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Recently, it seems like the web revival/indie web/retro web/personalized web sphere has had a huge influx of members. Probably a mix of dissatisfaction with the bigger social media sites like Twitter/X, Instagram, Reddit, and maybe even Tumblr, as well as troubles to find spaces you're content with in the fediverse. I know some people have trouble with Lemmy and Mastodon, from choosing an instance to their instance closing down or the instance owner being involved in drama, being defederated, or having trouble finding content all in one place. I've also seen people who fled from Reddit fleeing from Squabblr because of severe disagreements with the admin, and delete Cohost over allowing or not allowing the sharing of sexualized drawings of underage fictional characters.
We've seen such migrations before, but for other reasons. I remember that the past few years have brought up a lot of issues to be extremely divided about. That produced a lot of hate speech that was removed, so the people responsible for that got (shadow)banned, removed, or grew tired of having their posts deleted or accounts temporarily locked. I remember all these "free speech" alternative places being erected that just almost immediately faltered or had other severe issues. Lack of members, corruption and drama, or speech that even free speech absolutists grew uncomfortable with. Even those sites eventually had to draw a line and made members mad, or simply shut down (like voat).
It seems like those people are wandering perpetually around the internet, searching for a home for their ideas that cannot be taken away from them but still gives them an audience. And if your spaces fail, and the others won't take you, where do you go?
Personalized web spaces like Neocities and the connected small web spaces like smol.pub, status.cafe, the MelonLand forum and others are perfectly suitable for this. Neocities barely has any oversight and as far as I know, does not really ban users for content violations. Other spaces are small, with even less oversight, managed by 1-3 people with busy lives outside of their web projects and communities. There might not be functioning report features either, or no prominent way to contact the admin. There is no advertising here, so no advertisers to please. People can be nice and gather an audience on forums, the blogging here and the statuses over at the cafe, and then lead back to their websites where they can share propaganda unquestioned and unbothered. These spaces here are small, so less people to upset, less likely for there to be a bigger "shitstorm". And since these people share their views elsewhere, hosters of the services where they play nice can find themselves in the tough spot of "Should I ban someone for content that is not on the site I host or community I manage?". It can be difficult to judge if someone can be a threat to a community, or ruin the vibe of it, if their views can be accessed but are not directly in these communities. It can also be a ticking time bomb as to when they will share some there. Do you risk it or not?
Another point: I think a lot of people coming here from spaces where their views got them banned over and over again expect it to be different here because there is a focus on freedom, reclamation of the internet, and a lot of nostalgia as well as criticism of modern social media. A ton of Neocities websites feature manifestos about these things, and it can be misconstrued to fit the views of these people and seem like a safe haven to share and promote questionable to downright harmful and dehumanizing views without consequence. The idea of reclaiming the web, to them, can be about reclaiming it from "woke" people or people they deem inferior, like people of color, LGBT, and others in a similar boat.
I think deep down, they hope, and maybe even know, that people here do not operate like thoughtless, cutthroat businesses who will just ban you without recourse. There is an emphasis on humanity here, showing up and being vulnerable, and giving people chances. Maybe they know there is a bigger potential for compromise, "agree to disagree", or a false sense of some form of "fair centrism" where we gotta have "both sides". But in my view, that concept an be abused, or stretched in ways it shouldn't be. Our spaces have a responsibility to watch out for being overrun by people with views that cannot be tolerated anymore.
After all, we should all be aware of the tolerance paradox at this point, and that tolerating specific extreme views can drive others out, silence, or even endanger them. I've also seen that a love of nostalgia can quickly lend itself to the romanticizing of extremely conservative and traditional ideas that are homophobic, misogynistic and racist, often coming from white supremacists. Also, the criticism of social media giants and big corporations can sometimes be co-opted by people who want to talk about "The Elite" and specific intense conspiracy theories, like QAnon stuff, Pizzagate and so on, usually ending up with extremely antisemitic talking points due to thinking that Jewish people are behind it all.
I think this online scene we are in needs to reckon with this some time and position themselves, with guidelines and what they'll enforce or not, and where their boundaries are. You cannot detect these people by asking them during signup to describe themselves or what they're planning to do with this, as they have learned not to mention it directly. They often hide it within some subpages or externally linked socials or alternative sites.
It is a fact that climate change deniers, covid deniers, antivaxxers, pedophiles, QAnon people, neonazis, and extreme transphobes have accounts in our spaces and there will be more because of the aforementioned journey of finding an audience without a ban hammer. We should discuss it.
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