Sure, there are always outliers and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s just the overall impression I have.
(I wasn’t sure if !asklemmy@lemmy.world or this community would fit better for this kind of question, but I assume it fits here.)
Mostly mixed. The way i think it’s a weakness is because I’m an anti authoritarian leftist, and i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy. Despite hexbear/lemmygrad/lemmy thriving, Solarpunk and dbzer0 feel a little lacking community wise. I’d also like a diverse political community, in general.
Another con is that if you even just disagree with a [bastard] moderator, they’ll immediately ban you. Happens on lemmy.world with being anti-zionist, happens on lemmy.ml under the guise of ‘rule 1’ for literally just criticizing a mod such as dessalines.
But i also think it’s a pro due to the lack of far-right content on lemmy. I remember on reddit casually seeing disgusting content, such as blatant racism (Such as arabs being called sand n-rs, Or racism against asians/immigrants in general on r/canada + r/europe) and most of that is obscure on lemmy.
I’m not denying that the Lemmy community doesn’t have problems, Lord no. But it’s much better than most other platforms.
i’d like a stronger anarchist/libertarian community on lemmy.
That’s one thing that I’ve been both disappointed and surprised to not see.
The anarchist community on Reddit is fairly large, but not very anarchist. There’s a very strong authoritarian bent to their claimed anarchism. I had hopes that the nature of this place would invite a community that was anarchist not only in name but in spirit, but I’ve seen surprisingly little sign of that, or even really of anarchism at all.
db0 is real anarchists, as far as I can tell. Because they are not overbearing about it, it’s harder to be aware of them.
I think by definition, it’s easier to be aware of the “official” self-identified anarchist communities than the ones that are just doing their own thing.
I assumed that they were at least anarchism-adjacent - it’s pretty much a prerequisite for the bulk of their focus.
I hadn’t really looked into their political posting much though, and yeah - even with just a cursory glance, it’s promising.
And I hadn’t thought about that distinction between people who simply hold a position and people who “officially” wear the label in the context of anarchism (though I’ve noted it often with atheists), but yeah, there’s undoubtedly some truth there.
Thanks for the heads-up.
The slrpnk admins, as far as I can tell, stand in the same relationship to anarchism that your average megachurch organization does with Christianity.
If all you look at is the words, it looks like they’re supporting it.
Absolutely yes. Anarchists on reddit were largely only anarchist by name, and we don’t even have a proper community here. And anarchist communities on instances such as lemmy.ml are even worse, to be honest. Most political representation on lemmy is for authoritarian leftists, where’s the love for anarchy :(
Haha ML loves to ban you for even the slightest challenge of their views.
Don’t even need to challenge it. Just criticize a mod, and you’re banished to the void lmao
Talking about Yogthos eh?
Don’t forget our dear Dessalines, he’s a very sensitive one.
Because everyone knows, the best response when your lack of sources is met with sources is just “🤡”
The type of anarchism that says, “You must agree with my anarchism, and if you have some incorrect view, I’ll use my powers to remove you from the space” is not actually anarchism. It’s actually strikingly reminiscent of how the Russian implementation of communism had nothing to do with worker-led socialism that it was branded as. They implemented freedom by declaring themselves the arbiters of what were the allowed types of freedom and ruthlessly repressing anything else, which isn’t how it works.
In general, I think it’s a myth that if you disagree with liberal orthodoxy on lemmy.world, you’ll be banned. Plenty of people on lemmy.world constantly criticize the liberal orthodoxy and it’s fine. The people purporting the myth are either:
- Being flaming cocks and then claiming they were banned for their factual beliefs when they get banned, when that wasn’t the issue
- Or else trying to make themselves feel better about the censorship of liberals that happens on their own instances, by claiming lemmy.world is doing the same to their “side” when they aren’t.
The occasional whining about how unfair it is that you can’t post anti-Israel stories on lemmy.world, for example, is nothing to do with reality, but is instead a disguised yearning for a space where you can’t post pro-Israel stories, and the mods will enforce that political viewpoint using their powers so the speaker can feel comfortable because all they see is things that they already agree with.
I’ve skimmed the lemmy.world modlog, and it seems you seem to be right. That was a bad example.
But my point was moreso on the stubbornness of mods. For example, if i suggest that China is bad on lemmy.ml, that’ll get me a ban under the guise of “rule 1”. Why? it’s not against the rules, it’s not bigoted or racist.
If i write controversial, or even bigoted comments, then that’s another story. I was criticizing power tripping mods that ban users if they personally disagree with them, instead of actually break the rules
Yeah, those mods are bad, and they definitely exist including unapologetically on the tankie instances. I was just saying that the mirror-image bad mod, who will delete anything anti-Israel, is almost entirely a self-serving myth by a selected group that likes to pretend.
On the other hand, if someone repeats a lie often enough, doesn’t that make it true? :-P
I absolutely think that’s the idea, yes.
The world is a complicated place. Part of the optimization our brain does, to even be able to make sense of it at all without being overwhelmed, is to absorb things that you see other people saying to each other, and incorporate them into how you see the world. So I’m always interested when I see a variety of people all saying the same thing, even though that thing is demonstrably not true if you think for yourself for a few seconds.
In this case I think it’s just some kind of internal cope that they’re doing for themselves, and the repetition leading to other people potentially absorbing it is purely accidental, but it’s still a dangerous pattern.
I tend to love reading your comments - they are insightful and deep:-).
When people behave identically as a “bot” would - passing along what it has heard, without thinking twice or even so much as once about it - they can act as part of that same, dark anti-pattern. Except the danger is so much more real then b/c they “genuinely” hold their belief?
I thought that a lot of it was due to enshittification reasons to maximize profit incentive, e.g. making it hard to “search” on Reddit, yet exceedingly easy to “post”, while at the same time making it harder to read the community rules prior to doing so, all to maximize “engagement”. But it seems more related to human nature, which will never change.
Hey, thank you! Yeah. The nature of the network can induce people to behave nice or behave mean, and to put a lot or a little effort into the stuff they are posting. I think a lot of the anonymity and ease-of-getting-on of the modern Lemmy-type internet means that you get kind of the lowest common denominator of human nature. It’s unfortunately true of commercial networks as it is of free ones.
I’m sorry but libertarians and ancaps are just proto-feudalists that may like to smoke weed.
I agree. I should have specified, i meant left-libertarianism.
It’s a weakness. We need more anti-authoritarians here for sure. And even conservatives if nothing else so they can represent their own opinions rather than just laughing at straw-man versions of what neolibs want to say they think. I have moments I hate it here but there’s nowhere good to go and I guess I add a little diversity.
I disagree with the conservatives part. Their ideology does not deserve a place at the adults’ table. It is far too bent on undermining democracy, equity, and egalitarian society.
EDIT: To clarify, this is elementary “Paradox of Tolerance”. Those that wish to undermine democracy in an equitable society cannot be tolerated without making an end to democracy inevitable. Not all opinions are created equal. For example: “I think trans people should receive additional state-funded support.” and “I think that trans people should be murdered and/or the state should cultivate an environment amplifying their likelihood to commit suicide.” (the prevailing view expressed by the far-right through their actions and legislation) are opinions that should not be given equal treatment.
Yep, paradox of tolerance. We shouldn’t bend over for far-right, or even fascists for the sake of “pure tolerance”.
Saying, “I don’t like what they say so they shouldn’t have a voice” sounds a lot like undermining democracy to me. Them living in conservative echo chambers doesn’t increase dialog or challenge their beliefs either. Divided media and divided opinions are the tools to take down a nation. Supporting this kind of division strikes me as an example of the main kind of foreign interference this country is crumbling because of. If that was your goal, I guess congratulations?
Paradox of Tolerance. Those that intend to undermine a just and equitable society that tolerates the existence of all kinds of people cannot be tolerated.
But do we actually wait until we see how people think, or just silence them based on their opinion on one or twy divisive issues as a litmus test to justify our own intolerance? “They don’t support trans women in women sports so none of their opinions are valid.”
It’s, unfortunately, very subjective. A statement like that could be from a place of ignorance that they are willing to dig into and grow as a person. Any judgement has to include whether good faith is intended, etc. Conservativism itself is incompatible with motion towards a more just world, as rigid hierarchy is part of its core, and it is also an ideology rife with bad faith actors. Giving extra space for such an ideology that already has a far louder voice than it should have does not result in anything productive.
I’m here because I DON’T want to have to read fucked up opinions. People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
I’m all for difference of opinion, but not when one of those opinions is “we should oppress LGBT people” for example. 10-15 years ago, I’d have been more receptive to discussing opposing opinions, but shit has changed. A lot of those opposing opinions are now simply unacceptable to even entertain, because they’ve become a real, actual threat to my well-being. People aren’t discussing tax policy anymore, they are discussing imposing states of emergency to do some kind of purge on undesirables.
Some people call it an echo chamber, I just call it chilling and having fun with like-minded people. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what forums have always been.
People here are mostly nice compared to mainstream platforms.
Try disagreeing with the hive mind. Anyone can be nice to someone who echo’s their own opinion. The real niceness of a person is revealed when they can show civility to people they disagree with (I’m not talking about LGBTQ oppressors or Nazis…there’s a huge spectrum of opinions that aren’t extreme).
I don’t know. I am still as opinionated and difficult as I ever was on Reddit, but I also turn it around, display civility, and cede points far more often here. Maybe I’m becoming better, but I think it’s just a better situation overall.
I’ve received way more bitter and raged out responses here than I’ve ever received on Reddit for very lukewarm vanilla takes. I’m not saying Lemmy is full of extremists but there is a user base here that is all or nothing. My guess is it’s age related though.
Overall the people here are nicer.
The extremes are higher though - some people were booted from Reddit for a reason, and they came here.
Yea. I agree. There is a nice median and really strong extremes. But those extremes sometimes hog up the convo.
The presence of the high end of the extreme is what blew me away though. On Reddit I had given up all hope bc it never happened (even from myself, as I kept becoming more defensive, more snarky but less kind) while here the fact that it sometimes, heck even often happens, is just… outstanding!:-) 😍
Also the low end of the extreme is concentrated into specific instances, such that blocking Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net will improve someone’s experience on the Fediverse by ~90%, and then blocking users from lemmy.ml (with the PieFed Lemmy alternative, or either the Sync or Connect Lemmy apps, or lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au at the instance admin level) improves by a further 90% I found.
So the structure of the curve matters greatly here, to someone’s quality of experiences in the Fediverse.:-)
The version of someone you invite in the door determines the initial trajectory of how that person will act in the community. You can invite in the leading edge of someone’s developing kindness or invite in the ossifying mass of their nature that is threatening to turn hateful and uncaring. No one instance of invitation to a new person (however that may happen, formally or informally) pushes the needle far either way within any one particular person (though sometimes it can radically do so) but the overall integrated effect is a moderate shift of the an entire community towards the better or worse version of the community members. When this effect is used for good people often describe the resulting community space as a community that accepts them for who they are or more succintly is a genuinely safe space.
Of course, every interaction is in an invitation in some small way, it doesn’t just happen once.
I’m on BlueSky on top of IceShrimp because anything better than Twitter is good to use at this point.
Let’s see how downvoted I get.
I’m also on BlueSky as well as Mastodon, because BlueSky has the momentum right now, and critical mass is important.
In that same vein, I wish you’d treat LW as you do any other instance. We’re not hostile to other instances, and I think there’s a healthy balance right now. It doesn’t hurt Lemmy to have a bigger, more mainstream instance. I think defederation solely for the sake of defederation does hurt Lemmy.
I wish you’d treat LW as you do any other instance. We’re not hostile to other instances, and I think there’s a healthy balance right now. It doesn’t hurt Lemmy to have a bigger, more mainstream instance. I think defederation solely for the sake of defederation does hurt Lemmy.
I never advocated for defederation of LW, just for more decentralization rather than have 90% of the active communities on LW.
You never answered my latest comment: https://lemmy.world/comment/13624614
Just to make it sure, are you saying that it’s not true that at this moment
- !showsandmovies@lemm.ee has 1.85k monthly active users
- !television@lemmy.world has 754 monthly active users?
What prevents you from locking !television@lemmy.world, redirect to !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, and get that community more active?
I can even make you or any other LW mod mod of that community too, I’m not attached to being a mod, I just want communities to flourish on other instances as well.
Because besides monthly active users, LW has 4,600 subscribers where lemm.ee has 537. It’s not a clear cut case.
What good is 4600 subscribers when 754 are active?
I just checked the updated numbers, now it’s 2.57k monthly active users for lemm.ee vs 958 on LW.
On !showsandmovies@lemm.ee, we actively build the community, we have a best of 2024 post, we opened the moderation posts to any person willing to help, while you keep that community unmoderated with 2 bots as mods.
Really, I just don’t understand. What are you afraid of? I’m pretty sure that !mapporn@lemmy.world had more subs than !map_enthusiasts@sopuli.xyz when it was locked down, but it was still okay, because the activity was happening on the sopuli instance.
I just checked, !electricvehicles@lemmy.world has more subscribers than !electricvehicles@slrpnk.net , but the slrpnk community was still chosen when the consolidation happened: https://lemm.ee/post/46935805
If you’re afraid about losing the people, you just pin a post, point to the new community, similar to !casualconversation@lemmy.world, and that’s it.
I did everything fair. “Not happy with the community? Create your own, and become the better one!”. I did, everything, and while we’ve had success, the LW staying open hinders the growth of that topic as a whole.
You ask me to treat LW as any other instance, but no other instance is reacting in that way, preferring to keep some of their communities open when other people actively try to build an active community on a topic that apparently only a few people are interested in anyway.
Honestly the tankie takes justifying atrocities is nearly as bad as the conservative takes justifying the same.
Why nearly? They are just as bad, if not worse.
Nah. Tankies are wrong, but they’re also powerless. Conservatives actually have power though, and are extremely dangerous.
An idea being “bad” is power agnostic. If I want to blow up orphanages, wanting to do so is bad whether I’m the president or a homeless dude, the ability to follow through may change with power, but the ability to follow through isn’t what makes “wanting to blow up orphanages” bad, the idea itself is bad.
Yeah, I don’t think anyone would ask you “Are you okay with sitting at the bar with nazis?” yet plenty will happily judge you for saying “I’d rather not have to deal with MAGAts and their opinions”
Sorry but if your opinion is “trans people aren’t people” or “blacks need to know their place” then your opinion is shit and no the fuck I don’t have to listen to it
But another question, “are you ok with sitting at the bar with nazis, but they’re wearing red shirts with a hammer and sickle on them and espousing the same propensity for murder?”
Lemmy is fine with murder and genocide so long as you wear the right shirt while doing it.
Source: .ml, grad, hexbear.
🤡
No u
I agree, which is why I recently kicked a MAGA guy out of my D&D group that meets at my house. I had tolerated him up to then because he generally acted decent and was a good player. But after the election I decided I just don’t feel like extending my hospitality to that anymore.
But on the flip side when I hear a phrase like, “uncomfortable with trans people” my first reaction is, “What makes you uncomfortable?” instead of, “Fuck you you fucking bigoted fuck!” For that moral imperfection in my character I’ve received name-calling and at least one ban. Whatever. People have irrational fears and I’m not going to exile them to the desert because their “eww” reflex isn’t pristine.
Weakness, If you’re here for anything other than the narrow view.
Even if you’re here for the the narrow view take a moment and consider if an echo chamber is good for you.
I guess it could be counted as a weakness as far as attracting new users go, but I think it’s a strength overall.
It would be sort of nice if there was a stronger right-wing presence here, but at this point in our history, the right is overtly toxic. They’ve completely lost touch with honesty, empathy, integrity and simple human decency. Their entire identity at this point is built on hatred, bigotry and callous disregard for anyone other than themselves. They poison everything they touch, so the fact that they can’t gain a foothold here is very much to our benefit.
If we survive this era of Trump/Putin/Netanyahu/Polievre/Le Pen/Modi/Meloni/Hanson/etc., then hopefully the right will reconnect with reality, integrity and simple decency enough that they can take part in a community without turning it into a cesspool of hatred and lies, but unless and until that happens, this place is absolutely better off without them.
Right on, dude. It would be refreshing to see right-wing arguments advocating a serious fact-based (instead of hate-based and/or lie-based) position on any issue. I’d still disagree, but I’d welcome that disagreement.
Until that glorious future when “the right will reconnect with reality, integrity and simple decency,” I am delighted that they’re underrepresented on Lemmy.
Thing is you never will see that here. Even if those people are here (more reasonable right wing people are here in fact), they speak up less (typically once, before they learn what this place is) because the second you say “actually I don’t want to murder all landlords, my old landlady is so nice, she baked us brownies and let us put on illegal punk shows in the basement” you’re called a literal nazi that deserves death for having compassion for a nice old woman. So all you see are the ardent conservatives that are here to fight, not the reasonable ones that learn to just roll their eyes and block anyone with an @hexbear uname to save themselves the trouble.
Mixed opinion these days often reads more like outright polarization vs balanced discussions.
It’s a strength because we finally get to interact amongst the left without having to explain how society works to every ignorant conservatwat who thinks they can conservasplain some bullshit. It’s what makes it great.
Okay so yeah for actual conservatives totally. The Alt-Right is never going to be convinced no matter how many “facts” you explain to them anyway.
But you are considered a right-winger too, as well as I, by the likes of the folks in hexbear and Lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. We don’t view ourselves that way, but it’s the truth: compared to the likes of the Alt-Left, we legit are more “right-wing” than they are. And for good reason: e.g. we may not appreciate them but we’ve never actually murdered our landlords.
I think it’s primarily, but not exclusively, a strength. “We need more right-wing posters” is not something I’ve ever thought of Lemmy.
Preemptively let me say that I agree, although there is an entire spectrum along which people can hold their beliefs, and then on top of that there is the strength with which they hold them that can vary a lot - including some who are apolitical entirely as far as they themselves may be aware.
Also, recalling the phrase “first they came for…” - remember that WE are the “right-wingers”, from the perspective of instances such as lemmygrad.ml, lemmy.ml, and hexbear.net. I am not saying that Truth is subjective, but the definitions of those particular terms most definitely are.
So if they exclude us, and then we exclude “centrists”, who themselves exclude people to either side of them… ultimately what does that make us - conservatives ourselves, chasing some kind of ideological “purity”?
Let’s get back to me agreeing with you now, but clarifying why: we MUST be intolerant to those who are intolerant of others. However, to those who ARE tolerant… shouldn’t we be as tolerant to them as we can stand to be? As in, interact with them civilly even if we do not fully agree with everything they say?
So leftist vs. right(-ist?), I don’t care what someone is, so much as I care whether they are tolerant of others. BUT NOT TO THE INTOLERANT (i.e. not the Alt-Right, and also not the Alt-Left that I see hanging out on various Lemmy instances).
@crimeschneck Personally I’ve decreased my Lemmy usage a lot due to its echo chambery-ness. I avoided the political subs since day one, both since I’m personally not a big politics junkie and because I’m not in alignment with Lemmy’s specific brand of politics, but things also extend to other topics as well.
A lot of the enjoyment of using Lemmy is getting news/articles and seeing what people think, but even in the tech spaces the range of tech news is somewhat limited and the top comments are almost always in line with Lemmy’s specific tech thoughts (regardless of my agreement, I’d like to see interesting thoughts/commentary, if I can predict the theme of what’s said it becomes less interesting). Sorting by new did help a little, even if a dissenting but well thought out idea was downvoted to oblivion I could still read it - but the value of link aggregators to me is articles + strangers thoughts, and if all the strangers have the same thoughts then I might as well stick with RSS.
My 2c anyways.
It would compromise what we are to allow nazis and their ilk in here
Nazis and their ilk can be here, they just have to contend with a lot of disagreement when they broadcast their opinions.
I’m not a fan of this becoming a nazi bar
I’m not either, but that’s like saying “I don’t want my TV full of gays!” because a sitcom has a gay character.
Gay people and nazis are two very different groups, so it’s not like saying that at all actually.
I agree, and the point of my comment wasn’t to suggest gay people and nazis are the same (or even similar), it was that the mere presence of something disagreeable doesn’t mean the place is full of it.
Are you familiar with the nazi bar quote? I was referencing that phenomenon:
When Tager asked about why he booted the guy, the bartender, a seasoned pro, said that if you let one Nazi in, slowly they replace the clientele.
“You have to nip it in the bud immediately,” he said, as Trager paraphrased. “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 a while, 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 *****, this is a Nazi bar now,” he continued. ”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.”
No, I wasn’t familiar with that quote. Sokath, his eyes open. But nazis would not receive a friendly welcome here like in the bartender’s hypothetical story, so the same outcome is so extraordinarily unlikely, the reference seems like the same level of overreaction I said it was.
It’s not too far off already, considering .ml, grad, and hexbear’s propensity to advocate for violence against others for being “liberals.”
Basically it’s already a nazi bar with some red paint and a star on the door. The people who I told about lemmy all left pretty quick because of it and I’ve stopped recommending it to people entirely.
The people who I told about lemmy all left pretty quick because of it and I’ve stopped recommending it to people entirely.
This post could interest you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/32469271
Long story short, discuss.online defederated hexbear recently, making it a potential recommendation for new joiners (they also block lemmygrad)
https://lemmy.cafe/ blocks ml too, but they have the 0.19.7 pictures bug. Once they fix that, they could become another go-to recommendation for new joiners.
That’s good to know, I’ll keep an eye on it, thanks! But tbh the reality is that .ml is still too integral to defed yet, until your decentralization efforts take hold (and btw I try to sub to the other communities whenever I see you post one I’m interested in and will sometimes unfollow the .ml one if I can, thanks for all the recommendations!)
PieFed allows you to block all users from an instance of your choice without needing admin approval. The Lemmy apps Sync and Connect do also. So I’ve already managed to defederate from Lemmy.ml personally, aside from lemmy.cafe, dubvee.org, or quokk.au that have all done that at the admin level.
Although it sounds like you meant more that so many communities are still on that instance - which is fine - and don’t have alternatives yet elsewhere, which is not fine. If you can, perhaps consider making just one and modding it to help it grow. It won’t fix everything but it will help, and if 9 other people did likewise then that’s 10 communities that people would not have had access to without those group efforts:-).
Little by little, I think that we don’t have to consider places such as hexbear.net as part of “us” anymore. Perhaps it will take the further development of Mbin, PieFed, and Sublinks to accomplish that for Lemmy.ml. Otherwise we simply will progressively give up while the place dies slowly around us, as people leave and new ones refuse to join.
I think at this moment people can live without .ml if they’re not into tech. Sure, !privacy@lemmy.ml and !firefox@lemmy.ml are the most active in their fields, but the non-tech user probably doesn’t care. And alternatives like !linux@programming.dev are getting more and more active
Glad that you like that effort!
That may be true tbh, I’m more techy so I can’t yet but maybe for someone who isn’t they could.
Keep at it for sure! If this place really ends up thriving and getting bigger for niche interests and stuff it’s in no small part because of your efforts to do so! I genuinely appreciate it, even for stuff I’m not personally interested in.
It’s definitely a weakness. There is an entire spectrum of personal beliefs, but wherever you are, if yours don’t align with the mods you get censored. Reality is every new users first week is finding out where they ‘belong’ and this both discourages new users, and creates detrimental echo chambers.
If your “personal beliefs” entail persecuting others for their ethnic origin, sexual orientation or gender identity, you can fuck right off. Otherwise you won’t have any trouble fitting in here.
In my experience, there’s only been a handful of mods and an equally small number of instances where I feel that is likely to happen, but for the most part it seems most mods have a pretty light touch. I’ve only had one negative experience with a mod, personally, and I post quite a bit.
For me, it’s neither strength nor weakness. I’m a boring old fart, I’m not here for politics.
I mostly here not for politics too… yet everywhere I look in Lemmy, it’s all politics, kinda annoying
I think it’s a strength because I don’t want to chat with fascists, thanks
I think it helps to place labels onto things… and then respect those labels.
Like porn: it can get someone literally fired if they chanced upon such at work - some corpos are just looking for any excuse to cut costs, especially a repeating salary one. But so long as it is labeled, and does not appear outside of bounds… then what is the harm? (more even, studies show that places that ban porn tend to have higher rates of sexualized crime i.e. rape, so the presence of porn literally seems to help society?)
And politics: so many of us here LOVE to discuss it! But what if someone had anxiety, and could not? Could they use something like hashtags, keywords, trigger warnings I dunno, and block out most of it, for the sake of their sanity? If not, then their only recourse would be to opt-out of the Fediverse entirely, thereby taking all of the content that they would have contributed with them…
Full disclosure of my own biases: this is why I am against places such as ChapoTrapHouse from being federated with most Lemmy instances (even as I support e.g. lemm.ee’s desire to keep it) - it’s not that I want it to “not exist” (I’ve enjoyed many of my own interactions there… though it is also simultaneously true that many users from hexbear [or their alts] act as toxic bullies, ignoring people’s consent outside of those spaces, despite being told explicitly not to by their admins), so much as that I want it to be properly labeled & constrained, so that someone does not walk into it unawares, not realize what it is, and then leave the Fediverse entirely having been turned away from us due to their interactions with them.
Likewise much of the content on lemmy.ml is very much not only anti-capitalist, but anti-Western - the former I sympathize with, though the vehemence with which it is delivered and especially the latter will turn people away, as it definitely has me (especially when it abuses blatantly false tropes).
And that is the identical reason why we cannot federate with conservative spaces either, if we want to survive: it is not that we want them to not exist so much as we cannot host their content here, without making THAT action a part of our own identity. And to be clear, I don’t mean content such as “God loves us, each & every one of us” (that’s kinda an awesome thought, is it not, regardless of what we each personally believe?), but rather “I know I speak for [my specific version of a god] when I say that he (she? it? them? other?) hates some people, especially YOUR type in particular!”
But even if we took it as a given, purely for the sake of a hypothetical argument mind you, that we actually did want some type of space to not exist, what are we going to do about it - sabotage their servers? And after they spin up new ones, with better protections - then what? No, the real recourse (imho) is to simply leave them be, yet not choose to federate their content here. We all were young & naive once too - they may grow given time, or not, but that’s their business, and all we can and should (and actually MUST) control is ours.
In all of the above cases - including the pornography example - it is not what the content is (or sometimes not just that), so much as the unfriendliness of it appearing outside of bounds, causing legitimate pain and harm when it is exposed to people.
I think the way to maximize utility is to increase diversity by increasing welcomingness. Sorta like how Linux does not push people into any one distro, or window manager, or anything at all - we each are free to pursue our own paths. That’s fucking awesome!:-P
Lest anything think that I’ve refused to answer the question: it is both. Our (future) political diversity can both be a wedge driven between us - if we allow that to happen naturally - or else a source of strength, e.g. to allow a centrist person to post content unrelated to their political beliefs (woodworking? a game community?), so long as they are respectful of other people’s beliefs in the process. We don’t all have to like one another, just get along. In diversity we find strength… or we could, if we did it right, i.e. if only the ones offered in good faith were allowed to stay while all others given the boot, and even then they need to remain within their allotted lanes.
Preemptively to the people who will scroll to the bottom of this, see me saying that diversity is a strength, and comment or just downvote and move on without bothering to read the rest: fuck you. But to anyone willing to offer a good-faith critique: I am listening.
I said this on reddit a long time ago and I’ll say it here:
We need a political tag like the NSFW tagThat would be so great
On Lemmy.world it’s a weakness. Your instance may vary
Echo chambers are never good, no matter the politics. Just reading this comment thread is proof. Some of these comments are fucking ridiculous.
Half of Lemmy working to ensure that we never get any diversity of opinions or anymore normal people lol
Weird seeing you again, and seeing you say this, after you quickly resorted to name-calling over a disagreement in another thread just 20 minutes ago. Do you really not think that you’re a member of the half you refer to? I’m not so sure you actually want “diversity of opinions” or “normal people” if that’s been your response so far.
You took a bad position, I clarified why it was unfounded.
That’s called a discussion. You are entitled to post your opinion, I am entitled to provide a rebuttal.
That’s how discourse works.
Oh no, the poor right whingers aren’t being represented here.
Oh wait, good. Fuck ‘em.
They still have to suffer from shiti health insurance…
But sure let’s make sure nobody but a good neo libs “allies” are permitted here champ
Totally. Maybe we should invent some kind of… oh I dunno, ideological purity test? Surely that would not eat our faces off, hrm? Surely we can exclude only “them”, while keeping “us”.
Smh, it’s always the same. People don’t even see it.
In your country sure.
And who the fuck wants neo libs here? Neo libs (and libs) are right wing ideologies.
