Sven Slootweg (soft-deprecated) @joepie91@pixie.town

I almost can't believe I need to repeat this, but: the "nice" companies are the *most dangerous* ones.

@stonehead It's certainly possible for them to use the tech, it is open after all. But that doesn't mean that they will be accepted as part of the existing community, which is what the defederation part is about.

Can the corporate apologists kindly stop replying to this with some variation of "not all corporations are bad"?

You are not telling me anything I haven't heard a thousand times in my time on this earth, and there is a *reason* I am not considering it as a valid counterargument.

Maybe think about why that is, before assuming that I must just be clueless on the matter.

@untitaker@hachyderm.io You don't "combat corporate capture" by inviting corporations. You do so by keeping them out of your spaces.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io Sure. Like I said, you can make a different choice for your instance's culture, and you are free to do so.

But as stated, the consequence of that will be defederation from many other instances - that is how it's *designed* to work.

And my problem is with the repeated implications that this is somehow an undesirable thing that should be avoided, particularly implying that marginalized folks should be the ones doing the work of avoiding it.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io I am well aware of the historical racism problems on fedi, and they absolutely need to be worked on.

But Black folks are also not a pawn to defend corporate invasion of a community space with. It has no place in this particular conversation.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io Yeah, no, that's not how it works. Many people here (again, the people who have built the place to be a safe refuge) have absolutely no interest in a 'town square', and it is frankly quite privileged and rude to say "the town square is coming anyway" - it's an extremely colonialist attitude, "thanks for building this, it's ours now".

And instances are likely to respond appropriately by defederating from instances and folks who hold that view. Which means you don't have your town square anyway.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io That's precisely *why* we're pushing back on these changes.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io That vibe is very much deliberate. This is a community built by marginalized folks who were basically not welcome anywhere else, and we've made our home here, and there are certain house rules. There is no desire to turn this into a "public town square" or a "Twitter replacement".

See also https://www.hughrundle.net/home-invasion/ for more background on that

@jtolio@hachyderm.io No, they don't. Despite widespread belief otherwise (in tech circles in particular). *Particularly* not on fedi, which was basically built by marginalized folks to be a place of empathy.

@stonehead I've explained the reasons a bit more here: https://social.pixie.town/@joepie91/109360136040004274

And more fundamentally, fedi doesn't need to "reflect society" at all, it's a community platform run by volunteers for their own community building and social lives. There are entire swathes of society that we'd much rather not have here at all.

The whole "must reflect society" thing is basically just Twitter's "global town square" thing, but that doesn't apply here

@jtolio@hachyderm.io The problem that many folks have with corporations isn't that they're "not playing by the rules", though. It's that they *exist*, particularly in a community environment. There is no set of rules that can solve that problem.

Corporations will always, *always* act in their own best interest first, no matter how nice and hacker-y their outward communications may be, and no matter who runs the place. It is their reason for existence, part of the fundamental fabric of what makes a corporation a corporation.

In other words: they can never be genuine community participants, because they are always there for selfish reasons, not for the sake of the community. "Playing nice" just means that those reasons are more carefully disguised.

Thus: many people just don't want them here, regardless of the circumstances.

@jtolio@hachyderm.io That is your choice, of course - half the point of a federated network is that people can make that choice for themselves, so that's completely fine.

This is just a heads-up to let people know that that sort of policy is generally not appreciated in much of the fediverse (this is certainly not just about pixie.town), and so it is a likely reason for future defederation.