#indieweb

brennan.day

Free Speech and the IndieWeb

A couple days ago, I wrote the blog post titled "Five Interesting Indie Platforms You Might Not Have Heard Of". I was really happy with it—being able to share the work of others that deserve support and can help foster digital indie communities. But, regrettably, I had to rescind one of my recommendations. Let me explain. As I mentioned in the post itself, BlueDwarf's "rule enforcement is informal, and I admit I've stumbled upon some... peculiar opinions and takes during my time on the platform, so take that as you will." This was a nice way of saying you can find fringe, conspiratorial or right-wing beliefs and rhetoric on the site. At first, I really didn't like the idea of disavowing a small indie platform simply because it allows bad takes or opinions I personally strongly disagree with. I believe the price for community and connection we pay is inconvenience, annoyance, and weirdos. There are such a small amount of people who give a fuck about the small web and independent infrastructure—let alone those who are actually building and maintaining it—that surely it would be far less productive to splinter ourselves. The creator of BlueDwarf in particular runs the Cheapskate's Guide, which is an excellent resource for low-end, affordable, accessible hardware and software and how I found BlueDwarf in the first place. I am always going to have a big-tent mindset, and know that the only way we can enact meaningful sustainable change is by working with people we don't like and disagree with. And that's where I stood, and where I assumed things would be set. But then I messaged SpaceGhost, the sysadmin and owner of BlueDwarf, to see where exactly he draws the line in the sand. And at first, I was hopeful we had a mutual understanding of what's important and worth fighting for, and what isn't. Of what harm is worth tolerating, and what harm isn't. But that, sadly, ended up not being the case. But before I get into BlueDwarf, I want to assert something important—not all harm is the same. I still don't believe that, as-is, BlueDwarf is a harmful or dangerous website. Rather, the owner's beliefs and how he told me his personal view and how he would act in **specific, hypothetical** situations is why I can't recommend it. ## Degrees of Harm I want to make note that I think it's unproductive to put everything into a single bucket of "harmful," as there is a wide range of degrees of how harmful a community's approach to free speech is. X has Creator Revenue Sharing, which means paying users earn a cut of ad revenue based on impressions from other paying users. This means that people often post rage-inducing, upsetting content specifically because that's what will attract the most response and engagement—and thus make them the most amount of money. Ragebaiting is a profitable business model. The same thing applies to any other corporate social media platform, whatever content causes people to stay on the longest is the best, regardless of how exploitative or harmful it is. TikTok similarly has a trend of creators doing the same thing for the same reason. This is just one of many reasons to leave corporate social media, but at this point most people know what they're going to get—it's awful to normalize such terrible behaviour and practices, but until enough people leave these platforms or better safeguards are put into place, it's just how it is right now. With platforms as large as this, no amount of guardrails will stop harm. Meta is inflicting lifelong trauma on its content moderators in Kenya as a consequence. Arguments can be made about the harm being done by smaller platforms, like Bluesky, which took crypto VC money and has known moderation problems, but I personally think these issues are of a lesser degree of harm than what's happening on Facebook or X and staying there as an active user. ## Cloudflare Cloudflare is run by a free speech absolutist Matthew Prince, who often thinks that Cloudflare should not control who gets to be online and who doesn't. They hosted the Neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, as well as 8chan and KiwiFarms until the Christchurch Shooting and #dropkiwifarms campaign. And every time it was at the whim of the CEO who decided those sites in particular were too harmful for him to abide by his absolutism. I've written more about why I'm choosing not to use Cloudflare here. ## Substack But if we're looking at most harm per capita, as in, the most amount of harm a platform is doing relative to its size, I think Substack is easily the worst offender. I've written about the platform before but I don't think I went far enough. It's been known since 2023 that the platform has a literal Nazi problem. I do not mean "Nazi" as in generic hateful bigoted rhetoric—I mean newsletters that had swastikas all over them. CEO Chris Best declined to answer specific "would you or won't you" removal scenarios, stating that the company avoids getting drawn into hypothetical moderation judgments, even though this isn't hypothetical at all. Even now, years later, Substack is more than permissive about having harmful people on their platform, so long as its profitable. Andrew Tate, charged with sex trafficking and rape, had his newsletter ranked #1 on Substack and as of writing, the platform also allows the owner of Kiwi Farms to have his newsletter on the platform as well. I want to make the argument for Substack's harm for a number of reasons. To start, it is typically extremely difficult to make an income online with hate speech, and Substack is giving these people a paycheque. Second, Substack is culturally known as being a place where people write longform thinkpieces. They brand themselves as the place where you can "publish world-class reporting, essays, reviews, and fiction". This is not at all the same kind of reputation Facebook or X has. Even now, after years of complacency with Nazism, reputable progressives still use the platform—and thus continue to put money in Substack's pockets. If you're on Substack yourself and want alternatives, or know someone else who is, https://leavesubstack.com is a great list of alternatives and other resources to help make that happen. ## Lines in Sand I didn't mean to write so much about Substack or Cloudflare, but it is emblematic of how people look the other way about harms being done by platforms they're on because they're on them, or their favourite creator is on it. Everyone draws the line in the sand at different places—and some people get really upset at others for where they decide to draw that line. If you aren't aware that Substack has been complacent with Nazis, then it would be unfair to chastise you for continuing to use the platform. If you are aware and continue to use it, though, then that's supporting the platform—or at least being complicit yourself. I'm someone who tries my best to maintain my ire at systems and companies and those in power, rather than towards individuals. Ridiculing and finger-pointing at specific people will not negate any harm, it just is a way for you to personally feel morally superior and unproductively channel your (justified) negative feelings. ## Cognitive Dissonance I love people, and have made peace with cognitive dissonance. Let me give you an example. I find meat eating and the continued slaughter and suffering of animals far more reprehensible than something like generative AI—as meat-eating causes far more harm and far, far more environmental harm. It's far easier for people to avoid (and ridicule) genAI than it is to avoid eating meat. Again, this is not about moral superiority or whataboutisms, it's the opposite really. People do not change their minds or behaviours after being aggressively scolded. You meet people where they are, you offer them compassion and benevolence and alternatives. You channel your fury towards those in charge and those who are propagating the normalization of harms. But this, too, does not mean complicity yourself. It's okay to walk away from people and relationships. Be content with losing everything except your principles.. ## BlueDwarf in Comparison Let's steer this back towards BlueDwarf, which I'd like to now look at relative to other platforms. BlueDwarf is a tiny site with >200 active users in the past year, most of which post about old hardware and homelabbing, and occasionally about surveillance capitalism, or US politics, or indeed vaccine skepticism. It is not a CDN that 25% of the entire Internet relies on, like Cloudflare is. Nor is it actively providing a revenue source for Neo-Nazis, like Substack is. I think an argument can be made that, because of its size, me sharing the platform with my own audience could allow a new influx of more level-headed, scientifically-literate progressives who change the subculture to something less harmful. Anyway, let me finally get to my correspondence with SpaceGhost, with all of that pretext out of the way. I asked point blank if the firm stance on absolute free speech would continue if there were a sudden influx of Nazis on the site, making it a Nazi bar. This is how they responded: > I have not been tested by Nazis and only been tested by a handful of racists. My suspicion is the reason for the lack of posts by Nazis. etc. is that a social media site that does not allow name calling or threats is inherently uninteresting to them. A bit of evidence that seems to back that up is that Blue Dwarf has been online for over 4 years, and so far has not been over run. And I do certainly think there is a point to be made that a platform being up-and-running for four years without this problem does demonstrate that we can put our faith in people. SpaceGhost continued, sharing an anecdote from a particular user that was rather intense about their religion when they first joined: > [M]ost of us seem to enjoy her presence and her posts and do our best to encourage her contributions and find good in them. I say that as a person who is done with organized religion and in no way contemplating becoming a Muslim. 😃 Maybe I am being naive, but I would like to believe that in time the same could happen with anyone. I have noticed that the most initially troubling Blue Dwarf users seem to settle down and just enjoy Blue Dwarf with the rest of us. Often they become our most prolific and enthusiastic contributors. I am idealistic and optimistic enough to accept that. This is a very small platform that has successfully ensured a lack of hate speech over the years not by infringing on free speech, but rather by the cultural norms and communal effort. But it did not stop there. I specifically asked what SpaceGhost would do "if someone came onto BD who was respectful and followed the rules and also consistently posted articles that were pro Neo-Nazi, anti-Black, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and they got a bunch of their equally respectful friends to join as well, would that be realizing the ideal of BD for you?" SpaceGhost replied: > [A]lthough I find racists and Nazis distasteful, anyone who follows the rules is allowed to post on any topic they wish. I would like to think that my personal integrity would prevent me from removing even posts from people I find the most reprehensible. And continued further, by adding: > I am very aware of Cloudlfare[sic] choosing to break its own rules to stop providing DDoS protection for The Daily Stormer, 8Chan, and Kiwi Farms. My feeling is that was a bad decision by Mr. Prince ... I am also aware of 8Chan's and Kiwi Farm's lawsuit with the British government, and I hope they win. This is where I draw the line. This is where SpaceGhost prioritizes free speech over preventing the harm and hatred websites like these have metastasized, festered, and sprawled across the Internet for years. I believe there are many things to stay firm on, regardless of the cost, but this is not one of them. I do not believe SpaceGhost is acting in bad faith here, I do believe they sincerely think they're providing a net positive to the world and that free speech absolutism is indeed worth the consequence of harm that results from it: > One thing I have learned about people is that there are some bad ones, and nothing I can do or say will change that. Just because I recognize that even they have rights does not mean I support what they say or do. I support their rights because I want other people who disagree with me to support my rights--not that I necessarily believe that they will, but I do my best not to be hypocritical. And, we have laws to protect innocent people from the actions of others. This is a place where I believe it's okay to be hypocritical, because oh my God, we are hypocritical so often. It is truly unavoidable. Marginalized people need people to stand up for them, not for the people willing to debase and insult them. I cannot be complicit with cruelty or hatred simply because someone has a right to express cruelty and hatred. ## Conclusion A lot has changed over the past decade, and corporate social media now blatantly allows awful, harmful takes in a way that you could only get away with on truth.social or Gab or whatever the fuck years ago. You do not need a tiny, independent platform to say whatever you want, now. A vaccine skeptic is the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services. You are no longer anti-authority when the authority agrees with you. You are no longer the little guy fighting in counterculture against the big man in power. You're all on the same team, now. On January 7th, 2025, Mark Zuckerberg posted a five-minute video called "More Speech and Fewer Mistakes." In it, Meta ended its third-party fact-checking program in the US, replacing it with X-style Community Notes, and framed the whole shift as a return to free expression after what Zuckerberg called a "cultural tipping point" brought on by the 2024 election. In the same breath, Meta rewrote its Hateful Conduct policy to expressly permit describing LGBTQ+ people as "mentally ill" or "abnormal" and calling for their exclusion from professions and public life, loosened its rules around immigration status, and swapped proactive enforcement for waiting on user reports. Days later, the company donated a million dollars to the incoming president's inauguration, added a Trump ally to its board, and handed its global policy shop to a Republican former Bush staffer. The Center for Countering Digital Hate spent six months on either side of the change combing through eight million Facebook comments aimed at elected officials, and found abusive comments tripled, from 24,000 to 78,000, with violent threats and hate quadrupling and harassment doubling. The ADL tracked the Facebook pages of Jewish members of Congress and found toxic comments jumped more than thirteenfold after February 4, 2025. GLAAD, UltraViolet, and All Out surveyed over 7,000 people across 86 countries and found 92 percent worried about the rise in harmful content, and 77 percent now feeling less safe simply existing openly on Meta's platforms. Even Meta's own first integrity report after the change admitted that violent and graphic content, plus bullying and harassment, both ticked upward. That's what "more speech" bought. A starker ratio of who gets to speak without fear, and who barely gets to speak at all. Not more voices in the room. Walking back through BlueDwarf and Substack and Cloudflare and X and Meta, the question needing to be asked is **"are you protecting someone's right to speak _against_ power, or are you protecting someone's right to hurt the powerless without consequence, and calling it the same thing?"** Free speech absolutism is not for people with the least of it, but for the platforms and personalities who already have more than enough. Free speech is in abundance for hateful people, now. Free speech is not in abundance for journalists, for people in Iran or Palestine, or those getting actively suppressed by their government, not hate. As it currently exists, I don't think BlueDwarf should be taken down, but I can't in good conscience recommend it to people. I'll change my mind about recommending BD if SpaceGhost ever decides that "I won't stop them" and "I will protect the people they're aimed at" don't actually have to be in opposition. Until then, I'll keep pointing people toward the platforms and services that build their walls to keep the vulnerable safe _inside_ , not to keep accountability _out_.

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