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Hrefna (DHC)

Once again, for those who refuse to acknowledge consensus reality:

Nivenly is not supporting, does not control, never funded, and has no hand in TBS. It never has.

Unless he has joined since the last time this went around, which seems doubtful, Ro is not a member of Nivenly.

You can think what you like, but stop spreading misinformation.

Ro was funded for one (1) proposal called FSEP. That proposal has serious flaws that would need to be corrected before it moves forward, but beyond that it would also need _someone to run it_, and Ro has stepped back from it and no one at Nivenly has stepped up to take over that I am aware of.

Maybe my information is out of date, but it seems more likely that everyone is repeating the same false talking points from last time.

At some point I move past giving benefit of the doubt that people are just reacting to new information and don't know/can't find the truth.

Instead it starts to look like you are deliberately lying in order to manipulate others.

It's been what, five months since those lies were published?

You've had plenty of time to figure out the reality of the situation if it actually mattered to you. This is not a situation where there's room for interpretation, these are easily verifiable facts.

There are other lies that are part of the same package that go around, but you know what? Those are harder to disprove. They are rooted in people's motives and that's a lot harder to put a pin in. So I get why you would be distrustful even after groups assert otherwise. There are still a lot of lies there, but trust is in short supply, sure.

This nonsense, however, is trivially verified and involves concrete facts.

Yet people are _still_ making the _exact same claims_.

@hrefna@hachyderm.io yep, it's classic racialized disinformation. As is so often the case with disinfo there's a kernel of truth here (Nivenly did fund FSEP) and it's combined with misleading omissions and outright lies.

@jdp23 @hrefna some of the stuff is also like, pure conjecture.. where there's no actual link between anything they're saying if you look closely or actually ask for details / information.

Like the “FediForum is a Meta-controlled entity” lie, when really, Meta just joined as a mostly silent observer (I don't think they/their employees presented, and anyone could present because it's an unconference), just like Mozilla had people there.

Hmm, I'd say that thread also had some truth, some omissions, and some incorrect statements -- as do a lot of threads on the fediverse and elsewhere -- but it certainly wasn't racialized disinformation. Similarly while the inaccurate information about TBS is all racialized, I'm not sure how much is disinformation (intentional) as opposed to misinformation (unintentional). The incident I mentioned in my pinned post on IndieWeb for example was clearly (to me) misinformation; when I pointed out that I hadn't seen any evidence for the claim, the original poster agreed and actually edited the post to reflect that.

But the hit piece with the lies about Nivenly's involvement, false accusation against a Black trans person, etc. was clearly intentional, and racist a f, so meets the bar for racialized disinfo.


@thisismissem@hachyderm.io @hrefna@hachyderm.io

Indieweb.Social Jon (@jdp23@indieweb.social)Good times on fedi. X: amplifies racialized misinformation me: is that true? I haven't seen evidence X: I don't know, I haven't checked X: your punctuation was disingenuous ... X: amplifies racialized misinfo me: [a link with a different perspective] X: After your disingenuous behavior, this interaction was unwelcome, please consider posting to your own thread instead of replying me: ok bye (soft-blocks) X: Jon's behavior reminds me of [channer stuff] and he should know better. 🙃

@jdp23 @hrefna yeah, good point (sorry, not aware of what the current thing is, was more trying to say there's a lot of disinformation about a lot of honest or noble efforts from a lot of people, possibly because there's social capital in spreading it?)

@jdp23 @hrefna like, someone is benefiting some how from these disinformation & misinformation & slander campaigns, and it's not the fediverse. I just don't know how they're benefiting. But it wouldn't be done without something being given as a benefit, right?

Different benefits in the two situations. With TBS, it's specifically racists who don't want to be held accountable who benefit -- and more generally cis white supremacy benefits, by driving a wedge between trans and Black people.

With Meta (and ex-Meta people in influential positions), it's different dynamics. They're the ones who are in the position of power, and who embody and reinforce cis white supremacy. Disinfo attacking them isn't likely to have much of an affect, to the extent it does it's just as likely to benefit them (by distracting from and giving an opportunity to downplay non-disinfo critiques) as their opponents.

@hrefna@hachyderm.io @thisismissem@hachyderm.io

@jdp23 @hrefna so the "Meta" one was really "Meta attended a fediverse conference" so like, sure, we can agree Meta is responsible for horrific stuff, but labelling the forum they went to (along with hundreds of others) doesn't seem right, was there benefit ib slandering fediforum & it's organisers?

I don't remember any slandering of FediForum or its organizers in that thread. I recall it highlighting presentations at the conference that (at least from the titles and notes) aligned with a direction of introducing surveillance technology into the the fediverse and suggesting that Meta would require its use for federating with Threads. Opinions differ on CSAM scanners, but I certainly don't think it's disinfo to describe them as surveillance technology (to me it's surveillance technology that society has collectively decided is warranted in this case, and some implementations do more than others to try to mitigate the impact, but the laws make it very challenging to do it without surveillance technology). And I wouldn't be at all surprised if Meta winds up putting some conditions in place for two-way federation with Threads that in practice require some use of surveillance technology, maybe they will and maybe they won't but they could certainly make a strong case that it's in their users interest.

As I recall it also talked about some of the stuff that was discussed (in a session I led) about FediForum's whiteness and what it could do to change. Again I don't remember any slandering of the organizers, it's pretty well documented that they asked before what they could do to change it and then said the suggestions where impractical. As I recall, there were some good suggestions in the session, it'll be interesting to see whether the organizers do anything differently this time.



@thisismissem@hachyderm.io @hrefna@hachyderm.io

BUT WAIT!!!!!!! At the meta level, we've gone from talking about racialized disinfo directed against a Black person to talking about what might be misinfo (but certainly isn't racialized) directed at white people. And by we, I include me as well, without even really thining about it. Watch whiteness work!!!!!

@thisismissem@hachyderm.io @hrefna@hachyderm.io

@jdp23 @hrefna yeah, sorry, I didn't get the context earlier in thread that this was trying to focus on racialised disinformation (I'm not really up to date on what's happening), but do observe that many of the same people are involved in repeated spreads of disinformation affecting multiple people, projects, and teams.

@hrefna I wonder. Apart from anti-Ro ppl, I suspect there are ppl who are less lying than convincing themselves of a lie. People they trust tell them Nivenly are bad, Fedi loves a bogeyman to get angry at, don't believe what the baddies say, especially if it means leaving your social group and admitting a mistake.

In short, I believe in self-righteous ignorant idiots.

End result is the same, though. Still sucks.

And I've not seen the convos you have, so please tell me if I'm wrong.

@hrefna - howdy, Nivenly board member here. Your summary is correct. FSEP was one engagement that has been over for some time.

And fwiw, we haven't done much as an org beyond keep Hachyderm running since the passing of Nova.

We have a couple of member votes upcoming for "new" projects, and we should be announcing that soon. We also have a small experiment planned to support people who are finding/fixing security vulnerabilities in Fediverse software. More on this soon, too.

and the first vote for @nivenly members is up -> hachyderm.io/@nivenly/11201984.

we plan on announcing the "nivenly fedi security fund experiment" later this weekend. preview: pay finders/contributors who find/close high/critical bugs in fedi software. we did a mini proof of concept and sponsored @thisismissem to ship a fix for a critical 9.9 score vulnerability in pixelfed, and now we're ready to expand a bit. more soon!

@hrefna yeah, I'd say you're correct on FSEP being abandoned for all intents and purposes — I do sometimes reference it as "prior art” because some ideas have roots in FSEP (e.g., user-level domain block suggestions)

@hrefna

Boosting for the benefit of accuracy, and because I have been somewhat critical of Ro and especially TBS for their assumed collusion. I stand corrected, as it is.

@AnthonyJK @hrefna yeah I have plenty of problems I've had with TBS and over time most of them have proven to be lies that people told me. At that point it's like... If there are so many things wrong with it, why resort to making shit up? The debunked lies have ended up making me trust it more in the long run because why lie if you can get your point across with the truth?