/s/useful/hateful

UPDATE: Mastalab developer changed his opinion and I did not judge his behavior correctly before. He reverted all the changes after he got no response from the Plat Store. These changes were praised by the hateful groups. It's also paid now. I don't support actions Fedilab has taken since this post was published. I don't support harassment he received for reverting these changes neither.

If you're not following so-called "meta" of the Fediverse let me bring you up to date. There were some news that nazi-run "social network" which lost multiple hostings and was kicked out of app stores, which burned tons of inverstors' cash on nothing gives up on their own development and wants to adopt Mastodon and use Mastodon-compatible apps.

As one of the contributors to the Tusky, my first thought was "we should block the hell out of them on the app level". Later Eugen proposed the same thing.

Then Toot! did that. And Fedilab did that. And others did as well. And I'm hella proud of them all.

And then the response was… I don't know if you expected that but I did not anticipate such a hateful response. Of course it harmed "free speech" activists (who totally don't support nazis of course).

I want to make it clear. Letting racists spread hate wasn't my goal. It wasn't Eugen's goal when we was developing Mastodon. It was the goal of furries, queer people, people of color, poor people, neuredivergent people who developed, supported and used Fediverse. It wasn't my goal when I was hurting myself both physically and emotionally because I wanted to finish a feature for Tusky to say that those beautiful weird people are not valid. Listening and spreading nazi bullshit was never on my agenda, quite the opposite thing. Frustration with Twitter unwilling to deal with Nazi is one of the driving forces behind Mastodon.

Now you tell us, app developers, that we shouldn't do that. That we should be risking to be banned from the stores because of your twisted notion of free speech.

Why did I link to other's posts but not to Fedilab one? That's because it cannot be found. Guess why.

You are either useful idiots or nazis. Honestly, at this point it doesn't even matter. I want you to get your head out of your ass and do something useful with your life instead of harassing people who try to end oppression.

They will come for you too.

Don't you even dare.