Does Lemmy have more freedom of speech than Reddit?
Hello, Im kind of new here and trying to get used to Lemmy and I was wondering about if this is true since I am considering donating on this site to support alternative projects but wanted to hear other users before doing so. That being said, what have been your experiences?
What makes Lemmy different from Reddit is that if some moderator or admin is limiting your freedom of speech, you can run your own instance with your own rules and communities and still be on Lemmy. Reddit can ban you from Reddit, but Lemmy is like a collection of "reddits" that integrate and there is no central authority. To answer your question, as a user you have more freedom to find an instance with rules that align with your values and wishes, and you always have the option to create your own instance, and no one can stop you. If you say things that other people don't want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn't limit your freedom of speech.
thank you so much
I would add to this that there is significant controversy around the ideological alignment of the lemmy developers, and most people would find the political leanings of the instances they're associated with to be... unpalatable.
I'll leave you to undertake that journey of discovery for yourself, suffice to say that freedom of speech is particularly limited on those instances.
Other software operates in the fediverse and is interoperable with lemmy. For example, myself and the commenter you replied to are registered with piefed servers, while this post is on a lemmy server.
Some instances are really not about freedom but when I had problems I just moved and here is fine! I like it more
So it is like Trump's own 'social' media: I make my own and there I can say all kinds of bull that nobody wants to hear 🤣
In a way, yes, but his site isn't federated with other sites. Truth social is a modified Mastodon instance.
TS being a Mastodon fork is so disgusting.
E: To clarify, I mean that Truth Social's admins are capitalizing on it to promote views antithetical to pretty much everything that Mastodon stands for.
lol look at the modlog
at least lemmy makes that public
Technically, yeah. Some instances are run by tin-pot dictators with delusions of godhood, but if you get banned from one of those just switch to another one.
The communities tend to be bubblier, though, since they're small. So if your opinions don't match you'll get shouted down harder.
The hive is a lot more arrogant here.
There is one nice feature that pushes back against hive-mindedness here that Reddit lacks, at least; you can see your upvote and downvote totals rather than just the single aggregate total. Reddit used to be like that years ago but they got rid of it.
That means that if you say something that gets a ton of both downvotes and upvotes you can at least know that there were a significant number of people who liked it it. Over on Reddit saying anything that netted negative karma felt like screaming into the void.
Oh, and the small population means that downvoted comments are still likely easy to see. That helps too.
Still, the Fediverse does feel more strongly bubbled than Reddit does, from my subjective and anecdotal position.
Yeah. Basically, I go to Reddit for independent information. I come here to essentially get yelled for having a nuanced take.
A nuanced take on Reddit is pretty much a guarantee of downvotes and arguments against things your weren't saying
That’s not been my experience. Perhaps it’s the subs I tend to post in? Either way- a nuanced take is FAR less likely to be accepted here.
And because they’re Communarchyalists. Don’t forget that.
Please stay on reddit. You’re a perfect fit there, here we’re all horrible baby eating communists so you wouldn’t like it.
10 hours ago over in [email protected] you saw a picture that you rather liked but that was getting a lot of downvotes and you didn't know why. You were told by @[email protected] that "lemmy doesn’t like AI"
Also 10 hours ago over in [email protected] you said "I know its an unpopular opinion, but I don't agree with punching Nazis. It makes them look like a victim, and violence never works." You got a bunch of downvotes for that yourself.
Just a couple of examples of situations where an opinion that was against the consensus view of the community got "punished."
Lemmy.world, so the largest general 'bubble' so to speak. You're on the generalist, relatively moderate instance.
I feel like when people describe anything as moderate on the fediverse, they're really taking about the middle ground between centrism and true communism. And somehow that's still icky for some people's tastes. Lol
I would never in a million years describe myself as moderate and I find myself agreeing with the great majority of opinions I come across. That's how the general vibe of the entire instance feels, and it's still not leftist enough for some folks, somehow.
Yes, moderate here is a relative term in the context of the wider fediverse.
Yeah, I'm not commenting on whether it's a relative term, but where that line falls. It's already quite left, and somehow people are still clutching their pearls.
the point of being a extremist is nothing is good enough for you. it's a quest for ever more extreme views to feel superior/purer than the unwashed non-ideological masses.
the 'drug' of extremism is that it makes feel people feel 'special'. ONLY they know the TRUTH.
Okay “centrist”.
I’ll go be extreme in my belief that people should be able to live without being harassed and murdered for who they were born.
Absolutely.
It's not even a debate.
My 13 year old Reddit account was perma-banned without warning for saying "PUNCH A NAZI". Let's test that out here.
PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI
And that was just my first of probably 30-40 Reddit accounts before I finally said fuck it and came here. I'm not some asshole purposefully posting asshole shit I know I'm going to get banned for. Reddit is just that pathetic.
It's just that I have zero patience for dipshits posting misinformation (as should we all) and I'm not afraid to let them know it. Lemmy gives me that liberty. Thanks Lemmy!!!
Whoa whoa whoa there.
On Reddit you can say whatever you want.
As long as everyone likes what you say.
Fuck that insipid septic tank to death.
Uhh something more relevant here would be PUNCH A COMMIE!
You are now dogpiled on and banned from Lemmy.ml and Hexbear
You are vilified and immediately banned from lemmy.blahaj.zone
Let's be real, your example only works because the mods and admins agree that we should punch nazis.
The big difference is that while you can be banned from one instance, you can still use the rest of Lemmy.
You're free to say what you want, but individual instances can decide whether they want to platform you. I prefer this over reddit-wide bullshit bans.
But that's my point, you're not free to say whatever you want. Even holding a different opinion can draw the wrong attention in the worst ways. The people who dogpile, vilify, and twist your words see no consequences, and only you end up paying by being excluded from the bigger communities for sticking to your words. You will get banned, and your comments will be scrubbed from the modlog.
What you're saying only works if you're ok with dealing in smaller communities with less traffic, which is a major complaint seeing as how Lemmy is already a small social media site, or you're willing to shell out the money to spin up your own instance, which isn't viable for the people who would love to do that if only money wasn't a limitation.
What I'm saying is that regardless of how one cuts it, speech isn't free here. It's heavily punished and often enforced.
My point is this: SPEECH IS NEVER FREE. Not in the way you mean, i.e. without consequences. Find me one place in the entire world where you can say whatever you want without any consequences. I'll wait.
In your daily life you can also say what you want. People might get pissed at you, refuse to talk to you, break off friendships, get you fired from your job if you go too far, whatever. That's just life. What you say and do has consequences. Even online. Even at Lemmy.
Freedom of speech means your government won't arrest you and lock you up for your opinions, but any other consequences in your social circle, for example, are just that. When you're an asshole, people will think you're an asshole. Sounds normal to me. And if you're surrounded by assholes, they will act like assholes no matter what you say. If an instance has values so diametrically opposed to yours that they end up banning you, then good riddance, no? Edit: E.g. getting thrown out of a Nazi bar is no huge loss.
Sorry, I meant to say that speech isn't as free as people are saying in this thread. We have people essentially screaming "punch a nazi" as if it's a controversial opinion here, when there are other milder opinions that would create some serious outrage and get you banned on a whim.
I think it's universally understood that there are consequences to what you say, and even how you say it, and when. I think that's part of my point. I'm not here to argue for absolute free speech. I don't believe in that.
I'm merely pointing out that the Fediverse as a whole is a lot more policed than people say. It doesn't take much to create animosity.
I don't think that's how it works. You can very much agree with a community the overwhelming majority of the time while getting along fine, and still create some friction by touching specific topics. At least, that's been my experience in general everywhere, both online and IRL.
Oh absolutely. You can't agree with someone 100% of the time. Or well, you can, but it's rare. ;)
You're obviously right, there is no absolute free speech and there shouldn't be, imo. I see Lemmy a bit in the same way I see my real life. Everyone has rules in their own house and if you want to be invited in, you'll have to live by them. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but you can't expect them to keep inviting you - and you're welcome to go to another party where another group of people might not be invited.
Does this mean there are instances where I won't be welcome? Sure. But it also means there are instances where I won't be forced to see/read things I really don't want to see. I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but in my experience it's perfectly possible (with few exceptions) for me to say what I want, as long as I sometimes go about it with a little tact (but the fact that I don't want to be a huge asshole probably helps. ;))
Just because you are free to way whatever you want, doesn't mean, that anybody has to listen or agree with you. If people don't agree with your opinion and they let you know it, they are exercising their own freedom of speech.
And also, nobody owes you to platform your beliefs uncritically. Either you find a community, that wants to engage with you (and you talk to the other communities that wanna engage with your community) or you create your own community (and yeah, that could cost you a small amount of money and time). My point is, you can't just expect people to let you use the resources that they pay for to platform opinions that they find harmful enough to not wanna talk to you again. Saying that someone banning someone from their community is impeading on your free speech is just like complaining that someone didn't invite you to their party because you insulted them.
Disagreeing is one thing, and it's what we're doing, right? But there's a big difference when you're being dogpiled, vilified, harassed, insulted, and strawmanned all because people dislike what you said, even if it wasn't offensive or wrong. Then you get your comments removed and your account banned when you merely defend your point of view.
But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying quite the opposite, when even the point you're making is calling something into question. These mods aren't even paying for the hosting service.
Oh, come on, these are open forums where everyone is encouraged to participate at first, and you don't even have to be insulting to get on the wrong side of some people. I have been banned while being perfectly polite and following the rules.
Well, your entire argument is based on very vague anecdotal observations and you didn't mention any concrete examples, so arguing against your points feels kind of pointless.
What were the exact things you said on which communities, that got you "dogpiled"?
And please just be honest, you are not some kind of politian trying to win a debate by any means possible, I see this more as a conversation.
Sounds like you're just trying to wave me off.
Don't worry about it. Talking to you seems kind of pointless, too, seeing as you're not even a mod or an admin.
I'm sorry, what? Aren't we doing exactly that? How am I being a politician? I think you have the wrong idea about me and are trying to steer the conversation back on the track that it's already on for some reason. lol
Honestly, I'd rather not deal with these annoying mischaracterizations. I've said my peace, I think I'm done.
I've never found it hard to avoid offending trans people. Just don't be a dick, be respectful instead.
Well, yeah, I know how to behave. I have a long history of participating in the trans community. I'm not foreign to any of these things.
But none of that matters when the other person misinterprets what you're saying or what you mean, attributes malice to your words, and refuses to change their perspective when you try to explain, while demanding an apology for what is essentially an innocuous comment as if you killed their cat.
The fact of the matter is that, much like the atheist community that I've come to abhor after being a part of it for over a decade, the trans community also has its fair share of crazies. And those aren't even my words, but the words of a trans friend with whom I used to go to these trans events. He also got fed up with their bullshit and would rant at me about them while sharing screenshots. And even now I try to be more patient than him, but sometimes I think to myself, "holy shit, he was right."
You see, that's where I find it much easier than you. If I accidentally offend someone that I really didn't mean to, especially if they're in a marginalised group that has had plenty of shit thrown at them for it their whole life, I find it very easy to apologise, back down, maybe try to explain that I didn't mean it the way they read it, but being careful to very clearly restate my apology for the offence I caused afterwards if I do.
You would rather tell them that they were wrong and that you were right, and you're prepared to argue it long and hard. I find that completely unnecessary, because I don't need to win if I didn't mean to beat them in the first place.
I have difficulty backing down in lots of scenarios but accidentally upsetting someone I didn't mean to isn't one of them.
Not how to back down when you didn't mean to upset people, though.
I think you're assuming a lot about what the interaction actually was about, how it happened, and why. And you're assuming that I don't know what being part of a marginalized group that gets constant shit thrown at feels like.
An apology is not in order when the person is making a big deal out of nothing, making shit up, and reframing what's being said to defend imaginary people or abstract ideas. Then add to that malice when things don't go their way. If I had said something about a particular person or something egregious, I would understand, but I said it about a drawing.
You say that because you haven't met the whiteknights in the community who get upset on behalf of others or lose their shit when others don't follow their mental models of gender expression/identity. You know how white people will sometimes cry culture appropriation, and the natives are like, "uh, we're actually ok with that"? Yeah, they exist in the gay world too, and some are vicious and vindictive to the point of being abusive themselves. To me, it sounds like you're defending a Karen.
As I said elsewhere, it would be unusual for a vast number of folk to not contain annoying or argumentative people, but I worry about tarring a whole category by always bringing up examples of bad behaviour and mentioning the category as part of it.
For example: "There was this manager shouting at all the women that they needed to keep in shape to impress the customers, but he was obviously badly unfit and overweight and dressed really shabbily." OK story. But "Fat middle aged guys who don't lift a finger to try to live healthily can be so annoying when they dress badly and then shout at women that they sold keep in shape and to impress clients." Not OK, makes it about the category of people.
But, clearly I wasn't there and I didn't know that you were criticising a drawing!
It sounds like you had a bad experience and whilst I very much don't want to generalise from it, I also don't want to belittle it.
Precisely, so let's not assume things and speak in ways that try to pin it on me. "You should've apologized and backed down" is rewarding their shitty behavior.
I get your point about avoiding generalizations, but I wouldn't call it a category. This is a pattern of behavior from people who think they're standing up for someone or something, but end up being straight-up toxic by taking social justice to extremes. I've even seen it in person, where some asshole crashed our LGBT+ community group because they started accusing another guy of saying something racist when it wasn't the case. It was needless drama all around because someone decided to be the superhero and save imaginary people.
You usually won't find it hard to avoid offending people with reasonable expectations. Just don’t be a dick, be respectful instead.
But there can be unreasonable in all groups. You just haven't met an unreasonable trans person yet.
Although I haven't either and the depictions I know of might just have been another one of those social stunts, there most probably are a few out there.
Did you downvote your own post?! The scores are +0-1 when I'm seeing it (and the-1 isn't me).
You're right about me not meeting an unreasonable trans person. All the trans folks I know or have known in real life are fantastic people who I have a lot of respect for and have gone through a lot of shit from other people. I think it's worth me doing my best not to add to that and definitely value them as they are.
(Some people who are bullied go on to be bullies, but far, far, far from all, and statistically, yes, there should be some trans people who are unreasonable or bullies, and I think I've encountered an unreasonable trans person on lemmy, but I will only ever criticise the mean things they say or their politics, never their gender or presentation.)
Generally, I don't understand why people think that trans folk haven't had enough criticism, "explaining", social rejection, etc etc etc.
Considering there was a 17 hours gap, it's quite possible that someone had the time to read and downvote it before you saw it.
And I get it, there are quite a few people who don't like people that don't perform fake values.
One of the depictions of unreasonable trans people was a video that came up in the beginning of the this trend of trans people coming out + a lot of people getting medical treatments related to their gender identity.
It was some tall, brown coloured, athletically muscular "man" (because he looked mostly like a man, apart from the lipstick, which might as well have been just a man wearing lipstick, to those around him) loudly complaining about something in a restaurant, while the staff tried to de-escalate. One of the staff members then calls him (her?) "Sir", to which (s)he then became melodramatic. Although the chap didn't end up telling others what (s)he wanted to be called, until the very end of the video.
Now, it might have been someone with a genuine problem, that was just not captured in the video, but could also have been someone just trying to gather hatred towards a community that hadn't even been formed yet.
But of course, I have had a depiction of trans(-ish?) people long before the trend started on the US internet. It is of groups of people (called "ladyboys" by English reporters, but there has been a colloquial term) who are often hermaphrodites, but could also be eunuchs.
The story about them I was told as a child, was that they come in groups during marriages, asking for exorbitant (but somewhat payable) amounts of money and 'make a scene' if not paid. The scene they make would be stuff like public nudity, with obscene looking displays, or going around cursing people (which some person told me that they actually work).
To me, that looked like just some begging+harassment ring. Add to that, an anecdote of one my relatives having been casually molested in public as a child by them, made me think pretty lowly of them.
Those groups seem to have died down now (I think?), which maybe partially because the Government officially recognised the third gender (quite a while ago actually, since I see it in govt. forms) and apart from them getting access to education (the Govt. funded kind, meant for poor people, because if one is rich, being in a minority is just a minor inconvenience as far as "means" go), also getting some reservation quota for certain menial jobs, if they were to not find work normally.
And then there was the depiction of a hermaphrodite in the pretty popular cartoon (anime) "Kochikame", which made me think that Japan had been ahead in this kind of thing, as the depicted person was normally working as an officer.
Yeah, but on my instance, anything you post automatically has a +1 from yourself, which you must have removed.
Your takes on trans people and intersex people seem to all be from concern trolling media and third hand stories. Trans people are like witches that hand out curses that cause harm? I think your skepticism alarm should be going off.
For the record, molesting children is absolutely not OK under any circumstances. I forget what the statistics are, but I remember that the number of incidents of trans people being sex offenders is far lower than you would expect from the prevalence of trans people and of sex offending in the general population.
It seems to me that you were fed a lot of negative stereotypes of trans and intersex people when you were young, and I worry that you are interpreting finding the lack of evidence of any of this in the real world now that you are older as a change in the world when it might be wiser to take it as evidence that the negative stereotypes were always sensational, overblown and inaccurate.
When I said that - some person told me that they actually work - I didn't mean to say that I believed that part.
Although I understand that I didn't mention that multiple times in capital words (because I didn't feel the need to), just because some of the poor trans people banded with some poor eunuchs to make a cult, of which I have a bad impression, that doesn't mean, I have said impression for trans people all over the world.
I was mostly just giving a list of past events, and they most definitely don't tell my current thoughts, which I feel, the last 2 paragraphs should have explained well enough.
I have once even gone pretty far into explaining how important I consider, not to have prejudice, which even got quite a bit of backlash and a ban from a community. So I am not going to put the effort into reiterating it over here.
But of course, anyone may feel free to label me as anti-trans or whatever anyone may feel like and I may feel free to consider them an unreasonable person.
I didn't downvote my post, I just un-upvoted it. It is possible to downvote it and that would give me a -1 from myself.
It depends what you mean. Individual instances have their own approach to moderation, which influences what you will see and have access to. Some are more hands off than others. But if your "free speech" is really just looking for a free pass to hate on folk, then you won't have much luck with lemmy. There are instances that allow that, but most other instances block them.
I mean if mods ban people for not agreeing with them basically.
Stay free of .ml, they’re the worst of the bunch when it comes to this.
Again, it depends on what you mean. You're not really saying what these things are that you expect to disagree on, and that's the important bit.
Depends on the substance of the disagreement imo
Entirely depends on the disagreement. There are instances and communities where bigotry is tolerated. I do not frequent them. I would very much like the mods of the communities I use to continue banning people that disagree with them about things like basic human rights and hate. People are free to share their opinions on basically anything most places on the fediverse. Just don't be a dick, you should be fine. If the "freedom of speech" you're looking for is the freedom to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, or generally hateful, you'll probably be disappointed.
There are plenty of examples on the ye power trippin bastards community. It's a classic tale as old as the days of IRC and ancient Greek forums. Moderation can easily be abused if unchecked.
Good thing about activitypub is the power of mods and admins is always checked by the ability of others to enter the scene and create competitor communities and servers.
Yeah, however they protect shitfucks like UniversalMonk and all of his sock puppets. That community is run by wannabe anarchists that give it out but ban and block when they can’t take it.
I would say, Lemmy (or the Fediverse in general is just like real life. You can say anything you want, but don't expect anyone to invite you to their party or talk to you, if you are being an jerk.
Meaning, that noone can ban you from Lemmy for anything you say. But they certainly can ban you from their own instance and / or not federate with an instance, you are on if they don't like what you say.
Also, as a general word of advice, just be a decent, nice person and you'll probably be fine. Online or offline. A major idea of the fediverse is to imagine and be part of a better world and if we engage with each other respectfully, everyone is better off.
short answer: yes
medium answer: depends on what instance you're on
It has just as much freedom as any other platform. It all depends on who the admins and moderators are. We do have better tools of keeping those in check, with the modlog being publicly available tho.
The modlog can be scrubbed, though. Afaik, if a mod bans someone and removes the user's content at once, the modlog only logs the ban but all the comments are removed without a trace.
Moderation exists but it is built by the community at large, not corporate overlords. That may mean that harmful speech is removed more aggressively than on corporate sites. On most corporate media sites, bigotry or trolling has to be extremely overt before it is removed. On the other hand, the nature of Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is that it's a fairly low cost of entry, so there are many different people running many different instances, each with their own governance.
Try it out for a week or two, and if you find it worthwhile enough that you check it daily, I think it's very nice donate to the person/people running your instance. It helps with the cost of running it.
There are no ads, no corporate content, no manipulative algorithm.
We are not perfect, but we're a lot better than most of what's out there. We're a little bit weird, and most of our jokes are about Star Trek or canned produce (for reasons no one understands), but it's a pretty cool place.
I wish that were true, but if you haven't seen any, thank your moderators.
And if you have seen any, you can block them and they actually go away.
Instead of a placebo "stop seeing this ad" button.
Well hey, that's why I report any I see to the moderators :D
(And unlike corporate platforms they'll actually parse it lol)
Absolutely! It's not that corpos don't try. It's just not endorsed or supported by the community and is usually removed swiftly.
I think the beans speak for themselves, as does the corn. Does it need any more explaining?
You don’t have freedom of speech on any site. Freedom of speech is freedom from the government restricting your speech, not private organizations.
That said, yes. I got banned from Reddit for merely suggesting that people who harm children should face stiffer penalties. I’ve said that many times here and even pissed off some pedophiles here, but never got banned or suspended for it. I think Lemmy takes a bit more of a hands off approach.
Consider: what I say about Reddit isn’t going to affect Reddit at all. But someone like me says bad things about Lemmy, it might have more of an effect. Smaller sites pick their battles more carefully. Bigger sites don’t care.
But even more than that, Lemmy is federated. That means your instance — lemmy.org — can ban you, and you can just join another, like db0 (what I’m on) or hexbear. We’re on different instances but we’re still able to interact.
freedom of speech means the government can't arrest you for speaking up. Neither lemmy nor reddit are the government, so freedom of speech does not apply.
Which word or phrase do you suggest we should use instead for the idea of freedom of speech applied on a private level? Where in this case the instance admin takes on the role of regulating what can or can't be communicated on their instance.
Freedom from censorship.
Which doesn't apply to Lemmy either, different instances just censor different trains of thought.
Honestly, I might start saying that just to stop that "what is freedom of speech" sycophants from jerking each other off.
People can just as easily say that only the government can censor you and that private corporations and individuals are free to not allow you to say things they don't want you to.
Yeah, you're right (and smart.)
There is no concept of freedom of speech if not formalized from a state.
just as I'm free to kick anyone out of my house if they start spewing bullshit, so is anyone else. Being kicked out of someone else's property because they don't like you has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Ive made many comments that go against the general view of the user base. It gets downvoted but never deleted or banned. So I would say its pro free speech.
Not in my experience. I've gotten into an argument while specifically pleading against sharing screen-wide, zoomed-in images of common phobias like spiders without a spoiler/NSFW out of basic consideration.
Not only did people go out of their way to misunderstand what I was saying, but I got too many wholly nasty replies, and then got banned for reporting someone else for actually breaking the sub and site-wide rules, and was accused of being a "well-known troll" in the modlog. The fuck?
Needless to say, I got the mod to unban me when I called them out in another thread, and they eventually apologized.
But the knee-jerk reaction, close-mindedness, and immediate hate that I got felt a lot like the prejudice I've seen with homophobia. It's so exhausting to see these prejudices and attitudes so readily prop up in unexpected places, especially in a forum where you'd think people know better.
Hell yeah.
Now, will people disagree with you in very emotional ways, downvote without giving any explanation, etc etc.? Sure! But you won't get banned for opposing Western imperialism, for instance. I mean, I talk about God and give people shit for being vacuous, hedonistic and self-centered (because that's at the core of many sociocultural issues) and I haven't been banned, at most I get boo'd. 😅
I get the sentiment, but this usually boils down to blaming everyone on the Western hemisphere for what the US is doing.
I really wish these attitudes would take into account the other dozen countries like my own that largely keep to themselves.
So yeah, boo!
I'm gonna guess.... Portugal! I can't think of anything they've done -recently- that's overtly imperialistic? Ireland?
You'd best not be British, German, French, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Austrian, Polish or Israeli, though.
Lol I wasn't expecting people to guess. But it's just little old Mexico.
Oh shit! Mexico is indeed pretty blameless, except for the apparent heinous crime of existing next to the USA.
Tell me though, is it true that everything is in sepia there? I only have US-made movies and TV to go off, so of course I'm assuming that's 100% accurate. Is it still sepia at night? If you fly into Mexico does it flick to sepia instantly or is it more like a slow transition that you hardly notice? Who pays for all the yellow pigment?
Yes! Everything's sepia. If your filter is malfunctioning, you're required to wear your government-sponsored filter glasses instead.
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Thanks amigo/a
It's a free universe!
I'd say yes, reddit is overmoderated
Freedom of speech. Yeah, sorta.
Freedom from consequences of your speech. Nope.
The consequences are getting downvoted and ending up in ridiculous arguments sometimes, it barely counts, lol. Bans are very rare from what I've seen, but then again they're rarely necessary.
They are exactly the same thing.
A lot of people seem to be looking for safe places where they can spew whatever hate they have in their heart and not risk being criticised for it or banned for acting like a brownhole. Better make it clear for people probing the Fediverse.
There is three questions to consider.
One is the site itself. Reddit inc has their own policies that apply site-wide no matter what. Lemmy has no central organization like that, although each individual server operator has their own acceptable use policy for what they allow on their server. This means it is both more free and more confusing- if you want to post potentially objectionable content like porn, there are plenty of servers that allow it or you can always run your own, but you have to make sure you are on one.
Next is individual group moderation. Both Reddit and Lemmy have this, community level moderators that apply whatever standards particular community requires. There is much less of the 'power mod on a power trip' situation than on Reddit currently, at least in my experience. I think some of that is because the overall traffic level is less, so it will be interesting to see what happens as Lemmy grows.
Finally there is culture and self-moderation. You see this on mass market platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where someone will say like they were roped at a party and want to buy a pewpew to unalive themself or some other such bullshit. Unfortunately that brain rot is spreading into Reddit, even though it is not at all required. Fortunately Lemmy seems pretty free of that so far.
Yup all those too.
I wish Reddit would put up a banner like 'you are on the grown up internet now, please act like it'.
That's a good point actually. An extra level of ridiculousness and hypocrisy to this trend of self censorship.
You know what worries me though? It was about 2008ish when I first heard someone say "lol" verbally as a response to a witty comment, and it was a really weird moment for me. She didn't laugh, she smiled and said "lol", because she was so used to speaking online. Now it's pretty normal to hear that. I even do it without realising it.
What worries me is that these awful censorship words will creep into spoken English and people will start saying then out loud. I think I will unalive a little inside when that happens.
I have already heard things like "unalive" defended as youth slang rather than Orwellian doublespeak.
I mean, on the one hand, no. It's not even slang, it's just a pathetic phenomenon where the users feel forced into using words they don't want to, even though they aren't being forced but they cowardishly still do it for fear of actual censorship. But then, on the other hand, my generation's youth slang includes things like douchecanoe and heckin and live, laugh, love, so I don't feel in a superior enough position to judge gen z on theirs.
I’d actually consider Lemmy’s freedom of speech to be very similar to the US. Nobody on the network can limit your speech in your own instance but nobody has to platform your terrible speech and everyone is free to ignore your speech and exclude you to just participating on your own instance.
“Freedom of speech” is such a fraught concept. Define your terms.
This place has moderation…but it’s not the same as Reddit with their broad autoban system that the sub moderators tend to exploit. It depends on what you say.
I’m pretty new…but it’s apples and oranges. You’re a lot less likely to be baited into disingenuous arguments designed to make you angry to maximize engagement, here. People tend to post and comment in earnest.
lemmy isnt really an organization. its a platform that is then utilized by hundreds of different operators/groups implementing their own rules against much of the same content. there are many of these platforms that all offer differing capabilities and features while sharing a lot of the same content. this network is what we refer to as the fediverse.
the reddit-like side is the threadiverse and is mimicked by platforms like lemmy.
then there is the twitter-like (microblog) side i call the twitterverse and is mimicked by platforms like mastodon.
then you have platforms that can access both sides of the fediverse like piefed and mbin.
https://fedidb.com/
as for censorship...
its the beauty of this network' if one of those servers goes apeshit people can literally just move their 'subreddit' to a different server and tell the og one to fuck right off. this has happened a few times in different ways. users created new subs on other servers and effectively ignored the original, with no one having to make new accounts. it proves the idea.. no one person or company can control the content of the fediverse.
Your question doesn't make sense. "freedom of speech" is a political right to prevent government censorship. Internet forums have moderation and that's different from censorship because it's a private space.
If someone came to your house and started insulting you and your family would you tolerate it in the name of freedom or would you tell the jerk to shut up and get out?
I know what freedom of speech really means im a political science masters degree student at the moment. I didnt mean the constitution when i said "freedom of speech". Im just asking if mods ban people basically for not agreeing with their opinions.
The problem is that Nazis love to appeal to some hypothetical right to freedom of speech, because they want to shift the Overton window. That is why people are being particular with the wording here and why your post is getting downvotes.
It also makes it hard to answer, because, well, if you are a Nazi, expect to be banned from various communities and instances significantly faster than on Reddit. Supporting the harm of others is not an opinion worth tolerating.
The moderators on my instance have banned people for repeatedly asking what exactly is allowed to be said, and I've come to support that decision, because yeah, Overton window and all that.
Best to donate to another project besides lemmy.
The main dev for lemmy is kind of a shitty person who is not shy about their shitty beleifs.
He supports authoritarians and dictatorships and bans anyone who doesn't excuses the human rights abuses of dictatorships.
It does, outside of truly bad stuff or straight-up spam and such, you can just about say whatever here where Reddit will ding you if you sneeze wrong, seemingly, especially nowadays after they tightened up censorship over there.
Also, unlike Reddit, if you don't like a given Lemmy instance, you can either move to another or even host your own, where with Reddit, it's either their way or the highway as it's a centralized, closed platform.
In some ways yes, and in others no. On Reddit, shitheels like UniversalMonk and all of his sock puppets, along with Dragonfuck would have been banned a long time ago.
There is nothing inherently built into Lemmy that protects freedom of speech over Reddit other that being able to host your own instance.
I agree, but I do think that's the most important thing.
I don't think it is. Unless you are the host of a major instance, most of your interactions are going to be on other instances; these instances can do whatever mod actions they want against you.
If there are people interact on your instance, then you have the ability to restrict their speech.
Yes. And why is this wrong? You can also kick someone out of your house if they say crap you don't want to hear. This is not the government, there can still be consequences to what you say.
You are free to still use Lemmy though, which is infinitely better than a site-wide reddit ban. You are free to say what you want and individual instances can decide whether they want to platform you. I don't see any issues with this.
And if you really get banned from so many instances that using Lemmy becomes impossible, then might I suggest a fucking mirror so you can see the irredeemable asshole looking back?
I'm defining how a system functions; I'm not judging it.
I was using Lemmy And am now on piefed and I can say that Lemmy feels more free from reddit. I find my stuff getting removed less and if it did, the mods would have actual reasons for it rather than reddit mods which removed stuff because they felt like it. There's still the mob mentality with down votes and people still mass down vote things they don't like though
Certainly less aggressive admins and auto mods.
Well lemmy hasn’t banned me for pointing out that a prisoner who is still alive hasn’t finished serving their life sentence
Yes. Reddit is now beholden to corporate interest, and posts comments that go against those interest get deleted and users get banned. Once you're banned, there's no creating a new account because they IP block. Fuck reddit, long live lemmy.
No, it's only on the other direction of extremism.
In some cases yes, in others, no. It really depends on the community and instance.
Lemmy has the potential to facilitate free speech discussions, but unfortunately a lot of its users actively suppress the idea because they like censoring their opposition.
Says the two day old account...
No... thats not really a thing here anyway. But yeah. I may have been totally banned several times, hearsay. I might get banned again just for saying that. Its usually shortly after I reveal some of my awesome political opinions... /s There really is only a couple handfuls of folks posting content too. Watch for P icarrd maneuver, p ugjebus, c owbea, and some others. They post shit all hours of the day constantly, to dozens of different instances like it's their job... but they certainly aren't getting paid.
No, I dont care about getting banned anyway, im going to speak my mind. Unfortunately, Marxist and commies dont usually agree with me and is usually the point of contention.
You think everyone here is a marxist or communist, do you?
That doesn't inherently make them communist or marxist.
Everyone? Of course not Everyone
I wouldn't even say most. The actual communists (ML or anarcho) are concentrated on lemmy.ml, hexbear and lemmygrad (the latter two being heavily defederated). Dbzer0 has many too. But I would say most users are social democrat or democratic socialist.
Yeah, you may say that, and you might also be full of shit. To state so confidently that you know the the political affiliation of the majority around here is not only presumptuous, but also, quite ignorant...
So you know the affiliation of them, but I don't?