I don't want to post screenshots but some comments I've seen today lead me to believe not everyone understands how exactly the stuff between Gab, Mastodon, and Fedilab ties together.

The Gab event is remarkable as a threat to Mastodon apps in app stores, because there's a precedent of Gab's own apps being banned.

For end-users, it's nothing special. Servers more toxic than Gab have been dealt with on the fediverse and your nazi-free server will remain nazi-free.

@Gargron I had to make a terrible SVG image in 5 minutes for my blog post to get that exact point across:

@Gargron isn't gab volumes larger than those servers? "new gab" will no doubt see an increase in users, even if gab's popularity has declined in recent years

@toilet It doesn't matter how many users they have, it's still just one button to block their domain.

But also:

There are some articles analyzing Gab's activity and userbase and the estimates are a bit more than but less than It's a tiny droplet in the fediverse. More importantly, Gab claimed they want to create their own right-wing federation protocol which means that in practice they will most likely self-silo like did.

@Gargron i'm glad most of the fediverse seems to be hostile to the idea of Gab federating with their respective instances. what's concerning to me is that the quality of communities like this has often been seriously diminished by these extreme-right tumors (see r/fatpeoplehate or r/TumblrInAction on reddit and /pol/ on 4chan). the leakiness of activitypub would allow some form of connection between Gab and a blocking instance. but i guess you're right about how their impact can be lessened by domain blocks and such. doesn't mean app devs can't take a stand on this, as i'm sure you understand

@toilet Generally I understand why client apps, like browsers and ISPs, should not be in the business of deciding which content should be accessible, but Gab has given us a wonderful opportunity to block them without having to think about slippery slopes because the decision to ban them has already been made by the app stores.


google and apple are always the best examples to follow when it comes to ethics 😂

@Gargron so i know you're german but that doesn't mean that you have to be against freedom, the government can't get you here

@gargron the concept of the fediverse is still hard to grab for a lot of them folks ... let alone getting the difference between Mastodon as a network, and an instance, and a smartphone client which connects to that instance ... in Facebook or Twitter it's all the same

@clacke No idea, I think you replied to the wrong thread though heh

@clacke @dansup misskey was originally built as a twitter clone but with no notion of federation.

@Gargron Is blocking two-way? (I feel like an idiot for not knowing this) Because if it isn't, I *almost* feel sorry for the nazis who'll have a heart attack when they find out that the rest of the fediverse is—*LE EPICEST GASP EVAR*—PROGRESSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!111

Gab is a website associated with white nationalist content and hate speech. It has been banned from most app stores. They are changing their code base to be based on mastodon and potentially federated with other activitypub servers. This could be problematic

It's not really the same though with other clients is it? Gab's own app was made expressly to be used with Gab. Other clients aren't, it just happens that they can be. If Google and Apple were to start banning apps just for having the ability to be used with Gab, might they not as well ban every web browser out there too?

@doliu666 but when one of their users ends up in the media for a mass shooting and they were "using the popular Gab app Fedilab" you think Google, Apple or the media will care that it's just a client app?

Browsers are obviously different as Google/Apple are not promoting them in their app stores, and the media understands the difference.


@james @doliu666 @Gargron Browsers are not different in this case. That means, media wouldn't mention that they were using Fedilab just like they wouldn't mention that they used Chrome (general-purpose social media app, general purpose web browser), but media would probably mention if they used some Gab-specific app just like they would mention that they are a heavy user of Dissenter browser (or whatever this Gab fork of Brave is called)…

Can you explain, then? Because it's not obvious what you're saying people don't understand and you probably need a longer form post to adequately explain it.

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