I’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.
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, the OP thinks that even CSAM should not be moderated. Click here.
What the fuck
Yeah, I had a feeling. And had to take the long road to get there.
You can call wanting to avoid planetary extinction a “very specific desire” but it’s very weird to pretend it being unmet wouldn’t be a problem for everyone.
Are you one of those science denialists who pretends climate change isn’t manmade, or will be solved by corporations before the 100 more years it would supposedly take to become a problem, or something?
Non-sequitor.
Nope. The person I was replying to mentioned a “very specific desire” of mine. They were trying to pretend politics is no big deal, like people who think climate change is a future problem that will “just get fixed.”
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.
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.
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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.
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.
4chan has moderation, no voting, and censorship of humans.
Bot spam is what happens to a community with no moderation.
A community with moderation, voting, and no banning humans is not anything like 4chan.
You have a habit of taking everything literally. It has very scant moderation then. Still not selling it to me.
Are you using “habit” euphemistically, or do you literally think that’s a habit of mine?
Can you answer earnestly, not with irony or a joke?
And can you explain why you posted the reply I’m replying to right now?
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.
Instances are and will continue to be censored based on size, just like subreddits.
This is incredibly obvious, enough to prevent any major effort towards even trying to make mainstream zero-censorship instances so far.
I don’t get how you don’t get this.
You start a zero-censorship instance on DNS, it gets blocked immediately.
You start it on Tor, docs say it can’t federate with other instances.
When current levels of censorship get too many users, they can be blocked too, like how they’re currently blocked from reddit, keeping the spread of ideas controlled by the authorities, the same way it was when we were all on reddit.
What fundamental change do you see here that justifies saying the opposite?
An Instance isn’t a subreddit on a major profit-making site that relies heavily on advertisers. The Fediverse just doesn’t operate at base as you think.
An Instance is an Instance on a major profit-making network that relies heavily on advertisers.
It being an Instance instead of a subreddit doesn’t really matter, and neither does how major it is, or that it makes profit, or that there are advertisers.
The issue is that there are centralized groups of people given authority to control the entire space, so other, smaller groups can’t have their own authority over their own discussions without self-isolation.
You could make Tor as major and profit-making as you want and people can advertise on it all they want, and it doesn’t make Instances “subreddits,” but Tor still wouldn’t make it convenient for anyone to exert authority over what everyone else can post and see using Tor.
The reason size had an impact on Reddit, advertisers, does not exist on Lemmy nor is there a single large umbrella.
That makes no sense. If having advertisers is what caused reddit to be censored, then how did the smaller less censored reddit have advertisers the whole time? You’re letting the authorities distract you from their actual systems and methods of control with nonsense explanations like “advertisers”
Ignoring all that - assuming you’re from an alternate timeline where reddit only got advertisers right before going to shit - how does it negate the fact that Lemmy docs say Tor doesn’t work, thus requiring DNS / IP addresses, which factually simply are controlled by corporate authorities?
How does any of it negate the fact that, like last year, ambulance riders simply are being charged money while you post where not many people see it?
How does any of it negate the fact that, like last year, we simply don’t think we’re just one day away from changing it via organized resistance?
How would any of it change the reality where once you posted for few people on reddit, then it was more people and they got splintered between reddit and Lemmy, then as Lemmy grows they split between different parts of Lemmy, while debt collectors keep going after people for ambulance rides?
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
Do you consider taking down CSAM as censorship?
Why are you asking me if I recognize a valid dictionary definition I’ve said nothing to indicate I wouldn’t recognize?
Bad faith, that’s why.
Let me rephrase. Do you think sites should be forced to take down CSAM?