Have webrings and buttons aged badly or not?

[tarraxahum]

Not sure about guilt by association (although that's definitely a thing), but it's more like I have my own standards. There are certain topics and principles I'm not personally willing to compromise on, especially if they're being loudly expressed. Usually before linking someone on my site I try to make sure that we're on the same page or at the very least nothing vividly points otherwise.

In some ways it's akin to the way I communicate to people irl, dare I compare online to offline. I have friends with different views on certain matters, sure, but we mostly just don't bring those up with one another or discuss them in a civil manner, it's not a dealbreaker. If one of them were, however, to suddenly bring up a subject I feel strongly about in an overly direct manner or like, start doing active preaching/donating/otherwise direct action about it, I likely wouldn't be able to continue being friends or even talking much, regardless of them being an interesting person in other regards. Like, there's a line.

It's also kind of like the good old "curate your online experience" approach to social media which existed pre-algorithms. Don't like seeing what someone posts? Just unfollow them. Like someone's posts and can tolerate occasional stuff you don't care for? Continue following them.

In the similar vein, if I discover that someone I've linked to put out a statement I utterly and vehemently disagree with - well, I'll remove their button, solely because I don't want to interact with that in any way, let alone link to it. On the other hand, say, the websites that are solely graphics resources and such - I never specifically check who is running them, do I? As long as there's no 'conflicting' content being posted on THIS site, I have no problem with it. It's not like I'm buying something or making them any profit.

The webrings don't bother me at all, though. It's up to the webring owner's discretion (and I'm sure the big rings are hella hard to keep track of past the initial check up). I'm not choosing who participates in the webring, I'm not choosing who comes after me on the list, therefore it's not my choice to associate with whatever person in question and it does not reflect my values. (And yes, if someone doesn't understand how webring work, that's hardly my problem). In terms of social media it'd be like. "Why are you on Tumblr when this other problematic person also uses Tumblr!"

Same with my button on other sites - it's not something that reflects MY choices. I suppose I might ask for it to be taken down if I feel THAT strongly about the webmaster, but I honestly don't think someone like that would even want to link to me in the first place.

So, uh, to me it's more about my personal relation to the subject rather than what someone else might think. Although I will admit, I might give a side-eye to someone if a topic that's a dealbreaker for me isn't a dealbreaker for them, but depending on the severity of the topic that might just be, again, a sign to curate my experience.

Irl of course there are matters of "Sometimes keeping a relative is worth pretending they aren't a product of their bigoted time" or "Sometimes keeping a friend is worth challenging them instead of dipping", but those are personal cases that definitely go beyond just buttons and webrings online.

[Rrim0]

MMMH. I hope that I don't come across as a callous person with this, but this is a theme that interest me and I'm a little bit confused because frankly this is all new to me, so here I come:

 
I put a maybe unnecessary disclaimer on my link page where I have a little button wall of personal websites, where I state that I'm not responsible of what other people post on their site and that I will remove any button at whim (my interests and feelings change a lot).
I do personally think it's a given, but you never know what other people can think...

I just don't take linking to websites as seriously as other people, maybe, but I think that some clarification is better than none, especially since I come from a different online culture from the one I found in neocities and I'm not overly familiar with western personal sites' netiquette.

I am also not that familiar with a lot of bigoted dog whistles, so it's highly probable that some links go to pages that are run by a person I don't agree with (to be honest, I still have to find a person I 100% agree with and that's the beauty of humanity) because I don't catch that they are implying something.

I also have the neocities profile deactivated (sorry, but those social network features overwhelm me, as I am a very introverted person who has never had a public account on SNS with followers or likes for a reason) and follow no profiles (I follow through RSS feed exclusively), so if any drama happens there I have no mean to discover it.

Plus, I don't know any of the person I link to PERSONALLY, so how am I responsible of the content of their site or their ideas?
It's not my responsibility to constantly check if someone is a "good" person or not. Frankly, I don't particularly care since I'm not directly interacting with them.


I usually link to websites I find artistically interesting, so my stand on how and why I link to them is not that I like them as people or that I endorse their ideas per se, but that I find their personal space engaging in some way.

It's the same principle of "love the art, not the artist" that I followed all my life. Some of the best pieces of art I've ever seen or that have influenced me as a person were done by people who were despicable human beings with questionable ethics.
I never cared that much, because I can luckily easily differentiate between artists and their crafts. It's possible it's also because of my age and my cultural background. I have no idea, but it is what it is.

If I link to someone it's because I want the small amount of people who stumble upon my personal space to look at those site and see something stimulating, something different or something inspiring or simply something silly and fun.

I don't care about the feelings of the people running the sites because I have no idea who they are, but I treat them with respect because that's what I think everyone deserve.


Regarding the possibility of the "wrong" people linking to my site: I don't have a button for linking to my site and will possibly never have one for the reasons that:
1) I'm lazy and uninspired aha
2) people link to sites without buttons way less and that's how I like it. I'd like people to link to my site because they like what I'm doing with it, not because the button I make is good/bad/cute/creepy/whatever.

BUT! if I ever make another site that's not strictly personal, but something more like a fan site, I will make a button for it because I think that's entirely different.

[dirtnap]

i tried to reply to this thread a while ago, but my post was lengthy (and probably a bit repetitious) and focused more on the "guilt by association" concept, then i ran out of energy half-way through and decided the simplest way to clean up the post would be to close the tab and try again another time.

so, another time.

for the purposes of this post, i'm going to assume "problematic" content or anything i "disagree" with is outright, clearly-expressed bigotry ("women don't deserve rights") or clearly-expressed agreement with same ("i stand with guy who said women don't deserve rights")

i can't think of anything else that would create a strong enough judgement in me that i'd feel the need to take any action.

Someone whose button you have on your website has released a deeply disrespectful blog post that's making the rounds. Do you feel the need to remove their button as to not seem like you are supporting them and that view, or not? Do you fear that people think you have picked a side in this conflict because you still have that button up?

yeah, that button is gone, but not right away. even if i found out about this day of, i wouldn't remove the button until next time i updated my site. i don't update my site very often (i ended up here after looking at the task of doing so and becoming overwhelmed) and i think it's unreasonable for anyone to assume that the presence of a button on a site that hasn't been updated since the problematic views surfaced even knows about said views.

i also think it would be weird if i updated my site solely to remove that one button and nothing else.

which i think ties into the implied but unasked question: would i judge someone for retaining that button in these circumstances? if the site saw no indication of activity after the blog post was written, unequivocably no. but even if it did...maybe they just didn't see it? a single button with no explicit written endorsement of the views in question doesn't really mean much.

there's a big difference between linking to, say, Bakery Website where the blog contains unhinged bigoted rants, and linking to a site that is only unhinged bigoted rants. in the first example, it's possible the person who put the link there didn't even know about the blog; and even if they did, they're linking for the recipes.

(actually in this particular example it might be "more moral" to outright mirror every recipe on your own site. a recipe cannot be copyrighted. you can't steal a recipe. legally, all recipes are public domain. this is why recipe websites have lengthy walls of text absolutely no-one reads. that part is subject to copyright. but still, the actual recipe is free.)

i'd remove the button, less because i didn't want to be associated with this blog, and more because i didn't want anyone to see the post in question.

You're in a webring, and you skip through it and discover that the site that is before or after you in the order features content you disagree with profoundly. Do you exit the webring or ask to be moved in the order because you don't want anyone thinking you are associated (or for people who are not familiar with how webrings work, that this is one of your pages)?

i contact the webring master and point it out to them, asking them to remove the offending site from the webring. if they refuse, i ask to be removed from the webring.

again, not because of guilt by association, but because i don't want my site to contain a link to something hateful.

and, again to the unasked question, i wouldn't judge someone for being next to a more hateful site, or being in the same webring as it at all. assuming the webring isn't dedicated to bigotry (saying that i realise those probably exist), membership doesn't indicate guilt or association. as kolo said, you have very little control over your webring neighbours.

Someone with very problematic views features your button on their site where they host these views. Do you ask them to take it down or not?

asking a bigot for anything at all is asking for trouble. they can keep the button, and oh are there links to charities that benefit queer people and people of colour in my footer? huh. how long have those been there?

Do you think webrings and buttons have aged badly in this regard in comparison to ~20 years ago?

no. the issues you raise aren't new at all. in fact, contrary to much of the sentiment in this thread, i'm going to suggest that the internet has matured in this manner quite a lot.

i can recall the PETTIEST fucking drama over stamps and button links and sister sites and webring neighbours. your fanfic site allows non-canon ships? disgusting. i'm leaving your webring and starting my own. your review site posts uncensored swearing? what the fuck is wrong with you. i'm moving domains so all your links to my site break.

fuck, i can remember some fandom sites that censored links to other sites in the same fandom purely because the admins had a falling out over some minor canonical quibble.

the internet has matured a lot in terms of allowing others and yourself to be associated with things you don't 100% agree with.

but i still think outright bigotry is a sensible place to draw a line.

[SquidDied]

@472.28

its kind of impossible i feel like to be watching what everyone doing 24/7 unless you have some kind of automated system to monitor and flag them in place, if i found out my webring neighbor was being like being blatantly transphobic or something id hope the moderator of the webring would do something about it or id just leave

if a stranger decided "x user is on y webring so everyone on y webring must suck also" then tbh it seems like they dont understand what a webring is and if theyre not bothered to figure that out then their opinion doesnt matter to me

as for buttons, again if a site i linked was just straight up not aligned with my values anymore i might delete it, but otherwise i could probably have a disclaimer like "my views don't reflect those of the webmaster" and still keep it linked.

for people i dont like sharing my links like, i could make a request to the webmaster they be removed but theres never any guarantee they'd honor my wishes, especially if they were a troll or something :/

u can only worry about the things in ur control really, if someones making ridiculous claims about you online just try not to engage them i guess, let them make an idiot of themselves and ignore them as best you can. if u don't want to be associated with someone anymore you can make some kind of post saying so and try to remove any links if u feel its necessary.