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dontvisitmyintentions wrote

They uptalk: https://stealthisshow.com/s04e04/

They are plagued by nightmares of being adjacent to nazis: https://rebelliousdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/P2P-Hate-Report.pdf

They want a "community" instead of technology. And they don't want us.

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Elbmar OP wrote

Btw, I just found the part of the docs that explains how their cancel culture type views have influenced the protocol. You can publicly block someone, and that is announced to your peers. So for example, if a popular leftist scuttlebutt user publicly blocks someone saying it is because "he is a racist/sexist/homophobe/whatever", there would probably be peer pressure for others to publicly block the same person.

If someone is bothering you or saying things you don’t want to hear, you can block or ignore them from their profile page (in the Options button). This will hide their messages and comments from you. You can loudly block someone, or quietly ignore them. A block is public and everyone can see it. Blocking is a way to demonstrate community norms and alert your friends to someone they may also want to block. Sometimes it starts useful conversations. Ignoring quietly is a secret action that only you will know about. It hides the person from your view.

https://scuttlebutt.nz/docs/introduction/detailed-start/#stay-happy-and-safe

It could be pretty useful feature for the right as well though. If some user was posting child porn and a peer publicly blocked them for that reason, I would appreciate getting a heads up so I could block them as well. Same if leftists attempted a raid on right wing "pubs" and users. They could be blocked.

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Elbmar OP wrote (edited )

True, I was aware of the leftist leanings of the developers and much of the community.

Still, it appears that if conservatives and free speech supporters decided to connect to each other, there isn't much that the rest of the network could do. They could make sure they're not connected to us, so we would have less visibility from their part of the network, but they wouldn't be able to break up the existing connections between right wing users. One of the worst things about de-platforming for the right has been that people end up losing connections to each other when a platform gets taken down.

They are partially just relying on deterrence right now, as that PDF mentioned.

SSB has never advertised itself as a free-speech platform though it does have many of those qualities at a technical level. Additionally designers have Rebellious Data LLC & Emmi Bevensee ​| 15 purported that they pursue a range of aesthetic choices aimed at attracting or repelling certaintypes of users. For instance, clients and the official webpage often use pastel colors, on the homepage​ there is a cartoon about an inter-racial queer love story that explains how scuttlebutt works, and many clients have implemented content warnings. Interviews stated this was all intentional to turn-away hateful users.

All that said, privacy is generally more important for the right than the left because the left is allowed to get away with more. So a different project that is not so leftist and more focused on privacy may be a better choice for conservatives to migrate to.

From the pdf:

Those guided more by right-wing ideologies in the P2P space tend to focus more on things like crypto-currencies and extremely privacy focused free-speech tools, which are more ​likely​ to be abused by hate-groups whether that is the intention of the developers or not. There are powerful positive implications in both P2P privacy tools and crypto-currencies, however it is important to acknowledge this potential alongside their built-in affordances.Those focused more on social-justice influenced liberatory tech tend to focus more on P2P tech geared towards connecting people and try to build in more protections to protect abuse.

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