also good for trans people.


  • Look, first of all I’m not trans, I don’t know how its like, and you have my sympathy. The inzident with the H.P. fans harassing you sounds horrible and I’m sorry it happened to you.

    Independent from this, I don’t think the world of H.P. itself is transphobic, if it was written by a different author there would still be things to critize but not more than many other childrens books. Also, I think that the fandom can free itself from Rowling in the sense that it becomes an independent thing from the author. For example the Lord of the Rings Series by Amazon Prime did some central things different than Tolkien. I think that’s how cultural development happens in contrast to just boycotting it. On the other hand, while Rowling still earns money from it and spends it for bad causes, there will always be a moral dilemma. But I’m willing to take the consequences of that moral dilemma in this case, because I think the H.P. fandom could be really good for the Fediverse and grow it, and a big Fediverse will be good for the world.

    Additionally I have to add that, imo, throwing fashists and neo-nazis like David Duke into one bucket with Rowling is problematic, if not borderline totalitarian (and also just tasteless), because she simply isn’t. She is very conservative, but not a fascist. Fascists see certain groups of people as less human or not even humans at all, Rowling always said her arguments have nothing to do with the humans themselves, which is a crucial thing.






  • So discussion of the text would be allowed in literature section. Just not if it were transphobic?

    No, I meant that it wouldn’t be put to discussion if it were transphobic. It would need to be decided just like for any other book. I just don’t want to pre-empitively outrule the book because I don’t know it AND because the situation hasn’t arised yet.

    But yeah, we can assume that it would happen. Its a fair question. Probably I or the mods would have to do some reading and then decide. But that holds for any controverse book.

    Now, the question is, if in doubt, would I rather ban the book discussion or not, I would be on the side of allowing it, because banning books from discussion is a very radical step and then see if any transphobic comments pop up around it.

    I mean frankly, you are gonna have the community regardless what I or any other trans person say, which is your right.

    That’s true, it was never up for discussion; I mean, it was some work to put it up. But I’m interested in your opinions around it. Just because it will not be a safe place for queer folks (I have neither the resources nor the skills), it can still be a generally welcoming place to them (hopefully).





  • I love to be able to reclaim works from their hateful authors, especially cultural ones. I’m a big fan of Lovecraft, and that dude was hateful. He makes JK Rowling look sweet and kindly. But it’s a lot easier to reclaim the narrative and make it a part of our culture when the author is literally dead.

    Agreed. The athmosphere he creates is great but that dude was really problematic.

    I understand that HP is important to a lot of people. It was a cultural phenomenon. But we aren’t leaving it behind just because JK Rowling said something offensive. We’re leaving it behind because the author is actively using our consumption to fund hate and campaigning to deny rights to trans people.

    Sure, we find ourselves in a pickle, there. On the one hand, she is actively harming people and this will stay this way until it eventually becomes part of the public domain.

    However, boycotting Harry Potter also comes as a price that, at least I would argue, also hurts minorities. Because the places create structure, which protects vulnarable people.

    Why don’t we replace it with something else that does the same? Well, because in my opinion, Harry Potter culturally serves as a mythologization of the digital. People use it to understand the digital world. In past centuries, humans always made up stories and myths to understand complex concepts. The same thing is happening with the digital world and Harry Potter is one of the first to do this. It has a unique and central societal purpose.

    That doesn’t mean that it can be improved, as can be seen in Hogwarts Legacy, which is kind of progressive, and also still slightly antisemetic, which is not so great, BUT I think overall the books still do much more good for vulnarable people than anything Rowling does against them, if she wants it or not.

    So at the end of my line of thought, I always end up with two options: either create something new that does the same thing as H.P. while being more progressive but still hugely popular (which is hard to impossible), or to use H.P. and build on top of it to make it more modern (which is much easier).

    What I would like to see more in these discussion is the question how EFFECTIVE Rowlings actions really are and if boycotting doesn’t hurt more than it helps.