What is The Bad Space?
The Bad Space is an extremely long blocklist that claims to embark on a noble mission; self-describing as "actively moderating against racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, ableism, casteism, or religion" on the fediverse, a community commonly criticised for its large amount of white ignorance of racism-related issues. The Bad Space lists instances with a 'heat rating' based on what percentages of the instances it 'watches' blocks them. For example, an instance blocked by one out of the ten "Current Sources" instances would have a heat rating of 10%, whereas an instance blocked by ten of them would have a rating of 100%.
TBS, created by Ro of h-i, got a lot of criticism after blocking tech.LGBT and claiming it as a racist instance- something that seemed to upset them a lot and they posted a lot of details about. Tech.LGBT said they do not consider themselves a racist instance, but admitted to some wrongdoing on their part and published how they dealt with it (major changes include the resignation of at least one admin and a series of moderation ammendments, described in tech.LGBT's blog post about the incident.
Attention drawn by this criticism caused people to look further into Ro's blocklist- given it seems good at first; explainations, reciepts, settings, dedicated website, etc. This resulted in people realising that far too often the 'reciepts' section of block recommendations are left empty- and a lot of instances with empty reciepts are GSRM (Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minority) focused and are accused of racism and/or hate speech.
The Good Space
After said criticism, a website called The Good Space popped up, created by someone who has gone through every block on the list and tried to understand why instances without reciepts may have been blocked. The general consensus was that Ro and TBS do not like GSRM people or Anarchists- two groups who A) do not need to have access to the fediverse restricted and B) do not align with Ro's fedi-cop values. Instances listed on TGS include: - astrid.tech - - Single-user instance for a trans woman, accused of posting hate speech with no reciepts. The instance does not seem to exist anymore, or if it does I can't find it. - anarchism.space - - Now-shut-down Mastodon instance with rules against right-wingers and hate speech. Accused of hate speech without reciepts. - blahaj.social - - Pretty much what you expect. Trans women who like the shark. Accused of hate speech without reciepts. - buttplug.zone - - Blocked for being 'off-topic'. It is very on-topic. It has posts about butt plugs. TGS' creator thinks Ro has an issue with queer sexuality. - jorts.horse - - Shitpost-focused instance which is also used by Nina Illingworth, a well-written anarchist who focuses on a number of topics including capitalism and colonisation. The admin of rage.love, one of the "current sources" claimed she was anti-indigenous but retracted the claims after being proven wrong.
Where did I get roped in?
I have now been effected by TBS twice. For the first time, during my short-lived time with my account on woem.men when TBS blocked them for being "an Eris apologizer and anti-TBS". As of 24/09/24 there is a heat rating of 80%, with no reciepts and no explaination beyond that description. The second time was recently when my current instance, ak.ari.lt, was blocked by tenforward.social- likely either because of my #fediblock post about them or their general dislike of authenyo (Iris, a black trans woman who the admin of ak.ari.lt & both regularly talk to).
During the original woem.men block I really paid no notice, because while the blocklist seemed to be in good faith I had been following my admin closely and had never seen her say anything remotely racist, and given there were no reciepts and they listed 'anti-TBS' as a reason I assumed it was bullshit.
The second time was a different story. I was more directly involved (as shown by my #fediblock post) and I was also more annoyed. For one, the reason I issued the fediblock post: Packetcat, the owner of tenforward.social, had spent the afternoon spamming the fediblock hashtag (a hashtag meant to advise instance moderators on what instances to block and why) harassing Eris; a trans woman who apparently was involved in some drama including racism before I joined fedi. I do not know much about this stuff, but based on some instances that I follow closely I do not like Eris; however I also feel that blocking her out of social media completely will not help her fix her problems. Regardless, this happened years ago now and I am not diving into that issue. I called out Packetcat on
a) The fact he was spamming the (normally mildly useful) hashtag with this stuff from ages ago, given he seemed to be going on a mindless rant that didn't make a heap of sense to anyone else.
b) The fact he was somewhat baselessly harassing Eris. I do not like Eris, but Packetcat was posting no recipts for me to go off, so my reaction was "this person is harassing a trans woman, I don't know why, I don't like him". Eventually, Packetcat did post screenshots of some stuff that she said but it was all extremely old and, in my opinion, screenshots don't really count as 'evidence'.
c) Most of his #fediblock posts were random bullshit trying to pick a fight with Eris, obviously trying to bait her to respond. I'm not going to assume he was drunk, but he was certainly acting as though he was tenforward.social/@packetcat/113098092735781634
d) The little evidence that was shared by Packetcat at first was just complaining about her saying 'based'? He posted a link to this thread on rage.love but it doesn't have a huge amount of substance to it. Like it makes her seem rude but not racist.
On top of this, Packetcat is insanely hypocritical. He complains about coming back to 'fuckshit nonsense' when he is the one who made the thread and he is the one who literally asked people to "have a go".
Then, to top it all off, after I posted the fediblock Packetcat posted a violent fantasy about shooting trans women with an AK-47. I'm not even exaggerating. Source Archive He said, direct quote:
I'm going to buy an AK-47 and shoot them in the head. That's too quick of a death for them because I'm merciful.
Additionally, the Fedilore account posted some screenshots of Packetcat deadnaming Eris. Deadnaming is unacceptable under any conditions, regardless of their beliefs. I will not share the uncensored version publicly but here it is censored.
oh TIL. damn, even censored deadname catching strays from Eris smh smh
Conclusion
Deadnaming and violent threats are unacceptable under any circumstances, and The Bad Space's blatant queerphobia shines through with every queer instance they block. I am not opposed to something like the idea TBS claims to support, but I am opposed to TBS itself. This kind of things troubles me, because I was brought up in an extremely white place and I do often worry I am stepping out of line. Targeted lies from these groups do not help me try to better myself, rather they cause me to worry and spend time and effort checking what I've done and said; exhausting myself and reducing my ability to participate in anti-racism, anti-classism, or other anti-discrimination discussions or events due to my worry of causing issues like that again. I've decided I'm not at fault with the TBS issues, and I've also realised their effect on the community and decided to block them almost entirely from dystopia.zip. Eventually, once Iceshrimp.NET improves its moderation tools, I will reduce Mastodon.art from a suspend to a silence due to how big of an instance it is and how many unknowing users are there, but that isn't really an option right now.
I do plan on rewriting this eventually. I wrote this with the intention of clearing my head and properly conveying what happened, but to be honest I think I just made it more confusing because of my tangential writing style.