#wilw — Public Fediverse posts

Continuint our better know a host, with another #introduction this time of our resident captain Vash
Vash joined us a little after the formation of MNR, he usually is flying around on #startrek online, #NMS and is also another artist on the channel. The only thing is, do not bring up #wilw eaton cause...we'll we all lose 2 hours of our lives.
You can find him over on another instance @VashSyndicate

Does anyone know why Wil Wheaton's "The Ready Room" isn't available for streaming in the Star Trek: Picard "Extras" on #ParamountPlus?
#StarTrek #Picard #wilw #readyroom

He was on Counter.Social (a non-federated fork of #Mastodon) but stopped posting in 2019. According to this #Facebook post from yesterday he’s doesn’t use Mastodon or #Twitter at all, and an unnamed upstart network is falsely claiming he’s on there https://facebook.com/story.php/?story_fbid=pfbid0SggTGSqSbLJN1pyUxFwhzXUeRgKnFfZNpdKZCJyBpNkcPc1pHEeHYns41WMoo8eSl&id=100003496539869

He currently uses Facebook, #Instagram, and #Tumblr because he “doesn’t need that instant access and doomscrolling.” Though if Tumblr goes through with joining the #Fediverse, you may be able to get your #WilW fix here.

@ljwrites FWIW: I don't CW, though I also avoid horse-race and outrage-de-jour topics. I've outlined these on my pinned "Administrivia" toot thread.

Issues / concepts / bigger-picture / discussions are more my speed.

If someone's posts (or boosting patterns) annoy me, I unfollow them or disable their boosts. I mostly read from highly-curated Lists (3--4 ranked mostly by priority, the top two are usually pinned).

If someone seems to specifically have it in for me, or gets triggered by what I'm posting, I block them (on the grounds that neither us will be happy otherwise). And if there's a larger brigading action going on (against me, against others) I'll report it to admins / call it out.

"Block Fuckwits" (I am often the fuckwit) and "Block Early and Often" are policies I advocate strongly.

I'm much more lukewarm on shared block lists --- those can get out of hand and/or be misused. They're not entirely inappropriate, but should be employed very carefully. Instance-level blocks / restrictions are generally much preferred.

That last happens very rarely that I'm aware, with the #WilW instance back in ~August 2018 the most recent that I recall.

(I'm not saying it doesn't happen more often, I'm saying it's usually sufficiently contained when it does that I'm utterly unware of it.)

I'm a fan of general consideration of others, but highly prescriptive behavioural guidelines seem of limited effectiveness at best, to be a problem of themselves, as well as ultimately counterproductive and quite possibly alienating / oppressive. There are other tools which exist now (keyword filters, lists, mutes, blocks, reporting), and others which should be advocated for if necessary.

@VictorVenema Shared, possibly biased and/or unvetted, and most critically, widely shared especially by celebrity Twitter accounts (not to be confused with Twitter-celebrity accounts) played a major role in the #WilW Twitter-Mastodon affair, August 2019:

"Because Twitter does not make it easy to manage and reduce attacks and other bad acts, we have to rely on imperfect tools like shared blocklists, extensions that help us identify and block trolls and bots, and tools that do mass blockings of an account’s followers. I’ve said many times, it’s a blunt and messy } imperfect instrument. It’s a nuclear bomb where what’s really needed is a rapier, but we go to war with the tools we have."

http://wilwheaton.net/2018/06/regarding-blocklists-trolls-twitters-systemic-inaction-against-abuse-and-the-responsibility-of-wielding-great-power/

The list that WilW and other celebs used was also widely adopted by their followers, with both larger and smaller folowings.

The upshot was that many people, abusers or not, whos livelihoods in large part depended on their Twitter reach found themselves effectively silenced online,with few avenues of appeal.

Some doubtless deserved it. Some quite probably did not.

The drama followed WilW to Mastodon, where a similar lack of abuse mitigations, and an exceptionally bone-headed admin (of my previous main instance, #MastodonCloud), amplified the attacks.

Unsympathetic accounts of the episode from WilW's harassers for the other side's view:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/actor-wil-wheaton-driven-social-media-fellow-emily-zanotti

https://bentcorner.com/wil-wheaton-twitter/

Ad hoc user-compiled and shared blocklists have their own failure and abuse modes.

@woozle @faoluin @earfethe