Elbmar OP wrote on March 7, 2021 at 9:18 AM (edited on March 7, 2021 at 9:26 AM)

Reply to comment by dontvisitmyintentions in Scuttlebutt: An Off-Grid Social Network by Elbmar

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.