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.
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, "removed."
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.
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.
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 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'm no Nazi, I just think it's infantilizing to filter out certain words so I left .ml. We're all adults here. Enjoy what you like though, I'm happy with /0.
I'm definitely not saying anyone who's not a fan of word filters is a nazi. I'm just saying that nazis disproportionally dislike them more, so it's a good thing in my book. But yes, definitely enjoy what you like, too. I would be more critical of the word filter, if it wasn't possible for you to just join a different 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.
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.
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.
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.
Lemmy.world is incredibly hostile towards Marxists, or anyone too critical of the Democrats or the US' involvement in the genocide of Palestinians. I imagine @ComradeMiao@lemmy.dbzer0.com has similar complaints based off their username.
My name is a pun off of miao being meow in chinese but sounds similar to Mao. But yes, that is where their censorship is and I disagree with it, but I also disagree with lemmygrad/hexbear censorship.
I elaborated on my views in my top level comment here, but you can't avoid "censorship." You can only pick which bias you want to see more of. Lemmygrad and Hexbear are more open with their biases, and can be trusted to uphold that bias very reliably. Lemmy.world is more subtle, it focuses on selective defederation and selective removals and bans in order to carefully prune a demographic.
Dbzer0 is interesting, it's mostly tech nerds and those enthusiastic about Anarchism, while remaining federated with Lemmy.world, Hexbear, and Lemmy.ml while defederating from Lemmygrad. As such, it generally leans techy Anarchist with a large influx of Liberals from Lemmy.world and some Marxists from Hexbear on occasion. It isn't as heavy handed with removals as Lemmy.world is in my experience, but it definitely is selective with what the mods and admins consider "acceptable Marxism."
Thanks for the knowledgeable break down :)
I didn’t know much of that especially dbzer0 federating hexbear but not lemmygrad. Wonder why?
You’re smart about knowing the clear biases versus the more subtle one’s. Well said!
I never had any particular problem at lemmy.world but I really didn’t like their Luigi decision. The admin of dbzer0 seems nice. I directly asked about not liking ai, which is their focus, and they were very chill in their response
dbzer0 as an instance considers Lemmygrad to be "fake" Marxist-Leninists (which I believe to be sourced from the western-anarchist demographic of dbzer0 in general, rather than actual familiarity with Marxism-Leninism), the geopolitical stance of dbzer0 as an instance is contrary to Lemmygrad and thus the admins deemed this to be an absolute difference. That said, dbzer0 themself is more symapathetic towards Hexbear as Hexbear has a very large number of Anarchists as well as Marxists, and dbzer0 is an Anarchist.
As for Lemmy.world, I have had my own issues with it and been thoroughly soured by them, you can check my modlog if you want to see it, I don't really want to turn this into a drama post.
In case you check my modlog, here is the context for the Playstation@Lemmy.zip ban. The moderator banned me for calling out their regurgitation of white supremacist "anti-DEI" nonsense about non-white people being included in God of War. They since deleted their account and locked the sub, now its just bot posts for the most part.
Thanks for further explaining! How did you learn all this?
How do I check your specific modlog? I’ve also had some people randomly attacking me….
Admin's didn't like Luigi discussions to the point of not allowing discussion of Jury nullification. It wasn't not supporting violence but not supporting most discussion of this topic. To me, that shows protection of a certain neoliberal class. Like the opposite of lemmygrad.
They do support violence, just the old terror, as Mark Twain would put it.
Capitalist system terror and opression, though considering USA is at the stage of imperialism for which merging of capitalism and state is characteristical, we can say it's the terror of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Damn, that sucks. The users there must be missing out on so many good Luigi memes
more than just sucks; seeing it happen there as well as facebook, twitter & reddit makes it clear what .world's intentions are.
Yeah they might not always get everything right but I’d rather have an overactive mod team than an under active (useless) mod team especially when it’s all done for free
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.
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.
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.
we aren't federated with NSFW instances and thats honestly okay because I use this account in public.
