What is the point of the fediverse having built-in censorship to ban ideas, views, and opinions? There could be a direct connection between why Mastodon does not attract new users and the totalitarian censorship of the fediverse pushing a monolith barbarian culture.
Looking through posts on the different fediverse services, it seems anything built on ActivityPub will only turn stale in 5 years because it is designed for people who can’t function in society where random individuals can freely reject their statements, so they need the internet to hide away from life.
- Paradox of tolerance
- For Antifa, No Platform for Fascism To prevent ‘Alt-Right’ ideas from being taken seriously, the anti-fascist argument is that you don’t even let them start to have a platform in society.
- https://xcancel.com/IamRageSparkle/status/1280892535024619522
I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”
And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”
"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”
And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.
Censorship isn’t built in to the fediverse. You’re free to create your own instance and publish anything you want, completely exempt from any form of censorship.
So you got downvoted for a bunch of really shitty conservative political takes on the Canadian instance, and you’re going to call it “censorship”?
Grow up and take some time for introspection.
I do not see upvotes or downvotes. If there are lots of downvotes I will never see it.
Don’t worry! I got you.
I have you tagged as a right wing Nutjob already and your account is only 1 week old, so I have a great idea on the kind of “censorship” you’re talking about.
Your Nazi/Right-wing viewpoints simply aren’t welcome here, that’s not censorship. Censorship is the government telling you what you can and cannot say. Not businesses, not individuals, not instance admins and not the Fediverse at large.
If you want to spew or hangout with others who do spew xenophobic, transphobic, racist hateful trash, go back to X or even truth social, your shitty hateful “viewpoints” will be welcome there
Why is it always white people who only speak English that calls people racist?
Du bist ein scheiß Rassist und jetzt sieh zu das du Land gewinnst!
Happy now?
Lols in German
It’s not?
That’s not the point of the fediverse, and what you’re describing isn’t censorship. It’s more akin to a group of people not wanting to talk to you anymore, so they kick you out of their group. You can always create your own group, but it requires effort and people who want to interact with you.
If an instance’s rules bother you, you could change instances, or better yet, make your own. That’s the point of ActivityPub.
Also I don’t think “censorship” would really make a community die (go look at hexbear.net, if you could handle it, for example)
The entire fediverse is built on censorship of thought and opinion because no server is allowed to join the fediverse that allows posts criticizing transgenderism.
There isn’t really a single “fediverse” that decides what’s “allowed”. What your fediverse is depends on where your account is and who they’re federated with. You’re perfectly free to say whatever you want on your own instance and talk to the other people on instances willing to federate with you. The thing is, being mean to people who have done nothing to harm you tends to make you pretty unpopular and make people not want to interact with you, that’s why instances that encourage that tend to not be federated with very many popular instances.
Do people have a right to disagree with you? When you comment on any subject or topic, whatever it might be, do others have right to not support what you believe in? No marriage or serious relationship can last with restrictions on personal thought. Successful marriages must have room for disagreements.
If we’re talking on the phone and you start talking about stuff that I’m not interested in hearing, I’m allowed to hang up.
You can disagree all you want, that doesn’t mean I’m required to listen to you.
Yeah, over stuff like what to have for dinner. Not whether some people don’t deserve human rights.
And let me make this perfectly clear: all people deserve human rights.
What? People are allowed to avoid people they have serious disagreements with? You have every right to have whatever unkind opinions you want to have, but that doesn’t mean anyone is required to listen to you or like you. You’re never going to be liked by everyone in the world, but if you can hardly find anyone willing to be around you, it’s probably time to do some self refelction
There is a whole network of conservative fediverse instances and you’re free to go to them. They also allow CSAM and outward racism, which is why this side of the fediverse doesn’t federate with them. Hope that helps :)
Again, not wanting to hear bullshit != censoring. You can just go ahead and make your own instance that flames transgender people just for existing, if that’s your thing, but people might find you annoying and rude and might not want to hang out with you.
Would you consider me blocking you to be censorship, for example? And if not, why would it be different if an entire group blocks you?
You blocking me does not qualify as censorship due to individual liberties. I can agree that if someone is frequently complaining about trans people, even some people who agree will grow tired of the negativity. There is a problem trying to public promote a service as an established service and attract new users, and then to say “No, we don’t allow your kind in here, you are only allowed to agree with every word we say”, that starts to look like a bait and switch scam and pushing dictatorial censorship.
Do an internet search for “mastodon censorship” and read through 10 different search results.
Mastodon and Lemmy themselves don’t offer services. The people who install the app on their servers do. They set up their instance, with their rules and setup. Anyone who doesn’t follow their rules isn’t welcome.
But let’s say that users have a problem with how instance A is handling it’s modding. If they’re on another instance B, they could ask their admin to block instance A. If you’re on instance A, you can change instances, or better yet, make your own.
What we tell people that want to join is that there is no centralised server. Unlike reddit, if you get banned there, you have no link aggregator to go to. But if you get banned on Lemmy, you can, and I will repeat myself, change instances or make your own.
What is the point of the fediverse having built-in censorship to ban ideas, views, and opinions?
Because that’s what normal people want?
This is almost always relevant as soon as someone complains about free speech, censorship, etc:
Why does it never go the other way and your side screams censorship when there are restrictions saying not allowed to mention climate change, not allowed to mention socialism or Marxism, not allowed to mention covid?
When your definition of censorship is the same as right wing pud pullers like Musk, then it is time to reevaluate your perspective.
Without censorship tools this place would be riddled with spam, porn, and disinformation bots, just like reddit at its peak.
What moderators use those tools for, is in their hands. If you don’t like how certain instances or communities handle them, you can just start your own with minimal effort, that’s the beauty of the fediverse.
I don’t think this is quite accurate. Without moderation tools this place would be riddled with spam, porn, and so on.
Moderation is a software system. Censorship is culture. You can approve of moderating obviously abusive content, while still objecting to the idea of moderators enforcing a single point of view by deleting comments that disagree with them.
Of course, there’s a big grey area there. And some people complain about “censorship” when they are being abusive and being moderated for it, but that’s not what OP is doing, as far as I can tell.
Which is exactly what happened when things started growing quickly due to the first Reddit exodus. OP should try and set up their own instance without any filtering and if it gains enough users and attention they’ll see what full openness gets them. Have to remember, sometimes censorship doesn’t mean you’re being repressed, it just means most people don’t care for or are ignoring your viewpoint.
Yep. I quite enjoyed how lemigrad and lemmy.ml used to be the forerunners of lemmy and then quickly got kicked to the back because nobody in their right mind wants to interact with tankies.
It’s a harsh day sometimes when you’re used to being “the boss” of your social circle, and all of a sudden you have to interact with a wider world that doesn’t consider you the boss of anything.
Some people get humble and move on, wiser.
Some people earn the respect of the wider community and can sort of go back to being the boss, although they usually still present themselves more humbly. (Usually.) That is the hardest and maybe the most rewarding course of action.
Some people decide they’re still the boss, god damn it, and still talk to everyone that way, and think everyone should recognize it, and it’s a monstrous crime that they don’t, and sort of interact mostly within their social circle because when they go outside it they tend to have issues.
What are you even talking about? I’m on lemmy.ml because it’s still federated with y’all, I just prefer to post in their instance because I don’t always feel like arguing all the fucking time.
You don’t “all the fucking time” have to start a hugely intense argument when you see an opinion you disagree with. The mods don’t have to remove it. It can just be an opinion you disagree with. Or, even better, you and the person can sometimes be able to have a conversation about it. That kind of thing can be really valuable if you both approach it the right way. One or the other of you might be wrong, or you might see different aspects of a wider whole that’s more complex than one person’s preexisting models were accounting for. It’s how people get to understand the world. No one person already has all the answers.
That precise “arguing all the fucking time, any time I leave lemmy.ml” behavior being the majority culture on lemmy.ml has kicked most of their communities having a kind of “don’t go there” reputation, at least from the POV of most of Lemmy. That’s what I’m even talking about.
Lemmy is really good software, honestly, and it’s something the world needs more of, and regarded well and working well. Lemmy.ml “should” be a flagship instance. I think, much more so than the politics (which are far from unpopular, at least on the left/techie internet), the insularity and yelling / “I’m right you’re wrong” type of culture on lemmy.ml does a lot of reputational damage.
I guess I should just let you beat up on a strawman and ignore it?
That precise “arguing all the fucking time, any time I leave lemmy.ml”
But I don’t! I really enjoy posting on lemmygrad and hexbear too. It’s just whenever I have to interact with reddit.world and other such liberal instances it turns into arguments because we disagree so fundamentally on issues that I am passionate about.
I’m not too stupid to understand the complexity of the wider world. I’m not so arrogant to think people shouldn’t be allowed to disagree with me. Again, what are you even talking about? I’m happy that you libs have your own instances! That’s why I’m on lemmy.ml and not one of the instances that .world defederated from - I want to talk to y’all sometimes, even if we disagree on so many things.
So maybe stop beating up on this strawman?
It’s just whenever I have to interact with reddit.world and other such liberal instances it turns into arguments because we disagree so fundamentally on issues that I am passionate about.
When someone seemed specifically interested in the conversation, I posted on Hexbear some specific things that I thought Biden did a good job on, with citations, and they threatened to stab me with an icepick and then instance-banned me. I actually abandoned the effort to do any kind of “debate,” seeing it wasn’t going anywhere, and only later realized that I was banned.
I’m not too stupid to understand the complexity of the wider world. I’m not so arrogant to think people shouldn’t be allowed to disagree with me.
Fair enough. I’m mostly just going by what you said, that you prefer lemmy.ml because you don’t want to be in arguments all the time. The way I interpreted that was that any time you see a viewpoint that isn’t the lemmy.ml viewpoint, you get in an argument, and it’s exhausting, which I can understand.
Lemmy.ml thinks some things that, to me, are objectively wrong. “Tienanmen Square wasn’t a massacre, that’s just Western propaganda,” being a good example. That’s fine if we think differently about that, but if you think people should be allowed to say that to you, and you say something back to them, as long as you and they are both consenting to the conversation, you’re at odds with the lemmy.ml moderation and administration team.
Actually, OP’s conversation is also a perfect example of what I’m even talking about. People are genuinely asking what’s going on with a particular keyboard app. I had never heard of FUTO before this. I was curious. My model is, I’m allowed to read what people think about it and make up my own mind. The mod’s model is that his viewpoint is correct, and he’s allowed to remove “misinformation” that conflicts with his model, and it isn’t relevant what people think who are not him. Even though, in my view, some of his view is objectively wrong (“futo does not create open source” - https://immich.app/blog/2024/immich-core-team-goes-fulltime/).
That’s part of what I mean about the wider picture. I’m not saying the mod is “wrong” in their view of FUTO. I’m just saying that, certainly, the counterpoint that FUTO funds important FOSS and that’s an important thing for the conversation, isn’t “wrong” either. You can’t have someone going HAM about only their view, and no other, being allowed. It’s just silly. You have people really wanting to educate themselves, and the mod saying “no no no stop educating I already gave you the answer stop reading and talking to each other.” It just bugs me. That’s not my culture and my expectation of a social network.
I’m not saying you, or either of them, is “stupid,” like anyone who doesn’t grasp everything in the world is some kind of moron who needs to be educated. I’m just saying the world is a big and complex place. As soon as you start shutting down anything that doesn’t match “the model,” you’re shutting down some true stuff. In almost all cases. Not everything that doesn’t match lemmy.ml is “libs” that can just be glibly discarded.
What is the point of the fediverse if servers ban posts of unapproved opinions and banning wrongthink?
Federation = replication of content across multiple servers for the sake of preservation and accessibility.
It does not equate to freedom of speech or freedom from censorship.
If you want an instance that allows just about everything, I repeat: Start your own, nobody is stopping you.
You guys who are guessing at what behavior this guy is describing as “censorship,” and basing your advice to him on your guess, need to learn to read the modlog.
@OP, not every instance is like that. lemmy.ml is notorious for censoring discussion as a way of the moderator picking a “correct” point of view and enforcing it. It’s weird. Don’t go to lemmy.ml and you mostly won’t have issues with it, although some individual political communities may tend to do it, depending. But it’s not a feature of all of the fediverse. It’s just sort of an unfortunate side effect of the way moderation is structured. Mostly, the culture here isn’t like that, though. Mostly. Sometimes it is.
I am looking at the modlog and see nothing, what am I missing?
Precisely lol.
OP was not the one “censored.” They participated in a comments section about keyboards, and the mod was going around deleting comments about FUTO saying “offtopic,” and OP asked why is someone censoring comments. That seems like a pretty fair question to me. Especially since some of the comments looked on topic to me, and then there was a second post “What are your thoughts on FUTO?” that also had some apparently-innocent comments that I guess the mod disagreed with deleted.
It sounds, to me, like OP has a point, and lemmy.world is doing its thing and just charging ahead with whatever the most stereotypical possible take someone could have on whatever issue is at hand, after seeing it and spending 0 seconds thinking, and then yelling at anyone who disagrees with that take. Maybe I missed something, but that’s what it looks like to me.
Edit: Well now OP is starting to sound like they’re maybe talking about some of those more special and exciting opinions, about other human beings, as the ones being censored. I’m still not as sure about it as are some other commenters, but I’m at least not sure anymore that OP isn’t talking about that.
FUTO isn’t open source, and the community in question was !opensource@lemmy.ml, making FUTO offtopic.
At the same time, they do fund open source projects, most notably Immich, which is a fantastic Google Photos alternative. I’m personally okay with using their stuff, and tentatively happy with them as an organization, but I’m keeping a watchful eye on their behavior.
I couldn’t of said it better, I feel the exact same way. I’m not a complete FOSS zealot, if the source code is open and theres no shady business/trackers that’s good enough for me.
I am locking this thread to avoid needing to remove misinformation and advocacy from Futo fans who think they should be allowed to redefine a term which there has been consensus about the definition of since before they were born.
Like I say, it sure sounds to me like OP has a point. I also think this probably wouldn’t happen on a server which didn’t have a strong tradition of the mods determining what opinions people are and aren’t allowed to have.
People also have a point who are noting that OP is ticking some of the boxes of the “right winger complaining about censorship” bingo card. Personally, that’s not really offensive to me if it’s just someone saying what they think and asking if they’re allowed to say it, but it’s definitely poking a hole in my “yinz are freaking out, he’s just talking about keyboads” theory, I will admit.
We didn’t guess.
?
OP has never been moderated themselves. They participated in a comments section about keyboards. Some of the comments about FUTO were deleted because it was deemed offtopic, even though it kind of seemed on topic to me. Then, there was a separate post about FUTO specifically, which also had some stuff deleted from it. So it doesn’t seem like the issue was the on-topic-ness, after all. Maybe I missed something in my cursory glance over everything, but it definitely looked to me like the moderator was picking what point of view was “correct”, and deleting comments that went too far in the opposite direction from that. OP asked, “Why is there so many censored posts about keyboard apps?” which sounds like a great question.
What did I miss? I could have missed something. What did you see that OP was talking about instead of that?
I think your first sentence of reply has a mistake, maybe a word is missing, it is not clear. Or am I not understanding correctly?
(You guys who are (guessing at what behavior this guy is describing as “censorship,” and basing your advice to him on your guess), need to learn to read the modlog.)
You guys need to learn to read the modlog.
You guys who are guessing at what behavior etc, need to learn to read the modlog.
You guys who are guessing at what behavior etc, and basing your advice etc, need to learn to read the modlog.
Probably my sentence structure was confusing.
Nope, not even you guys are good to their eyes. When will you learn?
Yinz guessing at what this guy mean “censorship,” and basing yinz advice to him on ya guess, needs taught to read the modlog.
Happy now? There needs to be a non-offensive second person plural. I didn’t mean anything by it, I just geniunely don’t know what I should say that would be satisfying.
Edit: More correct yinzer
**Nope
The entire fediverse is built on censorship of thought and opinion because no server is allowed to join the fediverse that allows posts criticizing transgenderism.
This is a reply I recieved from them. Unless your instance allows transphobia, then maybe yeah, I was wrong, you wouldn’t “censor” them. Or maybe you’re gonna pretend that “criticizing transgenderism” isn’t some obvious dogwhistle, and I hope not.
It was obvious they weren’t just talking about your typical “lemmy.ml is censoring me” post. They also mentionned mastodon censoring them, which to me is a pretty red flag, since mastodon is not usually known for this behavior unless you’re right wing adjacent.
Edit: Fine I’ll try spelling it out. If their question was about the lemmy modlog in the keyboard post, why wasn’t it mentionned once or given as an example? Why was Mastodon mentioned and why were they giving “transgenderism” as an example?
There’s a school of thought that if someone is transphobic or similar, that you can still talk with them, and explain why they’re wrong. They probably won’t absorb it the first time. But, if you forbid anyone in the world from ever having that conversation with them, or for that matter if you approach the conversation from the point of view that the transphobic person is being “bad” when they express sincerely to you what they believe, then all you’re doing is making it a lot more difficult for them to ever adopt any point of view other than transphobia.
There’s another school of thought that, more or less, we don’t give a shit if someone is “sincere” about transphobia, that’s messed up, and I don’t want it on my network. Particularly since giving people an “innocent” way to express it and talk about it will open the door for right-wing bad actors to “innocently” express bigotry on your network.
To me, both of these schools of thought are valid. I’m comfortable talking with people with a wide range of opinions I really don’t agree with, at least for a little while. I actually lean a little more towards the first school of thought, applied to a whole lot of ignorant stuff including transphobia. I think Lemmy is pretty unanimous on the second school of thought. That’s fine, and I guess I understand why it has to be that way on an anonymous network that’s subject to all sorts of attempted abuse. But I do think the first school of thought is valid, too, as a general rule about dealing with people.
Maybe OP thinks so too. Or maybe they’re ignorant about “transgenderism,” from Lemmy’s point of view. Or maybe it was just an academic example, a pretty accurate one IMO, about a point of view that you cannot express anywhere on Lemmy outside of a few pariah-for-good-reason instances. Or maybe they are a secret right-winger who’s cleverly smuggled “transgenderism” and “censorship” into this conversation, and the whole thing of keyboards was just a ruse to be able to start talking about it. I don’t necessarily assume that third thing, though. It sounds like everyone else here is. I thought we were talking about keyboards. OP, are you talking about keyboards, or trans issues, or what? What are some examples of stuff you would like to be able to talk about on Lemmy that you can’t?
I read your post, so don’t take my short response as me not reading through it or understanding your point.
But that user clearly passed the point where I could ever give them the benefit of the doubt. They’re using a clear right wing dogwhistle, and I don’t think they’re asking it innocently. I don’t think they used the keyboard thing as a pretext, but that the question they asked goes above the keyboard thing and reveals how they think about “being censored”.
Fair. The “Your side screams censorship” comment was something of a tactical blunder, too, if they wanted to be able to make the claim that this is all about keyboards. It does make it sound like they’re trying to back their way into making a political point primarily.
I also didn’t really read their whole post initially, I saw the basic gist and looked up the history, because I was mostly interested in the reality of how they were “censored” more than what they had to say about it. Then what I saw in the comments looked like the most knee-jerk of knee-jerks. But reading their post in detail definitely makes it sound a lot like they want to be racist but can’t. Whether that was their intent or their desire or not, I don’t know.
OP: If you pick a fight with the whole room, you’ll be in a fight with the whole room. There’s actually a significant sense in which I agree with you, probably putting me vastly in the minority on Lemmy, but you being deliberately disagreeable is going to make it harder for you to be able to succeed making your point, and also make a challenge for anyone who agrees with you to any extent.
It will also cause a bunch of conflict, though, so if that was your goal, you are succeeding.
