The Pseudomoral Race.
In youth, when one is very idealistic and not very cynical, one tends to accept the game of moral categories with a certain ease, that is, the game of "good/bad". The problem with this game arises when you try to apply these categories in a divisive model, ie in a model that is applicable in politics.
An example is the contest to swear that never, ever, ever, the administrator of an instance in the fediverse will federate with Evil Threads, a product of EVIL, or of Meta.
I've already written about the fact that "has the activitypub interface", doesn't mean it can federate, (because of protocol ambiguity), and the fact that even if it could, "can federate" doesn't imply that it wants to , much less that it will.
But the real problem is that a political game based on moral categories has been placed upon it.
If you have an instance on the Fediverse, you are using one of the 5/6 software that is really capable of federating well. So, you are any pinchi dots. Even if you have written a truly anti-fascist moderation policy, entirely pro-LGBTQWERTZUIOPÜASDFGHJKLÖÄYXCVBNM*-°^~, congratulations: you are only one of 2/3000 who have the same policy. Nor will the cool background of your instance make a difference.
But then, if you're little fuckboys used to proving that you're better than all of us, how are you going to distinguish yourself? How can you tell the rest of the world that your instance is better than the others? How do you buy an SUV, for the requests of the fediverse?
The most puerile, or perhaps adolescent, solution is to say that you are the good ones, the hoplites of good, and that by entering the instance you will enlist in the forces of GOOD.
But at this point you will hit your head against a nice concrete pillar: first of all, the GOOD is inflated. Every fucking group on the planet, Satanists included, try to prove the same thing: "we are good"
I'll tell you the truth: if there was only one group, even the Specter, willing to announce that they were evil, the bad guys, the Evil Department, whatever doesn't produce any benefit, I'd join them tomorrow.
Unfortunately, not even the most hardened satanists admit to being on the side of evil: they throw out pathetic opportunisms like "freedom", "free will", and other crap that all seem to claim the same thing: they accuse us of being evil , but in reality we are good. No one who says “it's okay, we are evil. We love ingrown toenails and wish you hemorrhoids. We are bad, despicable, we don't do anything good or useful, we don't represent anything positive and we work for the bad, for the worst and also for the pineapple carbonara”.
But no: since everyone says they are good, or at least beneficial, or positive, and that they have a just battle to carry on, everyone has an idea of good, and if you don't see it, you're wrong or you're evil.
Thus, although we have had balls full of good guys since the Triassic, everyone tries to be good. And if you understand what it means to have a sort of Istanbul bazaar full of coupons shouting their goodness, you will understand one thing: those who have the "instance of coupons" find themselves with an immense company and even more vast competition.
But there are shortcuts.
For example, if you say that someone is evil, and you say that you hate them, then you can say "we are their enemies, and since we fight against evil, then of course we are the good ones".
Since no one has ever demonstrated that moral categories enjoy the transitive property, much less the aggregative one, this doesn't work: Hitler and Stalin were enemies, but saying that Hitler was evil doesn't help us to think that Stalin was good. (although, I myself would order an extermination if I had ten million Clemente Mastella in my country. And you too)
However, they delude themselves that if A is good, then A's enemy is evil.
So they say: hey, HALF is EVIL, and since we solemnly swear not to federate with HALF (EVIL) then we are necessarily “THE GOOD”. Doc. Docg.
In swearing never to federate with Threads, the implicit message is "we are GOOD". Why'? What do you have different? The answer is “I hate META”.
And I know very well what you will answer me if I ask "why hate META". None of the answers have ever convinced me. For several reasons.
1. “Because he spies on us”. If you short-armed stinky shitheads hadn't pretended that internet companies were non-profit organizations that offer free services, social networks probably wouldn't have to pretend they were free and then find a data-based loophole. Now you would pay a subscription to Facebook, and therefore in order not to get customers stolen, Facebook would be forced to protect their data.
2. “Because he doesn't have the same purest ideals as me:” you don't have them either, so much so that to demonstrate that you are good, you are forced to take on an enemy and work by comparison. What the hell are we talking about?
3. “Because Facebook does it _for profit_: the devil's dung etc”. Give me the address of your employer, so I can inform him that you disdain profit, and that you are told not to work for profit, i.e. for free. I am convinced that you will be very willing to work for profit.
4. "Because they are dangerous for democracy": the only ones who are dangerous for democracy are evidently the voters, not the social network. The social network does not vote. It can spread bullshit, sure: actually, we had never heard bullshit before Facebook. Clearly Zuckerberg invented them. I've never seen a mendacious mass media before. Really. Did you know that communists eat babies?
5. "Because they have too much power": sure, not as much as a cop who beats you to death in a barracks, not as much as an employer who makes you work for two lire, not as much as a fucking landlord that raises your rent, not as much power as any other power you suffer every day without a word. And do you know why Facebook is evil? Because if you say you hate Facebook, nothing happens to you. If you say you hate your slave employer, he fires you. If you say you hate the fascist cop, bad things will happen to you. The same if you fight against any other excessive power. Except META. Which at most responds by profiling you as a "pain in the ass". If you want to present yourself as a person who fights against excesses of power, well: you are not very credible.
6. Because it does nothing against hate. Aha. The epic stories of how you curbed hate have not reached my ears. do you update me?
7. "Because they force people to come to them, even if they don't want to." Not like when you changed your computer just because it "was too slow", by pure chance, when it worked exactly as it did when you bought it. And not like when you change clothes because they are no longer in fashion. Not like those times when you change your iPhone with a new model identical to the old one, to the point that sooner or later Apple will sue itself for plagiarism. Ninth. “THEY” do it.
I could go on and on, but what you apparently forget is that _proving someone is evil is as difficult and elusive as proving someone is good_. Especially since you want to prove someone is evil, only to then prove BY COMPARISON that they are good. The trouble is that so, after having struggled and probably failed to prove that someone is EVIL, then you find yourself in the even more difficult situation of _comparing yourself_
Honestly, I tell you what. I'm so fed up with "good", _and especially its sycophants_, that I would create an account on Facebook, if only I were truly convinced that it is EVIL. And if Elon Musk were himself "EVIL", instead of an overrated jerk, who is rich because he's overrated and overrated because he's rich, I'd even get a Twitter account.
Because you see, if all four of the world's four billion social network users moved to the fediverse tomorrow, you'd need about 4,000 times more servers than you do today. And your ridiculous connections, even at home, your two-bit instances, or in the Amazon "free tier", would not be enough.
And you would find yourself making a choice: pay two/three euros a month, or the instance will be forced to sell advertising. Those two or three euros that you would never pay, not even for Whatsapp or telegram.
To be good, you have done far too much evil.