4 ms·

Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. My last day on Mastodon was the day a few peopl

Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Tolerance isn’t acceptance. It’s letting things you don’t like exist without making a big fuss over it. You can dislike certain speech patterns without having to go on a crusade against them.

zoogeny 3y ago
I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never". I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet. It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil". It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing. What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.
- lukeschlather 3y ago
  Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?
  - Waterluvian 3y ago
    It reminds me of religious zealots. The law (or server rules) doesn’t reflect what they want it to be, so they’ll take matters into their own hands. Of course there is a bit of every variety. There’s certainly polite people asking nicely and sensitive people seeing it as harassment. And there’s certainly people who see something they don’t agree with and just move along.
  - tekla 3y ago
    I think about it as much as I think about the image not being intelligible to people who dont read English, not at all. Why dont you post everything in the top 10 most used languages if you want to be nice?
beebeepka 3y ago
> Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. Both extremes are the same. It's like love and hate. You shall not have freedoms is the point.
tsimionescu 3y ago
I think fascism is a bad term to use here, totalitarianism or thought-policing is more what you mean. Fascism refers to specific political beliefs including totalitarianism plus some form of cultural supremacy (typically racism, but it can also be religious or nationalistic), rigid hierarchy, and might-makes-right morals. Not all totalitarian regimes are fascist, and the behavior you're describing is neither hierarchical nor racist, so I don't think it's fascist in any way. And I'm not saying this to simply be pedantic. Fascism is scary and powerful because of the specific combination of those ideas, especially the militaristic efficiency of fascist organizations. PC/woke mobs are not scary in the same ways, and need different precautions.
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  Thanks for the comment. I think you’re right and that it’s important enough to try to change my habit of word use.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  Not to take away from anything you said, but the woke/PC mob are kind of scary right. They have the cultural supremacy part, like a non theistic religion where adherence to the tenets are required or you'll be excused. Those weird and creepy struggle sessions. Not to mention it is one side of the ongoing culture war. They have the rigid hierarchy known as the progressive stack that ranks people on their immutable characteristics rather than their individual merits. The might makes right comes from the antifa groups who ”by any means necessary” violently attack those who do not adhere to the tenets of the strange religion. As well as the control from the institutions such as universities where in faculty or students that don't adhere to the tenets are abused until they leave or are fired outright. So it's pretty close right? I'm sure there are a few other tenets of fascism that you left out for brevity which would preclude the woke/PC mob from the facist label but it's interesting and scary how close they come. I'm just glad they're not good with weapons, except for the Jon Brown Gun Club, for whom the addition of weapons seem to have a slightly deradicalizing effect
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
theodric 3y ago
It turns out you can put whatever text you want in the alt text field and it won't get clocked by the scolds because they don't actually care enough to check. It's enough that it appears compliant in a surface-level audit. However, there is an issue suggesting adding an automated scold in the Mastodon client (and Megalodon already has such a scold, plus a (!) of shame on images without alt text) https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13894 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13894 I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. I'm sure there is one somewhere, but it mostly seems to be a phenomenon on Mastodon for a few people to use as a cudgel to feel superior.
- Angostura 3y ago
  > I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. What was your sample size?
  - theodric 3y ago
    Spending 27 years on the Internet
    - Angostura 3y ago
      ... right, and how many visually impaired people did you talk to about this actual issue? Next week: "Of course I can understand black folk's problems - there are quite a few living in my city.
      - theodric 3y ago
        I'm not running a study, I'm making an anecdotal statement. That said, my actual position is that inconveniencing every single person who posts an image on a microblogging service by forcing them to write a description of it on the off-chance that a tiny percentage of the population who are visually impaired will want to read it is a net evil. It will, in the short term, antagonize people who just want to post something quickly and get on with life, and in the long term drive lower engagement on the platform as it raises the amount of effort required. It's a waste of potentially a massive amount of tiny slices of a nonrenewable resource: human life time. What should happen, instead, is that the tech wizards developing the microblogging software use computer vision and language models to provide on-demand transcription of any arbitrary image. If anyone should understand that, it's the audience here.
Angostura 3y ago
> My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Why was it important for you not to include it?
- tsimionescu 3y ago
  It wasn't important for them not to include it, it wasn't important for them to include it. There is a world of difference. And being aggressively ganged up on for something you don't believe is an important detail is an excellent reason to leave a group. It makes it abundantly clear that you have a fundamental difference of values with much of that group.
  - Angostura 3y ago
    So when some people suggested that it might be important to include it - they decided not to, despite not including not being important to them. Sounds like it was pretty important to not include it.
    - tsimionescu 3y ago
      No. If I don't think including alt text is important, regardless of what others tell me, I will sometimes add alt text but I may forget to do it, I may decide not to when I'm in a rush, I may be in a mood where I can't be bothered to. Someone who believes strongly in this may see every instance of me not adding alt text as a slight or as me being obstinate. They may start demanding I go back and add alt text to all my posts retroactively. I may very well refuse to do so, since, in this thought experiment, I don't think it's important enough to spend my time on it. They may get aggressive at this time, since their values are so different from mine. For a more contrived example, if I told you it's important to me not to see people's shoes in pictures, would you entirely stop posting pictures like that? If you sometimes forgot, and I later asked you to crop all the pictures where you did, would you start doing it just because it's important to me? I should note I have no idea if this is how things happened for GP. For all I know, they could be making up the whole thing. I'm just trying to point out how someone who is indifferent to X may end up in conflict with someone who is strongly for X.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

zoogeny 3y ago

I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never". I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet. It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil". It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing. What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.

lukeschlather 3y ago
Style guides exist for good reason. Also a simple suggestion that people adhere to the style guide is often heard as harassment even when it's simply asking people to adhere to the style guide. Also, if 99% say "never" and that sounds too high, what about "Would you ever send an image without alt text to a blind person?" Does it make sense to post a message when you know a significant number of people are physically incapable of interpreting it?
- Waterluvian 3y ago
  It reminds me of religious zealots. The law (or server rules) doesn’t reflect what they want it to be, so they’ll take matters into their own hands. Of course there is a bit of every variety. There’s certainly polite people asking nicely and sensitive people seeing it as harassment. And there’s certainly people who see something they don’t agree with and just move along.
- tekla 3y ago
  I think about it as much as I think about the image not being intelligible to people who dont read English, not at all. Why dont you post everything in the top 10 most used languages if you want to be nice?

beebeepka 3y ago

> Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. Both extremes are the same. It's like love and hate. You shall not have freedoms is the point.

tsimionescu 3y ago

I think fascism is a bad term to use here, totalitarianism or thought-policing is more what you mean. Fascism refers to specific political beliefs including totalitarianism plus some form of cultural supremacy (typically racism, but it can also be religious or nationalistic), rigid hierarchy, and might-makes-right morals. Not all totalitarian regimes are fascist, and the behavior you're describing is neither hierarchical nor racist, so I don't think it's fascist in any way. And I'm not saying this to simply be pedantic. Fascism is scary and powerful because of the specific combination of those ideas, especially the militaristic efficiency of fascist organizations. PC/woke mobs are not scary in the same ways, and need different precautions.

Waterluvian 3y ago
Thanks for the comment. I think you’re right and that it’s important enough to try to change my habit of word use.
mikrotikker 3y ago
Not to take away from anything you said, but the woke/PC mob are kind of scary right. They have the cultural supremacy part, like a non theistic religion where adherence to the tenets are required or you'll be excused. Those weird and creepy struggle sessions. Not to mention it is one side of the ongoing culture war. They have the rigid hierarchy known as the progressive stack that ranks people on their immutable characteristics rather than their individual merits. The might makes right comes from the antifa groups who ”by any means necessary” violently attack those who do not adhere to the tenets of the strange religion. As well as the control from the institutions such as universities where in faculty or students that don't adhere to the tenets are abused until they leave or are fired outright. So it's pretty close right? I'm sure there are a few other tenets of fascism that you left out for brevity which would preclude the woke/PC mob from the facist label but it's interesting and scary how close they come. I'm just glad they're not good with weapons, except for the Jon Brown Gun Club, for whom the addition of weapons seem to have a slightly deradicalizing effect
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

theodric 3y ago

It turns out you can put whatever text you want in the alt text field and it won't get clocked by the scolds because they don't actually care enough to check. It's enough that it appears compliant in a surface-level audit. However, there is an issue suggesting adding an automated scold in the Mastodon client (and Megalodon already has such a scold, plus a (!) of shame on images without alt text) https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13894 https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/13894 I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. I'm sure there is one somewhere, but it mostly seems to be a phenomenon on Mastodon for a few people to use as a cudgel to feel superior.

Angostura 3y ago
> I have yet to find an actual vision-impaired person complaining about missing alt text. What was your sample size?
- theodric 3y ago
  Spending 27 years on the Internet
  - Angostura 3y ago
    ... right, and how many visually impaired people did you talk to about this actual issue? Next week: "Of course I can understand black folk's problems - there are quite a few living in my city.
    - theodric 3y ago
      I'm not running a study, I'm making an anecdotal statement. That said, my actual position is that inconveniencing every single person who posts an image on a microblogging service by forcing them to write a description of it on the off-chance that a tiny percentage of the population who are visually impaired will want to read it is a net evil. It will, in the short term, antagonize people who just want to post something quickly and get on with life, and in the long term drive lower engagement on the platform as it raises the amount of effort required. It's a waste of potentially a massive amount of tiny slices of a nonrenewable resource: human life time. What should happen, instead, is that the tech wizards developing the microblogging software use computer vision and language models to provide on-demand transcription of any arbitrary image. If anyone should understand that, it's the audience here.

Angostura 3y ago

> My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Why was it important for you not to include it?

tsimionescu 3y ago
It wasn't important for them not to include it, it wasn't important for them to include it. There is a world of difference. And being aggressively ganged up on for something you don't believe is an important detail is an excellent reason to leave a group. It makes it abundantly clear that you have a fundamental difference of values with much of that group.
- Angostura 3y ago
  So when some people suggested that it might be important to include it - they decided not to, despite not including not being important to them. Sounds like it was pretty important to not include it.
  - tsimionescu 3y ago
    No. If I don't think including alt text is important, regardless of what others tell me, I will sometimes add alt text but I may forget to do it, I may decide not to when I'm in a rush, I may be in a mood where I can't be bothered to. Someone who believes strongly in this may see every instance of me not adding alt text as a slight or as me being obstinate. They may start demanding I go back and add alt text to all my posts retroactively. I may very well refuse to do so, since, in this thought experiment, I don't think it's important enough to spend my time on it. They may get aggressive at this time, since their values are so different from mine. For a more contrived example, if I told you it's important to me not to see people's shoes in pictures, would you entirely stop posting pictures like that? If you sometimes forgot, and I later asked you to crop all the pictures where you did, would you start doing it just because it's important to me? I should note I have no idea if this is how things happened for GP. For all I know, they could be making up the whole thing. I'm just trying to point out how someone who is indifferent to X may end up in conflict with someone who is strongly for X.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]