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

Hello new followers who seem to have imported their follow lists from Twitter wholesale: I hope you're prepared for my decidedly more anticapitalist takes here 🙃

@Saket (Nitpick; the "echo chamber" hypothesis, at least in its common form, is a right-wing talking point, and not really supported by evidence: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2207159119)

@nova@hachyderm.io @ariadne@treehouse.systems I can only speak for myself here, of course, but my two concerns are:

1. The existence and/or normalization of corporations on the instance
2. The rather unconstructive way in which several users have been replying to my original post, making the same sort of "you must be new to how the real world works"-style patronizing comments that I would get on Twitter

If those two issues are addressed, then I would personally have no immediate reason to distrust Hachyderm. I *think*, but obviously cannot guarantee, that other fedi admins will feel similarly, and that folks would be open to reconsider defederation where it has already occurred.

The practical implementation of this would involve disallowing corporate accounts entirely, and establishing a general understanding within the Hachyderm userbase that the existing culture here exists for a reason, and that people should be respectful of that.

Of course that doesn't mean that criticism of that culture is wholly disallowed, but it should come from a place of understanding (and particularly understanding that those reasons might not apply *to them personally* but can nevertheless be valid), rather than from a place of 'defending the status quo'.

Part of that will also be recognizing that, despite the relative queerness of the Hachyderm population, it on average still has a very privileged population compared to many other instances ("well-paid folks working at big tech companies and startups", to put it bluntly), and that there is a considerable amount of people here who have not been that lucky, and who will eg. be automatically suspicious of anyone who presents their tech job as part of their identity (which I've found common on Hachyderm).

Much of this space is about self-organizing and community with a decidedly anarchist (and non-commercial) approach, and that just isn't very compatible with "well-paid tech workers who promote their employer and generally seem to support hierarchical governance models".

Particularly those in support of capitalism are generally not welcome, due to how capitalism is an active threat to many of us here.

I do think that Hachyderm can mostly coexist with other instances as long as users are aware and mindful of all this in how they interact with others outside of Hachyderm itself.

That having been said, *some* nonzero amount of instance blocks will probably be unavoidable due to fundamental incompatibilities (a risk which grows with instance size), but that's also just a part of how the fediverse works - it doesn't *need* to be one big universal platform with everybody in the same room.

@ariadne@treehouse.systems @nova@hachyderm.io I mean, like I've said, it is ultimately their choice to make. I'm only explaining why I would not trust an instance that does that, and why I expect many others won't either.

@ariadne@treehouse.systems @nova@hachyderm.io That is still "why it wouldn't be so bad" and not "why would we actively try to have this to begin with" though

@ariadne@treehouse.systems @nova@hachyderm.io The "benefit of the doubt" thing is more complicated for me.

I understand that the presence of corporation has become so embedded into culture, *particularly* in the US, that people could be (mis)led to believe that they are a necessary component of a social environment and therefore must be included in some way.

I'm not going to rake someone over the coals over that belief. That's also why my original post wasn't FediBlock-tagged.

But what bothers me is when people have been made aware of the problem, and *still* insist on "trying it out", and that is where my benefit of the doubt ends.

With the widely-documented harm that corporations as a concept do, any such attempt should come upfront with a clear justification as to why it is being attempted, and how it is different from the thousands of past failed attempts.

I have been unable to find any such justification in this case, and it not being proactively provided makes me highly skeptical that it is being attempted for the right reasons, or that the person attempting it *truly* understands the gravity of the problem.

@ariadne@treehouse.systems @nova@hachyderm.io The "if one is to exist at all" is what I'm trying to get at. Considering that corporations are fundamentally hostile entities, what possible benefit could there be from allowing (and even inviting) them to embed in your community?

Like, we can keep talking about all the problems until the birdsite dies, but ultimately I still haven't seen a credible answer to "why would you even want to *consider* doing this in the first place"?