What irks me the most is the spinelessness of a lot of mods. Shadow banning and banning without an explanation just striffling free speech without acountability. Freedom of expression should not be subject to the whims of individuals!
If this gets me banned than you are worse than spez
make your own/move instances? isnt that the beauty of the fediverse?
But… but… I need to be able to use the reach others have built to broadcast my message or muh freedom of speech has been take away!!! /s
It’s a non-solution. Self hosting doesn’t stop other instances from banning you.
Freedom of speech means that you won’t be jailed by the government for speaking your mind even when your position is not popular.
Freedom of speech does not mean that everyone gets to speak and be heard on any subject they desire to whoever they want. It also does not mean that everyone, or anyone, wants to hear it. Individuals are free to censor you as much as they want.
Interaction is a community effort with a social contract that everyone tries to behave within the bounds of the community rules. If you break those rules, even if for a good reason, it is not unreasonable for the community to object.
Your reply sounds like you disagree with me about something but I have no idea what.
You pointed out that self hosting doesn’t prevent bans, and they were essentially saying that anyone concerned with dodging bans reeks of entitlement when they demand to be heard on platforms where they aren’t wanted.
No. I just felt like you did not understand how free speech and censorship worked.
Creating an instance so you have a platform to speak from is always an option, but other instances having the ability to block that instance is not a sign of it being broken. It means the system works as intended.
I haven’t said a word about free speech.
So? If people refuse to amplify your message that’s not a “freedom of speech” issue.
Sometimes I think these free speech morons will cry censorship over anything less than guaranteed bandwidth straight into our brains.
They want to show up, use a community someone else has built to carry their message, and if they can’t, it’s “freedom of speech!”
Let’s just put that shit away for good. Non-solution? It’s a non-problem, akshully.
I haven’t said a word about free speech. Chill man, lol.
OP has. Topic is on the table. I’m not specifically saying you. When you said “non-solution,” what is the problem you were referencing?
what is the problem you were referencing?
I think OP is basically asking how he can be sure that he will not get silenced unjustly or atleast what they consider unjust. Another user suggested making their own instance, to which I pointed out that it’s not going to solve OP’s problem as he can still get banned and have messages removed.
Ah. Well, I still think that’s about as close as OP is going to get. There’s a difference between “being silenced” and another instance defederating from you.
This reminds me of a time my mother came home from the voting place, deflated because one of the election measures had not gone her way. She said she was disappointed in democracy, because she had done her part and voted and it STILL didn’t go her way.
I didn’t think that was a reasonable complaint. Getting your way, guaranteed, is not a reasonable expectation for anyone, pretty much anywhere. By the same token, I don’t think OP has an actual “problem” here so there isn’t going to be a solution.
It’s a solution for the rest of us.
Why should we be forced to repeatedly deal with someone who makes Lemmy worse?
You shouldn’t. Everyone should be free to block users, communities and instances as they wish.
I’m happy to have a moderator do it so I don’t have to encounter all the unpleasantness and block folks myself.
Modlogs are public so I can see if they’re being unfair.
So in your mind, other places must give you a platform. What a nonsense.
Man, did this happen often to you?
Yeah, I’d like to hear exactly what free speech was suppressed. Because the vast majority of these rants have a very interesting post/comment history.
Not exactly free speech violations like OP is stating, since what happened is the same solution as here, i.e. create a new community and use that, so it’s not Reddit issue, but the specific mod of the specific community.
In Reddit there were (possibly still are) two large Bitcoin communities,
/r/bitcoinand/r/btc. One of them is extremely censored, and you will get banned for criticising a specific feature that was introduced in Bitcoin a while back. The other one is a lot more open to discussion and doesn’t ban people for criticising or approving that (or any other) change. You would see at least once a week someone coming to the newer subreddit because he was banned from the other one, for example I was banned for linking a GitHub page that was in the sidebar as a resource (because in the context of the discussion that page proved a mod wrong).I’m not saying this is common place, but it happens, and because the vast majority of people know about Bitcoin but don’t know it’s usually abbreviated btc they’re likely to find the first community. Again I’m not claiming this is a violation of free speech, not even arguing this is a bad thing (since I agree the solution is to create your own community with blackjack and hookers) I’m just pointing that mods banning people just because happens, so there is a grain of truth there.
Reddit will close subreddits that do not delete Hamas footage, for example. So mods have to choose which way to go.
Hamas are right up there with the Nazis as people we don’t need to include in our discussion about how to run a civil society. I say this as a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian cause. Fuck Hamas. Is anyone complaining that tech companies prevent ISIS from using their platforms? Hamas are no better.
I do not understand. I gave an example of absurd censorship. They censor big, negative names because it costs them money. It has nothing to do with Hamas itself. They did not censor them before the attack. The do not censor many other terrorist groups right now, because they are not in the media. They allow(ed?) ISIS content.
Understanding how terrorists operate, based on their go pro footage, seems pretty useful to me. It is also an excellent way to get a realistic view about what happened. They even remove videos where the terrorists were hunted down if it was from their perspective.
It seems you do not understand. Tech companies do everything they can to ensure that terrorists and hostile regimes do not use their service. When ISIS communicate on Facebook, that puts Facebook in jeopardy with the government. Negligence on this is the best thing Facebook can do to invite Congress in to regulate them. I’m not saying that every company does a perfect job or even a good job but to say that removing Hamas content is new or special in any way… yeah you just haven’t seen the inside of a major company’s trust and safety team. If Hamas is prioritized more than last year, maybe it’s because they’ve removed any ambiguity about whether they are the elected authorities in Gaza or terrorists. They’re also probably waging more intense information campaigns than ever since their attack was designed to stir their supporters and put them in conflict with Israel. Yeah, fuck Hamas. If you want to cry censorship, find someone worth defending.
You really need to stop making straw mans. Read what I said, not what you think I said. I gave a specific example of what was discussed. No more and no less.
You said that disallowing Hamas produced video is an example of suppression of free speech and constitutes “absurd censorship.”
My reddit account was recently perm banned for messaging a mod who banned me from a sub for mockingly repeating their policy back to them on attribution and OC. Granted, I was perma banned for “harrassment”. I am skeptical of the people you are talking about as well as many of them are kinda awful community members but I think its a mistake to dismiss all these guys as people who just want to say racial slurs or something.
It sounds like you were trolling, spamming and harassing?
I wasn’t trolling at all. I’m not sure how that could be your take away with the information I gave. I guess you’re in favor of moderation that limits discussion and opposing viewpoints. Most authoritarian are though so I can’t be suprised.
Arguing with a mod isn’t trolling. Disagreeing with a mods decisions isn’t spam or harassment. I guess you’ve found a great way to control speech you don’t like though. Anytime someone says something you dislike call it trolling, spam and harrassment and oila, you can effectively control every message board in existence.
Somehow I can’t reply to the other reply so i do it here:
No i do not have one of those trouble-maker post histories. Most of the time the people who get banned are the ones who don’t follow the hive-mind.
“The ones who don’t follow the hive-mind.” 🚩🚩🚩
So you are saying reddit isn’t plagued by behaviour where people basically pile onto diverging (albeit legitimate) opinions?
I’m saying that the opinions that people piled onto were generally worth piling onto. If the things you say garner a negative response everywhere you go, maybe it’s not everyone else who’s the problem.
I have no idea if this is/was “generally” the case. Go into any sub that is pro or anti anything and say something reasonable that does not fit that pro or anti sentiment. Good luck. People downvote things usually not based on logical thinking but feelings.
That’s true. But a space that is pro or anti something isn’t a space that’s going to be protected by any semblance of “free speech.” It’s not a fault of the community, it’s by design that they want people of a similar mindset. Wanting to guarantee “free speech” in a space like that defeats the purpose of those spaces.
I fully agree. Free speech is something else entirely.
Both state driven information filtering as well as people letting their emotions loose creates bubbles in which people are misinformed. They think X is a really big problem, while it could actually only seem so because of that bubble. And the other way around too, of course. Anyone pointing errors out is massively outnumbered, no chance.
Thinking about it, I think religion works the same way. Just not with random people on the internet but in the local community, where it is even harder to escape that bubble.
Thats not a very good argument at all. You’re literally stating “well since majority agrees with it, it must mean somethings wrong with you.” How could possibly think this is healthy or good way to engage with ideas different than the “mainstream”?
Is this the first time the “mainstram” is right?
I’m saying on Reddit in particular, the comments that got downvoted into oblivion were generally of a certain variety, and OP is being very cagey about what they mean. And again, a community forms around common belief, and “free speech” doesn’t protect your inclusivity into a space, it only protects you from government action against your speech.
Anything that broke the “echochamber” is what got downvoted but this was never strictly about downvoting it was about moderation so im not sure why you shifted the focus to downvotes. We know you’re trying to essentially say the people who got downvoted or moderated deserved it because they said things so “bad” they deserved to be moderated. I’m not sure that’s always true or even mostly true.
You’re right that free speech typically means the ability to speak freely without government intervention but I think you’re being obtuse if you don’t see how those implications could be limited by corporations online and if you’re comfortable with censorship online not being democratically decided upon that’s cool but I don’t trust the corporations as much as you do i guess.
I’m saying that the opinions that people piled onto were generally worth piling onto.
Oh come on you know this isn’t true!
On numerous reddit communities there was a very slim overton window and if you say something that is totally a reasonable thing to say you but diverges from the consensus you get downvoted to oblivion and sometimes even mods take action. You know this is true. Don’t believe me google it. Otherwise I’m going to assume you are not arguing in good faith.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences for your speech. Your definition of “reasonable” doesn’t sound like it’s reasonable by the consensus of users on Reddit. It seems like you’ve been fairly gun shy about posting what these “legitimate opinions” are. On Reddit, I would get in arguments with liberals a lot, because I consider them entirely too right leaning. But it never resulted in mod action or even downvoting, it was a discussion. There is one kind of opinion that pretty consistently resulted in downvoting, and especially mod action. And those kinds of opinions should be downvoted. The only things I can think of otherwise are people criticizing mods or Reddit itself and getting banned by power hungry admins, but as others have said, go to a different community if you see that.
Freedom of speech is not the same as freedom from consequences for your speech.
It is when it comes to the consequence being not being able to speak. if my speech has at its consequence that it pisses off people in power in a group then freedom of speech means that they wont stifle my speech when it threatens their power or is deemed undesirable for other than rule breaking reasons.
Are you complaining about Lemmy or Reddit?
There’s ways to “not follow the hive mind” without getting banned. There’s a reason why daily wire is able to be on YouTube and reddit for example.
There’s ways to “not follow the hive mind”
that depends on the community r/conservative gets you banned for even slight deviation from allowed opinions.
that depends on the community r/conservative gets you banned for even slight deviation from allowed opinions.
In that case (unless it has changed since I stopped using Reddit in July) the rules of the sub explicitly tell you this will happen if you post comments that are not in support of conservative views.
Their house, their rules. (and not censorship)
In that sense, at least they are transparent a put being authoritarian. There are too many “populist left” spaces where those things aren’t spelled out and you’ll be banned for a vague rule that could be anything and everything. I despise when they don’t give transparency to their rules and how they enforce them. It’s generally bad too imo. That being said, mods have a hard fucking job admittedly and they aren’t paid.
On lemmy, you dont have 1 instance with that community, if a mod or admin is not good, just swap the instance and make there a better community.
That is the same argument as: if you are mistreated at feddex why not join UPS. Is that really a solution when all instances are organized under the same structure?
Its the basic free market idea… you dont like company ( for our side “instance” ) A then why dont buy it from Company(“instance”) B?
The only difference is that you can still access posts/comments from other instances after you switched.
I just don’t think the choice between either censorship or isolation is a good one.
Freedom of speech should also extend to social media. Of course that does not include pedos or people screaming fire in a theatre or inciting genocide.
I do not understand your position given the context. What do you want? A big platform that many are supposed to see? That is also, essentially, not moderated? If so, how do you expect that not to turn into a shit echo chamber of one group?
That is also, essentially, not moderated?
Of course i do NOT want to see any pedos or other awful content. I was talking about content that follows the rules but is censored despite that.
The illegal stuff is why I wrote “essentially”, but given that even that is extremely location specific… Well.
So, how do you keep it from becoming a cesspit like platforms that are already like that?
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Freedom of speech should also extend to social media
and right here you prove you have no clue what this means. youre talking about social media, not the contract between the government and citizens speech.
reddit, all social media platforms have literally zero to do with ‘freedom of speech’ because they are not related in any capacity to the government or the governments regulation on speech.
they are private, non-government entities, which you choose to accept the policies of when you sign up.
private platform gunna private. dont like it DONT USE THE PLATFORM. go educate yourself.
if you cant find any community that would have you make one or maybe realize; you are the problem.
So you do draw a line somewhere. Do you not see that that is what you asked to not be done?
People make rules and agreements to shape their environment.
If you don’t like - for example - insults being removed start a parallel fediverse group with like minded people. Those who don’t want to see it won’t join, those who do will.
The line should strictly be drawn at anti-social behaviour like the examples you gave but free speech that is within the limits of what is reasonable should not be stifled.
prevent the gore pictures but dont band somebody posting their christian rock band or their satanist book club
And you think or experience it as not like that on Lemmy?
It’s not the same at all for one important reason. That’s friction to change.
There’s a lot of friction to change from one employer to another. There is practically no friction to change from one Lemmy community to another. Even if they all suck, nothing’s stopping you from making another community. If your new one is so much better, everyone will flock to it, because it’s so easy for them to do so.It’s the same concept as the Free Market. The friction to change is why the free market frequently doesn’t work well in the physical world. But in here, where all the friction becomes practically zero, it actually can work the way it’s supposed to.
Assuming you argue in good faith:
If switching lands you in the exact same predicament then switching is no solution. the reason why i brought up feddex and ups is because none of the problems you face at feddex will be resolved by switiching to ups. just as switching from working at burger king to working at mcdonalds wont change your position.
If you smell shit, check the floor. If you constantly smell shit, check your shoe.
Different instances can handle moderation in different ways. If an instance becomes problematic, it can also be quarantined from other instances. These 2 combine to both allow free speech and prevent poisoning of communities simultaneously.
There is nothing to stop you creating a moderation free community. You can even be part of a whole sub-federation of instances with that mindset. The only thing others can take from you is the ability to reach into their communities. It just turns out that most people don’t want to be involved in that sort of community.
It only won’t matter if the mods in the community your switching from aren’t actually bad. If it’s only you who doesn’t like them, then it’s you who’s the problem, and your leaving fixed it for that community.
But if it’s true that the mod in that community is a real problem, most of the people in that community will move with you, and the problematic mod will be left with an empty community and nothing to moderate.
Or perhaps the people are split. Then you’ll have two communities on the same topic, with different moderation policies.
In any of the above cases, that’s the system working correctly.
I refuse to engage with this topic in terms of “freedom of speech” and “censorship.” There are no civil rights at issue when moderators of a forum delete comments. If you want to talk about petty, tyrannical behavior by the mods that’s a question of what kind of community we want to have. NOT “freedom of speech.” There absolutely have to be norms of conduct here or the place will descend into shit. So unrestrained expression is off the table in all scenarios.
Stop talking about it as freedom of speech and then we can get somewhere.
“If this gets me banned than you are worse than spez” hahahahahahahaha, wot m8?
I get the feeling that you are not taking me seriously or that you might even be mocking or worse ridiculing me /s
You can host your own instance to share your opinions.
Still don’t expect other instances for allowing content they don’t want to be federated with, so you might have where to say something but it might not reach everyone.Lemmy.world, by its own continuous admission, is not a free speech platform
Community moderation simply isn’t the issue most people leaving Reddit were looking to solve during Rexit
I think I found this out a bit late. I was looking for something that allows for free speech while preventing anti-social content/behaviour.
I was looking for something that allows for free speech while preventing anti-social content/behaviour.
Then create your own instance, you can post what ever you want then,
But of course, no one has to federate with you if they do not want to listen.
Personally, I feel it’s the proper job of a mod to decide what kind of a community they want to foster, establish their rules to reflect those goals, and enforce accordingly. Not every online space has to be a wild frontier allowing the worst of online behavior. Furthermore, any person who wants such a wild frontier community on reddit or here is certainly free to make that community. If enough people enjoy hanging out with that behavior, then your community will be a success. And THAT is actual freedom of speech: make your community the way you like it, and see how many other people want to hang out with you. I promise, if I visit your community, I won’t complain about being offended or aggravated.
Most of my experience with people complaining about lack of freedom of speech have tried to force their wild frontier self expressions onto spaces where civil speech is enforced or the topics to be discussed are tightly defined.
Please give actual examples of what was silenced.
Also what is your definition of freedom of speech?
Do you understand that freedom of speech is a legal, very explicitly defined thing?
Do you understand that freedom of speech is a legal, very explicitly defined thing?
Freedom of speech is a philosophical concept. What is protected speech may be very explicitly defined, but that’s a different thing.
honestly? nothing whatsoever. I see a lot of censorship on lemmy, particularly in the *.ml instances.
If you got banned a lot of Reddit, the problem might be you.
There were some dubious moderators, but I tended to stick to subs where i share values with the sub and the mods and things were pretty decent. If they hadn’t torpedoed mobile apps I probably would have stuck around.
In contrast, Lemmy seems to be very lightly moderated across the board, probably because moderating is a crap load of work.
If you got banned a lot of Reddit, the problem might be you.
Or the problem might be reddit i.e. a problem reddit has with free speech:
- reddit is like many other social media subject to campaigns of propaganda by companies, groups, state-actors.
- bots are common place and are influencing discourse
Social effects like mob mentality take place, so if you are an individualist and say it how it is you are going to be surpressed just for voicing a legitimate opinion.
You clearly cannot question the prevalence of bots and large scale manipulation by bad faith actors (say for example a company that systematically downvotes or through their mods bans all unfavorable comments about flaws in their new product).
🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩
I think its mistake to simply play these folks off as people who want to say racial slurs or something.
I’m not.
But I am starting to get the feeling that they, let’s put this gently, do not play well with others. And that subsequently they externalize that experience.
Since this is a recipe for recidivism (you don’t learn anything if you always think the others are at fault) and eventually you get banned and it ends up being a self fulfilling prophecy.
I refuse to let Lemmy become the place where people banned from other services go stink up the place.
Agreed on all points. I loved Reddit and had a long lived account with a decent amount of comment karma. I dropped it cold turkey when the API change happened.
Never had any real run ins with mods even though I had arguments with other users pretty regularly. I acted in good faith and tried to be helpful as much as possible.
Most subreddits were fine. If you got banned all over the place, it says more about you than it does Reddit.
Edit: regarding the light moderation on Lemmy, I think some of that is just because there’s less content here spread across a lot more places. Most communities are pretty sparse.
Freedom of expression should not be subject to the whims of individuals!
Are you saying it should be without limitation?
Insults, hate speech, lies, prejudice, riling up conflict and hate? Ad spam and off topic?
I would also be fine if insults, hate speech, lies, predejcue, riling up and hate and spam and off topic are prevented but legitimate speech remains uncensored.
basically all speech that doesnt break the rules.
What are you complaining about being removed then?
No not at all there are limits to free speech for example screeming fire in a packed theatre.
I don’t think it should be in the hands of individuals but it should probably be community based idk, maybe through voting or some better system. like a sort of distributed moderation instead of centralized.
How much more distributed do you want it?
What i mean like the jury system were 12 random users for example might be picked and then they get to vote on a case.
So no judge? How do we make sure that the jury follows the rules?
I’m not sure tbh
I think something were there was a jury system, part of your social media experience would be to sit jury for a queue of cases. and you just vote by button press along with 12 others to decide on bans and the like.
Who plays the judge in this judicial system?
this guy:
Why? because that’s a great cosplay, and frankly, he looks fun.
LOL! Agreed!
good question.
Cry harder, then go start your own instance so you can moderate yourself.
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I myself have not made a single report.
I consider the job of mods to prevent another 4chan. Without moderation pedo content and other awful content will flood the site. I do not bother mods because of name-calling. Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can never hurt me.
Modlogs are public here, for one. As communities get bigger and modding gets more labor intensive there’s bound to be some convergence in practices, but there’s also different options available as instances can defederate, new instances can be established, forks can be made of the technologies at play, etc.
Guess we’ll see.
Guess we’ll see.
I guess so
