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.

  • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    How would it do that? How does it do that?

    By being less censored than Reddit, and both being complete garbage and full of slop, spam and trolls.

    The lack of anyone else demonstrating the same level of fluency as me despite what seems like immense pressure to do so in the current state of the anglosphere / planet

    How would they do that? You’ve spoken to everyone to know that you have better fluency?

    Also, is there a way to tell if (or maybe when) a post here is edited, so you could prove your answer with numbered links?

    Why should I do that?

    If I remember right you said “these rules” but it was a question, so it’s acting like I somehow know what set of rules you mean when you didn’t establish a group of rules to be talking about before calling it “these rules”

    No, it wasn’t.

    I was asking what pressure the lemmy.world admins were supposedly under when they made the instance.

    • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      By being less censored than Reddit, and both being complete garbage and full of slop, spam and trolls.

      If that was all true, I still don’t see how it would answer my question.

      How would they do that?

      Same ways as me, I guess (except more)

      You’ve spoken to everyone to know that you have better fluency?

      Your fluency is so bad that’s what you thought I said?

      Or are you just a deeply dishonest person?

      Why should I do that?

      Do what? You put this after the part where you copied and pasted me asking if there’s a way to prove your answer with numbered links - are you asking me what the burden of proof is yet again? Why do you keep acting like you need things repeated so many times? And you still didn’t answer the question, is there a way to tell if (or maybe when) a post here is edited?

      No, it wasn’t.

      Incorrect. It was.

      I was asking what pressure the lemmy.world admins were supposedly under when they made the instance.

      I didn’t ask what you had been asking at the time, and putting this after the “no, it wasnt” makes it seem like this is all supposed to flow together to someone who’s not paying attention. But it’s weird to do this manipulative stuff for “someone who’s not paying attention” because, once again I tell you brother, it is pretty much just us this deep into this subthread so far.

      • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        If that was all true, I still don’t see how it would answer my question.

        It’s closer to being uncensored than Reddit or the Fediverse.

        Same ways as me, I guess (except more)

        What a non-answer.

        Your fluency is so bad that’s what you thought I said?

        If you haven’t spoken to everyone, then how can you know that you are the most fluent English speaker on the planet?

        Do what? You put this after the part where you copied and pasted me asking if there’s a way to prove your answer with numbered links - are you asking me what the burden of proof is yet again? Why do you keep acting like you need things repeated so many times? And you still didn’t answer the question, is there a way to tell if (or maybe when) a post here is edited?

        I did none of this. My dude, you don’t even know how to check if a post is edited and you’re coming up with grand plans for how the future of Lemmy should go.

        Incorrect. It was.

        No, it wasn’t.

        I didn’t ask what you had been asking at the time, and putting this after the “no, it wasnt” makes it seem like this is all supposed to flow together to someone who’s not paying attention. But it’s weird to do this manipulative stuff for “someone who’s not paying attention” because, once again I tell you brother, it is pretty much just us this deep into this subthread so far.

        Whatever this slop is above me, it’s not an answer. I was asking what pressure the lemmy.world admins were supposedly under when they made the instance.

        • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          It’s closer to being uncensored than Reddit or the Fediverse.

          What is?

          What a non-answer.

          What is?

          If you haven’t spoken to everyone, then how can you know that you are the most fluent English speaker on the planet?

          I don’t really care for riddles.

          I did none of this.

          I assume this is a response to me pointing out something you did. Why lie?

          My dude, you don’t even know how to check if a post is edited and you’re coming up with grand plans for how the future of Lemmy should go.

          Didn’t ask.

          No, it wasn’t.

          What wasn’t what?

          Whatever this slop is above me, it’s not an answer.

          I probably didn’t ask what you thought about it. Why waste time typing that?

          I was asking what pressure the lemmy.world admins were supposedly under when they made the instance.

          Today’s capitalism making people need money to survive, authorities threatening to arrest people who run websites that host “child porn,” etc.

          Why do you keep asking such dumb questions?

          • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            My god, you’ve forgotten almost everything spoken about merely a few posts beforehand.

            Today’s capitalism making people need money to survive, authorities threatening to arrest people who run websites that host “child porn,” etc.

            I don’t think lemmy.world admins want to host child porn in the first place. Like my assumption is that the reason they don’t is not just because its against the law, but also because they just don’t want to - because they’re opposed to child porn at a moral level. So this isn’t really a “pressure” if they happen to agree with the law, and have no problem following it.

            • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              My god, you’ve forgotten almost everything spoken about merely a few posts beforehand.

              Me or god? Either way, I think me and god both remember pretty much the whole conversation. Unlike me, god might even remember the exact order it all happened in and exactly what each part is in response to.

              I don’t think lemmy.world admins want to host child porn in the first place.

              I didn’t ask if you do. Why waste time typing that?

              Like my assumption is that the reason they don’t is not just because its against the law, but also because they just don’t want to - because they’re opposed to child porn at a moral level.

              I didn’t ask what you assume. Why waste time typing that?

              So this isn’t really a “pressure” if they happen to agree with the law, and have no problem following it.

              Incorrect. Pressure isn’t erased by finding someone who agrees with it. In fact, the kind of “pressure” we’re talking about is social pressure, which can’t even happen without someone willing to make it happen.