Blocked from serde organization?

[andreisilviudragnea]

I have been blocked from serde organization for a 👎 reaction on serde-rs/serde#2514:

Did the same happen to you? @bonsairobo @Apollo314 @Dushistov @yallxe @leeh-peter @BurnerWah @BreadFish64 @ahlinc

Edit: I have been unblocked as of today (September 6 2023).

[Legorooj]

I've not been blocked, no.

[ferrohd]

I'm not blocked from the repo. Being blocked just because you disagree with the mantainer is scary, considering the size of the project.

[NoahGreer]

I have not been blocked. I just starred and made a fork of serde to confirm.

[AlexTMjugador]

At the moment, I have not been blocked from interacting with the repository.

[vi]

because I expressed my support for serde-rs/serde#2580 through 3 emojis

Is it a fact or a hypothesis?

[andreisilviudragnea]

This is how I see them:

[Legorooj]

What I believe @vi means is it that the only action you've taken on the repository? Is there any other possible reason?

[andreisilviudragnea]

I might have reacted to other comments or releases today. No comment for sure.

I was investigating the on-going discussion with the precompiled macro and I like to react on everything I find interesting. I sometimes feel like on Facebook or Instagram here.

I asked on a subreddit about this and I might not be the only one. I don't feel it is ok to block people for this.

[yallxe]

It's most likely a fact in my case. I've never reacted or commented on serde org or dtolnay's profile, except this one moment.

[setzer22]

[andreisilviudragnea]

Let's not troll or spam. I just want to raise awareness about something that might have gone unnoticed until now.

[andreisilviudragnea]

@vi So are both links visible for others? I can only see the one from @mo8it.

Oh, you were talking about the issues above, sorry.

[pacak]

Here's my only two ever interactions with him, after which I was blocked:

Well... What was the expected result?

[vi]

@vi So are both links visible for others?

The links are viewable, including by non-logged-in users.

[setzer22]

Just an FYI: Someone has asked me to withdraw my message, and I have complied. Sorry for the inconvenience!

[mo8it]

I shared it on Mastodon 🐘
Share it! Funny that we act like press in some dictatorship…
No more silencing. As if locking the original issue was not enough 🤦🏻‍♂️

[setzer22]

This was also apparently removed from reddit with no explanation.

[pacak]

This was also apparently removed from reddit with no explanation.

To avoid sending an angry mob. A link to archive.org might survive.

[andreisilviudragnea]

It was automatically removed because of using words like banned I think. I posted another one here: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/15witl2/silenced_for_reacting_on_a_pull_request_over/

[andreisilviudragnea]

I tried to link the serde-rs/serde#2580 to this issue: #2, but if you are blocked, this will not show up on GitHub.

So everyone can be silenced without anyone else noticing.

[LuckyTurtleDev]

Currently I am not blocked. But the only think I have write, was that i prefer on opt-in option.

[Rusty-Weasel]

nope it works, and concerning future of dev, i prefer also opt-in option

[mo8it]

If at all, then I would prefer top level opt-in when compiling binaries only. Otherwise, if a library I use opts in, then we have the same issue again.
But even then, the gained performance is not worth it.

[hllhnd]

I have not been blocked from the serde organization. Additionally, I had put negative reactions on dtolnay's original comments, but I have not been blocked.

[goffrie]

I've been blocked by both the serde-rs org and dtolnay personally. I did not post any comments, only reactions.

Unblocked now.

[canselcik]

Oh wow I have been blocked as well. What a thin skin. Fascinating.

[andreisilviudragnea]

Why have you been blocked?

[canselcik]

For a comment and a few reactions.
Obviously people who are trusted with maintaining such high profile crates should not be silencing voices just because they don't like what is said. Emotional maturity is a must really. @dtolnay has failed at every step when it came to handling this PR issue, not to even mention what he originally did at its technical merits and how he just tried to reply with that terrible "this is how it is done, issue closed". What was he thinking...

[yallxe]

I'm blocked. I think serde maintainer is crazy at this point. The best part of it is that I only left a reaction and I never even wrote anything on serde repo.

[bonsairobo]

Yea I'm blocked. Can't follow dtolnay, star the serde repo, or fork it.

Never would have expected this from posting a 👎 reaction. And it's doubly odd, because at one point I looked up to David as a prolific Rust author, and I even learned how to write proc macros from his workshop repo. I guess I should not have misplaced my trust in someone based on technical prowess.

[bonsairobo]

I've finally been unblocked. No response from David though.

[leeh-peter]

Yes, indeed, I'm blocked.

[Cyprex]

It's unfortunate that there is so much drama over this. dtolnay doesn't want to put up with people demanding they do xyz, and that's fine. They're an unpaid volunteer for an open source project. What do you expect? If you feel like he must oblige your wishes you should pay him to produce a version of serde for you.

Or you could fork serde yourself!

[Stargateur]

Or you could fork serde yourself!

you can't when blocked on github haha

[Enet4]

I don't think anyone in their right mind¹ contested the fact that he is the legitimate maintainer of Serde and that no Serde user is entitled to a stake in how it is maintained and designed.

With that said, we are entering new grounds with Serde, and apparently in more than one factor. Given its immense importance in the Rust ecosystem, members of the Rust community may start arguing that being blocked from participating in Serde-related repositories causes disproportionate harm to them. And if this is really happening because the user reacted on GitHub posts, then we'll have to continue questioning some serious stances happening under the Rust Code of Conduct. If the community continues to treat reactions as an affront or an aggression, rather than an aggregated measurement of sentiment towards a post, we're going to see many bystanders getting silently blocked from interacting due to a non-universal interpretation of these reactions (one which has only been discussed occasionally in some threads and is not even explicitly outlined in the CoC).

---

¹ Alas, bad takes may still occur occasionally (such as suggesting that a maintainer may lose the protection associated with being an open source maintainer), but we must not lose sight of the real issues and put everything in good perspective.

[Apollo314]

I am now blocked too. I didn't even write any comment. put a thumbs down emoji on the pr and maybe thumbs up to a few criticism comments.

[ferrohd]

At least he reverted the changes about the precompiled binary back to building from source. Release Link

[Logarithmus]

Yes I've just checked and I can't star serde repo. Don't know why, because I didn't participate in this binary drama, didn't put any negative reactions and only learned about it today from Reddit. Maybe I put some negative reaction on some @dtolnay comment like 1 year ago or so and he used a script to ban everyone reacting negatively to all his comments, I don't know.

[jedisct1]

I posted a link to this discussion on Reddit. Post got quickly downvoted, reported and censored.

[tmvkrpxl0]

@bonsairobo Could I please get an update on this? I've been following this, and for the most part it seems resolved. However to me, this discussion remains as the last unresolved part of this, and I would like to hear from serde's maintainers about this.

[bonsairobo]

@tmvkrpxl0 I have not gotten a response from David. It's been 4 days since I reached out.

Still blocked from serde and David on Github.

[bonsairobo]

I'm now unblocked, but no response from David.

[andreisilviudragnea]

I have been unblocked too.

[matklad]

For posterity, @jedisct1 I can't find your link, but I found the link by @andreisilviudragnea and, as a mod of r/rust, I can confirm that the reason for removal has nothing to do with "hate speech".

As per subreddit rule's, we generally require the links to GitHub issues, PRs, discussions, twitter/mastadoon threads and other read/write forums to be proxied via archive.org (or some other way to get a "readonly" view).

The reason for this rule is that its possible to inadvertently stir up an angry reddit mob by linking to an issue, and we don't want to do that. We want to strike the balance between "make information available" and "avoid organizing a crusade in someone else's space". "Use read-only links" is the line where we draw the boundary.

Note that the rule exists primarily to avoid doing this by accident, but I personally would say that this whole discussion exists to make that happen on purpose.

In particular, @andreisilviudragnea knew that the reason for removal of their reddit post was the explicit rule about archive links, and the general "please do not try to rile people up into a mob" guidilene, but they chose to frame it as "they consider it hate speech". This is exactly how riling people up looks.