The bot does use force though: e.g. if I had wanted to post in the community, now I am unable to b/c despite my consent and against my judgement (in this scenario), I am no longer able to. Granted, this level of "force" does not rise to full "violence":-).
Though does fascism necessarily imply violence? Yes they are willing to use it, and moreover they don't shirk from it as others do, seeing it as a healthy and natural part of the world, but they seem to me to simply want to win, using whatever means necessary, rather than having that be a defining characteristic for them, as if using it were their sole or even primary tool? As the current regime of disinformation warfare is showing us, if lies work better than tanks, then those are what you want to use to convert your target from a foe into an ally. The goal for them being the attainment of said goal, unlike e.g. liberalism that focuses more on the process to get there - the means not justifying the end (for some, though fascists would ofc disagree... violently if necessary).
Also, for me it is not just the improper technique - if they want to do something incorrectly, that's on them, e.g. I don't need their code to compile & run, only my own - but rather the various means of imposition that their application of their tool has upon me / us all. e.g. right now my account has zero bans on it (ironically including this one, b/c outside of Lemmy.World I cannot see this ban, only on that exact server instance), but if this bot makes a new "determination" for me lets say every other day, then in the course of the next quarter I (or whoever) could have nearly 50 mod actions taken against me. That means then that if I get legitimately banned, from a real community that I may actually care about, I will have a much harder time even noticing that, if I have no tools to separate out those automated bans from the human ones (just b/c it has not happened to me yet, doesn't mean that it never will!:-P). It is the email spam issue all over again, or the older I-was-just-sitting-down-to-eat-dinner-with-my-family-when-the-salesman-calls (or shows up at your front door, at a time they figured you would be home): how do you maintain utility of a tool (your email address, your phone number, your front door visitation privileges), when someone abuses those, spamming it at all hours of the day and night with their blitzkrieg approach to "just making sure that I/you are aware of this amazing opportunity... and if you act now then you can..." I am saying: these mod actions are not harmless - they deny us the use of the normal functioning of the modlog.
And even if the modlog issue were fixed, it is still harassment. A white woman stopping an immigrant, or a black person, to "share their opinion" of whether the recipient should be in that particular place... "I'm just saying", or "I'm just asking questions here..." except no you aren't, you're on a campaign to convey a message that "you[r kind] are not welcomed here, you should go elsewhere, imho". It's an attack - a fairly low-key, extremely ineffective one, but a pointed/directed, nonconsensual, not-friendly, abusive message that is being sent. Though unless I am misunderstanding something here, while I can block the sender, I cannot block those modlog entries... right? (do you know?) Thus they deny me the use of that, filling it up with their spam, even if - again - I have never visited nor ever desired to visit their community. Ofc if someone were an admin, or had access to some of those admin tools... then that would solve the issue for them personally, to either not have to see those messages or at least be able to filter them so that they can see others, but it would not help anyone else across the Fediverse - that is an unreasonable expectation that "we should all become admins of our own instances". Thus, these qualify as "attacks" under those circumstances - do they not?
But I suppose where I went wrong was that "fascist" seems to imply a far-right nature? And while far-left totalitarians share a lot in common - the heavy directive role played by the mods/admins, the self-sufficiency not desiring input from anyone outside of the echo chamber of loyal ~~pets~~ subjects, and the purity seeking to separate themselves from the denigrated "jerks" - they indeed differ, I suppose, in the specific definition of their end goals. So what do you think, would the more proper word be "authoritarian"/"totalitarian", rather than "fascist"? I suppose we all (translation: me:-D) are playing fast & loose with that word, as in the concept of certain people being "like (without necessarily precisely being" (a fascist), but I've been doing so long already that I'm not putting it in quotes, and allowing myself to forget even inside my own mind whatever I may have originally meant. (And I may even have offered this exact apology before, to you, yet if so, then here we are again...)
In any case, they do seem to be falling prey to the same format of thinking as those that they claim are "bad"? And then they ramp up the scale - if they downvote, then *I* will ban! (at which point the other side simply gets alts, etc.) And then in the process, as you pointed out, such an arms race nullifies the original/proper/intended use of those tools.
That's a great explanation, thanks! ๐
They can still come back from another parallel reality or some such - villains are like cats, they always come back (unless they are bored and then they don't).
Ah... centrifugal force, ofc!:-)
And thanks for the comment! Honestly, while I see the religious connotations, that wasn't even the first place my mind went. i.e. it seems much more "zen" than Judeo-Christian, although I suppose in fairness it's both.
Anyway, it seems to be (1) something mostly just to ponder, rather than a specific rule that someone must take, and therefore (2) not something intended for everyone, e.g. if you have a medical need that will cost money, then why commit suicide by giving away that treatment?
But... as with any art, I suppose it means whatever the reader pulls from it.
I do want to add that we are getting sidetracked with the "money" part, as should be expected, but that's nowhere close to what this poem seems to be about overall, to me at least. It also mentions telling someone you love them (hehe, not necessarily with a gift of all of your money:-), and overall screams to me of bravery. Especially that last stanza - "nothing more pathetic than caution", which it goes on to specifically mention that while perhaps not always, definitely there seems to be times when it needs to be discarded, not to fill someone else's pockets or even stomaches, but for our own sakes, in that moment.
Why is that - wouldn't you be working against solar gravity? Like you don't have to get them there quickly, just launch them in some orbit that will decay and be taken in?
Or yourself. Like Mercury is in retrograde bc you turned left.
(The guy in red's name is Ban:-)
They don't even see the contradiction: that in an attempt to fight the fascists (as they say in the post I linked), they have become ones themselves.
Also, I don't mind if they user block me using such a bot - that is simply curating their own feed (I may not think highly of their choice, but at least I agree that it would be their choice) - but to ban me from some place, and more importantly make a note in my modlog to that effect, is something else entirely. It's the difference between choosing not to have an abortion for oneSELF, vs. making that determination for someone ELSE to not be allowed to have an abortion.
And then telling that person what you think about the situation, at whatever frequency that bot is run, essentially spamming the Fediverse with your own speech, in an attempt to silence someone else's (in your community... except that unless you are an instance admin - in which case you don't need to resort to this type of implementation - you don't "own" any community, even if you started it, i.e. there are still instance rules that need to be followed, and anyway you certainly don't own the modlogs of every person across the entire Fediverse!?!!?!).
If I were the author of this bot, setting aside how I never would have made such in the first place, the best solution now would be to throw it away entirely, as it is far too broken to be fixed with mere tweaking, like minimum of five comments rather than one. Even then, that account might end up being banned from several instances, for "vote manipulation", and it even puts the instances that allow users to run it at risk of being defederated as well, eventually if that becomes a pattern and the admins are unresponsive to deal with it, for violation of the rules of the Fediverse, especially spamming. These are like constant advertisements of "I don't like this other person, and want them to only have access to separate but equal communities away from me", which is... not ideal but basically their private thoughts, not something that needs to fill up the modlogs of a large fraction of people across the entire Fediverse, especially mostly innocent people getting caught up in too wide of a net, and making the modlogs of those thus affected no longer human readable.
Fascinating. I always enjoy going deeper with you:-).
According to his definition, put forth in his 2004 Anatomy of Fascism (via that wikipedia page), he says:
I picked up on the usage of the wording of "jerks" - at least 3 times in the bot post, and more times still on the actual community page - bc of how much it struck me as a tactic of "humiliation". As in, it's not enough to ban someone - they need to be told about it (just when they sit down to dinner! ๐), everywhere they look, and have that word added, with the link to that word given specifically embedded into the modlog ban message. i.e. it's very "in-your-face". Much like how "the poors deserve their fate bc they're lazy and spoiled and entitled", never mind all the facts to the contrary e.g. what if a store is currently selling (almost expired) steak meat for half the price of ground chuck. But no, Kansas had to pass a law specifically prohibiting people on food social welfare programs - most often widows, whose husbands disappeared for whatever reason and left a single parent to now raise an innocent child - from purchasing steak with those funds, regardless of the pricing. The "luxury" items - even nearly expired ones - are too good for the likes of them, i.e. it's a humiliation tactic used by conservatives to stick it to the poor. Just like that bot calls people "jerks", as in it's not enough to ban them, they must also have that label thrown into their face.
And we could go down, one sentence fragment at a time, one after the other - e.g. "obsessive preoccupation with community decline", yup, check - and we see how well that bot post meshes with this definition of fascism. And even irl regimes don't always meet all the criteria - with only Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy having done so. "working.. with traditional elites" - yup, community mods, check. "abandons democratic liberties" - yup, people's rights to only be banned after they have committed some offense, which downvotes do not qualify as, especially in some other community entirely, and all the more so when a single downvote can do the trick. "and pursues with redemptive violence" - yup, I mean it's anonymous online, so fairly limited, but we agreed how it's an "attack" nonetheless. "and without ethical or legal restraints" - yup, violates various codes of conduct as well as the entire spirit behind federation principles. "goals of internal cleansing and external expansion" - yup, get rid of the "jerks" and thereby make the communities that use the Santa-bot great again.
I dunno, the more I look into this, the full-on term of "fascism", not just authoritian/totalitarian seems to fit better. But I'll be curious to hear your rebuttal bc you definitely have read far deeper than I on this topic:-). I agree it's strange to think in terms of fascism wrt online moderation principles rather than tanks and coups, but if the shoe fits, as the old saying goes...