FOSSDLE PieFedLemmy is designed to fail the same way as reddit when reaching the same size
iloveDigitI've been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasn't sure how to feel about it.
Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken "federation" system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it's never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy's official docs say you can't even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won't actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
So you can only ever have the "average joe lemmy" and "average joe reddit" with everything approved by the authorities, and then "tor copies of lemmy" and "tor copies of reddit" where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.
People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But it's the exact same thing, it's reddit.
When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldn't let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they won't let you talk at all.
Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.
It's not actually a solution to reddit. It's not designed to be different, it's designed to match the past today and then match reddit's present tomorrow, while being part of a system that's about the same in past, present, and future.
Last year, this year, and next year, you're posting somewhere it won't be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. There's no difference here.
Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.
I don't want Lemmy to be zero censorship.
In every case I've known, anywhere claiming "zero censorship" either adopts it sooner or later, or disappears - and in every one of those cases, it was a godawful place to be 100% of the time. IME, those who do say they want this tend to be either edgy teenagers, crackpot conspiracy theorists or psychopaths.
Sure, you can say "well, zero censorship except bots" - well that's censorship, isn't it? And given no anti-bot tactic is reliable, you'll be blocking humans. Or you can say, "zero censorship except CSAM, or extreme pornography, or anti-terrorist" and you're either applying societal laws or your own morality on others. You can't use "no censor" and "except" in a sentence without contradiction.
If you want zero censorship, I don't think Lemmy is for you. I don't think the fediverse is for you. But if you disagree, then run your own instance and put it on an onion address, please stop trying to rant at us for not sharing your views.
Yes, but not on purpose - and if done correctly, not in any way that allows systemic censorship of people for their whole lives (which most of us live through today).
Right, don't do that unless you're just making educational cartoons for very young children or something (definitely not hosting a space for political discussion)
I definitely can.
Didn't ask.
Do you actually think I might be subservient to you, or are you willingly making a pointless suggestion to be annoying?
I asked if you actually thought I might be subservient to you, or you were willingly making a pointless suggestion to be annoying.
Are you afk, or is that question too hard-hitting and uncomfortable for you to answer?
You waited two hours before demanding a reply? Wow. Funnily enough I don't live at the keyboard and was away doing interesting real world stuff.
Your other question wasn't relevant to the subject in my view, so although I wasn't ignoring you, I will now.
Please stop wasting my time with replies unless you can explain the intentions/motives behind your words
rofl beyond pathetic.
Unless you're using a zero-censorship instance it likely will block zero-censorship instances. So it's not a surprise you couldn't find one.
You need to define "fully working state".
Not necessarily. It could be possible to use standard IP addresses directly instead of domain names. In fact odds are good that would work already.
That's overly simplistic. Under a substantially sensorial authority the "average joe" would out of necessity, become such a nerd.
It's not Reddit. The difference is, democratic censorship vs corporate censorship. Reddit users have no real power over what gets censored or not. On Lemmy they do. If your instance censors something you want to see, there's little friction in moving to another one.
That's a big difference.
Unless you think people are owed reach and exposure to a broad platform. In that case yes all censorship is suppressing your right to be heard by everyone in the world.
To be clear you don't have that right.
Censorship isn't the only way to differentiate from Reddit. Lemmy is also different in countless other ways; Algorithms and advertising to begin with. It's myopic and supremely egotistical to think your one idea is the only difference that matters.
Since the context was a tool designed to improve reddit's model by giving clones the ability to "federate" with each other, I guess a "fully working state" would be one where improvement from the reddit model cannot be furthered by adding more ability for clones to "federate" with each other.
Is this a gish gallop, or do you think IP addresses are like Onion addresses instead of DNS?
That's what I'm hoping, yes. There's also the risk that the planet is just going extinct instead. You can't just wish for the best and take it for granted. Freedom isn't free.
If Lemmy users aren't using Tor, then they aren't coordinating to take any authority away from the corporations.
I don't know how many times you people are going to make me repeat this.
First you were on a small corner of reddit, which was a small corner of the internet, which was a small corner of the screens.
Then the internet got bigger, and reddit got bigger, and now Lemmy is that size corner.
Then Lemmy will either stay this size, or fragment again when it gets bigger.
Without Tor, there's zero difference.
Nope.
Again, not making sense, just trying to reframe things in a way where you can insult me.
Incorrect. I'm not the one being egotistical and, depending what "myopic" means, probably not that either. I am focusing on what matters, you are not.
That's not what a Gish Gallop is.
Myopic
Definition 3: Narrow-minded
Also you aren't really connecting the dots well as to how Lemmy can be censored by corporate authorities, or what specifically those are. Explaining those may help your case. Size also, it's not clear how that really matters to censorship.
Not clicking your link, but what you quoted here is what a Gish Gallop is, and what the reply I was replying to is (hence why I brought it up)
What's not? Like, what were you referring to?
So, like "egotistical," I'm not the one being myopic
What dots have I not connected?
These posts have a small audience. I've said that.
In the past, this small audience was on reddit. I've said that.
This audience isn't much bigger than it was on reddit. There's no fundamental difference in how censored you are right now, with Lemmy vs reddit. The authorities have successfully kept your audience about as small as they were successfully able to keep it on reddit. I've said that.
In the future, if Lemmy tries to grow this audience using its current design, it can't really get far past where it was on reddit without the authorities fucking it up by blocking IP addresses and domain names. I've said that.
I don't know what new thing to say to "connect the dots," you're just making me repeat myself.
Edit - no reply, 2 downvotes. Community full of mentally ill bullies who waste time with bullshit, and then run out of bullshit to say and just stop replying, without admitting they were wrong in any way.
Who are "the authorities" here? The owners of instances? It's not clear what you're referring to.
Why would "the authorities" (whatever that means) block IP addresses and domain names in the event of potential Lemmy growth?
Why are you asking again and acting like it isn't clear when I've answered this question in very clear wording multiple different ways for you already?
Same reason they created FCC licenses, same reason they started taking subreddits away from reddit mods by force, etc.
War criminals would find it difficult to keep being granted authority by The People without seeding mental illness and shifting the overton window as far as possible from reality
You use the word "authorities" in such a vague and bizarre way that it's like someone just saying "the man!" The "authorities" here seem to be the active userbase, so far as I can tell, and community moderators and instance admins - most of whom all desire a moderated experience as most people on here, as I've said, don't want to use a forum with no rules.
Reddit has always been able and willing to take away subreddits from moderators, and has done so since its inception. That doesn't really have anything with domain names and IP blocking.
Not sure what FCC licences would have to do with anything here. What specific "authority" would even be blocking IP addresses and domain names from Lemmy?
The no-censorship crowd is funny. "I wanted to block everyone whose admins block someone, in order to find the people whose admins block anyone, so I could talk to the few people I hadn't blocked because they don't block people."
(And that's ignoring the traditional entitlement in that people somewhere else deciding not to listen to you somehow means you're censored locally.)
Hypocracy -- and conspiracy-level rambling -- aside, there's actually an interesting kernel of commentary here on how we talk about joining and administering Fedi. On the one hand, we say that newcomers shouldn't worry about which instance to start out on, because every one connects to every other, but on the other we celebrate how the instanced architecture allows admins control over which other instances to connect to. And then you have the deeper issue of the vast majority of the software assuming DNS, so even if admins want to connect to Tor instances, they can't feasably do so without a fair bit of host-system tweaking. Yeah, those mixed messages are just the emergent result of which layer of abstraction we're talking about in any given conversation, but it would be nice if we could find language that doesn't take literally the opposite tack on each successive layer.
I don't know how to respond to this comment. Upvoting and leaving a confused reply.
"allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow" apparently meaning "Allow CSAM"
So, until today, you thought the corporate authorities allowed CSAM on reddit?
Or are you just upset that I say what I mean, and mean what I say?
No, I was pointing out that the "discussion" outside of what the "corporate authorities allow" is according to you, actually just CSAM. I don't think anyone here wants to "allow" in that.
No, you're just upset I say what I mean, and mean what I say.
I never said CSAM is the only content censored by the authorities.
Didn't ask what you think everyone else thinks.
Also, can I add that Reddit - per its own standards, hasn't failed. It's a massive website with a lot of traffic.
We think it's failing, and poisoning the atmosphere - but that doesn't mean it hasn't been a big success. A lot of people on the Fediverse do not aspire to grow to be the size of Reddit, and think thats both unrealistic and undesirable.
Didn't ask. Why waste time with it?
Again, didn't ask. Why waste time typing this?
Again, didn't ask. Why waste the time?
Again, didn't ask. Got a reason for typing this, other than to waste my time?
Your original post and comments seem to suggest the end-goal of the Fediverse is to get as big as Reddit, and that it failed due to being overly censorious. It didn't, and it is not the overall goal of the Fediverse.
Okay, what other content are people on the Fediverse unable to talk about and share?
What do you mean? People on the Fediverse are able to talk about and share CSAM, so how would stuff they can't be "other content" in the way you used the words in that sentence?
Do you mean "share widely," in which case, you know the answer is everything and it's weird that you'd ask yet another question you know the answer to?
No, people are not able to share CSAM on the Fediverse. Doing so gets your account banned.
What specific topics can you not say on the Fediverse, or indeed any website outside of TOR without the threat of being arrested?
My problem with reddit was not censorship, and I can't think of why I would want to visit a forum with absolutely no censorship. I want "right" or "good" censorship or however that ends up relating to my values. Lemmy was not designed to address your problems with censorship, but it definitely addresses some problems of censorship.
Same here. I joined lemmy for privacy, the federation that allows smaller communities with very specific interests and moderation and an escape from the capitalist reddit that doesn't care about it's users at all.
Why are you wasting my time like I want replies from liars?
"Right" or "good" censorship, as you call it, is censoring bots from political discussion, or censoring pedophiles from a kids' TV channel, not censoring humans from political discussion.
You're free to read and respond to any comments you want, you're the only one who can waste your time.
Talk about blaming others. Interesting person.
Yes, it is interesting that people who discuss things in good faith blame bad faith discussion (and the time wasted therein) on those who choose it.
Incorrect.
Willingly baiting someone to read nonsense in bad faith makes you responsible for wasting their time. You don't get to blame the victim for being willing to engage in good faith.
Bad faith is bad, good faith isn't, that's why they're called that.
How did the person "bait" you?
How is it nonsense?
How does the responsibility, how you spend your time, shift to someone else?
How are you a victim?
How are you arguing in good faith?
So much to unpack.
Why do you ask? Is the context deleted now? I don't feel like scrolling up to check
What do you mean? Why would one person's responsibility shift to someone else? Is that even a thing?
Are you asking me to consult a dictionary for you, or asking me to repeat what I said above?
Again, can't tell what you're asking here other than "help me use a dictionary"
You could get better at doing gish gallops but luckily I'm pretty good at handling them
Edit - I checked and the context was not deleted, so the "how" at the beginning is another weird question
Hahahahahahahahaha what the fuck. I did not bother reading past your first section. Why should I? Waste someone else's time.
I absolutely think nazis should be censored from political discourse in communities I am involved in.
Didn't ask, but why did you tell me?
So you seem to think that should never happen?
So was there a reason you told me? I asked this above but you still didn't answer it
That question baits me to say something I could get banned for here. If your goal is actually to learn something and not just get me banned, try asking me on nostr.
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I don't think you would get banned for saying you don't believe nazis should be banned.
Personally I use other platforms for uncensored discussions.
Unfortunately they're filled with insufferable twats like yourself, but that's the price we pay for free speech.
It's obvious for everybody except for you, that Lemmy isn't intended as a free speech platform, but a means to form your own community based on shared interests and values. That inherently comes with some amount of censorship at the discretion of instance operators. I'm a free speech advocate, but I value and respect individuals' right to maintain their property (Lemmy instance) as they see fit.
If you want free speech, hop on Simplex where you can yell racial slurs until you've satisfied yourself.
Or spin up your own lemmy instance. I'd be happy to join and engage in some debates.
No you don't. We use other platforms for less censored discussions. Maybe you use nostr like me but that doesn't mean either of us has overcome this era of censorship.
Yep.
This is self-contradictory. Which is it?
Not intended for free speech?
Or indeed intended for free speech (freedom to form your own community (discussion space) based on shared interests and values)?
Simplex isn't what I use for free speech, nostr is, and my slurs are generally not racial.
How would you even use Simplex for more free speech? Does it have group chats or something? (I don't actually care, I'm just mildly confused)
I will not be spinning up instances of anything. I will seed hashes in bittorrent-like P2P networks, I will put my posts where they fit, I will look for posts from others in the most anti-censorship ways I can find, and I will hope devs and server admins create a version of Lemmy that's fitting for more of my posts - while hurrying toward a possible future where Tor isn't enough to make Lemmy relevant anymore, because P2P networks become the only place worth posting anything.
It's not self-contradictory. Any user created community will have rules designed to keep on-topic. Whether or not its a music community, video game community, national community, pottery community. "Free speech zones" so to speak are contradictory to those goals.
It is self-contradictory.
Reddit has the authority to hijack a subreddit and change the mods and the rules, or just ban it. Reddit staff take that authority, and reddit users grant it.
If you want Lemmy to improve on that, which I also want, that area of improvement is what we call a form of "free speech."
You cannot accurately say Lemmy should offer this improvement over reddit, but it is not related to free speech. That is just incorrect.
Yes. So do lemmy instances.This is because community moderators don't actually own any part of the instance they operate on. How is it you imagine Reddit users can somehow not grant it?
But ignoring that, any user-made community has specific topics and themes in mind for what it wants to focus on. This necessarily requires focusing on those things to the explicit censorship of other topics.
I agreed with the title, but then downvoted immediately upon reading your post.
Censorship is not Reddit's problem. It’s enshittification.
Reddit didn’t fail because Spez has some niche political opinions he pushes and you aren’t allowed to say, it failed because its algorithm/UI is structured to farm users and turn to shit.
Lemmy has major problems and power tripping mods, but its existential issue (IMO) is collapse from spam, trolls, attention algorithms, commercialization, and so on.
But federation is a good first step to avoiding the enshittification traps, like the original internet did until Google/Facebook got such a grip on it.
Mods please censor this guy
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I think/hope it was a joke.
But none that I'd like or find healthy, to be honest.
Instances can be created freely, and are free to both associate and disassociate with other instances as they please.
Each instance decides their comfort with content within their instance and outside it. There are left leaning instances, centrist ones, and I'm sure a few right leaning ones. Some are ban-happy, but many will allow you to post all sorts of content, as long as it's not too outlandish.
If the content you wish to see/post is wildly outside the overton window, you can join an instance that allows this or create your own. But other instances are under no obligation to federate with content they don't wish to see.
No. Instances can be created in a restricted and censored way.
I see no proof. Docs say Tor doesn't work, so you're restricted by DNS / IP address usage, making it up to the authorities who can federate with who, not each instance's "owners."
I addressed in my post how this weird censorship fetish is so common, many of you are unable to see what's happening, because you're fine with seeing bans happen to certain people, not just bots. It's like you completely missed this before typing a sentence that ends in "as long as it's not too outlandish"
And I'm under no obligation to recommend Lemmy or stop myself from criticizing it for blocking a basic bit of functionality that would stop it from being increasingly useless for me and others like me
Edit - a lot of this is just pointless. Why make me explain that I'm not obligated to recommend Lemmy? Why explain to me that you're under no obligation to federate with stuff you don't want to? Who asked?
Any instance made can have its own policy.
Do you actually have an example of an instance being dictated to by the "authorities"?
Yes, every instance, as I said in my original post.
I also explained in my original post how many of you have a really hard time with this because the censorship fetish is so popular, you are actually OK with seeing bans happen to certain people, not just bots.
Are you making me repeat this yet again in good faith, or are you willingly refusing to understand me?
What are you calling the "authorities" exactly? Currently instance owners design their own terms of service. They aren't dictated to by any other "authority".
And yes, I am not a free speech absolutist. What's your point?
People who are given authority is what the word means. In this context, that would mean people who are given the authority to censor posts online. That should be pretty clear.
Then by "instance owners" you mean ICANN and the other ("other than ICANN") authorities that design the terms of service allowed on federated instances, not the individual admins of each instance, so it doesn't matter that they aren't dictated to by "other authorities" ("other than the ones that dictate these things")
On the other hand, maybe you're just incorrect, and using "instance owners" to mean the individual admins of each instance, who are dictated to by authorities like ICANN and the President, who are filed under "other than instance admins"
So when you asked who I'm calling authorities, you are one of the people who give them authority to censor the internet, and possibly one of the people given such authority. You should be more familiar with these words.
My main point is that Lemmy needs Tor federation in order to do what it ostensibly tries to do: solve reddit's problems.
My point in this subthread is that it's remarkable how a lot of you reply trying to justify censorship, like I didn't make it clear I'm not open to bullshit - and meanwhile the thread is downvoted to shit, so there aren't many people you could be trying to talk to other than me.
The people who have the authority to control what is on the Fediverse, currently, are Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed instance owners and admins.
No-one has applied pressure so far as I know.
Sorry, are you alleging that the instance owners of lemmy.world or lemmy.ml or lemmy.zip are dictated by the president? (I don't know what you mean by ICANN)
That you want no censorship doesn't bind us either. I am not obliged to change my positions because you don't like it.
Yeah of course
And you're next.
(you must feel powerful to write that, it's fortunate that the mods only censored one of his comments)
You can tell you're all mentally ill by how the context of this reply is someone else wasting my time with paragraphs of bullshit before you admit the real point they were too passive-aggressive to say
And I mean YOU can tell
Deep down, you know this about yourself, because it's so obvious, that's my point here
So many nice personal insults from you, I really wonder why you want/need a "no censoring" area... Oh wait, no, I do not and I am happy that people like you are not allowed everywhere.
Didn't ask. Why do you reply with this, though?
ActivityPub is designed to create platforms that enable customized moderation experiences in order to resist corporate/commercial influence.
ActivityPub also resists government censorship, because a thousand copies get made for every post, one for every federated instance.
If you're looking for a platform where your personal speech can be forced upon others then ActivityPub is quite literally the opposite of what you're looking for.
Apparently you ignored my whole post.
Lemmy does not allow "customized moderation experiences" to "resist corporate/commercial influence." They have to allow corporate/commercial/"government" censorship via IP/DNS blocking, according to Lemmy's docs. That's what I explained in my original post.
I never said anything about forcing my speech on others, it's straight-up mentally ill how you talk like I did.
So you're just mad it doesn't work over tor?
I'm annoyed people are wasting my time with replies like this, and I'm also pointing out that Lemmy won't really be useful until federation works properly, which would currently require Tor.
The purpose, 👏THE*.👏*PURPOSE.👏of the ActivityPub protocol is to give ultimate moderation power to instance owners (as opposed to a singular, usually corporate, owner).
That is (and I can't stress this enough) the entire point.
We've had disagreements in the past, but I can't agree with you more in this case. It's the entire point
Lol, well if we agree on something then you know it's serious. This guy doesn't seem to understand that his issue with "Lemmy" is a fundamental one.
Definitely
So if Lemmy is part of that, someone should fix the issue so that it can do that
ok buddy. don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
I'm not banned yet.
Just host your own fucking instance then nerd
No thanks.
Server admins can host their own instances when Tor support is added, though.
So you want to censor 99% of speech, leaving only people who agree with you on only hearing speech from people that post in your mkni community? I feel like that's counter-productive.
Sometimes people say Lemmy.ml is "high censorship," but I've never been censored here. People sort themselves into instances that generally align with what they want to post and comment, it isn't that there are censorship regimes going on.
As for Lemmy "failing," it already does what it needs to do, it provides a good platform. Reddit went downhill because of the profit motive, Lemmy doesn't have that.
It's almost like that was the beginning of a bigger point:
What I say isn't censored, so OP's idea that people are controlling their speech on instances that take a more active stance to moderation and therefore aren't worthy of federation is built on a false premise.
What you say aligns with what's considered acceptable viewpoints on that instance. Take those views to another instance that aligns with different views and you'll be censored, just like someone expressing dissenting views on lemmy.ml will be. I'm not sure I understand what point you're trying to make here.
What you just said is my point, minus the part where I said users sort themselves into instances already so that they don't get censored from what they want to say. OP's claiming that people control their speech on their own instances, therefore justifying OP defederating from this "controlled speech," but my speech and presumably your speech isn't controlled on our respective instances because they presumably align roughly with what we already want to say.
I'm well aware that Lemmy.ml removes comments and posts bashing communism, or that have bigotry in them, etc. Lemmy.world removes comments critical of the DNC, and has some Zionist mods. Users naturally sort themselves into whichever one won't censor what they want to say to begin with, we aren't all forced under one banner like Reddit, because of federation.
Make sense?
Maybe my lack of understanding stems from a misunderstanding of OP's post... which to be fair, I found fairly difficult to parse, and based on their responses to your and other posters' replies, I strongly suspect that's a 'them' problem, not a 'me' problem, as it seems everyone else is having an equally hard time understanding what they're actually trying to say.
I just want to be clear that it is a lack of understanding and not an attempt to be antagonistic. I have no inherent problem with you; we have strongly differing views on a number of important topics, but we seem to be able to co-exist on Lemmy (and even post in the same communities) just fine, which... seems to be a counter-point to OP's post? But maybe I'm just still misinterpreting what that point actually is.
That's fair! Yea, from how I have interacted with OP, it seems they want Lemmy to overtake Reddit in numbers, have no moderation outside of CSAM or something, and have TOR integration so governments can't censor it, and that they believe this is the key to achieving socialism (I think?). I think this person just has very specific desires and sees it as a problem for everyone that they aren't met.
No, it's that you're in a community full of mostly people like you, including the same issues.
I'm speaking coherently. I even rephrased my original point in my main post to where I thought I was making it too long, for the sake of making sure people could understand. People are basically just too upset about the part where I called out their censorship fetish, and not mentally able to think straight about something upsetting.
If you're really undecided about whether it's me or everyone else, keep re-reading or asking more questions until you understand what went wrong in your own first reading. That should really help you understand more of the world in general.
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No. It's seriously like you people can't read. I thought I was repeating my point too many times in the original post, but apparently I didn't rephrase it enough different ways for anyone to understand.
The issue is not that Lemmy could do something similar to reddit in the future.
The issue is that Lemmy is the exact same thing as reddit, having the exact same failures at each stage of growth.
Currently, we are at the stage where the stuff you post on Lemmy is censored from reddit, and you reach a certain percentage of Americans via Lemmy.
In the past, we were at the stage where this stuff was censored from Fox News, and we reached a certain percentage of Americans via reddit.
In the future, without Tor federation, you can reach a stage where stuff is censored from big Lemmy, and you reach a certain percentage of Americans via small Lemmy.
Many of you think of this place as different in ways that it is not. The ambulance rides still cost money.
People are controlling my speech on instances that take a more active stance to moderation, and therefore aren't worthy of federation.
That isn't very well-written wording, but I can't spot the lie.
What false premise do you think it's based on? Apparently, that you're censored - but I didn't say you're censored, if you're fine with ambulance rides charging money, so where's that false premise actually appear in my train of thought or connect to the statement you're trying to connect it to? I said censorship exists, and I implied it applies to people who want ambulance rides to be free - I didn't say anything about you personally.
If you think ambulance rides should cost money, that's a false premise, but it doesn't change anything I said - the idea that it does would be a second false premise.
Is it that you think ambulance rides shouldn't cost money, but political discussion doesn't impact policy? Because it does, so that would still be you with the false premise.
Is that you're aware of both why ambulance rides should be free and how political discourse impacts that, but you're not understanding how you need a majority to win elections? Because you do, so that would still be you with the false premise.
Do you understand all that, but think Tor users are a majority? Because they're not, so that would still be you with the false premise.
I can't see how you get from me saying "there is censorship" to "Cowbee isn't censored and there is no censorship" without using a false premise. Meanwhile "there is censorship" remains a true premise.
People here mostly don't want to interact in a 4-chan esque 'muh free speech' zone. The policy of most used instances that federate out reflects that.
I like 4chan because of the fact that you can say anything on there. Good, bad, ugly. I don't mind seeing it all, even if I don't personally believe in it.
Never said anything about 4chan. You are yet another person making me copy and paste from my original post, like none of you can read:
4chan is just the end state of what happens when a community has no moderation. I didn't literally mean 4chan.
Your point was about people censoring their own speech, ie Pawb.social posters can't say certain things, Lemmy.ml users can't say certain things, etc. That may be true, but Lemmy is federated and accounts are free, I use Lemmy.ml because I won't be censored for being a communist and they presumably use Pawb.social because they have interest in doing so.
You don't gave to comment on other instances, you can spin your own, but defederating from others makes no sense. You can let others visit and just not remove their comments. By blocking, say, Hexbear, like you already do with a sh.itjust.works account, you are limiting the number of communists you interact with already.
You're ignoring so many of my words. Is that in good faith? Are you in a big hurry but still considering this important enough to try to engage in a rushed way? Or are you just willingly refusing to understand something simple?
Instances don't censor based on size, but based on stances. slrpnk.net is biased against Marxism-Leninism, but is a very small instance. Growth won't increase censorship, because we aren't appealing to advertisers. It's a false premise.
Secondly, I'm not a free-speech absolutist. Misinformation and bigotry should be removed, especially in the modern age where massive propaganda networks push narratives.
My train of thought today started from people on lemmy.world talking about defederating lemmy.ml for being "tankies" which lead to me blocking lemmy.world - then I ended up here because the Lemmy community here seems to be the main one anywhere for discussing Lemmy
If you want an instance that doesn't defederate from any other instance, you're going to be left with very few options, and those are going to be the ones hosting some incredibly, incredibly questionable content.
There are 2 options:
Don't defederate from any other instance, but keep a list of censored instances and an easy way for users to block that full list
Just make the list of defederated instances the list of censored instances
Anything else is useless
Anything designed by people who think "questionable" is a bad trait and "censored" is a good trait, is useless for others
Sounds like the solution is for you to just start your own instance, create your own 'free speech zone' communities, and engage in a 'censorship-free' policy there. Personally, I prefer to stay as far away from instances hosting, for example, CSAM and unbridled hate-speech as I can, and the current federation system handles that quite well.
Again, can't.
That's the whole point of my original post. Don't know how many times I have to repeat it. Lemmy uses DNS / IP addresses, stops Tor from being used, can't have free speech instances under this configuration. Might need new code, not just new instance
If 99% of speech comes from people who are against free speech, I want to let 99% of people censor themselves by posting in censored communities while I stay in a free speech zone.
You can phrase that as me wanting to "censor them from my own feed" as long as you recognize the caveat that, unlike them, I give them the option to deactivate my censorship of them any time, all they have to do is deactivate their censorship of me.
Did you just make me explain this in good faith, or were you only pretending not to understand me?
There are some instances that could be described as 'free speech zones'. It's just they're usually heavily defederated and so you'll have to find them.
Replying, here as it's a bit higher (I've been down quite a few subthreads): don't feed the troll.
"heavily defederated" - again, my core point in this whole thread has been that according to Lemmy's docs, they can't federate.
You mean over TOR, according to your OP
How else would they do it?
Currently federation works now. You just don't like how it works, and you're paranoid that the authorities will intervene and dictate to Lemmy instances what they should do.
But I can say whatever I would want to say here, I'm not censoring myself. People sort themselves into places where they can already say whatever they would want to. I understand your point, I just don't think it's actually an issue because people post on instances where they can say what they want already.
If Lemmy doesn't allow federation over Tor, you are potentially helping censor both of us by posting here, unless your posts aren't made with goals like making ambulance rides free, in which case you're just helping censor me & other honest people, not yourself (who might be fine with "only reaching nerds" when posting here).
That may become a problem down the line, but it doesn't seem to be one yet.
I explained exactly how it is a yesterday, today, and tomorrow problem, not a waiting-to-come-tomorrow problem.
Is it in good faith that you make me copy and paste myself?
I can agree that TOR functionality would be useful, I can't agree that it's necessary at the present moment.
What do you mean by "censorship" and what is your example of the "high-censorship instance" doing it?
This started with me blocking lemmy.world because I heard they defederate "tankie" instances
Better get ready to block sh.itjust.works then too because it also defederates those same instances.
Right. If you read my original post, one of the first things I mentioned was how I looked for a a fully zero-censorship instance/cluster to transition into. Why do you keep needing things repeated?
So why block lemmy.world and not sh.itjust.works when it's also guilty here?
I don't know. Is there some reason to do that? My idea seems to make more sense to me.
Or did you mean temporarily, like, why should lemmy.world be first?
You said the reason you blocked lemmy.world was because it blocked the "tankie instances". Guess what? Sh.itjust.works is exactly the same.
No, I mean why aren't you just blocking every instance that blocks those instances.
i disagree that tor or tor-level anonymity is some magical requirement to defeat corporations.
you speak as if lemmy isnt a bunch of independent instances. maybe step outside the lemmy tree and take a look at the ap forest
I didn't say anything about anonymity. It's not convenient for the authorities to block Tor connections, like it is when directly using DNS or IP addresses. The question isn't anonymity, it's whether there's actually a place for everyone to come together and join in discourse, or just a centralized corporate filter system for making sure the "wrong people" are never listened to.
Well the Fediverse isn't centralised so there is no corporate control of content on here.
You couldn't make it 3 paragraphs into my post? Yet another reply where I have to ask if it's in good faith
People didn't leave reddit because the authorities were blocking posts. They left because of fundamental disagreements with how the site is run.
The part of your post where you worry about state censorship is a hypothetical fear for the future.
I am banned from reddit and I'm not the only one.
I'm surely not even the only one on Lemmy.
Did you make me explain this in good faith, or are you just posting incorrect shit willingly?
We are censored by the authorities in the past, present, and future, not just the future.
Okay. Some people are here because Reddit banned them. Many aren't though. I imagine most people who got banned on reddit also ended up getting banned here.
I would argue that it is not the primary reason for why most active users come here.
What I need to understand is how you envision a 0-censorship community working when there's content that should at all times be censored, like CSAM. I don't hear solutions to these cases, or even an acknowledgement that not all content should be protected from any sort of moderation, just complaints about content being moderated at all. Furthermore, you keep accusing everyone of arguing in bad faith but we're all just saying the normal shit every other Lemmy user knows about Lemmy and ActivityPub.
And if I missed some point of yours, which seems like you think most of us are, blame it on laziness or smith, I'm boarding a plane and can't be bothered
Personally my ideal thing would be an instance that does no blocking and the technology allowing me to block in all ways. I would also like to subscribe to others block lists. I also want blocking to be symetric. When I block or someone blocks me we both effectively do not exist to the other. That being said instances need to block to be in compliance with local laws. In addition I totally understand instances that are about something to block instances which are mean to them. Like if its about lgbtq and anothers about how nazism is the way and another is about christiantiy as a loving accepting faith while another is about christianity being about prosprity doctrine.
Agreement:
I'm glad you support an instance that does no blocking, and instead gives you all the tools
Disagreement:
Custom feeds and labels solve basically the same problems as block lists without being anywhere near as harmful
"Symmetric blocking" as you call it, cannot coexist with public discussion, and is not natural or appropriate for a political "town square"
Real laws are rarely localized, so saying "local laws" makes it sound like you think "laws of man" are real
I think that is bs. Blocking imitates what we do in meatspace. Avoid people we don't like and hang out with people we do. No one would argue with getting toxic individuals in their life but blocking online is creating a bubble. We need to get back to what is natural. No one has a right for people to view their crap and its fine for them to restrict folks from hearing their crap to. custome feeds and labels do not cut it.
You cannot just make people stop being able to hear you or reply to you in a public place.
The average person could not just avoid every political opinion they disagreed with before the TV was widespread.
Stop ignoring stuff willingly.
You sure can. You avoid them. You don't go to the places they go. The internet piles everyone together and humans can't handle that scale. People heard other political opinion from more reasonable people who mixed with different groups that happened to intersect at a place. If the asshole showed up they would leave but the other person would not but they might catch up with the other person and hear some relevant things the asshole had to say. Given the asshole is just an asshole because it rubs the first person the wrong way. Its this middle person that enables the flow.
Avoiding people alone does not make them unable to hear you or reply to you in public places. If you meant "avoiding people and not having any public opinions" then maybe, but before TV, that would have kinda fucked up any attempt at political involvement.
Again, does nothing for the "public places" issue unless you also make sure none of your opinions are public, which is a moot point in the context of trying to make ambulances stop costing money.
Some humans can. I'm one of them, and I'm trying to help others learn to do the same, before Earth goes extinct. It's quite urgent.
People were more reasonable, but they didn't magically make their birthplaces match locations full of agreeable people, or have the freedom to live wherever they wanted, or even always have opinions shared by any large group of people anywhere.
This middle person has not solved the problem of people using screens to echo chamber themselves, ever since TVs became widespread.
This middle person was more of a factor back when people spent more time in public places, especially in eras where people felt safer discussing politics, like in the US when it was an anti-Nazi country.
I don't see what you are not getting if I avoid someone and do my speaking away from them. They don't hear me and I don't hear them. To some degree echo chambers have always existed. You go to any random bar and it will often have somewhat of similar attitudes amont the patrons but there will still be lively discussion. One reason is some of the patrons also patronize another bar that others don't but some of the others patronize a bar the first group does not. Anyway I don't really care if you like blocking or not but I will be on the technology that allows it and you will be on one that does not so the really great thing is eventually it will be like we blocked each other. Even though I am not looking to block you currently even though I could. So I guess im saying your requirements for what you want your space to be will create an echo chamber for you. The federation is an echo chamber that blocks folks that are only on xitter or facebook or reddit but not necessarily completely as their are communities dedicated to postings stuff from those outside sources (which I personally block). Those people reposting from the other sources are that middle person and although I don't want to hear the stuff they post from these other social media sites I will still hear things from them that are influenced from hanging in those spaces.
I.d.k. if you've heard of reclaim the net, you may be interested to give them a follow, and if you know similar websites/accounts i'm interested, thanks for the thread !
(thanks as well to the moderators for allowing you to speak freely, this should be a basic freedom)
Here's one more example of censorship i've just learned about : I’ve already been permanently demonetized by YouTube and had albums removed from Spotify, this time under a false allegation of transphobia. Felt pertinent to add somewhere.
I hope in the near future you'll find more of a paying audience than YouTube or Spotify have ever offered you
Nah, i'm stupid sorry, it was a quote from a post by David Rovics, i should have put the «...», my bad.
He's the only anti-imperialist singer i know, along with Red Creators Network, worth checking out i think :)
Got it, will do 🙏
I didn't ask you about this. Why waste time telling me about it?
I've found that the other replies don't really express my personal take on this, so I'll go ahead and write mine down.
First of all, and it's important, people's take on such topics is heavily dependent on the country they live in. It's legitimately hard to imagine why you would want to break government rules hard and be a good person if you live somewhere in Norway. And it's legitimately hard to imagine a world where you really trust your government and think that the current levels of censorship is actually good if you live in a dictatorship country.
With this in mind, a comfortable and universal level of censorship simply doesn't exist.
I think the lack of Tor support is valid criticism if you're in a dictatorship. Of course, DNS-based solutions are not good-enough for you. I hope you'll find something that solves your problems. Unfortunately a simple Lemmy instance is not a solution for you.
Generally, if I'd advise something, I'd suggest to look at what the project actually aims to do, not at what you think it should be doing. E.g. visit https://join-lemmy.org/ and there it says:
Well, does it sound like a solution made for people in heavily censored environments? To me -- not. If you want to present your case and incentivize the Lemmy devs to ADD another perspective or direction to the software that they're spending time developing, prepare your case and argumentation well. Explain your situation (e.g. "I'll be hung if I speak freely where I live", or more relevant, "my country heavily DNS-censors 90% of the good existing Lemmy instances, I'm deprived of good information you have circling here"), propose some solutions or offer help. I don't know really. It's up to you. Good luck with your seach
I explained my situation. I want to shift towards a cluster of zero-censorship instances, but I found out they apparently can't exist because Lemmy blocks Tor (?), so I'm better off just spending less time on Lemmy.
I don't care that much if devs fix it, I'm just explaining the problem. If it gets fixed, good; if not, the devs who would fix it will do some other good thing; if that's not enough for the planet to survive, it's that there aren't enough good devs, not that they aren't focused enough on Lemmy. I hope there are enough good devs for the planet to survive, and also for Lemmy to get fixed, though.
While I agree on the general message, I very much disagree on the "completely free speech part", for the same reason the paradox of tolerance exists.
That makes no sense. Why would you not be able to tolerate anything without tolerating everything? Or, why would tolerating one thing force you to also tolerate some other unrelated thing? And if that's what you believe, how do you pull off absolute intolerance in a fair and peaceful way? When it comes to discourse, just don't let anyone talk? Just have everyone censor whoever they disagree with because that's "fairness?" It makes absolutely seriously no sense.
Everything has limits. Water is good for you but too much will kill you. Most people don't want to take the moral and legal risks of running a completely uncensored site.
Why did you reply with this where you did? What does it have to do with the post you're replying to? I didn't ask about what some percentage of people is doing this year
It's an overall response to your post. If you want to take the risk of allowing unfettered speech then run your own Lemmy server.
It sounds like you haven't even read my post. My whole point (as I've repeated many times throughout this thread to others acting like you) is that I cannot solve anything about Lemmy by running my own instance because federation is broken.
Find the other posters complaining about absolute free speech and y'all can post to each other on your instance.
Libbest post of the year here.
You come here complaining this doesn't meet your made-up expectation of 100% uncensored full audience reach. Who ever said that's what any of this was?
Since you seem to have such a strong opinion of what the world needs, why don't you go fucking make it if there's nothing out there that suffices for your grand vision?
What?
You, just now, right? I don't see anyone else accusing me of making those complaints or making that shit up, seems like that was just you in the sentence before you asked?
I am. Why are you pretending I'm not, when that's exactly what my profile shows me doing?
Are you suggesting Project Zymogen and all of its follow-ups should be so easy and fast to finish, there shouldn't even be time for Lemmy to develop? I don't think that's what you're suggesting, because that would be extremely fucking insane, but it seems the alternative is that you're just making shit up about me based on nothing and you don't even know what Project Zymogen is, which would be about the same amount insane.
I have no idea what that is and it sounds like you just pulled it out of your ass, but good job. You're not going to convince anybody here to join your hellhole though. That's not what lemmy is about.
I'd thank you if you actually understood what you're saying, at all. But there's not one iota of sincerity or comprehension in those words.
That depends whether I have a hellhole, but I probably won't have one, indeed. Kinda random though - why'd you bring it up?
So again, why bring it up, but also why add this part?
are you terminally online?
What do you mean?
I asked why you brought up whether I'd try to convince people to join a hellhole
I asked why you added "that's not what lemmy is about" to your own topic
yeah ok, anyway, have fun with your zygote project and censorship free whatever
So you want to block people who block people? There's no corporate centralisation, that's a huge fundemental difference. Big Daddy's not there, its more anarchic.
I think I got cancer reading this post.
I've read less than half of the comments here, but my main feeling is that the downvotes only happened because they didn't understood what you said, in their mind you want something even less censored than 4Chan, which will lead to something even worse than 4Chan, they believe that moderation helps in healthy discussions.
I've got reserves on that, for example mods should only ask for the user to edit h.er.is comment instead of instabanning them for life, and as i said elsewhere our states don't only ask platforms but are making laws to "moderate" the internet.
But that's not what you were talking about, these downvotes should tell you that your thought hasn't matured enough to be presented as a clear project, like here :
At first i was furious because i thought that many people opposed freedom of expression, but after reading more comments i'm relieved that it's still seen favorably by a majority.
The problem here seems to be that your "vision" isn't clear enough, and that's probably why you wanted to discuss it with others. The good news is that people didn't oppose your ideas
It's a bit late in France so i don't intend to stay much more online(, and you've been at it for more than 12 hours), even if i'd be interested in your answer because i frankly still don't understand you, sry :/
He does. By his own admission he wants quite literally, zero moderation. Except for spam. What do you think that would lead to, honestly? What do you imagine the outcome of that would be? What sort of community would that become?
Almost everyone in this thread opposed him bar a few people.
Depends, i haven't understood what he talked about, and neither have you. What if it's a moderation made by the user h.er.im.self, while taking into account the vote of users with the same "tags"/preferences as him ? That's not his idea but other methods are possible, in any case it's aiming for an ideal of freedom, it's left to us to see the best path in attaining it, and internet is still in its infancy.
And they didn't understood what he said, and you're always answering aside
They did. I'm sorry, but they did. Most of them focused on his inane objection to any and all moderation and fundamental misunderstandings of the fediverse and how it actually works. He doesn't really know anything about it, and makes baseless about what's happened on the site that he refuses to back up.
But again, the core thing here is that most of the people on the fediverse are not free speech absolutists who want to operate in an instance with no moderation.
From what i understood :
- When you're critcizing the incomplete/broken system of federation, would it be enough if instances can't block each other(, even if you'd probably don't mind if users can block instances) ? I've seen that same thought in /c/fediverse a few times, along the lines of being able to access a real "All" tab ;
- Instances shouldn't communicate through DNS because authorities could block it, hence why you're suggesting to use Tor, it'd make Lemmy a.n free/unconstrained network ;
- You're making a mistake i.m.o. when stating that Lemmy will become censored like Reddit, because you can't have the same Lemmy admins for all instances. So, while Reddit banned republicans and communists, it can't be done for Lemmy(, unless through national/federal laws). You probably already knew that, just in case(, bonus by the devs) ;
- It feels like the core of your speech ? In any case, i'm missing almost all of what's surrounding it hence the comment above.
How would this even be possible? This is essentially forced platforming.
I'm saying Lemmy's censorship is the same as reddit's because we still have roughly the same groups as on reddit.
I still post to about the same audience or smaller, not bigger than peak reddit.
The people saying "ambulance rides shouldn't cost money" are still drowned out by the people saying "poor people should die because I'm rich enough to be the one people listen to" so I don't think we should choose who to listen to based on money.
If reddit worked as a system the authorities could use to control discussion, what we have now with reddit and Lemmy definitely isn't any less useful for the authorities that way, because I seem to be making slower progress towards making ambulance rides free, instead of faster progress.
If these two sentences are meant to be understood together, then it's misleading to use the word censorship i think, it's more a mix of a lack of visibility and echo chambers, in which case these are two things that don't seem debatable/false.
If i understood you correctly, could you expand on your solution ?
But the authorities cause it willingly, so it's censorship, imo. Maybe debatable
Another way of looking at the problem is, without Tor federation, all the federated instances will be 100% one group of people, and each Tor instance will be 100% another group
That 100% isn't healthy, there needs to be a balance where each place has some of each group. I don't want a place full of nothing but pedophiles, but I also don't want a place full of nothing but people who send pedophiles to their own place. I want a place full of nothing but people who agree everyone should be allowed to talk
To do that, would it be enough if instances can’t block each other, or if users could unblock the foreign instances blocked by their original instance ?
You'd also want some .onion instances, and that they could communicate with those using the DNS.
Am i missing something ? You seem to also have more to say
Absolutely. That all sounds perfect to me. I actually don't think you're missing anything
And how do you force current instances like lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works then to tolerate /some/ pedophiles exactly?
Because that's what would have to happen under your system.
I don't get what you mean.
Again, not sure what you mean.
You're correct, but I doubt anyone here will listen.
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Occasionally, I stopped engaging here much after getting banned from a community for calling an obvious sockpuppet an obvious sockpuppet
I think the downvoting of this is showing exactly why Lemmy will fail. Why cant people have a different opinion than most? Why downvote it? You guys love your little bubbles dont you.
I want to also read opinions i dont agree with. It doesnt bother me the slightest.
Downvoting doesn't stop you from reading the opinion?
He can have an opinion, but have you seen how he's behaving in the replies?
No didnt read it...
Yeah, he's not behaving with grace.
Nah, he's being downvoted because he hates censorship, while expressing exceptions(, bots, ...), and underlining how unacceptable it is for political opponents/discussions, and you're hence 'disagreeing with'/downvoting him.
I think he's awesome and fully agree with him.
You think I'm the only person downvoting and disagreeing with him?
You fully agree with him? You want CSAM to be on the fediverse?
You was plural, and sry for editing my comment afterwards i haven't seen your answer.
States already make it illegal, and that's not what he was talking about(, you should know that, he expressed himself clear enough).
Great post. All of your downvotes prove you were exactly right! It's crazy that a place like Lemmy, which likes to complain about censorship in mainstream media, loves censorship so much.
Lemmy does not like differing views or opinions. They love to censor that shit out.
It's failed like Reddit already and is tiny. The sheer amount of botspam, fake accounts, spam instances, etc makes Reddit look curated.
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