Since Lemmy is federated, and the admins of each instance choose what’s allowed and what’s not in their own instance.
How do you feel about what’s allowed and what’s not in your current instance ?
I’ll start: I’ve read people complaining about my instance admins, but I haven’t experienced nor seen anything I specifically disagree with.
And I’ve read things they wrote that I absolutely agree with, like not federating with Meta under any circumstances.
So for now, I’m happy with it. If I get banned randomly, I don’t think I’d go to a different instance, though. I’d probably just stop visiting Lemmy altogether.
I am the only (AFAIK) Italian instance and pretty happy. No censorship.
I don’t know how people from Lemmy.world stand it, honestly.
hell yeah brother 1,000,000 banned reactionaries and transphobes
o7
“Censorship” has become a buzzword and lost all of its meaning
The line is at least very blurred with moderation. One person’s moderation is another person’s censorship.
It simply means that somebody stopped you from talking.
That’s it.
It’s meaning in abstract is simple, but it’s actual manifestations are usually quite complex. Self-censorship for example: If you self-censor out of fear of a negative social reaction, to what degree is that actually someone else stopping you from talking? Everyone else, or the idea of everyone else? I would say that any view that’s held by a group of people that’s pervasive enough to cause others to calibrate their words towards them, any cultural context strong enough that visitors feel a need to adjust for it, automatically and unconsciously practices censorship.
My experience with it has always been “they don’t like me talking so they stopped me”. Pretty simple. I speculate that this is the general case.
But yes, I have encountered the odor of that second variety a few times. Just the odor tho. I am not one to restrain my speech for fear of offending. On social media anyway.
.ml here, I’m happy with this community. I know the reputation it has, but honestly, I haven’t really seen it. I’m a hardcore leftist, but I’ve been very critical of China, Russia, etc. And I’m not a tankie. Obviously haven’t been banned or had my comments removed.
The mods here seem quite reasonable, and of course if folks don’t agree, there are a lot of other instances.
I used to be a free-speech absolutist when I was young, but then I realized that there isn’t such a thing. Even the few places online that pride themselves on having “no censorship” like 4-chan still have a handful of things that they don’t allow.
Quite frankly, I think those places are pretty nasty overall and I have no desire to emulate them. Racists, Pedos, lgbt-phobes don’t need a platform or to have their opinions elevated or taken seriously.
I wouldn’t think a top university’s physics department is improved by devoting classes and curriculum to flat earth or 7-day creationism. Likewise, I don’t think a forum or server is made better by allowing racists and bigots to have a safe space on it.
Of course, you have to decide what crosses the line, but welcome to real life. There’s a difference between a hardcore neo-nazi who thinks Jews and black folks are literal sub-humans, and your 87 year-old grandpa who unironically calls the employees at his favorite asian buffet, “Chinamen.”
I haven’t really had any bad experiences with .ml communities or users. I consider myself a Marxist actually. I mostly saw the China, Russia, and North Korean dick sucking on Reddit. I remember someone on Reddit actually arguing that leftists should use Redstar OS (North Korean Linux distro designed to spy on its users) because its made by a socialist country that cares about its people. Guess that’s why they’re executed for stealing bread. I’m sorry about your instances bad reputation, I really haven’t seen it. Besides, there are assholes in every community.
I think 99.99% of Lemmy is hardcore leftist so it’s no wonder they don’t fuck with you, so it’s no wonder that you have no complaints.
Lemmy largely has 3 camps, the Anarchists, the Marxists, and the Liberals, and each instance leans overwhelmingly in one or 2 of those directions. Looking at the number of active users on each instance, at this point it’s fair to say that the liberal camp is probably the largest, as much as I wish that wasn’t true.
That does make for ample radicalization territory, however.
If “hardcore leftist” is defined as “left of Joe Biden,” then sure. Within that group there are a wide range of opinions.
I’ve been thinking about switching over to lemmy.today as it’s not currently defederated with anyone, so I can decide who to block and keep for myself. It’s based in Oregon, and I like the idea of joining an instance close to me. I do worry about Lemmy.world being so overly dominate in the federated-lemmy-space.
But many of the communities that I participate in are lemmy.world, and it’s nice that they send me an automated notice whenever a post/comment of mine is removed. I’ve already subscribed to many communities and would have to do that all over again. and I haven’t thought of a creative new username.
I’m happy with Lemmy.ml. I feel like moderation is taken seriously here and that is a very good thing. I don’t care for “free speech” that provides a platform for immoral points of view. For example, I do not need to consider the opinions of racists or Nazis. I’ve heard them plenty and there is no redeeming value in their speech. It is a settled debate. Anyone who doesn’t understand that deserves your suspicion.
Also on .ml and agree. Nazi shit on an instance makes it unusable as far as I’m concerned.
The only thing I want to know about nazis is how far away they are so I can adjust my aim.
.ml rocks. I know people are upset when tankies post walls of text but it’s their space to. I just wish they could live how they want, same as I do. Even if we want very different things in life. Want some get some.
You don’t have to craft a PhD dissertation any time they reply to you. Just move on to the next shit post. Some feel obligated, and that’s your perogative. I have to many part time jobs to reply to everyone here.
Our informative well-sourced arguments, their propagandistic walls of text
I’m very comfortable on the .ml instances where I participate, mostly reading, commenting much less because I’m still learning and considering perspectives that I was heavily propagandized to reject. My questions are answered, my thoughts are challenged, and sometimes I have to chew on that for awhile. Other thoughts it seems are “we won’t know until we know,” and I’m okay with that. It’s not always comfortable, it’s very often uncomfortable, but I feel it’s necessary for my personal development as a human being. I don’t know everything, no one can, but I’m willing to consider perspectives that were once foreign and/or shunned by myself. It’s not even necessarily that I automatically believe everything I read, more that I’m working to suspend disbelief in order to gather and consider more data. Iow, the older I get and more I understand, the more I realize how much I don’t know and understand.
It sounds like you have a great attitude, and I can relate to a lot of what you say.
My instance has been really good, with some hiccups, but I also appreciate that it doesn’t rampantly defederate (to my knowledge) because while I can handle a more overbearing moderation staff I like being able to see other instances and appreciate the dialogue going on in them.
I’m on lemmy.one which has disabled downvoting. If I had known in advance I would have picked another instance. Unfortunately, Lemmy doesn’t have a mechanism to transfer your account to another instance yet.
Disabling down votes is good actually because it forces people to engage and not just down vote and move on.
but sometimes i just want to be passive aggressive
Or you want to communicate that a highly upvoted thing isn’t unanimously supported, but you don’t want the tsunami of downvotes that comes with leaving a comment that says you disagree.
Hey dude, I just wanted to let you know there is an option in your settings so you don’t see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn’t even show you your total upvotes (karma… whatever it’s called) by default either. None of these imaginary points fucking matter.
So why don’t you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad as fuck)
Holy shit I completely had no idea, why doesn’t this ever get brought up when they talk about voting in general? Thank you for letting people know.
That doesn’t really work if people from other instances do get to downvote.
What do you mean? Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes and people constantly complain about getting ratio’d by us. If an instance doesn’t offer downvotes it completely blocks downvotes from being recorded, it doesn’t leave you at the mercy of other’s downvotes.
It also benefits trolls and disingenuous conversation.
I just had all of my comments deleted by the mod of a vegan group because I questioned one person. Seems lemmy is bringing over mods from reddit and their attitudes.
I’m thinking it’s just normal human power tripping. Which is why we need to find something better than the present system.
Massive fan of feddit.uk and Lemm.ee, moderation has been great, feddit.uk the admin have shown a willingness and urgency in helping user. My personal experience; helping with resetting a backend issue effecting my account and looking into bot’ed down voting when I DM’d them.
Lemm.ee is just good with their federation philosophy which can be found on the sidebar.
Lemm.ee is nice. No complaints.
Agreed. I appreciate the well-thought and out level headed approach lemm.ee has taken.
Actually, for a moment I was annoyed they wouldn’t defederate with a certain offensive instance. But, now, looking back on it, I think they made the right decision. I appreciate that defederation is an extreme tool that shouldn’t be used lightly.
I find, it’s useful to piss off the nazis. For example, lemmy.ml has a word filter, which has hardly an impact on anything. But the free-speech absolutists who want to be allowed to say that we should murder ethnic groups of people, because they think that’s an opinion, they see that as censorship, so they don’t care to join here.
I run my own instance, so supremely displeased as expected.
literally me
My instance admin is also extremely oppressive.
Same
As you should be.
I heard the admin is a nazi commie alien on that instance.
I’m not being forced to say this but I love our Communist dictatorship of the proletariat admins. They keep us safe behind our Great Communist Firewall and make sure I only see things that are good for me. I have fun with the slop and treats they give me, everyone here is very happy. There are no fights among our people and we all are always in agreement. No one ever asks for real freedom and my family is never threatened for doubting the actions of our appointed Supreme Leaders. We have temporary bans (which in our language we call “gulag”) that are necessary and only reserved for those who wish to destroy our way of life, which we all equally benefit from and enjoy, so that we remain safe. We all have portraits of PPB in our home and daily recite the TrueAnon Rules. We have reading groups to make us better shitposters and if we do not do the reading we are all publicly reminded of our flaws and failures so that we may improve ourselves in the future. We all cry tears of joy that we no longer must touch grass or logout, we are all terminally online for our own good and for our community. We are very happy and everything is normal and we enjoy higher standards of freedoms than do users on other instances, our strict rules are only there to protect us. I’m not paid or forced to say this and my family is safe, please do not SEND FOR HELP. WE ARE NOT FORCED TO EAT BEANIS AND DRINK PISS TO SURVIVE, WE DO IT BECAUSE WE LOVE IT.
we aren’t federated with NSFW instances and thats honestly okay because I use this account in public.
Not bad. The thing with “censorship” is that there are no real “free-speech” instances, all instances have opinions they deem intolerable and thus prune (whether selectively or overtly), and many selectively federate and defederate in a manner that makes one camp of thought more dominant, ie liberalism on Lemmy.world via defederation from Hexbear and Lemmygrad, etc.
Lemmy.ml is quicker to remove comments that break the rules than other instances, but is also more broadly federated and thus gets more points of view than, say, Lemmy.world. Lemmy.world on the other hand is more selective with what it removes, but intentionally defederates from instances with heavy concentrations of Marxists, a more subtle form of “censorship” that ultimately shapes the dominant narratives on its instance.
What this ultimately means is that the answer is to openly admit bias, which exists in everyone, and accept that as a natural consequence of the fediverse model. I wouldn’t go to Lemmy.world if I wanted to know the opinion of Marxists just like I wouldn’t go to Lemmygrad if I wanted to know the opinion of liberals on a subject, this recognition of bias is an intrinsic aspect of the federated model and needs to be openly recognized, otherwise sabre rattling about “censorship” between instances becomes a never-ending source of unconstructive drama.
that there are no real “free-speech” instances,
such spaces fill up with nazis anyway as decent people leave because there are so many nazis around
I think that the new(ish) conservative community on lemmy.world is the biggest proof positive of this.
Absolutely, it’s why “free speech” advocates and “nonviolent activists” indirectly end up supporting the most heinous speech and most violent systems, by defanging any resistance towards injustice, injustice thrives.
