A Brief Tour of Mastadonia

I opened up an account on Mastodon a while back to see how that environment has developed in the wake of the exodus of the "oppressed" from X (formerly known as Twitter).  I followed a few hashtags for topics in which I am naturally interested.  My account is on mastodon.social rather than part of one of the many personal fiefdoms created as part of that distributed network.

Many writers flounced out of X due to the alleged overwhelming presence of fascism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, commonsense, blah-blah, etc.  Any idea that slightly diverged from leftist opinions of the moment was called intolerable.  Mastodon was one popular destination.

My exploration began with topics of personal interest that were mostly related to genre fiction.  I explored some political topics as well.

My first impression is that there wasn’t much activity related to Worldcon or the Hugo Awards.  There also wasn’t a lot of activity related to several genre-associated hashtags.  Given the number of genre authors doing their Dorian Grey impression, I would have expected more activity related to those topics.  There was precious little activity related to those hashtags.  [I eventually identified some other genre-related hashtags that are more active.]

Later on, we had the misfortune of the attempted #assassination attempt on #donaldtrump.  For clarity, it was fortunate and good that he survived.  Political violence is always a bad idea.

A check of the hashtags #trump and #assassination in the days following the attempt suggests to me that the Mastodon admins are purposefully censoring or otherwise throttling which topics are allowed to trend on that platform.  The hashtag stats suggested that few were talking about the event.  A review of the search results of posts on Mastodon indicated that many people WERE talking about that event.  The hashtags were included in the text of various posts, but a hashtag search didn’t correlate well with a post-based search. 

Conversely, both tags were quite active on X.  I cannot say that the tag search and the post search accurately reflected each other on X.  Only that both were active.

There is also evidence of censorship/down-platforming/throttling of certain Mastodon accounts.  Doing topical searches, I found several accounts that Mastodon admins had purposefully muted.  You could still click through to read what they have posted, but you do get a notification that the account has been muted.

None of the accounts I found (roughly 5, so not a big sample) had posted anything overtly offensive unless one holds that moderate disagreement with leftist positions is ipso facto proof of offense.  Comrade Stalin would be proud.

It would be unsurprising if I learned that my account had already been deprecated or otherwise throttled.

Individually, Mastodon users generally (exceptions to everything) appear to lack any interest in critically engaging with diverse viewpoints.  One recent example was a discussion in the wake of the tableau from the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics that was designed to invoke da Vinci’s Last Supper.

My interlocutor responded at some point with “artistic license”.  I pointed out that the artists were appropriating another culture and that I am reliably informed that cultural appropriation is an unacceptable behavior.  Having nothing to offer in response, they blocked me.

Casual accusations of racism, sexism, blah-blah, etc. are routine.  I’ve already been called racist despite not once offering any opinion that relates to race in any reasonable manner.  Again, Comrade Stalin would be proud.

Before Elon Musk purchased Twitter/X the platform was infamous for quietly throttling accounts expressing opinions that were modestly right-of-center.  There was a two-tiered system of moderation in which the slightest of infractions by someone right-of-center would engender suspensions, throttling, and bans while identical (if politically inverted) behavior from left-of-center accounts would be overlooked.  [I came across a recent thread on Mastadon about abuse on that platform.  So leaving Twitter didn't really solve any problems, eh?]

After purchasing the site, Elon revealed exactly how biased the prior administrative efforts had been.  Many normal reasonably centrist and modestly right-of-center accounts were restored.

It appears that the Mastodon user base prefers to live in a mutually affirming silo.  The platform is distributed so that people may create private chatrooms where they can police ideas into conformance.  And that choice is their absolute right!

Yet they still are tolerating extreme forms of authoritarianism in their midst.  I found many profiles using Che Guevarra and communist Hammer-and-Sickle images as profile icons.  Other accounts will readily endorse socialism and/or communism as viable alternatives to liberal democratic capitalism.

Most informed people will recognize that socialism/communism continues to have a higher body count than fascism.  Socialism/communism also continues to foster higher rates of poverty and murder by state actors.  Ask the citizens of Venezuela about it.

While Mastadonians have cleared Hitler, the Nazi cross, and real fascism from their social media environment, they have left far more offensive, destructive, and murderous opinions untouched.

None of this is particularly surprising.  Nor is it unique to left-leaning folks.  People on the right (with some obvious exceptions) have seemingly lost the ability to participate in good-faith engagement with people who hold different opinions.  The number of right-leaning accounts that are comfortable with using helicopter memes to address communists is quite…well…deplorable.

People in all corners of the political pool only seem to want to assuage their emotions by participating in the vibe.  Labels matter more than substance.

Me, too…from time to time.  But I try to be aware of the problem.

Mastodonia isn’t a solution.  It is a reflection of the problem of reacting to conflict by shutting out contrary perspectives.  Siloed communities are not a solution.  Good faith engagement is the only solution.  I don’t see it coming back in fashion anytime soon.

Authors and Social Media

I had an interaction with an author a short while back via social media.

The author is an indie author.  They had put out something that was unrelated to their works.  It was something political.

The item considered a comparison between a socialist/communist dictator to Che Guevara as being positive towards the dictator.  I pointed out that Che Guevara murdered a whole ton of people.

The author responded by calling me a "crypto-fascist" and attempted to get a dogpile going in my direction.  No dogpile resulted.  The author also went into "whataboutism" mode by pointing out that the US government had killed a bunch of people in the 20th century.  (He is right on that count.  More context below.)  The author was either unwilling or unable to engage in a civil discussion about Che Guevara's history of malign actions against the people of Cuba.

I lamented the fact that our modern age offers enough access that we can learn all sorts of things about authors that most readers would never have known.  Nothing I offered was insulting.  The author asked me not to respond any further and I honored that request.

Some other person (also an author....I think)  came along with a response that was more pointed than mine.  That individual made some mildly insulting remarks towards the author while also questioning whether Che is worthy of laudatory comments.

And that was largely the exchange.

You may note that I haven't named the author, their books, the social network, or the socialist/communist dictator.

That is because, this incident aside, I like this author and I enjoy their books.  They only have two books out right not, but they are both great.  The third book in the trilogy is due out later this year.  I can't wait.

And I do not want anyone harassing the author.  Again, this incident aside, I like this author and I enjoy their work.

But I do want to talk about the author's ultimate response which was a couple of blog posts.  One was about indicating that they were stepping back from social media.  The other was lamenting the emotional drain that being in near constant contact with one's readers/fans has on an author.

Ironically, the first one was titled to give the impression that a discussion of that social media platform in particular.  No such discussion was forthcoming.

I'm sure that the constant contact with fans and the perceived need to continually create new engagement is emotionally draining. 

Everyone has to figure out how much social media they can take without harming their own well being.  

One helpful approach is to be well grounded in one's postings.  Kind words for Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, or Adolph Hitler (number 4 on the mass murdering dictator list) are going to invite a pretty significant reaction.  While Fidel Castro (and by extension Che Guevara) didn't have the same raw numbers in terms of people murdered, the percentage of the population that was murdered was certainly closer to that for the people that suffered under history's "big four" murdering dictators than to a true democracy.

The table below comes from the Power Kills website that is maintained by the University of Hawaii.  That website presents the research data of the now deceased Professor Emeritus R.J. Rummel.  Professor Rummel researched the number of civilians killed by government action; military combatants excluded.  I have extracted a few lines of data from the professor's database.

My point?  Cuba under Castro was a bloody mess.  His regime murdered at least tens of thousands of Cubans for the crime of dissenting from his communist regime.  We aren't talking about violent dissent.  We are talking about people that were insufficiently supportive by cutting corners on rationed goods or who participated in black markets for staples that most Americans purchase at a local grocery store.  And gays.  Castro murdered (and imprisoned) lots of gay folks for the "crime" of being gay.

Cuba under Castro was a far more bloody mess than it was under Batista.  That is almost always the case when comparing a non-socialist/communist government with the socialist/communist government that replaces it.

In fact, the Cuban government killed far more Cubans (domestic deaths) than Americans that were killed by the American government (again domestic deaths).  The US is clearly a much larger nation, yet the government killed far, far fewer people.  In an apples-to-apples comparison, the Cuban government was far more murderous (0.807% of the population vs. 0.016% in the US).

Looking at democratic governments, including the US, in comparison with totalitarian and communist regimes (kinda the same thing, IMHO), democratic governments are far less likely to start killing their own people.  Democratic governments, including the US, are far less likely to run around killing civilians in other nations as well.

We should all be decent to one another online.  Don't reach for invective and insults too quickly.

And don't offer praise for people that are undermining the human condition on a massive scale.  You will get called on it.

Edit - 6 September 2019

I've had limited exchanges with the author after the events above.  Mostly I've just "liked" and re-posted their promotional posts.  The third entry in their series dropped this summer. 

I'm about halfway through it and the author's performance remains excellent.  I said so in the same forum where we had that more heated exchange.

The author apologized for their behavior, acknowledged that I had responded to their behavior civilly, and thanked me for my support despite their self-described unacceptable behavior.  Supporting the work of someone with whom one has other disagreements was in some measure remarkable to this author.

For my part, I apologized for offering an opinion where it was not expected.

Neither one of us apologized for our opinions.  It wasn't required.

Again, I'm not calling out the author by name as that wouldn't be helpful.  But I do think it is helpful to note that given a bit of time and introspection, they came to regret the manner of their response.

I try to be a work-in-progress.  I think this author is trying as well.