Reflections on Fedicon and FOSS: Guilt by association?

August 5, 2025

Introduction

Before I start. I want to be extremely clear. I love the Fediverse. I love being on the Fediverse. I'm extremely grateful to developers like Eugen. I have a Peertube account on spectra.video kindly provided for free by Sean Tilley. Librecast posts it's videos on that channel and has a mastodon account on chaos.social. As do I on onepict@chaos.social.

The Fediverse is a wonderful alternative to the walled gardens of the 2010s. It offers interoperability.

I've participated on social hub. My project is a funded by NGI Zero which funds many projects for Activity Pub integration. So I do want to be in solidarity with these projects. I don't want to piss on them or burn bridges within my community. There's a huge “however” coming.

I'm writing this rather long post. It's going to upset people. Despite my posts I don't like upsetting people. But I will call out the vibes if I feel we've not really learned anything. For all we protocol wash this stuff, nothing's changed.

I'm seeing history repeat itself. I'm seeing attitudes repeating themselves.

Especially with the recent quote about FOSS being dead. Which is true. I agree with that. Our communities and their spirits are being picked over by AI that steals our creations and creates zombies without our living fire in it.

Telling yourself that you're a FOSS project and doing good merely because you picked a licence isn't enough. Open Source has always been the acceptable face to the corporate world because it couldn't really cope with the idea of Free Software.

In our community, we tell ourselves Fairy Tales.

That's not fair. As adults, we tell ourselves fairy tales all the time. We tell ourselves comforting lies about the way the world works.

In FOSS we tell ourselves the comforting lie that what we do is ethical. Merely by writing code and releasing it under an Open Source Licence. – Esther Payne (me) [20]

However we also have a huge divide even within the Free Software world. Individual liberty over communal freedoms. Which is how we end up with the divide within the Fediverse community. Some folks really do have a problem with Opt in Consent and want to connect the world, publishing everything and sharing everything automatically.

Back in the olden times

Nearly two decades ago I was at a mini meetup where various Open Source using companies in Scotland met up to try to figure out a workable replacement for Microsoft Exchange. There was the talk about how we were nearly there and “yeah, we'd save the world from these evil proprietary Corporate Software Companies”. We'd save the world from Microsoft!

There was one dissenting voice. From a guy who believed in what we aimed to do. But was also working with Exchange day to day. Who saw just how integrated Exchange was in the Corporate world. But the underlying unspoken aim that none of us spoke out loud, was that we wanted to take over to win.

As we ended up in the startup community in Edinburgh, much of the same sentiment was closer to the surface. We had bloop, a twitter clone where the initial organiser of Tech Meetup Edinburgh was desperately trying to get us to sign up. Even creating a cross-poster to link up Facebook and Twitter. As a Managing Director friend of mine pointed out: “What's the point of it. We have Twitter and Facebook.”

We also tended to use those networks for separate things in my spaces. Twitter for the Activism, Facebook for family and friends. We knew better than to mix the groups. We were trying to prevent context collapse before other folks defined it for us. So we'd attend for the free pizza and mix together. Then some of us would go for a pint nearby and Kebab Mahal for the awesome curry and think about what folks pitched. To our little group of folks in small business who were used to Infrastructure, it seemed like a bunch of marketing wank. Solutions looking for a problem.

So looking in from an ocean and landmass away, It was interesting seeing the spirit of the startup culture showing up. It's great that developers are meeting up together. I wish there'd been some Health Policy and masking. But I know that's asking too much from many folks in FOSS.[25], [26]

We tell ourselves the fairy tale that we care, yet our values are lacking in that regard. [23], [24]

Fedicon and the two sides of Fedi

Other posts and articles have covered the two sides of the Fediverse ad-nauseam. We know the two sides, the vulnerable folks who'd like opt-in consent to be built into the design of our Fediverse applications from the beginning. Those who want to connect up everything and share information between protocols and federate everything. Even when the political considerations or consequences have never been thought about.

Ben Pate's presentation was quoted over the Fediverse by the attendees. What was quoted by some of the well known members of our Fediverse seemed to starkly illustrate the divide in attitude. Sometimes our community seems to get it. The idea of consent, and presenting ourselves as different from places like Twitter and Facebook. I mean we have IFTAS and some block lists. That's enough isn't it? We care!

No politics here! Only Connections! Yay!

“The connections between the nodes are more important than the nodes themselves.”

—Ben Pate at Fedicon August 02 2025 [1]

A quote like this is lovely. Yes, this is the freedom of Association part. It's Article 20 of the UNCHR. Freedom of Association in Safety. Then I remember bridges to Bluesky and Nostr [6]The “Apolitical” Networking Protocol. An instance using that software bridged and posted Dentangles posts about Alonso[a] on its network which is indexed by Google. Dentangle selected the No Index tag. So we had an issue with NodeBB and also discovered a Nostr instance synced those posts to it's instance. Which also doesn't seem to respect the NoIndex tag.

Nostr has a reputation for this. Nostr also works with Alex Gleason who does good work so why not? Yes, that Alex Gleason who used to work for Truth Social. Activity Pub has some issues and was never designed for many folks needs. So consent isn't really built in. It's the nature of the Internet. It was never really designed for Privacy and Security and our developer community is a reflection of that. After all, many developers started in FOSS. We're conditioned to work together and not discuss politics.

It's why when reporting on the block evasion of authorised fetch the article on we distribute was neutral about it. After all we're all working together for a common good to connect everyone up in a decentralised network. Why on earth might some folks not want to associate with us? [7].[8]

“AGREE TO DISAGREE” IS RESERVED FOR THINGS LIKE “I DON'T LIKE MARMITE.” NOT HOMOPHOBIA, TRANSPHOBIA. NOT HUMAN RIGHTS. NOT BASIC COMMON DECENCY. WE DO NOT HAVE A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION HERE. WE HAVE A DIFFERENCE IN MORALITY. DISAGREEING WITH THE VALIDITY OF SOMEONE'S IDENTITY AND THE RIGHTS AND SERVICES THEY DESERVE OR DON'T DESERVE BECAUSE OF IT IS DISCRIMINATION, NOT DISAGREEMENT. – David A. Evans

But why do we associate with everyone?

It depends on your goals. The other half of the Fediverse is a product of our startup culture on both sides of the pond. The line goes up. We must connect everybody!

Granted these are quotes from a presentation where everyone is bigging each other up. It's an important part of the community to support each other and show solidarity for each other. To grow the community.

It's also why at times, we distribute does show more solidarity for the Dev Community in the Wider decentralised community than us folks who complain about the lack of consent in the culture. I'm sure the Activity Pub and Bridging Folks feel very singled out. But here's the thing.

We expect better of you.

Yet even with a pisstake in a presentation it comes off as well as the “Developers, Developers, Developers” quote by Steve Balmer[9] It's great enthusiasm but it sets off alarm bells about corporate Fedi. You talk a good community group game. But it's no movement. You can't manufacture a movement when a good portion of your community don't feel safe in it. You can't grow a movement when you seem to have a lack of empathy for it.

You seem to think of us as haters. But if we were haters, we would just leave. Some folks have had to because of your lack of care. Much like when we've lost folks to the Proprietary world. We failed them utterly.

In the grand scheme of things, the Fediverse is still very, very small. We’re at the early peak of the “Innovators” section of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle.

Threads and Bluesky absolutely crush us in terms of user numbers, and they themselves are only tiny slices compared to even bigger platforms.

#FediCon [2]

Hot takes those posts may be. But it really gives off an air of huffing each others farts.

Like I get it. I've been there and you're all having a great time, being inspired in person. Eating together, sharing tips, doing hackathons. It helps to keep you going. Its why I loved going to conferences.

Being in a space with other Devs with no one nagging you for changes and not being mean to you is great. I'm sure there's always encouraging conversations to reassure developers that they didn't do anything wrong, or it was a mistake and you don't deserve the pile on. To be fair, no one does. Including the various minorities on the fediverse, who when they do point out what's wrong with our culture on here get way worse. No one deserves Death threats, doxing and stalking. You're getting a tiny bit of the experience for a lot of vulnerable folks on here.

I'm sympathetic really. Don't mistake that for me being a nice person. I know that some folks will be a bit upset and see this as another scold. [8]

It is a scold, but there are also behaviours to be encouraged and some of the devs in our spaces are changing. Are listening when things happen and do try to mitigate the damage. The damage is still done. So it still needs to be called out, because there's a pipeline to the Fediverse that thinks about the technical aspect first and the wider community a long time afterwards. [10]

Which Developers like Darius are working on, to create a testing framework with generated data, so we don't have incidents like the nodeBB one over the weekend.

I try my best to be kind. But I won't hide behind niceness. Niceness is a falsity. Being nice to each other and framing it as kindness means you can ignore the Fascist in the dev teams. After all if you never talk about your politics in the open, you can claim you never knew they were harmful.

Context Collapse

“There are 8 billion humans, and we should aim to serve every single one….We can’t exactly hold up the Fediverse as a viable alternative when we leave so many people behind.”

— Ben Pate at Fedicon August 02 2025

This was the quote that made some of us on the other side of the fedi divide nervous. The side that prefers context in our communications.

I have to admit I get nervous when I see Devs on here being obsessed with scale and reaching billions of people.

Yes we do need to share information.

But we can't scale context or the complexities of language. We can't really understand the scale of billions.

Sharing information and translating is an art and takes some empathy.

Scale does matter for the transport, but the message?

You need to consider context, that takes people. It should also take explicit, enthusiastic consent.

“The 100 people in this room are the 1% of the 1% of the 1% of the 1%... If knowledge of the Fediverse were money, we would all be hundred-billionnaires.” [2] Ben Pate at Fedicon August 02 2025

This is hype cycle. This is the us and them. This gives off a mixture of mid-life crisis devs having missed out on the 2010 gold rush. Along with the kids who are so excited to be with these guys. They are finally here! Whohoo! We're so much nicer than Facebook or Twitter. Despite the fact that you'll still work with threads and Blusky which Jack Dorsey funded. Nothing's changed, we're just a little more open. We still are reducing people to the numbers.

We are still objectifying folks and logging the numbers to show our success. The line goes up.

It's the attitude that doesn't mind a bridge between separate networks of folks who perhaps shouldn't be mixed. It's the attitude that encourages context collapse.

It's also the same attitude of the earlier crop of walled garden social networks that encouraged us all to upload our address books so that our contacts had shadow profiles on those networks without their consent.

Facebook has always had a rather shonky idea of consent. It seems to be the standard Silicon Valley growth mindset to suggest users find their friends. By asking you to upload your address book. If you did upload your contacts, it's made you culpable as well in that very bad idea of consent.

Yes you.

If you uploaded your address book, there will be a shadow profile of someone who never wanted to be on Facebook. Their information is on Facebook's servers without their consent.

Chances are that person may well have told you this as well.

It's well past the time since 2013 for you to be listening to them.

Which is why I'm against the bridges. When our followers bridge our content, the current state of affairs with Activity Pub means we have very little control over where our posts get shared.

How to deal with an issue

Julian who developed NodeBB, once he was made aware of the issue with Dentangles profile and posts fixed the profile not respecting the no Index part.

There's still some stuff I don't agree with like treating public and unlisted posts as the same. Which is more of a Mastodon thing and we really could do with consent being considered for version 2 of Activity Pub. Although with the Organisations that are part of the SWF I have a feeling privacy and consent will be at the bottom of the pile for Activity Pub improvements.

Eugen also recognised the issue and pinpointed the cause. [12]

Both developers were calm and polite and listened. Which is more than I can say for the circle the wagons types who see any complaint as an attack. Who also prefer to focus on the classification of the behaviour rather than consider the consequences. Anyone who brings up these sort of issues in the public as a call out will attract the ire of community defenders as much as devs who want to sort out the problem. When controversy happens on the fediverse, there is an overwhelm with discussions that mention the person as the originator. Which can cause that account to consider shutting down and leaving. Because of course we want to defend our projects. Of course the community that has built up around projects wants to defend them.

It's a thing that makes me nervous as Librecast gets bigger, as we build more. I love the fact our community is supportive. We're still building something to be usable. We're at the foundations. I love the faith that the community is putting in us.

If we screw up down the line, we need to be accountable for that. I'd never want to be responsible for a pile on because of a fuck up on our part. So I hope our wider community always takes the time to understand the situation, and waits for our response before reacting. Every member of our community is an ambassador for it.

At times, some parts of the Fediverse in their need to defend it, are not great ambassadors for a community. To be fair neither are a lot of FOSSfolks. We've got decades of form, with little solidarity for vulnerable communities.

But the thing to remember is regardless of how a post on the fediverse ended up being indexed by google. The fact is that user expectations were broken, a users posts was indexed on Google.

We're careless with peoples data. We always have been and I'd like us to do better.

How to consider opt out

Money and power are not the problem. The centralization of that money and power are the problem. – Ben Pate at Fedicon August 02 2025 [4]

This is a great acknowledgement of one of the reasons we are in the online situation we are in. But it's not the whole story. Decentralisation much like multicast is not the panacea for fixing the problems. They are merely the transports for information.

Who we choose to associate with, what are their politics does matter. You can't expect vulnerable folks to associate with others who have a laissez fair attitude to Privacy and politics. Money is merely a way to enforce and gain power.

The problem is who we associate with to enable that power and influence. The problem is not recognising the solidarity we should have with folks who require mutual aid. The folks who do require some privacy but who want to have some visibility because we live in a capitalist world and artists do need to eat sometime this month. As do developers and community folks. [13 – 19 ]

There is another way. If you want to develop in the Fediverse. Consider consent! [21]

Sometimes consent has already been built in via the way the network you need to bridge was built in the first place as Encyclia Found. But Encyclia has also made opt-out very easy. There's a paper you can read and everything. [22] The developers analysed Orcid and the fediverse communities, they asked folks like Jon Pincus (and myself) what we thought. Before Julian Fietkau even asked, there was an automatic opt-out mechanism. I have an Orcid id, and I work in the public. So it's a useful bridge for me. Julian took the time to understand both communities and put the work in to get community buy in.

More of that please.

[a] A small Dog who visits dentangle. Alonso is awesome.

[1] https://social.wedistribute.org/objects/374c4a38-afe7-47ad-bfda-53e56d270b2d

[2] https://cosocial.ca/@evan/114960662017514079

[3] https://social.wedistribute.org/objects/332b437c-18ea-4cc0-bf1c-9beeba406617 archive.today link

[4] https://j12t.social/@j12t/114960633276222308 archive.today link

[5] https://www.onepict.com/consentpartdeux20240215.html

[6] https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/nostr-crash-course/

[7] https://wedistribute.org/2023/12/authorized-fetch-circumvented/

[8] https://dotart.blog/cobbles/the-scolds-bridle

[9] https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmer-viral-sweaty-developers-chant-microsoft-2025-6

[10] https://cathode.church/fedi-scraper-counter.html

[11] https://community.nodebb.org/post/105338

[12] https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/114959141909677032

[13] https://www.onepict.com/20240813-ecosystem.html

[14] https://www.onepict.com/20241114-hats.html

[15] https://www.onepict.com/20240409-sustain.html

[16] https://www.onepict.com/20240409-sustain.html

[17] https://www.onepict.com/20240512-elephant.html

[18] https://www.onepict.com/2022-11-28-resign.html

[19] https://www.onepict.com/20240601-fedieco.html

[20] https://www.onepict.com/20250119-cobbles.html

[21] https://privacy.thenexus.today/consent-for-fediverse-developers/

[22] https://encyclia.pub/optin-optout-analysis

[23] https://librecast.net/fluconf-2025/

[24] https://librecast.net/2025-07-31-matrix-and-linkedin.html

[25] https://beige.party/@PhoenixSerenity/114950635483009795

[26] https://dotart.blog/cobbles/why-the-cobbles

Defiance

August 3, 2025

TW: Rape Clause

I am a child of defiance.

I'm not talking about a childish feeling of breaking the rules.

I'm talking about my very existence being defiance.

Family

Starting with my mother being disabled and recovering from a coma after a horrific car accident where the doctors didn't think she'd wake up. Or have children. My father's determination to make sure he was in my life when my parents split up was defiance. I defied my mothers wishes to forget my father in turn and at thirteen I left my mother to live with my father.

When my grandmother died, my brother and I lowered her into her grave. Which I had to fight for the right for both of us to lower her down. Convention wanted men who weren't related to her to do it. I was fortunate the rest of the family backed me up, but there was pressure to get me to back down.

This defiance wasn't just a circumstantial occurrence. It's been baked into me from generations of ancestors before me. We aren't always loud about it, but we also can't just accept circumstances.

My Grandfather joining a union and becoming a strike leader was defiance against his conservative voting parents. My other grandfather rolling into a field after being captured in 1940 and then helping others to escape France was defiance.

Sometimes though, defiance is existing despite your circumstances.

I always knew that my maternal great-grandmothers father was a secret. She didn't know who he was and her mother slammed the door on the man who turned up at her door a few years after her daughters birth.

I'd recently done a little family history and searched for that side of the family. I found an extra sibling that I'm not sure my Grandmother knew about. I know that her grandmother was herself brought up by her unmarried mother.

In the UK we currently have the two child rule limit on child tax credits (also known as the Rape Clause because if you've been raped and had a child then it's not limited.) A very awful right wing law that tries to define who is the “deserving poor”. It judges poor women with multiple children. Our society loves to blame women for it's lack of care of poor families. We've not moved beyond Victorian Industrial morality. [1][2]

I looked at the census for 1891 and saw a grandmother, a mother and her daughter living with their uncle. I found three children with different surnames.

I looked further and saw how estranged those two women were from family with only a brother living with them. The black sheep of the family. In a small town in the North East of Scotland in Victorian times. Those women were tough, both women survived into their seventies.

They survived scrabbling from job to job. It took brothers to go out into the world and earn money to give stability and a home over their heads. They worked where they could in factories, doing knitting and as washer women. All to put food on the table.

They survived despite being considered loose women. They survived despite there being no social contract. They survived despite not being the “deserving poor.” I sat there looking at the screen for a while. Feeling that coal of rage within me heat up. But at the same time I marveled at the toughness of those women.

Defiance doesn't always have to be loud. Sometimes defiance is existing and bringing up the next generation. We build on each generations progress. It's slow and sometimes we are knocked back down.

I think about the fact that I got an education and got an Honours degree in Computer Science.

From 1860 which is roughly when my great-great-great grandmother was pregnant (and gasp, was unmarried), it only took nearly one hundred and fifty years for someone in the family to get there. To rise from the very dregs of polite society to having qualifications to participate as part of my community as an equal.

Girls in my family mainly tend to go into teaching. I got a different class of degree.

My grandmothers sister got a good education and became a teacher, she was sponsored by her uncle. She had a patron. My Grandmother had to stay home to look after the family, because she was the youngest. She was intelligent, but ignorant. So she made sure I did my homework. A part of her resented not being able to get an education.

So both of my living Grandparents were proud I made it to University.

My cousins and myself are the first generation in my family on my Fathers side to go on to further education, straight from school. I'm the first girl for both sides of my family, to get a degree that's more on the Sciences and engineering side.

I was only able to do this because my generation was the last generation to get grants. I got a free education because I was too poor for tuition fees. I feel very angry about the opportunities that other folks are denied.

When you have policies that want to judge people and only help people who are the “deserving poor” then you've gone backwards. This is why I am a huge believer in Universal Basic Income. I also want a Free Education to all, Free Healthcare and Free Public Transport. We could have this.

The reason we don't is because very rich people want to control who gets looked after. They don't want their taxes to pay for the poor to build a better life and community.

This is the betrayal of Labour on the populace in the UK. Not just within Government but our political representatives making legislature. It was activists who pushed over decades for social policy. For a National Health Service, for Free Education, for Nationalised Infrastructure.

Thatcher did a lot of damage. But New Labour continued it. From opposition they allowed the two child limit to be voted in. From opposition they were whipped to vote for Brexit. Labour has not been a socialist party for a long time. They cater to centrism, so of course they are gradually turning more right wing.

Labour have betrayed the social movements that caused it to be created. Now they are criminalising protest. They are making it harder to protest the wrongs in our society and things like genocide.

So the most radical thing that any of us can do is pass our knowledge onto others. To ensure that knowledge is available to others. It's a defiance of those who would limit our thoughts and our knowledge to do so. Sometimes we may be considered hostile in our tone. People for the status quo tend to see any push back as hostile. So that should never stop us.

We need more defiance. I don't want it to be another One Hundred and Fifty years before families get that further education. I want education to be free to everyone and available to everyone.

Defiance doesn't always have to be loud.

[1] https://www.womensaidni.org/everything-wanted-know-rape-clause/ [2] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/child-tax-credit-exceptions-to-the-2-child-limit

The End of an Era? – Thoughts on Fosstodon

April 29, 2025

Introduction

Late last week it was revealed that a moderator on Fosstodon had some rather abhorrent views that were posted on Reddit and that moderator made some extremely questionable moderation choices on that platform.

Fosstodon's initial response was “Well the mod's not doing it on here, so it's fine.”

Many folks on the Fediverse, including myself felt differently. There was a point where Fosstodon could have put a message going “We are aware of the allegations against the mod. Bear with us while we investigate.”

They did not do that.

The mod came back on and started defending themselves. Other Fosstodon users defended their community with vibes of “so much for the tolerant left.”

I get the defensiveness. I do. No one likes to be told that folks don't like their community. Folks do take exception to the idea that they are sitting in the Nazi bar. We tend to think of Fascism as being violent and taking over a space violently. We don't think of them in our spaces quietly having a cup of tea. But that's how it works, there's no one way for it to take over our space. If it was purely violent, folks would push back.

So normal folks, comfortable in the status quo, don't know about the dog whistles. They repeat words said by Fascists using those dog-whistles and it becomes mainstream. The left are seen as the unstable ones for pointing out the elephant in the room that's about to go on the rampage. So it becomes easier to leave the bar. Leave the community because it isn't safe. It's not just Fosstodon, it's everywhere. So in the end it's Nazis and you. You're not a Fascist, you aren't a Nazi why are those folks saying your space is the Nazi bar?

It's not exactly a secret that over the years Fosstodon has been the home of the reply guy. It's also the home of some awesome FOSS folks and projects. Fosstodon is FOSS Centrism personified. It's a safe space for FOSS centrists and that's fine. But don't expect queer fediverse to give you the benefit of the doubt when you have a Fascist modding your instance.

Mike and Kev quit. Reading Kev's post it was everything I expected it to be. Kev's never been diplomatic. Kev's also uncomfortable with pronouns and likes poking progressives in his posts occasionally. Mike was more diplomatic and laid out how they got there. Starting from just two friends doing an instance, then others joined.

Yet another example of how some of us shouldn't be in charge of spaces, especially when they grow to a large size. To be clear I'm not saying I would be. There's a reason I'm on an instance with excellent instance owners. It's a mostly drama-free instance, and some of that comes from the boundaries that are set in the instance rules.

I moved there from Fosstodon. I'd wanted to move for a while, not because of anything bad. It just didn't quite fit me.

My First Mastodon instance

Fosstodon was my first instance and for me, as a privileged individual in FOSS, it was a good instance. Mike in particular was very good at handling disputes in the early days of it as a small community. But as open sign-up instances do it grew.

Reading the Instance admins posts it sounds like the responsibility of this small community was no longer fun. Which I understand. As the numbers get bigger and you feel attacked by people it can cause a bit of a hunkering down mentality.

We all changed and grew. In time I was given an invitation to an instance that is a better fit for me. Which is how it should work here. When I moved we only just had the tools to move followers etc. Mastodon is changing and the more upfront about the things that we need the better.

Users need better tools for moving posts, although that brings up a can of worms for other instances depending on the size of the account. Instance owners need more guidance and help setting up their communities. Moderators need more tools to help them moderate a community.

But any community needs a set of rules and some guidance so that when they do have folks helping them out in positions of power they choose people very carefully and do some due diligence. Fosstodon also has always made an explicit political statement “No Politics”. Which is reflective of its community. There are a lot of folks in FOSS who believe that Tech can exist without political bias.

Tech is political. Of course it is. Making a sandwich is political. – Zen and the Art of Multicast, Brett Sheffield

Fosstodon has faced a lot of drama. Some of that drama can be placed at the point of creation of that community. It's about values. More of us need to consider that when we create our community spaces.

As Brett Sheffield wrote in Zen and the Art of Multicast

A good Code of Conduct sets out the kinds of behaviour expected by all members of the community. Those that aren’t in alignment with your Values are less likely to get involved, and it is much easier to tap the sign later if you actually have one.

In other words, we need to be more open about our values. On the fediverse, this is incredibly important to do. We can reduce drama on the network if we state our boundaries and accept the idea that not every node on our network needs to talk to every other node on the network.

On here we don't have to repeat the model of the early 2010s of scale to connect everyone on the planet. Some of us want our cozy groups and we wish to state our boundaries.

Many of us know that you cannot escape politics. Making Free Software is an explicitly political act.

When you write (or choose not to write) a piece of software, this is a political act. The choice of whether and what to write, how you make it, where you publish it, if you publish it, under which license you release it, who you collaborate with, the types of users you target etc. are all political considerations. Perhaps you don’t consider it political, as the developer. You were just scratching a personal itch, but the consequences of your choices can have wide-ranging impacts, whether you choose to consider them or not.

Choosing not to play the game is also a move. You cannot escape politics.

Zen and the Art of Multicast, Brett Sheffield

Power, Instance Owners and Mods

Frankly, though the Nazi bar analogy is correct. Just because a mod isn't openly doing their bigotry on the Fediverse doesn't mean you should trust them in a position of power. But in tech, we've been conditioned to consider working with all sorts of people. Now in our political systems, we can see the results of that. You only have to look at DOGE and how it's destroying a lot of the limited good the US was funding in the world.

Fosstodon's pains at the moment are a reflection of what we're facing in tech. We do need to take responsibility for our choices. We need to take a look at the people who are abusing others. We need to stop letting people in our community abuse others or hold frankly inhumane views because they do good work. This issue isn't a fediverse only issue. It's in all of our Tech communities. FOSS isn't immune because of the magic of the licence we choose. It takes more than that.

To think that a mod who is a bigot and for forced deportation of Immigrants is at all appropriate on an instance where there are a lot of FOSS projects was carelessness. Fascists are very good at appearing reasonable in public. That's how you edge the status quo and the centre to the far right.

I understand that for some folks it's easier not to confront the elephant in the room. But it takes up a lot of space and forces others out of the room. At a time when we need new ideas, new life experiences new voices.

Shared Power, Shared Responsibility

Years ago I wrote an essay that was about Threads and the Fedipact. But what it really was about Power and how we give power to instance owners and we should choose carefully.

As a community, we need to give more tools to help instance owners and mods. Because being an instance owner or a mod is a thankless job. A community has a balance and if you can you should contribute something to your online home. Perhaps money, perhaps time for admin.

At least the small community work of gently calling out poor behaviour when you see it, this is something everyone in a community can do. But you have to want to do it. You have to want to grow to change. It is uncomfortable.

Instance owners are not the same as Community Managers

Fosstodon's story is the same as many community stories on the fediverse and in tech. A group of people get together and start a small instance. Like-minded people join and before you know it you have thousands of people who join your “vanity handled themed instance.”

This was a lost opportunity. Let's compare the pariah of some parts of the fediverse. Mastodon Art. The instance was handed over and the instance owner has learned. Mastodon art has a fairly straightforward set of ground rules and it balances the need for an audience for .art members with a safe space.

Everyone needs a safe space. Even FOSSBros. That's fine. You are allowed a safe space. But declare those boundaries upfront. Accept the fact that not everyone wants to federate with you.

If it does grow beyond you, start considering that at a certain size, you need someone who understands community. It's a skill. We have folks in our networks who do this for a living.

Small is better

But many instances are run on a shoestring, as a labour of love. Like Fosstodon was. We are many nodes on a network. Federation is complicated. But there's nothing wrong with staying small, going invite only. Vet who you let moderate your community

Vet the instances you want to join. Yes, we need more education and an idea of who federates with who. But there are valid reasons for some instances to not publish those relationships too.

Curate your space.

The Future of FOSSTODON

It's in the hands of the Fosstodon community now. Which is perhaps the best thing. Communities do outgrow their founders and a responsible founder should have a succession plan. Especially when it's essentially a flagship instance for FOSS.

Gina a former mod is stepping up and working with Kev and Mike to see if the instance can be saved. There is enough technical experience in that community. The challenge will be for the community to take a look at itself and decide what it wants to be in relation to the wider fediverse.

Perhaps it will only want to federate with the bigger instances. Perhaps it will change its rules. Now's the time to do the best for Fosstodon's community. What's comfortable for the Fosstodon community may be incompatible with some parts of the fediverse.

Which is fine. It's best to declare this now. It's literally the point of the fediverse. It's the choice of everyone involved. From you in your choice of instance, to the instance owners choosing who to federate with.

The Scold's Bridle

March 7, 2025

When I see the vitriol directed at women and other marginalised folks online I'm often reminded of the scold's bridle. This particular reminder was WeDistribute's article on Fedionfire and how the Fediverse backlash caused it to shutter. [2]

It was an article that was particularly disappointing from WeDistribute after they published the Nexus of Privacy's 8 Tips for Developers article. I felt WeDistribute was rather punching down on the community there. [13]

We saw similar opinion pieces around the Fediverse on BridgyFed and on Threads when folks decided to band together for the Fedipact.

There's a push and pull between those who want smaller communities and those who want to “Facilitate Network Discovery”. You've a lot of marginalised folks on the Fediverse, LGBTQ+ folks, Women, BIPOC, disabled folks. There's complexity in our communities and reasons why some folks want to organise in the open, but don't necessarily want to be searched for.

But as usual, backlash happens, and hurt white feelings abound. Somehow the community who never asked to be collated get called out as the hysterical folks who just need to shut up.

It's the need to shame the shamers because you felt scolded. We harshed your buzz and goodness, don't you just want to make us pay for it so we never do it again.

What is the Scolds Bridle?

It was a form of punishment mainly of outspoken women or gossips or Scolds. It was an iron cage with a spiked bit that would pierce your tongue if you tried to speak. The scold would wear the bridle for an amount of time, often being led around the area. It was a painful, humiliating punishment. [3]

Scolds weren't the only folks punished, it was used against Quakers preaching as well. So let's be clear on this. The Branks as they were also known were used to subjugate women. To shame them and be an example to others to not speak up. A violent state punishment to protect the status quo.

We never asked for you to collate our posts

Some of us found out that Fedionfire took posts from the public firehose. [1] We weren't very happy about it, some folk snarked. There were threats as well.

Folks don't send threats to the developer. Pointing and laughing are fine though. For one thing, I've found some devs tend to have very thin skins when it comes to mockery.

In all seriousness though, We shouldn't have to keep pushing back. I've literally written a couple of essays about Consent and the Fediverse. [5], [6]

We care about consent on here. It is possible to ask folks if the thing you are doing might upset people because you are collating their posts without their permission. Heck, there's a list of previous developers who haven't cared and had serious pushback on it. Don't just listen to other CIS white developers who don't see anything wrong with it. Especially if they feel Facebook being in our space is so cool. As I wrote in Consent and the Fediverse, there's a reason some of us left.

But let's address just why there's a backlash against the backlash. White Supremacy is fearful of rage when it doesn't come from a cis white man.

Feminine Rage

Why did such a thing as the branks exist? Why do men feel the need to reply guy back to women explaining the world and the experience they live in? Why do we have Christofacism hand in hand with Trump in the Whitehouse? Why is there such a need to undo progress?

Why do some folks in the Fediverse feel this need to punch down on Folks like WelshPixie and the admins on the Fedipact?

The thing that I note is that it is very often white cis male developers who do these things. When people push back, there are a lot of hurt feelings. There are accusations of harassment.

Men are scared of feminine rage. They fear the scolding. Not just because their feelings of doing something bad may make them feel bad. There's some misogyny to work on there. There's some racism to work on. There's homophobia to work on. This is our socialisation to uphold White Supremacy.

As a cis woman, I've been socialised to keep my rage in. To be nice. To provide feedback nicely. To ask nicely and to advise nicely. I hold in my rage. It's a rather tenuous thread at this point. I'm not sure what would happen if it snapped.

I find it very hard nowadays to keep that rage in, every time I see another scraper, or pulling from the firehose tool. Sometimes it's physically painful to keep the scream of anger and tears in. But I do. My iron branks are mental, my socialisation. I know to scream out will hurt my career. There's the spike in my tongue and the spike pierces in so much further for others. The consequences for speaking out would be so much worse for some folks in our spaces.

I find it hard to keep my rage in every time we point out that we'd like to opt in for people reusing our posts. Or to have my phone not try to send back my metadata to a centralised point.

When I express mild annoyance, I get the odd patronising reply guy message. “Well that's the way the world works, Honey, Don't you worry your purty little head about it. Now just shut up and take it.”

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. We aren't Maenads who don't understand how the Fediverse works. Nor are you developers Orpheus.

I find your song of code lacking, out of tune because of your privilege.

As you ask for us to be forgiving like Mummy and your friends pat you on the back because we were so mean. As your fellow developers and fanboys talk as if we had torn you apart.

Dude. There's a reason lots of us push back.

We claw our way out of the pit of our backgrounds, into the light to live, to exist, to organise. Then you lot decide to take a bunch of our public posts without our permission, you don't seem to understand we'd like some control over where our public posts go. Who we want to work with. [1]

The flippant answer of “duh just don't post,” is shallow. It's exclusionary. It shows how little danger you've had to face. How little abuse. How much you've bought into rape culture rather than consent culture. Silicon Valley is very much the result of White supremacy. The meritocracy is a myth. We're reaping the political consequences of believing that lie right now. Meanwhile, you witter on about your hurt feelings and how harsh that criticism was.

Girls. It's utterly feminine to feel that rage, that incandescence. It's feminine to want to lift that baseball bat and smash. It's also feminine to find the words to tell those developers, why it's wrong. Or like, just link to the Nexus Of Privacy's 8 tips for Fediverse Developers. Because I can guarantee most of them won't have read it. If they had, they would ask before launch if their project should be opt-in. [12]

And so we continue ad-nauseum.

The pushback against the opt-in, that need to reply-guy back comes from the same desire that the branks came from.

To shut up the marginalised. To humiliate them, to scold them back into compliance.

It's why I think WeDistribute punched down. That article was written from the desire to support the developer and push back against folks.
It's why they may not see it as punching down. They will probably see this as me punching down.

It's the desire by others to perpetuate the harassment that Folks face on the Fediverse for stating their boundaries loudly and clearly. To hide and re-frame the issues of harassment marginalised folks face. We're interfering with the Fediverse Utopia by stating our boundaries.

But I should be fair because the Devs aren't the only tech folks scolding the marginalised for requesting that their human rights be respected. You only have to look at the debate around alt text and see some high-profile accounts call folks “Scolds” when all they asked for was some alt text for a screenshot.

We all have work to do on this, on our biases to learn to listen and not react. I've spent a month not reacting. I'm still incredibly disappointed and angry.

I honestly expected better of my community. It was disappointing to read that article. It was disappointing to see someone I respected in tech go on about Scolds. Well done on dropping your mask on the ableism there. If you really can't be arsed doing the alt text for a screenshot or even asking for someone else to do the alt text for you, why bother with the picture? Well done on the punch down.

Sometimes I suspect that if the branks were around today, some of you would be the first folks to put it over my head. To slide the bit in, to tug on the bridle and break teeth. You'd take pleasure from me not being able to speak. To express my rage.

So yes, this is a scold.

The Internet form of the Scolds Bridle is politeness, it is tone policing. It is the threat of doxing and violence. For the same reasons, we disrupt the idea of the status quo. No one likes to be told they are harming others. [11]

We don't like the idea that we perpetuate harm, particularly in FOSS.

I'm tired that we have to protect our safety and justify our existence in public. I'm so tired of the fact that LGBTQ+ and BIPOC folk have to hold in that rage. Even if on occasion we do feel so angry there's almost a visceral need to tear “something apart” to burn it all down.

Oh hey, looks like the tech bros are doing it for us. What do you mean? Not that way?

I'm so tired and angry that our human rights are fucked and the SWF is happy to let Facebook into our spaces to determine how Activity Pub 2.0 should benefit Zuckerberg's creepy surveillance data hoarding to feed LLama.

I'm so tired of the rapey vibes I get from developers who would prefer us to opt out rather than consider building the opt-in. It's not that hard. It's what just my toots do. You look at my mastodon profile you see a link to just my toots. Which I opted into.

Why is it so hard for the Fedibros to get consent? Why do we keep having to do this? Holding in my rage is tiring. So I try to direct it, to use my rage at the world and to speak up for others if they haven't the energy at the moment to do so themselves. This post isn't my first scolding and nor will it be my last. [5 to 8]

If you're a guy and you're wondering what to do? Take a look at the culture around us. When you see your friends doing the reply guy thing? Call it out.

Is your friend doing some kind of Fediverse project that's a bridge? Ask questions, and ask them if they are going to make the service opt-in.

Keep calling out predatory behaviour, whether it's apps or real life. I know they are your friends, but if you're scared of losing their regard. They aren't your friends. You're their fanboy.

If you don't see what's wrong with their behaviour but you're feeling a bit attacked right now? Be brave, step back. Take a breath and listen to what folks are saying rather than reacting.

We are at a stage in history where we need to band together and I want to work with people who don't want to bridle me but to work with me.

Be braver. It's braver to take the hit to your idea of yourself, rather than punching down on the vulnerable.

Mirror Mirror

January 19, 2025

Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fairest community of them all?

FOSDEM and Billionaire Fascists

Once upon a time in a land far away there was a FOSS Conference...

On Thursday the 16th of January Drew De Vault alerted the FOSS community that Jack Dorsey founder of Twitter, Bluesky (which he left as soon as they started doing limited Moderation) and Block (Blockchain company) was keynoting about Open Source culture and what it can bring to a company. [1]

This did not go down well in a community that prides itself on being an ethical community.

Yeah yeah, I hear some of you laughing.

The FOSDEM organisers scrambled to publish a post denying that Dorsey's company's sponsorship had anything to do with their accepting his submission for a Keynote.

Meanwhile one of the volunteers leaked the PreTalx voting session where only one of the reviewers scored it highly at a nine whereas the other reviewers gave the talk a very low score.

Oh no, they denied it. Talk slots cannot be bought. The sponsorship had nothing to do with it.

To be clear, in our 25 year history, we have always had the hard rule that sponsorship does not give you preferential treatment for talk selection; this policy has always applied, it applied in this particular case, and it will continue to apply in the future. Any claims that any talk was allowed for sponsorship reasons are false. [2]

Which may be true. Talk slots can indeed not be bought directly. But perhaps we need to take a look at some of the biases in our community. Perhaps we need to look at the soft power large sponsors have.

We need to look at the soft power and very real monetary power that an individual like Jack Dorsey has. Through Twitter, the idea of the town square became a de facto monopoly. When Twitter was sold to Elon Musk, he and the other shareholders earned an almost unimaginable amount of money from the sale.

His very story, his existence and his fellow alumni of the “Move Fast and Break Things” School of Technology, sits in the back of every Open Source technologist's mind. The idea of the startup, VCs and the money and power that comes with that.

For a conference that's meant to be about challenging the status quo of proprietary software, the organisers have missed the point. I think there's a disconnect between the organisers and some of the community.

Some of us, who were attracted to FOSS for explicitly ethical, and political reasons appear to have misunderstood what the movement was about.

We've woken from the dream. Reality seems rather harsh. We no longer believe in the fairy tale of FOSS.

Fairy Tales

In our community, we tell ourselves Fairy Tales.

That's not fair. As adults, we tell ourselves fairy tales all the time. We tell ourselves comforting lies about the way the world works.

As Terry Pratchett wrote in Hogfather :

” YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. “

“So we can believe the big ones?”

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

“They're not the same at all!”

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

In real life we allow ourselves to ignore the social injustice of the existence of Billionaires. The British King is a billionaire, Bill Gates is a billionaire, Taylor Swift is a billionaire. They not only have the power of Money. They have the power of influence, they can influence laws to ensure that they keep making money and retaining power.

There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. They profit from our labour and our misery. They pay money to their accountants to reduce their tax burden and to lobbyists to ensure they don't get taxed at all. The money they amass gains them more power and influence. In the meantime our healthcare systems struggle and people who want higher education or well health amass un-payable amounts of debt. Billionaires are the result of the economic and political policy changes over the last forty years that Milton Friedman aimed for when he wrote the tyranny of the Status Quo.

But we allow it because we hope that one day we will get lucky, win the lottery, get that awesome idea, and get that sweet sweet VC investment money.

I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians.
Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.
— John Steinbeck, “A Primer on the 30s”

In FOSS we tell ourselves the comforting lie that what we do is ethical. Merely by writing code and releasing it under an Open Source Licence.

FOSDEM Criticism

I was surprised that anyone thought the community would be happy about Jack Dorsey talking at FOSDEM. He's not exactly a hobbyist hacker. He's more known for palling around with Jay-Z and claiming that teaching poor folks about Bitcoin is financial literacy [5]

I mean, Jack Dorsey speaking about “Infusing Open Source Culture into Company DNA” when not a single soul has ever heard of him in relation to Open Source before this talk title would have worked as a joke to me. — Daniel Stenberg [6]

But perhaps we should not be surprised. For the immunocompromised, for those with a disability, FOSDEM is a no-go area. Which is where we really should hold the mirror up to all of us in FOSS.

For a long time, FOSDEM resisted the idea of a code of conduct. It has no meaningful health policy. Plus as Anna e só noted when they were a keynote speaker very little accommodation for their disabilities was made available.

Oh, and addressing Jack Dorsey’s presence at FOSDEM: I invite you all to think about it as a symptom of something bigger happening at FOSDEM, not as an issue in and of itself. The mobility issues, the grim logistics of watching talks in person, the difficulty in connecting with others in crowded spaces, the “let it rip” attitude when talking about flu or COVID—those are a part of a whole that tells a story, and this is an invitation to think about how we can do better as a community in general. — Anna e só [7]

Garret Le Sage had some interesting points about other barriers to accessibility for everyone at FOSDEM.

#FOSDEM:

is inaccessible for those with:

mobility issues

scent sensitivities (no policy against perfume, uses smelly soap in bathrooms); this affects around 30% of the population

who need/want CC for videos

And refused:

to have a code of conduct for years; have no real means of enforcing the one they have now

to implement any kind of sickness mitigation (COVID, “FOSDEM Flu”, or other), including encouraging masks and ventilation

And promotes: – cryptocurrency
– billionaires

#FOSDEM does do a lot of good too, bringing people together and promoting Free Software. And there are amazing people putting together the event every year — especially the tons of volunteers spending their time and effort to make this all happen.

But promoting the ideals of Free and Open Source Software is all the more reason they should really respect their audience, be inclusive, and try to be better.

(People critical of FOSDEM aren't attacking it; we all want it to be better.) — Garrett LeSage [8]

I don't like what I see in the mirror's reflection

Around Mastodon, I've seen criticism of this stance from folks on various tech-flavoured instances. Folks giving the temporarily embarrassed millionaire vibes or feeling judged because something they love and enjoy going to is getting such harsh criticism.

FOSDEM with its history of sponsorship is the reason why OFFDEM exists.

Why does it exist?

Some free software developers have been unhappy with the takeover of the community event by corporate sponsors from Silicon Valley’s surveillance capitalism. Since there was no way to reform the original gathering, we decided to fork FOSDEM. [9]

Consider going to OFFDEM. A lot is going on this year. [10]

FOSDEM has a long history of siding with the status quo. Those of us at the edges don't really count. Not in the organising committee and sadly it appears not in the wider community. We can't even get people to consider wearing masks in solidarity and advocating for clean air. [11]

So let's get to the real meat of the situation. FOSDEM is not the only conference or the only organisation with this problem. [12], [13], [14]

We see the issues in real life and online with various community controversies that crop up from time to time. FOSS is littered with the debris of abusers and our inability to look in the mirror and see that it starts with us.

Our complicity in the status quo. Our complicity in abuse because the abusers do good work. In tech we appear to have a serious problem with understanding consent and why opt-in even on our public posts is the moral thing to do.

We don't consider how the technology we create can harm others' human rights and their democracies. We don't want to acknowledge our complicity in this abuse.

We aren't prepared to sacrifice for our principles. But when there are a lot of folks facing hardship from layoffs and disability perhaps it's time to consider that one day you may be in that position looking for mutual aid.

You are never going to be a billionaire. Let go of that fairytale.

So what can FOSDEM do

Well as others have pointed out can the talk.

Yes, Jack Dorsey will make a fuss and probably get to go on lots of right-wing shows crying about the marketplace of free ideas and how his free speech is being harmed.

I keep reminding folks that you need to twin Article 19 of the UCHR with Article 20 which is freedom of association. Which is what some folks are asking for.

We want the freedom to not have a billionaire trying to grift our young ones into a wasteful planet-burning technology so that Dorsey can amass more money and more power. We want to go to a conference with clean air in an accessible venue.

If the sponsorship isn't tied to Jack Dorsey giving the talk, well then it should be easy enough, shouldn't it?

Another thing that FOSDEM can do is be more transparent in it's procedures and spell out explicitly what the sponsor money is spent on. Make it really easy to find.

What can I do?

Perhaps the best thing that the organisers of FOSDEM and the attendees can do is take a long hard look at the mirror that some of us are holding up to you.

Understand the harsh reflection on the comforting lies you told yourself about Free Software and Open Source Software. Understand the corruption within the community and within yourself. Look at the scars that our society from its origins in White Supremacy and Colonialism inflicts on us and minorities.

Understand your own ableism and consider who's missing. Try not to see my mild pleas for a safe spot in Europe that I can go to and present at as criticism of all of your life choices up to now. I'm not an outsider, I presented at FOSDEM in 2020 in the decentralisation and privacy room. I'm ill now. I miss people and giving them bosies if they are into that sort of thing. [15]

I can't currently travel safely to a big city in the wintertime or anytime really. I'm not alone in the isolation. Others are having to take serious life-changing risks because conferences are where they can make the connections to help their careers.

At the moment many of us in Tech risk sacrificing our health and our family's health for our careers. Because very few able-bodied people want to make the small sacrifice of boycott or even masking up. No one is prepared to advocate for us for our health and safety.

Because what's happening in the physical FOSS community is a microcosm of our wider society. If I can't convince folks who believe that FOSS is the ethical alternative to proprietary technology to mask and advocate for community health and safety. What chance do I have to convince the rest of society?

But perhaps the idea of Jack Dorsey talking at FOSDEM offends you. So here's a small, really inoffensive way that you can protest this.

Go to Drew's sit-in. A Sit-in is one of the most inoffensive forms of protest that we have. Drew's not even asking for yelling. Just sitting peacefully on the stage to prevent Jack Dorsey from going on the stage.

I do not want to platform Jack Dorsey on this stage. To that end, I am organizing a sit-in, in which I and anyone who will join me are going to sit ourselves down on the Janson stage during his allocated time slot and peacefully prevent the talk from proceeding as scheduled. We will be meeting at 11:45 AM outside of Janson, 15 minutes prior to Dorsey’s scheduled time slot. Once the stage is free from the previous speaker, we will sit on the stage until 12:30 PM. Bring a good book. If you want to help organize this sit-in, or just let me know that you intend to participate, please contact me via email; I’ll set up a mailing list if there’s enough interest in organizing things like printing out pamphlets to this effect, or even preparing an alternative talk to “schedule” in his slot. — Drew De Vault – No billionaires at FOSDEM

Billionaires who jet around the world grifting the fruits of our labour from us need some more friction in their lives.

Be that grit. Be ungovernable.

The first thing you need to do is take a long hard look in the mirror. Yes, it is a harsh reflection. It will hurt.

But our community and the people who are missing desperately need you to look. You can't change or improve the world if you won't see that you're part of the problem.

We will help you. But you need to wake up from the spell you're under.

Understand what you see in your reflection. Then we can start to work together.

[1] https://drewdevault.com/2025/01/16/2025-01-16-No-Billionares-at-FOSDEM-please.html

[2] https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-4507-infusing-open-source-culture-into-company-dna-a-conversation-with-jack-dorsey-and-manik-surtani-block-s-head-of-open-source/

[3] https://fosdem.org/2025/news/2025-01-16-protests/

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/series/cost-of-the-crown

[5] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23162314/jay-z-jack-dorsey-bitcoin-academy-brooklyn-free-classes

[6] https://mastodon.social/@bagder/113843673151493774

[7] https://friend.camp/@anna/113844191308154319

[8] https://mastodon.xyz/@garrett/113842951885650493

[9] https://offdem.net/

[10]https://oxygen.offdem.net/t/no-billionnaires-at-fosdem/463

[11] https://www.onepict.com/20230124-cobbles.html

[12]https://www.onepict.com/20230123-cobbles.html

[13]https://www.onepict.com/20230703-cobbles.html

[14]https://www.onepict.com/20230917-rotten.html

[15]https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/view/id/4624

Happy Bi-visibility Day!

September 23, 2024

CW: Internalised Bi-phobia

I've had my bi-flag up on my profile over the summer. It's on my handle on Mastodon. Which gives me a mild bit of discomfort whenever that handle is scraped by other systems. I'm not used yet to being out.

But I wish I'd grown up with queer folks around me. I wish there'd been a culture of out folks around me growing up. But I grew up in the UK during Thatcher and during the AIDs epidemic.

In a small city in the North East of Scotland.

This is the reason I'm writing this.

It still feels new, and while the Fediverse is the open web, I still felt a bit of brief fear when the Maven ingest happened to 1.12 million Fediverse posts. I saw my profile name, on a network I had never even heard of, or posted on. The bi flag is on my profile name. With my posts being used to train an AI set. [5]

The brief flare of panic seeing that on Maven wasn't great. Stress flareups when you have Long Covid are not fun.

It may seem odd to fear that information being on the web. We post on the Internet and put flags on our handles. People will see that. Data leaks. But just because I post information on the internet, doesn't mean I consent to my handle and posts being used to train an AI dataset. Or that information scraped. Our data economy isn't based on consent, it is based on how valuable that information is to others. We're objectified. [1], [5]

So not a month after I put up that flag on my handle, I felt violated by Maven. While no one may be looking having that information on a network I had not signed up for was disquieting. A leaking of information to a network I had not heard of. To a group of people who seem antithetical to my ideas of community and identity in that community.

Airing out the closet

One of the reasons why Privacy is important to me is a feeling of control over what information I choose to distribute to other people.

As a child, I had very little control over my life. My parents chose what to tell me about, and could direct my information gathering. They could monitor me. As we get older, we want to control what others know about us and how we explore life. I used to be out of the house as often as I could when I lived with my mother. I needed privacy. I needed time to myself to think.

As a teen, I moved schools and kept parts of myself to myself. I'd been sexually harassed at my previous school at the age of 12. With what teens go through now, I'm glad my generation didn't have Facebook. I chose my mask well of a bookish straight girl, who was a bit weird. Sometimes I was defensively weird with too much information. It worked, the bullies left me alone.

Is this a closet I'm in?

Then one day, in my third year at secondary school, I realised I liked girls and boys. I remember standing in the school corridor, beside the head girl board. There was a girl and a boy who looked slightly similar. One was a friend of mine, and she was feminine, but also reminded me of Brian Molko from Placebo. The boy was a year older and looked similar enough. I wondered if they were related.

Then in that corridor, I realised I was attracted to her. She was a typical 90s girl, pale, with dark hair, and wore Doc Martens to school with a bob. She was quiet but projected a laid-back warmth. I used to joke that she was so laid back that she was horizontal. She was so chill, but not one of the “cool girls”. I liked her, then I really “liked” her. Suddenly that feeling was there. It felt in that moment it had always been there. It would always be there. The crush on the girl stayed, long after I'd dismissed her male doppelganger.

Cue the start of the confusion.

Am I gay now? Is it a phase? Are there others like me? What does it mean?

Is the closet really a thing?

It was the mid-nineties in Aberdeen. Homophobia was vocal. Slurs were openly used in my school. Our Secondary School wasn't really rough. But the rough school and the middle-class school had been combined. We had council estates and middle-class folks. You didn't want to be openly gay. I also didn't want to shrink my non-existent dating pool.

While Madonna was bisexual, it was dismissed as lipstick lesbianism. Ellen had come out and was dating Anne Heche. Then they split up. Cue more accusations of lipstick lesbianism of Heche. For representation, we had famous people. I had no idea who else liked girls. [6], [7], [8]

Growing up in Thatcher's Britain with Section 28 meant our sex education didn't cover this either. Legislation like this meant that it was illegal to do so. It wasn't normalised in our storybooks. I grew up not knowing anything about LGBTQ+ communities. Not in my small town before Aberdeen. Not at my schools. I didn't know this was normal. I was isolated, not knowing this was a valid orientation. I didn't know I was bi, I didn't know I could like both sexes. [9 -13]

Now as I wasn't considered dating material in school as I looked 12, this was not a problem. I was awkward. So nothing really changed.

Except I had a crush on a girl. She was awesome and private. She projected a gentle warmth. I still have a copy of a poem she wrote. It was a silly poem. But it was her. I felt it through me as a truth. I had a crush on her. While still having a crush on another boy.

Normally my crushes came once at a time, in an orderly queue. I'd get over a crush. Have some peace, then I'd develop another one. But my crush on her stayed. The boys got swapped out. The only common factor was I liked them as much as people. They were kind.

So it was there in the background. Do I like girls, or is it just this girl? Is it a phase? I knew I didn't want to tell her. I was already really awkward with my crush on a boy a year earlier. One of my frenemies published a thinly veiled story based on my crush, in the school newspaper. So I knew not to tell anyone.

My crush on the girl stayed quiet. I presented my guy crazy mask to my “friends” at school. I had no frame of reference. [9 -13]

Two years went by. Then my other frenemy decided to out the girl I had a crush on to me. “She's a lesbian”, my frenemy told me. “But don't tell anyone.”

I remember thinking. “Well, I know not to tell you about me.”

Did I talk to my crush about this? No. I didn't know if it was true. Plus if she was a lesbian, was I? Did I want to out myself as a lesbian in secondary school? There was no guarantee that she'd like me back in that way. I didn't want to risk it. I did not want the stigma. Especially since I still liked boys as well.

I felt the violation on her behalf though. Someone's sexuality shouldn't be gossip. Their trust when they choose to tell you that private information is betrayed when you out them. It's still surprising to me when the media decides to out people. There's no public interest in this. It's prurient. [1]

I put it to the background.

Peeking out

I attended University. I was still awkward. But I dressed better, and I gained confidence. I still looked young but I had a student ID now. I was that perfect combination, young-looking but over the age of consent. I went feral.

I fell in love with friends. Guys and girls both. I was careful to keep them as friends. Because I knew I fell hard and fast. I fell for someone who wasn't my friend. I didn't like him that much. But the sex was like catnip. I like sex. But I knew better than to catch feelings during sex.

Even then I did, and it was devastating when he dumped me. Then we got back together. Broke up again and I took a 9-month break from dating.

I got a crush on another girl. She was an ex of his. We met because my city is the biggest fishing village ever. We're all interconnected due to university and the oil industry. I was drawn to her gentleness and warmth. I hit on said girl. I crashed and burned, it was embarrassing. So I never contacted her again. I felt guilty, I made her uncomfortable. I decided to never do that again and pushed my attraction to women as far down as I could.

It was still there, but I pretended it wasn't. I felt I was a chaotic creature in my early twenties. A bit lost. I wanted an anchor.

I didn't even think to check if there was a gay and lesbian society at university. Was I gay? Is being bisexual a thing? Was I just curious? Why look?

I put it to the background. Still chaotic, still a bit feral. I've always trusted my male friendships more than my female ones. I did make some female friends. They were nice and supportive mostly. Part of me preferred the simplicity of my male friendships. I never trusted women-only spaces, I felt discomfort in them.

Some chaos still happened in my group. I broke my don't hit on friends rule. I knew I fell in love far too easily. I didn't need the chaos in my heart. I'd get random flashes of attraction to women. One of whom taught me a reiki hand routine. I still use that routine to this day.

The closet is cosy

I graduated and got an IT job. I ensured I didn't date at work. I gained a reputation at work for being quiet and shy. The folks who knew me outside work found this very funny. I wasn't as feral and chaotic as I used to be.

Then I found my person. We communicate well. But I didn't admit I like women and men. When you think you're in a heterosexual relationship, there's not really the urge to discuss sexuality.

Keep it quiet. Push it to the background.

Back in Aberdeen in 2006, we joined a friend who was helping another friend navigate the Gay scene in Aberdeen. The gay bar was nice. But I never went back. I'm in a hetero-normative relationship, and I thought I might be bisexual. But I had no idea if that was valid or real. Would it be attention-seeking? I was not sure if I'd be welcomed, so I didn't try to join in. I had no frame of reference, I knew nothing about LGBTQ+ yet.

I joined LiveJournal and my communities seemed kinda gay. But bisexuality is written as “exotic”. I wasn't “exotic”, I was still not sure if my feelings were a phase. But the queer fan-fic community was a comfortable space for me.

But no, I was sure I wasn't gay. I put it to the background.

Fast forward to LCA 2020 and the Women and LGBTQ+ Business Breakfast. I've never liked women-only events. I've never felt safe in straight female-only spaces. I've never related to them. I don't trust the kind of women who go to business breakfasts. But I decided to go to this one because I was trying to put myself out there more professionally.

This event was awesome. I met people who weren't straight and seemed comfortable with that. I felt safe in this space. I babbled about it to the organisers of the business breakfast. This switched something on in me.

I meet other bi folks there. This is awesome! It's real! I'm real! Being bisexual is a real thing!

Opening the door

I finally accepted that I am bisexual. I am awkward with both sexes, but I chose my husband because he's my person. He just happens to be a man. When I realised I was attracted to him, it was a bolt of realisation much like that first girl at school. Much like her, he projects warmth. He's kind and curious. He's an anchor, it helps me to hold on. When I came out about my bisexuality he was cool with it. It's just another facet of me.

My husband has a big heart. He shares it so well with friends and family. He shares it for far longer than many people deserve. I never feel lonely with him. I find his capacity for caring boundless. It honestly hurts me, when he hurts. He will literally exhaust himself for others and never ask for anything in return. So of course he accepted it. He loves me. I love him, and I'm very fortunate that I like him as a person as well. We have a friendship.

The only reason why I was able to come out to my husband was because there were tech people like me. Who are open about their bisexuality. It makes a space safer. There's a comfort in knowing you aren't alone in a part of your identity. It lessens the chaos. As a teenager, I do wish that there had been a queer community around me.

It's nice to know in my bones that I am bi. I am attracted to women and men. It's normal. It's not a phase. There's nothing wrong with me.

Frankly, it would be nice to have an official Unicode bi-flag. My mastodon bio has very limited space. But apparently, we're too rare. We don't rate one. Three hearts suck. Give us the flag, please. While you are at it, give other folks their flag as well. Those flags would be a lot more useful than a dodo emoji. [2 – 4]

It's nice that we have famous bisexual folks. However, representation matters in a more local sense, with the people in your immediate communities. When you see others who are around you, who are out, it creates a sense of safety. You can come out. There are other folks like you.

Stepping out

Coming out is a process. It starts by believing that there are others like you. You realise your orientation is valid. That happens when you speak to folks like yourself. You hope that people deserve your trust. I came out to my partner and then when I felt comfy enough I told my father. Funnily enough, my brother already knew, he's a millennial though. He already had friends who are queer. But other members of my family don't know. I needed to be comfortable enough in my identity to feel I could mention it casually. It takes a community to help you feel that comfort. It takes quiet conversations with like-minded folks.

It's bisexual awareness day today. We see a lot of bi-erasure and bi-phobia in our popular culture. Back in June, a famous TERF author went on about women who kiss other women for attention. That kind of attitude kept me in the closet for years. To be honest, it's probably part of the reason I've never trusted straight single-sex spaces, even while hiding in plain sight. I'd already been different growing up being the child of a disabled person. I had no desire to stick out more.

I wish I'd had people in my local community who could be open about their sexuality as a teen. The folks around me presented as straight. Perhaps they were mostly straight, but I had no idea. It might have reduced my emotional chaos in my late teens and early twenties. Perhaps not. But there is a steady feeling in accepting my sexuality. I have an extra anchor now, It's me.

Thank you to the community of folks around me who led the way for me. Being you.

You make it easier for us to feel safe enough to air out that closet, it was stuffy in there.
It's nice to breathe.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/14/nobody-should-be-forced-to-come-out-famous-rebel-wilson [2] https://moreprideemojis.com/flags/bisexual.html [3] https://moreprideemojis.com/flags/ [4] https://www.change.org/p/unicode-unicode-google-and-apple-where-is-the-bisexual-flag-emoji [5] https://wedistribute.org/2024/06/maven-mastodon-posts/ [6]https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/a40900987/anne-heche-remembrance/ [7]https://greensboro.com/bisexuality-has-become-more-visible-in-the-90s/article_12a1a17b-65dc-59b2-8873-01e6f2766b8c.html [8]https://www.thepinknews.com/2021/03/01/madonna-sexuality-sex-newsnight-1990-twitter-lgbt/ [9]https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-2023-0213/ [10] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/9/section/28 [11]https://www.theguardian.com/politics/homeaffairs/page/0,11026,875944,00.html [12]https://theconversation.com/twenty-years-after-section-28-repeal-lessons-still-need-to-be-learned-from-uks-homophobic-law-210928 [13]https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/features/lgbt-history-month

On Bears

May 6, 2024

The “who would you prefer to be trapped in the forest with? Man v Bear” is one of those usual shit-posts that becomes a discussion[1].

The default response for women is “bear”. Partly because we recognize the value of a shit-post. But also because it's a truth.

The accurate answer is “Both can be very dangerous in different ways” or “It depends.”

We grow up learning to fear boys and then men.

The first time I learned to fear the opposite sex was when I was twelve, in a classroom when the teacher wasn't there. That fear was continuous for 6 months.

We get reduced to our bodies, and we become an object in a guy's obsession. We grow up learning to navigate power dynamics. We learn diplomacy, to be nice. To not laugh at men. Men fear our anger. If we express it we're called bitches and all bets are off.

If we go outside the expected norm of soft, sweet women, then we suffer. We aren't meant to go into the forest like Red Riding Hood. There are wolves and bears. The forest is dark.

I used to like walking home at night in my quiet city in my early twenties. I'd worked to reclaim my autonomy after being stalked at school and for the first two years of uni. Plus I couldn't afford a taxi.

Sometimes I just needed to get out and just walk. In the deserted granite streets, to find space and peace when my mind was crowded after socializing. I liked walking home at night, navigating the empty streets avoiding people.

The city is our forest. Dark and peaceful.

Our forest has its own predators, and its own dangers.

On the rare times, I went up a busy street, a few times I felt the fear of someone coming up behind me. Getting my keys ready in my fist, to run. Then the bastard just ruffled my hair as he went past. I kept walking, trying to get my heart rate down. Feeling that fear and anger. Feeling very stupid for taking that risk.

Another time, I walked home from a friend's place. Opposite the street, I heard a man yelling at his girlfriend as he left her flat. I kept walking, and he crossed the road to me. The fear rose up, it engulfed me. I said little, I listened as he talked to me, and then he went up a side street. I'd been polite. Diplomatic, while wondering what would happen. Cursing my poor choice. Knowing that if anything happened, my choice to walk home in the summertime would be judged.

Like I'm a bicycle that wasn't locked. A lone woman out at night is apparently asking for it, even if she's in jeans, Doc Martens and a baggy shirt.

My father told me, “Be sure you want sex if you go to a guy's flat.” Which I tried to follow. I did follow it. I was always sure and in my dating life, I followed that advice.

Sometimes there's no map for the forest.

Sometimes you're an intern on a work night out and sharing a work taxi gets you propositioned by a man in his forties. Or it's a rainy night, the taxi queue is long and another colleague who's in his forties offers the telephone at his. You're foolish enough at twenty to trust a work colleague. Both times I was fortunate.

Sometimes the predators give you a pass. Sometimes you are stalked in broad daylight for 2 years. Sometimes we're seen as a goal, sometimes we're just there. We're always objectified. We all have experiences like mine and worse. [2]

I'm so tired. I'm so angry that nothing has changed for folks.

Because privileged men's feelings seem to matter more than our bodily autonomy or our safety. You get defensive and hurt because of a meme. You belittle our knowledge because you are feeling judged. “Does every woman look at me this way? That's not fair.”

Yes, we do look at you, if we don't know you. Sometimes even if we do know you, you assault us or objectify us. It's not you specifically we are judging dude. It's the society that dictates your attitude and the rules we chafe under. We see it in our replies. The need to go ”But I'm not like that.“

Just stop. Take a moment. You really don't need to reply. You don't need to correct our thinking. We know the bear would eat us.

Men don't seem to want to respect our boundaries[2]. Our survival happens at a whim.

Of course we're going to choose the bear.

Being mauled to death is quicker than being stalked or worse.

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2024/05/03/man-or-bear-many-women-say-theyd-rather-be-stuck-in-the-woods-with-a-bear-in-latest-viral-tiktok-debate/ [2] CW: Harassment, Stalking https://dotart.blog/cobbles/ignoring-boundaries

I'm not going to get better.

October 10, 2023

There's a certain distance that someone with a chronic illness feels from able bodied folk, especially some friends and family. Or sometimes even from people with milder manageable chronic conditions. There's a lack of understanding what a debilitating chronic condition does to your quality of life. That you may need support and you know you aren't going to get it as your folks move on with their own lives.

The distance grows as our isolation grows. We're no longer fun, we haven't the energy. Often we have less money so we don't socialise as often. Although the lack of energy plays into this as well.

We're less fun to be around now.

We have a language we use with each other when we communicate with someone who's ill.

“Get well soon.”

“Hope you recover soon.”

“How are you doing? Are you feeling better?”

It's hard for us when we are able-bodied to truly understand what a chronically ill person means when they say they are ill. It's a permanent condition and they are exhausted.

Being ill is only temporary isn't it? Buck up. “You'll feel better soon.”

The chasm is wide.

The truth is we won't get better.

The distance is massive between myself and friends and family who are not as fatigued as I am. Other than my partner the only people who realise are my father and my brother. Even my father slips up sometimes.

It's language. It's our culture. Our society is based on our usefulness.

Although in his case, I know he's hoping I feel a little better for a while so I can get stuff done. Because being constantly fatigued is draining, it's depressing. Because he had his own Post Viral infection in the 1980s he hopes I recover. It wrecked his life. Which is the last thing he wants for me.

Other folks though. They don't get it.

They don't get why I need them to wear a mask. They don't get why every time they say or write an insincere get well soon message it's like metal scratching down a chalkboard on my psyche.

It comes off to me as passive aggressive. As if I change my ideas and buck up I'll magically feel better.

I'm not going to get better. If I'm lucky I will have more “good days” than “bad days.”

I just had to send a link about spoon theory to a relative.

6 months then you need to recover

My Grandmother once told me about living in our small fisher town after she became a widow with a disabled child.

“Everyone rallies around you at first. They constantly come round and offer you lots of help.”

I remember we were doing dishes as I came to visit for the weekend. It was the last weekend I spent with her. She died the week after.

“But after 6 months, you have to fend for yourself. No one bothers after that. You're expected to cope on your own.”

Which my Grandmother did. At the expense of her mental health, time and energy. She had to cope. No support systems existed for her anymore. No husband, and his family didn't help either.

She was widowed twice.

Out on the fishing boats.

I remember reading once about a widow that had 9 husbands. In the 1800s fishing was even more deadly in the North Sea, the men got carried out to the boats on the backs of their wives. They couldn't get their trousers wet as it was heavy calico. They couldn't afford to catch a cold and die. Doctors were expensive.

The women then climbed up the hill, over the Enzie Braes to Keith to sell their fish. A distance of 9 miles. Those women were tough, and generations of this create a harsh culture where you survive. But there's no time or mental space for comfort.

They lost a husband. Remarry. No time for grief, no time for crying. Survive. Live.

The Buchan Peninsular is a cold windy place. In the winter the cold blows through into your bones. The sea is so cold Aberdonians invented a high calorific bread of suet and salt for the fishing boats that went out further into the North Sea.

https://scottishscran.com/butteries-recipe/

I think I get a lot of my mental outlook from my Grandmother in that way. You don't cry in public as a woman. Even if your heart breaks. You can't seem weak or hysterical. The world doesn't have time for weakness. It never did.

People have their own issues to deal with.

Mutual Aid and Solidarity

While there's often a monetary idea to mutual aid. I've seen it practiced across the fediverse. It's sometimes the boosting of a post.

But often it's a heartfelt response to someone's heart break. It's a “Hey, I see you.”

It's comfort and a genuine acknowledgement of someone else's pain. I see it practiced across the ME and Long Covid community. We get more comfort from strangers across the internet than our own families and friends in meat space.

Unless you've been there in either position, you have no idea of the comfort of that.

An acknowledgment of yes, you are ill. I stand with you.

I want the comfort. I want the acknowledgment of mine and others suffering. I don't need people to try to make it better (although that would be nice, if you have the capacity).

I need some of my meat-space folks to realise and acknowledge I'm not going to get better. I wish they could show solidarity in the way that folks on the fediverse do. I'm pretty sure some folks on the fediverse feel the same with their own meat space communities.

It means so much more than an empty “Get well soon.”

FOSS and The Fediverse, the culture's rotten.

September 17, 2023

Sometimes I just despair of #FOSS in general. This week has been brutal to watch.

This week we've seen an outpouring of hate wrapped up in cotton candy rhetoric that I've not seen since gamer-gate.

This period of hate was directed against a Black developer who is creating a database of Fediblocks with reasons and receipts for those blocks.

To be clear I'm a cis white woman. Like I have quite a bit of privilege here. But I am othered. I'm not straight, and I have Long Covid. I grew up in a disabled household. I can see the cobbles around me and sometimes I can see them for others, but not everyone. We cannot anticipate all the harms. But we can use tools to mitigate harm. It does take will from our communities though.

The fediblock tag was created by 2 marginalised folks in the fediverse, at least one of those creators was black. It was created partly in response to the outpouring of hate against playvicious an instance for black folks in the fediverse. I've seen people say that the developer started this in 2020 with screenshots as their arguments. But the truth is all of this started back further in time in 2017.

The fediverse isn't a welcoming space to black folks, its not a welcoming space to indigenous folks. But then the fediverse is a microcosm of the larger FOSS community.

I've often seen the arguments of fediblocks go thus:

They can be misused and can be a vector for harassment/false accusations.

When it's coming from FOSS white cis dudes, it kinda reminds me of when women get accused of making false accusations of harassment.

So when I hear that kind of argument, it raises a red flag for me, and I make a note for later. Because I need to work on my own sexism.

A more obvious red flag for me in the FOSS community is related to that community safety. I saw a toot today that made me really angry. It was by a well known and respected person in my FOSS community.

It turns out he doesn't like masks or banging on about #COVID and the need for vaccination boosters. He also defends Richard Stallman passionately so there's that as well.

The Fediblock Tag and what the blocklist tools are for is to help your admins keep your communities safe.

Codes of Conduct are tools to help Projects, Conferences, Event Organisers to keep your communities safe.

A robust health policy enforcing masks are there to keep your community safe and disease free.

If you refuse to see why these tools are needed, I can't interact with you in a meaningful manner. I will not be able to interact with you in person.

Because you won't be safe for me to be around. Or my friends and colleagues to be around. If you value people who won't support safety policies, I need to ask you why?

I need to ask you, why are you not open minded enough to hear a wider community view?

More to the point if you value folks like that over a diverse community, why should we do the work to improve your community when you aren't welcoming to us?

Why should we help you, interact with you, give you our passion and energy in FOSS when you don't accept us or other marginalised groups?

Why should I work with you when you can't be arsed to wear a mask? Or actively ridicule me and others for prioritizing our health and safety?

Why should we advocate for your projects when you don't give a toss about accessibility? When you are actively hostile to us when you defend those projects due to your #ableism?

Why should we work with you, or collaborate with you when you won't do the research and work to look at your internalised #racism?

Why should I work with you when you don't see the point of a Code of Conduct and are sexist? You may not treat me like shit, but who are you harming when I'm not looking?

Why should we collaborate with you at all when you don't make us feel safe and welcome. We know we aren't welcome. You make it clear. Your disdain for us is not hidden.

We've a lot of work to do on our communities and who we consider working with and supporting.

I have one thing for the FOSS movements to consider. When you push for freedom at the expense of other peoples freedom, it's clear to me you don't believe in Human Rights. It's clear to me you barely tolerate me, you sure as heck don't tolerate those outside white-space.

Although perhaps I'm wrong and you do want to help.

Fine. You can start by supporting Ro or donating to the Bad Space.

https://tweaking.thebad.space/about

Ignoring boundaries.

September 6, 2023

CW: harassment, stalking

A tale of harassment and stalking.

Prologue

Where to start?

Well what's the reason for this post? What inspired me now of all times to write about this subject?

I needed to write this post. In my professional and personal landscape of my communities I keep seeing the same dynamics. Recent events brought it to mind again.

I lay awake for hours last night as I realised just why some admin and other harassment campaigns brought out a protective instinct in me.

TLDR : An increasing escalation of abuse by a man because a woman enforced boundaries.

Introduction

When I was 17 years old, I managed to acquire a 22 year old stalker. On and off he stalked me for about 2 years, from the age of 17 to 19.

How had I managed that? It's not like you go and pick up a stalker from the shops.

Well. It happened because I was a girl in a very geeky male majority environment. The world of tabletop RPGs. I'd got into it by accident a few years before with a group of boys I knew in Secondary School (High School). But for various reasons that group had to stop.

I missed it, so I got into another group of folk, who were outside school who also liked RPGs. Some liked live action, some like me liked tabletop.

This group was very different from my classmates at school. There had been a few odd incidents and behaviours, that being 17, geeky and odd, had not registered for me. Including some very close to the line stuff, that I didn't want and didn't know how to stop it.

Suffice to say, it was the 1990s, problematic behaviours were the norm. We grew up watching problematic 80s films of Romance and shenanigans. So if you are a guy and feeling uncomfortable or guilty about what came next. I don't blame you. There's a reason there's a CW on this.

I'm not aiming to make this post an attack on men. I am aiming for you to recognise when constant abusive behaviour happens to people online. I want you to understand the trauma that happens from it. I want you to recognise it, see it, and try to get the abusers to stop. If they don't stop, well that's what we have moderation tools for.

We all good now? Cool, cool.

Youth is wasted on the young. For one thing I'd have spotted my abusers faster.

I'd already been subject to a really odd pissing contest about me between 2 guys.

One of them had already been not just creepy, but physically creepy as well. I was disquieted by it and I spoke to the other guy about it because it had made me uncomfortable. I thought the person I was speaking to at this point was a friend.

We started our RPG group with an already screwed up dynamic, of this guy and a younger male friend of mine from school. I'd known that friend from Chess Club and he introduced me to this group. The game was Shadowrun.

Looking back, I should have got a clue, from the pissing contest. I should have got a clue from the fact this new “friend”, used to joke that he'd become a dragon in 2020 and he wanted me to be his enchantress. I did my best to poo poo that.

Make it a joke, and maintain the friendship. The constant story that many of us have. Desperately trying to fend off the inevitable. Before we even knew what was going to happen.

Anyway, I wasn't interested and after the recent incident with one of the other boys in the group. I wanted to be very clear on this.

I wished to set this boundary.

So we did our campaign. It was fine.

Then it wasn't fine.

Dragonheart sucks.

The triggering incident was the film Dragonheart coming to the cinema. I didn't want to see it. The dragon in the trailer looked crap, despite being voiced by Sean Connery. I wasn't going. My friend, (who I'm now going to refer to as my stalker) wanted to see it. He was going with my school friend and his girlfriend. He wanted me to go too.

For a few weeks the conversation was:

“We should all go to see Dragonheart!”

“No thanks, I'm not interested.”

A few days later:

“Oh come on, please come!!”

“No I'm not interested in Fantasy. Besides, younger guy and his girl are going. No”

You get the idea. I was getting sick of this conversation. Especially as my younger school friend was also pushing for this.

I had my reasons for not going. I also knew that it was not a good idea, going to sit in a darkened room, with a couple and a guy. I knew he liked me in a way I couldn't reciprocate. I needed to maintain that boundary.

Again. I was 17 years old, and he was 22 years old.

Finally, it came to a head.

Another person in the TTRPG community was also a casual friend. He'd come by and we were chatting. He was also 17 years old. He was also trying to put the moves on me and I was about to maintain that boundary as well.

My school friend visited, to try to get me to go to Dragonheart one more time, he had tickets. He didn't look happy to see the other boy on my couch. He left.

Then I got a really nasty phone call from my stalker.

He demanded to know if Couch boy was still there.

He then demanded that I go to the cinema with him to see Dragonheart.

Oh and I should get rid of Couch boy and never see Couch boy again.

I was getting rather fed up of this. His tone was very angry. I was disquieted by his tone of voice. I did not appreciate his efforts to control me. To tell me what to do.

I was 17, he was 22.

I told him to never call me again.

I came off the phone shaking. Couch boy saw this and immediately backed off from coming on to me and spent the rest of the afternoon cheering me up. On the rare occasions I see Couch Boy years later, we still catch up and consider each other friends. He never tried it on with me again.

Note the difference there. He respected my boundaries.

The next day, the younger school friend came by again. Yet again to ask me to go to see Dragonheart. He also demanded on behalf of the stalker to know how long Couch boy had been there. What happened with him.

Why wouldn't I just go to the cinema?

At this point I was becoming rather angry. I did not understand what was going on. But I was getting rather annoyed about it. So I responded.

I didn't want to go to the cinema. Especially as this would be a de-facto double date. Which I didn't want to do. Also what happened with Couch boy was NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS!

Cue this breathtaking piece of misogyny “You were unconsciously leading Stalker on.”

I have a temper. But it tends to be a very cold anger. Ice coated my voice as I said “Close the door behind you when you leave.”

The calm before the Storm

So at this point we have the start of the counter example.

It's no longer about the film. It's about control.

My stalker is possessive of my attention and at this point in time, my stalker is starting on the path of over 2 years of stalking me.

I had the temerity to say no. To keep saying no.

I also have male friends that aren't him. I've been objectified. It's no longer about me. It's about him. Why won't I go out with him? I'm his.

I didn't realise at this point in time that my younger friend was going to be “bros before hos” about this. I didn't realise just how much he'd become an enabler of this.

I didn't realise just how he'd betray 4 years of friendship to be an accomplice to my stalking.

Possession

Very soon after that incident, I came home from school one day to find my stalker outside my house. Fortunately I spotted him in time and went up a side street before he saw me. I then went straight to my best friends house.

Scared out of my mind.

The location of my friends house was fortunate, it was straight across from the bus stop where my stalker would get on the bus to go home.

My stalker did not know this. So for an hour and a half we hid behind the net curtains watching the bus stop and we waited until he got on that bus so that I could go home.

At home I found out just how bad the situation had been. He'd turned up outside the house at 13:45. My Father had been about to go out and do errands. My Father didn't dare to leave, in case something happened to me. He'd watched as he saw me spot my stalker and half inch it up the side road. He then watched as my stalker stayed outside the house, then when my stalker decided to leave, he walked back down the road, looking up every side street to see if I was hiding there. He took his time to check.

Again, and I feel this cannot be stated enough. I was 17 years old, my stalker was 22 years old. He was unemployed and had income from being a carer. He had free time. Which he used to hang outside the school gates to try to talk to me alone.

For several weeks I would walk past arm in arm with my best friend. Terrified, heart rate up. Last year I read my diaries from that time, wondering if I was just being over dramatic. Yeah. If anything I've toned it down. I'd detailed it, right down to hand drawn maps explaining where he was and where I was. I'd logged it in more detail than I'd realised.

I logged my anger, my fear and my pain. I logged my analysis of the situation. Trying to work out if I had led him on. Had I? How? I read my previous entries from months before.

I could find nothing. I logged how angry I was about this. I wanted him to stop.

In addition to this campaign of a few weeks, I also had my betrayer's girlfriend come to my house. I didn't let her in. I remember standing on the steps of my front garden. Her standing on the street as she repeated my stalker's and her boyfriend's (the betrayer) words to me.

“He just want's to talk to you.”

“If he doesn't stop I'm going to report him to the police. Please tell him to stop.”

So it stopped for a short while, until the summer holidays.

I was on the phone to a relative when I heard someone come to the door. I recognised his shape. I carefully hid while whispering to the relative to stay on the phone, but I needed to be quiet. Meantime he knocked, and then looked though our mailbox flap to see if I was there.

Again my heart rate increased. I sat quietly on the stairs out of the direct view of the front door. I was terrified he'd get in.

I got silent phone calls. Not everyday, but often enough that my Father had to answer the phone for me. 25 years later and I still don't answer the phone from an unknown number.

I'd stated my boundaries. I'd stated quite strongly to my stalker, my former friend and that friends girlfriend to leave me alone.

This wasn't a case of girls being shy, or not wanting to hurt a guy. I enforced my boundaries and he escalated.

I went to university in my city. He managed to figure out where my campus was. My stalker and my betrayer, hung around outside the entrance. I started to never leave the campus alone. Every time I saw them, my stalker and his enabler, my betrayer; I felt a mixture of terror and anger.

Anger at my stalker, for not respecting my boundaries. Anger at my betrayer, for helping that stalker to stalk me. Anger at myself, for ending up in this situation and being terrified.

I'd mentioned to my Father about seeing them. In the Winter, My Father started meeting me to go to the library, “I was going to put these books back, wanna come?”

It gets dark up North very quickly in the Winter. There were a lot of poorly lit alleyways between Campus and home. I felt safer, plus I like books and they weren't there. Plus my Father's awesome company.

It wasn't until a decade later my Father admitted to me, he walked to my campus (2 miles away) to see if my stalker turned up. Every time my Father came to my campus, my stalker was there. He'd stay there outside my campus door until he and my betrayer spotted my Father. My Father desperately wanted my confidence to be good. To not be affected. He wanted me to get the maximum I could out of university and the friends I made.

I went on night's out and lived my life and took risks, in sheer defiance of my stalker. I was so angry, at him and angry with my own fear.

I fenced. I got a Full blue for fencing. I'd walk down the street. But I was fortunate, my stalker had to be home before 6. We'd still get the odd silent phone call. But he had affected me. My Father remembered when I bought a slightly larger pair of docs.

“I'll wear thicker socks, it'll be better for kicking a guys shins and then running.”

The end of the story.

It finally stopped when I was away on industrial placement for a year. I was still working in the city, but 9 to 5 meant he didn't see me. In the years after that I'd still occasionally get a silent phone call, so it reinforced my fear of answering calls on the landline.

He was one of the few people who had it. It was ALWAYS him. But at least I no longer saw him outside my house, or outside my uni campus.

I got off lightly. I was also protected by friends and family.

Many women don't, many men who are stalked don't. Many marginalised folk on here are doxxed and harassed.

There was escalation. All because I didn't want to go and see Dragonheart. All I did, was think I was friends with a guy, and enforced a boundary.

If you are a guy, and you are feeling guilty because perhaps you recognise some of the initial behaviour. I want you to continue on this journey. Try to grow that empathy a bit more. Yes, it's hard and painful. The guilt sucks.

For one thing you may well have been Couch guy. He realised and backed off. There's a difference between that and a campaign of stalking for 2 years.

I don't want your penance. If you also started on that journey, the person you harassed doesn't want it either.

No really.

Leave them alone.

You aren't entitled to my forgiveness or theirs.

What should you do?

I want you to teach the other folks around you that this escalation of behaviour and harassment happened because we enforced our boundaries.

I want you to see online harassment beyond “main character drama”, “mini Elons” and “Fedi fiefdoms!”

I want you to understand that this harassment keeps happening, because some Fedi admins spoke to their communities. They enforced a boundary. They enforced moderation.

The harassment continues on from “Drama to drama” escalated by some well meaning people. Who naturally trust their mods, because sometimes those mods have kept them safe.

Because they only know one side of the story. The harassment keeps happening because those admins enforced their moderation rules.

They have rigorous codes of conducts and enforce them. They do this to protect their communities. To keep those folks safe. Sometimes they will make mistakes. But those communities are filled with folk who made the choice to be on those instances. Because they weren't protected elsewhere.

They needed the boundaries to shelter behind. They needed those boundaries, because sometimes they have stalkers who don't respect boundaries either.

I want you to understand that the harassment will keep happening because those admins care about their communities and enforce a boundary for the good of those communities.

I want you to recognise the escalation.

I want you to see the harassment and the recruitment of others to be their accomplices.

I certainly don't want you to trust those accomplices with your mental health when you're being harassed.

I want you to see it when the “Dramas” online and in our physical FOSS communities escalate in harassment because someone said no.

I want you to help enforce those boundaries. Not join in the harassment. Not excuse their lies or buy into “it was just a shitpost bro!”

Recognise it.

When I enforce my own boundaries. Please respect them.

Don't be like my stalker.

Introduction

Back in the olden times

Fedicon and the two sides of Fedi

No politics here! Only Connections! Yay!

But why do we associate with everyone?

Context Collapse

How to deal with an issue

How to consider opt out

Family

Betrayal of the Social Contract

Introduction

My First Mastodon instance

Power, Instance Owners and Mods

Shared Power, Shared Responsibility

Instance owners are not the same as Community Managers

Small is better

The Future of FOSSTODON

Further Reading

What is the Scolds Bridle?

We never asked for you to collate our posts

Feminine Rage

Further reading

FOSDEM and Billionaire Fascists

Once upon a time in a land far away there was a FOSS Conference...

Fairy Tales

FOSDEM Criticism

I don't like what I see in the mirror's reflection

So what can FOSDEM do

What can I do?

Consent and dissemination

Airing out the closet

Is this a closet I'm in?

Is the closet really a thing?

Peeking out

The closet is cosy

Opening the door

Stepping out

The chasm is wide.

6 months then you need to recover

Out on the fishing boats.

Mutual Aid and Solidarity

A tale of harassment and stalking.

Prologue

Introduction

Youth is wasted on the young. For one thing I'd have spotted my abusers faster.

Dragonheart sucks.

The calm before the Storm

Possession

The end of the story.

What should you do?