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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

(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.

?

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?

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.

Dude, just click it. They have a whole UI and everything.

If only lemmyverse.net drew from more than once instance. If only.

It’s a good idea and exists at https://lemmyverse.net/instance/lemmy.world

99.36% uptime overall, other stats could be added

IDK what benefit there would be to having downdetector that was specifically for Lemmy sites, there is downdetector after all, but in general there are a couple of sites that do this. Fedidb is another one that tracks some fedi metrics also, although to me they seem a little unreliable / inconsistent from instance to instance and month to month sometimes.

Yeah, they definitely don’t like veterans with PTSD. They like veterans who work for the police department and try to use their military / police status to insist on discounts at McDonald’s.

All my Trump voting family keeps telling me “oh, it won’t be you guys, you do good work”.

You should bet them money. And you should make it explicit, both before and after you win your money, that you know that doing good work won’t protect you because Trump is a big manbaby piece of shit who doesn’t care if people are doing good work, and in fact mostly actively dislikes it.

(This is probably not good advice for your exact situation. It’s just a satisfying thing to think through, the idea that you might do it and it manage to slap some sense into them, because they genuinely don’t know what Trump is about. This is why I sometimes emphasize that it’s not the Trump voters’ fault, really, because their news is so backwards from reality that they really think he’s a good person who’s going to do good things. Seriously. I am 100% serious about that.)

Well, but if they keep giving you dumb seminars, then they won’t have to stop sexual harassing, racism-ing, or stealing everything for them and their golf-asshole friends. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what’s really important?

Like a lot of things, the original idea was a pretty good one. But, the original idea wasn’t compatible with profit-seeking at all costs, or the mindsets and habits of a crew of remarkably dim members of the managerial class who had to put it all into practice. And so, the original idea got thrown in the bin, and replaced with a tradition of remarkably dim one-hour seminars which accomplish nothing at all beyond wasting an afternoon every now and then, and prejudicing people vaguely against the still-pretty-good original idea, which remains in the bin, still in its original packaging, unopened.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llci8MVh8J4&t=156s

Edit: I want to know who the fuck downvoted this. I’m not mad about it for me, I’m mad for her.