Yup, I'm coming out of the woodwork for this one.
Fedilab choosing or not choosing to block a domain has very little impact on nazis accessing the fediverse. There is literally nothing stopping them from circumventing any performative block done on the client level, because any of them can just fork and publish their own client.
Shouting down a developer for choosing not to take action against this is not anywhere close to the gravity some of y'all are inflating it to be.
@shaderphantom Hard disagree - it makes the effort of accessing fascist platforms harder because they need to change the code in order to use these apps. While it may be minimal, it does have an impact.
@brainblasted trivially harder. It's trivial for any user of Gab to fork an open source project and tell everyone else on Gab to use it instead, even if the upstream project blocked the domain. It's like a one line change and signing up for Play Store distribution and then every fascist developer there can help otherwise stay in sync with upstream.
Then Fedilab runs the risk of being overtaken in popularity by the fork.
@brainblasted the efforts of a single user can greatly benefit the entire network. It applies for non-fascist uses as much as it does for fascists. Not all of them have to know software development to take advantage of their commons.
@brainblasted you might find it surprising that I agree that I would have preferred the block added even if it does nothing practical.
But cancelling the developer of the app for not doing so is grossly unacceptable policing behavior given how little it would actually do.
This is performative more than anything else.
@shaderphantom I don’t know about cancelling, but we are allowed to disagree with them and voice our disagreement publicly.
@brainblasted which creates the practical effect of a callout, even if it's just "public disapproval", because this is an individual maintainer we're talking about, not a corporation.
@shaderphantom you may disagree with me on this, but calling out people for enabling fascism is perfectly valid. This shit is life and death for some of us, so it’s in our best interest to not let it spread.
@brainblasted well, I guess a whole lot of clout farming leftists currently on this platform need to be pointed out for regularly engaging in harassment campaigns against innocent people aided by the very fascists we're talking about preventing, but don't mind me...
@shaderphantom For one, if Google knows that the app is being used to circumvent the Gab ban it may be denied from app store distribution. Which means they need to use less-known distribution channels.
There is no excuse for enabling fascists once you know there are fascists.