Soapbox 3.0 – Web UI for the Fediverse
soapbox.pub
soapbox.pub
Given it clones the Mastodon API- all clients should work with Pleroma, minus the small Pleroma-specific features.
> Powering the future of social media.
Doesn't tell much. Nothing really.
Soapbox is a UI for the Fediverse. You can use it to replace Mastodon's UI...
His involvement in Pleroma made many of its developers leave the project, e.g.: https://hacktivis.me/articles/Update%20on%20Pleroma%20Mainta... & he excessively whined about it: https://blog.alexgleason.me/pleroma-is-dead/
Given how easy it is to obfuscate a vulnerability in code I would not want to run code programmed primarily by someone who has a peculiar world view (except in a sandbox). At least its a yellow flag to audit it well (but that is no guarantee). With regards to FOSS projects its just a time bomb till some nefarious actor (Russian, Chinese, North Korean, Iranian, etc) does something bad to a popular FOSS project. But the worries are the same when the author is unknown (TrueCrypt, for example), and some people have been paranoid about SELinux ever since.
Taking above into account IMO the heads up is fair. And with all that, you're still free to make up your own mind. Nobody is telling you that you should avoid the project. They're suggesting you look into it.
The OP doesn't claim that anyone infringes any licences, just points out a relationship and political activism involvement. People are free to care or not care about it.
Actually, it would be wise to care about it because the political bias might need to be held in check. People from that ideology were involved in many very illegal stuff, including terrorist attacks or coup attempts. Some people might want to distance themselves from all that even if the developer doesn't have any involvement in the illegal part of their activism.
In the reality I live, people ignore or care about whatever they want. How does your reality look like?
Not even talking about contribution. I am talking about people trying to boycott those who simply use the software. There are actual mastodon admins who block instances on the mere grounds of having deployed soapbox.
- Yes. Disagree with tankies ? Don't help them write their software either. Tankies are absolute morons and a joke to much of the left. Don't like working with transphobes and people with ideologies fresh out of the 30s ? Don't help them write their software either. Unless you don't mind your name being a few lines under <notorious fascist> in the contributor list.
- Stalinism-Marxism ? Please stop letting Ronald Reagan write your history books, it's just Stalinism, which has followed Marxism-Leninism. Stalin was a notorious denier of Marx's theories. Ask Trotsky about that.
- Sure, use their software if it doesn't bother you. But pretending that it does not contribute to spread also the ideologies by giving them more importance is clueless.
I think it's worthwhile to note this. As I said elsewhere, my comment wasn't to tell people to avoid Soapbox (nor even to start a pointless debate like some sub-comments had) (and, heck, I even use an instance nowadays which sometimes use Soapbox; even if I personally despise the main author).
The fedi is also quite political, and as others and I said, just barely using Soapbox could get you auto-blocked or auto-judged.
Few things scream "I don't mind totalitarianism when it is pointed at those I don't like" more than that.
That i'm pro- or against this is out of the topic; but while I don't entierly agree with that, I can definitely understand the _reasons_ they are doing it.
And we cannot really call this totalitarianism, we are talking about a dozens of servers in a decentralized network, not about the government of a country, or laws.
It's similar to JK Rowling getting famous off the Harry Potter franchise and using that clout in a way that causes harm, prompting others to stop promoting her works and thus stop feeding her positive attention. Having read one of those books or having watched one of her movies doesn't make you a transophobe, but promoting her works gives her the means to do harm.
Moreover, the majority of soapbox instances tend to be freeze peach servers that either contain or amplify other harassers. Good soapbox instances tend to be the exception rather than the norm.
Out of curiosity, has he done more, than saying he thinks that transgender is imaginary?
You'd do the Gipper proud.
As to your other assertion, the author's view on sex and gender would have been considered liberal ten years ago. The section on his views in this post below is definitely not right wing or conservative at all.
https://blog.alexgleason.me/trans/
At most you can say the author speaks without thinking, or perhaps is just rude. Maybe he's just fed up, I've never heard of him before today so I can't say.
I feel the need to address this.[0] The page you linked displays incredible ignorance of the past century of feminist thought (including that of the radical feminism movement).
> If we really cannot tell a man from a woman, then how is it possible that women are even oppressed?
Because a patriarchal society views femininity and womanhood as lesser, rightful targets for abuse. People are oppressed on many other lines which are, similarly, not rooted in some fundamental biological reality (e.g. race, social class) and are similarly punished for attempting to breach these boundaries (e.g. refusing to appropriately signal their group membership; acting in a manner not permitted to those of their station). The patriarchy is a social construction, and it can be dismantled.
The passage of Julia Serano he's paraphrased is not saying "we really cannot tell a man from a woman". I'll quote a few paragraphs,[1] for context:
> Claims that trans women are not women often rely on essentialist (and therefore incorrect) assumptions about biology. For instance, people might argue that trans women are not “genetically female,” despite the fact that we cannot readily ascertain anybody’s sex chromosomes. Indeed, most people have never even had their sex chromosomes examined, and those that do are sometimes surprised by the results.
> Other common appeals to biology center on reproduction — e.g., stating that trans women have not experienced menstruation, or cannot become pregnant. This ignores the fact that some cisgender women never menstruate and/or are unable to become pregnant.
> Claims about genitals are similarly problematic: Women’s genitals vary greatly, and as with chromosomes and reproductive capabilities, we cannot readily see other people’s genitals in everyday encounters. If you and I were to meet, should I refuse to recognize or refer to you as a woman unless you show me your genitals? And frankly, what could possibly be more sexist than reducing a woman to what’s between her legs? Isn’t that precisely what sexist men have been doing to women for centuries on end?
> I would argue that all of these appeals to biology are inherently anti-feminist. Sexists routinely dismiss women by pointing to real or presumed biological differences. Feminists have long challenged the objectification of our bodies, and have argued that we are not limited by our biology. So it is hypocritical for any self-identified feminist to use “biology” and “body parts” arguments in their attempts to dismiss trans women.
It's saying (among other things) that nobody – not even Alex – uses his standards to distinguish men from women; which is true. This is something feminists have been saying since at least the 1940s; and it's unsurprising it doesn't make much sense when reframed in Alex's preferred ontology.
> If it's true that privilege is determined by gender identity and not sex,
Privilege is, among other things, determined by gender expression. History is rife with women pretending to be men in order to benefit from the patriarchy in some way; usually to get a job that they would otherwise have been barred from. Part of masculine expression is putting (other) women down, by the way.[2]
Women often have to wear business suits (express themselves in a "traditionally masculine" manner) in order to be taken seriously, despite the pushback they often get for exactly that presentation. A businessman wearing high heels and a skirt (enforced office attire for women, in many places) would be ridiculed, and would experience a reduction in respect – a partial loss of male privilege, plus a punishment for stepping outside his box and violating social norms. Femininity = bad, weak; masculinity = good, powerful.
This is basic, basic stuff.
> Transgender ideology takes us a step backwards. A man who wears a dress must be a woman.
"Feminists hate men! Hah! QED." By Brandolini's Law,[3] this doesn't even bear rebuttal. Read, maybe, a single transgender feminist thinker? This section even contradicts itself later on:
> Trans advocates will deny this. […] To that I say: then what does it mean to be a woman?
This is a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument. Karl Popper's criticism of Sigmund Freud comes to mind.
There's nothing else worth discussing on this page. It's a mixture of low-substance bullshit, not-even-wrong, appeals to "urgh, weird", and misrepresented statistics. (Seriously: even when the cherry-picked stats are relevant, click through to the sources. They don't say what he says they say.) These are not the words of a truth-seeking feminist.
[1]: https://juliaserano.medium.com/debunking-trans-women-are-not...
[2]: See "toxic masculinity".
This is a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument."
It still sounds like a legitimate question to me.
In the reference to Danielle Muscato, who looks like a man, acts like a man and has the biological sex of a man, but identifies as a woman and wants to be seen as a woman.
I mean, I really do not care that much about gender and yes, otherwise the page is quite filled with ideological self righteous references, but to me it does seem like a valid point. Also the comparison to transspecies people. So a person who feels like a lion, is still a human, or not?
So why can a person who feels like a woman change their biological sex then?
To be clear, I have no problem adressing people by their new names or alike, but I do feel that at some point the topic reached the realm of absurdity. There are biological differences and I don't think acknowledging that, has anything to do with supporting patriachat power structures, which undoubtly still exists.
It is a legitimate question. But it's a legitimate question answered in 978 pages in the late 1940s[0] – and that answer's validity is questionable, considering how much it leans on the experience of upper-middle-class French women from the 1940s. I think it's fair to say that a more complete answer would be longer.
Expecting somebody to answer this question, in the context people like Alex are asking it, is like saying "if red isn't Fe₂O₃, then what is red?" (and then refusing to listen to answers like "apples are also red" or "red is a kind of visual perception" or "photons can have different energy levels"). It's so much easier to pose the question than answer it; you basically have to be an academic philosopher to even understand why the question is meaningful.
> Also the comparison to transspecies people. So a person who feels like a lion, is still a human, or not?
This, likewise, probably requires a book to answer. I'm not aware of anyone having written one; if there are academic treatises, they'd probably start by distinguishing between species concepts[1] and work from there. (I'll give the tentative answer "Yes, but it requires you to decouple some of your notions about what human is." – provided you don't quote me on that.)
A good rule of thumb to use is the principle of charity: nobody's claiming anything absurd.
> So why can a person who feels like a woman change their biological sex then?
Empiricism. Like with species, there are several different ways to define biological sex; most can be altered, in humans. Endocrinological sex, secondary sex characteristics, primary sex characteristics… Reproductive capacity, even, though that's not legally available for humans yet, and I doubt it's practically available either.
But, as you noticed, "change their biological sex" isn't the point of being transgender. (Not that there's really "a point" in the first place, but semantics.) It might be worth making the distinction between transgender and transsexual, while observing there's a decent overlap… though there's an extent to which that's just a model, too. The best description of reality is reality itself.
> There are biological differences and I don't think acknowledging that, has anything to do with supporting patriarchal power structures, which undoubtedly still exists.
There are many biological differences – but our society fixates heavily on certain differences (secondary sex characteristics, "race"-associated phenotypical variations) to the detriment of everybody involved. It's fine to acknowledge them, but try not to categorise people by them without their consent, and don't sanctify them as immutable when they're very clearly not.
Why not keep things simple and reserve sex for the biological terms?
Summarized, men have a penis, women have a vagina.
So a mens toilet can look different to a women toilet, out of physological reasons.
And none of this has anything to do with how a person feels inside or how he or she or it identifies, or to what jobs they qualify. Except well, giving birth and breast feeding.
Edit:
I think the terms trans men and trans women are clear and precise enough, to describe people who identify with the other sex, why having another body. But as far as I understood, some think that is already discriminating?
It is confusing and this is what annoys me with the topic. My initial reaction to the top post and transphobic, was that the maintainer is a sadistic asshole who attacks trans people, but so far I only have seen, that he has a different opinion on the topic and the tendency to push his opinion on other people in a not ideal way, but maybe it is still possible to not exclude him from participation in society?
Because the whole thread here seems to be a discussion about that. Can we still use his software? I think yes, otherwise we are heading into a totalitarian society.
Well, yeah – or familiar with that kind of thought, at least. Confronted with the question "what is red?", most people just shrug and get on with their lives. Just look at the SEP page on qualia,[0] and that's a summary of part of that question. It simply doesn't matter to most people. I don't have to know what, exactly, a Hindu is, in order to respect Hindus; the question simply doesn't have all that much relevance to my life.
> Why not keep things simple and reserve sex for the biological terms?
I mean, you can. How you use language is up to you. But, rightly or wrongly, "man" and "woman" are very salient social categories in our society, and pressuring people into social boxes without their consent harms them. (It's a form of violence, for some senses of the word "violence".)
If you can use the terminology how you want to, without forcibly social-categorising people, then more power to you! And please teach me your ways, if you have the time.
> But as far as I understood, some think that is already discriminating?
That isn't discriminating. Discriminating is discriminating. Such insistence on such terminology can be part of discrimination, but the essence of the discrimination is not in the words.
> It is confusing and this is what annoys me with the topic.
Me too. The world is large, and confusing. Especially with social topics, people are inclined to yell at you as soon as you "step out of line", because if they make space for those who genuinely aren't informed, they open themselves up to sealions.[1][2]
Fortunately, you usually have opportunities to learn about these things other than in the spaces that get trolled often.
> My initial reaction to the top post and transphobic, was that the maintainer is a sadistic asshole who attacks trans people, but so far I only have seen, that he has a different opinion on the topic and the tendency to push his opinion on other people in a not ideal way,
It can be both. (Though I wouldn't call him sadistic. Some people around him are quite sadistic, sure, but I don't think he wants to hurt people because he likes their pain.)
> but maybe it is still possible to not exclude him from participation in society?
I'm happy to play catch with him again, if he stops lobbing bricks at my head and claiming it's dodge-ball (and if I can trust that he isn't likely to start again once my guard comes down).
He's not excluded from participation in society; just some parts of it he used to be included in. He's got plenty of new friends to enjoy spending time with, if he can. Just because he's sad about the relationships he's thrown away, that doesn't mean he's entitled to other people's friendliness.
[0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qualia/
They would most likely point to something red and say "this is red" "and this is red, but more orange". They don't want to say "this is #ff0000".
And asked what is a women, they would point to some human with characteristic female charaters and say "she is a woman", "and this person probably" "and this is likely a man". Very concrete and refering to the biological terms.
And yes, that can be wrong on first look. And oh my, having long hair I also have been misstaken for a women some times and told, that I seem androgyn. So what? I know that I am biological a men and yes, I have a female side, maybe stronger than in stereotype man. That doesn't mean, I feel justified to go to a women only sauna and start a drama, because I feel more female that day.
"if he stops lobbing bricks at my head"
But is he really throwing something against you? Is he insulting you directly, or do you feel insulted by his opinion?
What would matter to me in this concrete example: does he only accept pull requests from trans people, if they use their old name for example and insist on using "she" only for biological females? That would be over the line for me. Otherwise I could look over it.
Pretty much.
> Very concrete and refering to the biological terms.
They're referring to the categories, and those categories are often described in biological terms. But they're often described in other terms, too – men are XYZ, women are ABC. There are many ways you can point at the "woman" and "man" categories, none of which are descriptions of every man or woman.
Outside of mathematics, categories don't have rigid boundaries and formal definitions… unless this is the one case in all the world where they do? (Not impossible, but Occam's Razor says human cognition probably doesn't special-case this.) My claim here is experimentally falsifiable, too: if you think you've got a formal definition, provide it, and I'm happy to give you examples of hypothetical people who obviously don't fit into it, exhibiting the divergence between your definition and the real-world man/woman distinction.
Side note: over 10% of English speakers are from cultures with a continued tradition of having more than two genders. It's clear they mean something other than "biological terms", so I won't labour that point.
> That doesn't mean, I feel justified to go to a women only sauna and start a drama, because I feel more female that day.
I understand you're trying to express… confusion? Disagreement? But so far, it seems like you get it just fine. (Unless you're saying that you frequently feel more female than you do male, in which case… I don't think HN's the right place for the ensuing discussion. Check my NickServ taxonomy on libera.chat, if you like.)
Fun (probable) fact: did you know, most trans people don't even go swimming?
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> But is he really throwing something against you? Is he insulting you directly, or do you feel insulted by his opinion?
That was a tortured metaphor. We've never played catch, either, in case you were wondering. (I don't know that we've been in the same country at the same time.) I don't think Alex has ever hurt me directly; in fact, he's had access to a reasonable amount of my personal information and, as far as I know, hasn't done anything bad with it.
One of the hate groups he's tech support for spent about three days harassing me online, one time. (I think it started because they were harassing one of my acquaintances for daring to put pronouns in her bio, and simultaneously work for a feminist non-profit.) Don't remember whether I was crying, but I know some of the other targets were. Does that count?
> does he only accept pull requests from trans people, if they use their old name for example
Not to my knowledge. Then again, it's a while since anyone I know has worked with him.
> and insist on using "she" only for biological females?
At one point he was trying to insist upon that; no clue whether he still does. I never knew him all that well, and it's not like I keep tabs on every bigot I've ever been social media "mutuals" with.
> That would be over the line for me. Otherwise I could look over it.
I'm not saying you should hate him. Heck, I don't hate him, so it'd be pretty weird for me to insist you do. But he advocates for, and aids, the harassment of people I care about. It's not about blame; it's about trust: he doesn't deserve yours.
Can you name a example? Genuinly interested. Do you mean neutrum?
"But he advocates for, and aids, the harassment of people I care about."
This is something not tolerable.
"It's not about blame; it's about trust: he doesn't deserve yours."
And he never had my trust. I never heard of him. I simply observed that on his blog he made some valid points mixed in with some prejudices and of everything else I had no idea before - and while asking exactly that further down, there came no more examples, of him doing wrong, besides having a different opinion.
So my main point was and is, that this whole debate has gone off rails a long time ago. Funnily enough, yesterday I was banned from a Telegram group, I stumbled into, found they were "critical of the gender agenda", and they all had of course "homosexual friends who also thinks that", but behind the masks and after asking more questions, they turned out to be very trans- and homophobic, liked their bubble and any other viewpoint was not welcome and I got kicked out.
And so here my initial comment is flagged as well, apparently from the other side.
Is there really no more middle ground? Is there really only the option of choining the racists, or submitting totally to the latest progressive agenda and staying up to date to the most recent words I have to learn to not offend anyone, or otherwise risk a career ending shitstorm?
This is my problem with this whole debate, it polarizes and increases the rifts in society. And it does not convince people of anything, it just scares people to speak up their mind. I am pretty progressive I think and when I still have the wrong opinion, that needs to be flagged, well, good luck convincing any "normal" people out there and not pushing them more to the other extreme side.
(directed not necessarily at you, but at the people who flagged my opinion above)
I'm not the right person to ask about this, but there's a list on the Nonbinary wiki[0]. (Remember to check the Further reading and References sections; Nonbinary wiki articles can be a bit hit-or-miss.)
Some of them "don't count" from a "sexuality/gender distinction" perspective, but that philosophy isn't universal in cultural studies, and I think it's starting to become less universal in mainstream feminism.
> And so here my initial comment is flagged as well, apparently from the other side.
So was mine – and a really trollish one's been vouched for, too. *shrug* That's just how these things go.
> Is there really no more middle ground?
Sure there is.
• Be slightly kinder than you have to.
• Don't get famous, and especially don't get internet famous.
You're doing it right already. I like to think I'm doing it right (but I think I'm getting into too many internet arguments for that).
> This is my problem with this whole debate, it polarizes and increases the rifts in society.
The whole "debate" is recent, and artificial; I suspect it only exists to create justification for the claim that trans rights are "controversial" (despite widespread public support in places like the UK).
Don't let yourself get sucked in. So long as you're not insisting when people say they don't want to engage[1] (even when they're being rude and you're being polite – remember, you might be the fifth person this week, and the other four might've been trolling bigots), and so long as you're not playing Devil's Advocate[2] or poking holes / finding gotchas, it's fine to ask questions. (If you're seeing "gotchas", it usually means that there's a drastic difference between your understanding of the subject matter and the understanding of whoever you're listening to.)
Oh, and take things critically. Much feminist discourse online is very ill-informed, and I'm no exception. There are people who say Always Do X because ABC, or Never Do Y because DEF – but they're talking about their own experiences, and their reasoning might not apply universally. Don't mistake confidence for competence, and don't dismiss somebody just because they're not using the "right words" for things.
Question your confidence, but don't shy overmuch away from questioning other people's: here, asking for reasoning is a much better approach than telling people they're wrong. If it's necessary to do so, emphasise why you don't understand (e.g. "My native language barely has gendered adjective declension; could you give some more examples?"), rather than that you don't understand (e.g. "why does it matter? I still don't get it").
Take this advice critically, too.
[0]: https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Gender-variant_identities_worldw...
[1]: https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/problem-with-educate-me...
[2]: https://feministing.com/2014/05/30/an-open-letter-to-privile...
On that note, why does the trans activist movement require that trans people must LITERALLY be the sex they self identify as? Why is that the one criteria?
I agree that he got some _correct_ views- mostly anyone does; but I read the guy posts over the years, it's widely known on the fediverse that he's pushing alt-right stuff.
He's also loves to use many of the slang they use.
It's his behaviour on the Fediverse & related spaces that made me (and many others) think/know he is alt-right.
It's not a fun discussion to have, nobody approaches it open minded, nobody wants to be convinced beyond their surface level gut reaction.
I'd rather we put a boundary at "is it okay to use or promote software from people that many are ethically opposed".
Who is this young man in Poland and how can I buy him a pierogi?
+1 for the TLD and the footer "♡2023. Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share."