What is #CounterRapidBlock?

Every organism exists to perpetuate itself, which requires adapting to its environment by understanding enough of its reality to manipulate the parts it needs to survive. For humans, that includes a couple additional wrinkles, namely personal joy in existence and a civilization or organization which can remain both positive and realistic enough to achieve its goals and therefore serve enough of a positive purpose to keep going. Researchers have found that those geared toward success communicate differently than those who are less likely to succeed:

Participants had to debate hot-button topics in an online chatroom. One group was instructed to adopt a competitive mentality in order to “win” the argument, while the other group was told to “argue to learn.”

An “arguing to learn” mentality rests in viewing contentious conversations as collaborative exchanges that can deepen your understanding of a given topic, rather than battles to be won.

This means that Open Discussion provides people with both sides of the conversational benefit, meaning they are both heard and able to hear others, leading to if not agreement at least an understanding of what the other wants rather than seeing only what the methods they are demanding that they hope (often partially incorrectly) will lead them to what they actually desire. Open Discussion means collaborative discussion and debate with civility but no limits on topics or opinions offered.

A key aspect of Open Discussion is a lack of viewpoint discrimination, which is the universal human fallacy that says that if you eliminate any non-conforming data, only the data supporting your point will remain and therefore you "win." Political correctness operates by this standard, as does the censorship common to Socialist and Fascist regimes, eliminating viewpoints in order to make their own viewpoint the only possible source of discussion:

When the government engages in content discrimination, it is restricting speech on a given subject matter. When it engages in viewpoint discrimination, it is singling out a particular opinion or perspective on that subject matter for treatment unlike that given to other viewpoints.

The necessity of being able to express any viewpoint therefore becomes important because removing certain viewpoints results in people only being able to discuss any topic in the context of approved viewpoint, which constitutes a form of compelled speech and through it eventually, thought control, as explicated by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which states that language programs the mind, therefore changing language changes mental outlook:

The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that language functions, not simply as a device for reporting experience, but also, and more significantly, as a way of defining experience for its speakers.

Sapir-Whorf goes two ways: language shapes thought, and shaping language controls thought, making language a battleground. If you can exclude the viewpoints of others, the tool of communication -- language -- becomes a propaganda weapon. It works because language defines self-esteem through a religious purging of humiliation and assertion of status:

Speech gave the human beast far more than an ingenious tool. Speech was a veritable nuclear weapon! It gave the human beast the powers of reason, complex memory, and long-term planning, eventually in the form of print and engineering plans. Speech gave him the power to enlarge his food supply at will through an artifice called farming.

One of Homo loquax's first creations after he learned to talk was religion. Since The Origin of Species in 1859 the doctrine of Evolution has done more than anything else to put an end to religious faith among educated people in Europe and America; for God is dead. But it was religion, more than any other weapon in Homo loquax's nuclear arsenal, that killed evolution itself 11,000 years ago.

I had come to the conclusion that virtually all people live by what I think of as a "fiction-absolute." Each individual adopts a set of values which, if truly absolute in the world--so ordained by some almighty force--would make not that individual but his group . . . the best of all possible groups, the best of all inner circles.

For humans, language initially served an entirely descriptive role. Then it described the most sacred things we had, and finally became part of our "fiction-absolute," or our way of justifying ourselves as winners and therefore dispensing humiliation brought on by making unrealistic choices by instead maintaining symbolism of the self as sacred. Language made us into solipsists; now, the battle for territory in our heads is shaped with censorship and mass culture trends, meaning that language directly affects our future.

Fediblock and RapidBlock

On the decentralized network known as the Fediverse where many have gathered after the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, users who wanted the same state of affairs as old Twitter -- censorship of controversial ideas -- adopted something called the FediBlock or a formal list of "nodes" or "instances" on the decentralized network to block in order to avoid contact with controversial ideas.

After this prompted a backlash from the users who would prefer Open Discussion to a walled garden, the project modulated into RapidBlock, an automated list which allowed "journalists" and others to exclude from their safe space any controversial ideas. The project describes itself as a form of moderation when in fact its censorship agenda becomes clear:

The RapidBlock Project is something different: humans are in the loop at every step of the decision-making process, and the only thing that is automated is the actual propagation of the decisions. Moderation is hard, especially good moderation. Moderation is a full-time job, and many Fediverse admins aren't taking up that mantle of responsibility. We are trying to build a central moderation team with a clear, published rationale for our blocking criteria and a clear dispute process for remediating mistaken blocks.

But a central moderation council would be toothless without solidarity. Solidarity, for those not versed in labor organization, is the active choice to act together as a unified front, rather than to try and negotiate one-on-one, because we know that while a few might be able to negotiate a better deal for themselves, it will only be the ones in the most privileged or nepotistic positions who manage it, and the majority of individuals will end up worse off.

In the RapidBlock context, solidarity means this: by standing alongside the RapidBlock Project's moderation decisions, you as an admin are forcing abusers and harassers to treat you with more respect, because they will be forced to acknowledge that losing you means losing everyone that they want to hurt, even the people who they haven't gotten around to hurting yet.

It went from "moderation is hard" to the idea of centralized/standardized censorship and retaliation against those who do not agree with a collective reward scheme for those who affirm the "correct" narrative rather quickly. This shows us something about the mentality of the people behind this project: they realize that their theory is conjectural and therefore, open to attack by ideas and language, which causes them to want to eliminate any linguistic competition and force a centralized/standardized agenda upon all users of the service.

In short, it is a takeover attempt, which like any form of totalitarianism seeks to socially engineer mass conformity, something that goes against Open Discussion and any use of language to share ideas, facts, and perspectives. They turn language from its noble origins in passing on reason, memory and planning and make it into its dark final stages as a type of religion which admits no dissent.

To preserve the open nature of the internet and of human communication in general, two movements arose: DarkFedi and the page on which you are currently residing, the CounterRapidBlock project, which aims to censor the censors and force them into their own echo chamber of a walled garden hugbox so their discussion becomes self-referential and repetitive and dies of entropy like Digg, MySpace, and Friendster.

Open Discussion has two attributes:

Discuss anything without viewpoint discrimination, meaning that any topic especially those which are suppressed by whatever regime is currently in power is on the menu, but
Congenial behavior is required, including avoiding spam, excessive slurs and obscenities, cruelty, bullying, and other non-communicative behavior.

Language can be used to communicate or control. We favor the former, and see the latter as a destruction of the best human dreams, hopes, goals, and behaviors.

CounterRapidBlock

Thus follows the CounterRapidBlock list of instances which use the FediBlock or RapidBlock censorship narrative and agenda.

CounterRapidBlock List February 1, 2023

This list has been compiled from those instances observed to be either using the blocklists or blocking sites based on viewpoint. It is not infallible and is subject to change; if you feel your instance has been unfairly represented here, please contact the maintainer.

CounterRapidBlock

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