Beehaw is a community of individuals and therefore does not have any specific political affiliation. At this point in time, we do not know what the political leanings of most of our users are. I would suspect that many of them would identify as progressive because we are explicitly a safe space for minorities. What we stand for and the space that we’re trying to make is compatible with many forms of politics. Unfortunately some political groups build themselves around and choose to elevate or tolerate hate speech. These are the only political groups that we are incompatible with. If any of it was unclear in any of the other posts, I will restate it all here. Beehaw does not tolerate hate speech. Beehaw is an explicitly safe space. We center and promote kindness because that is what we see and love in the world.
Some of the instances that we have chosen to defederate with have explicit political stances and ideologies. Their political stance and ideology had nothing to do with the choice to defederate. The choice to defederate was based on the amount of hate speech present on the instance and/or explicitly endorsing it. Since hate speech is not controlled on the instances that these users come from, we cannot expect them to change their behavior when participating on our instance. While users may exist on some of these platforms who do not spread hate speech, the choice to defederate is made to reduce the burden on our moderators and admins. Occasionally these instances or users from these instances will point their fingers at Beehaw and make claims about our political leanings or whether certain kinds of politics are banned. To be explicitly clear, the only kind of politics that are banned here are those which enable hate speech such as fascism.
Politics on the internet
Many, if not most discussions of politics on the internet are poisoned by virtue signaling. When they are not poisoned by virtue signaling, discussions are often just ways to vent emotions. I believe the reason for this is the platforms themselves and the incentives to engage online. On the internet I can adjust my level of anonymity. An adjustable level of anonymity allows me to change how I speak to others while simultaneously mitigating or removing any consequences to myself. This of course varies based on the platform and what I’m attempting to accomplish, but in the context of speaking with others on the internet, I can be relatively consequence free to say whatever I want on most major platforms. Particularly negative or hateful behavior might cause me to be banned off of a platform, but through the use of technology or other means, I can simply create another account (or migrate to another platform) and continue the same speech. In malicious terms, I do not have to worry about managing someone else’s emotions or my connection to them.
In real life, on the other hand, it is not as easy to pass myself off as someone else. I must be much more aware of how I speak to others because consequences can be much more dire. When discussing politics with others, I may alienate them or myself and so I may choose to be more open to listen rather than soapboxing. The people I’m interacting with may be a regular part of my life and may be people I have come to respect. Understanding how they think might be vitally important to maintaining or improving our connection.
I am presenting the internet and real life as two ends of a spectrum but it is more complicated than that. There are people who are very visible and tied to their identities on the internet just as there are people in real life who use false identities created to mask their true identity. Interactions vary in level of connection, platform, and who happens to know who we are in other spaces on the internet. There are plenty of people who talk on the internet about politics with the explicit goal of changing the minds of others. Some of these individuals are not using this as an outlet to manage their own emotions. These generalizations are presented in this way because I need to talk about these patterns in the context of the platform Lemmy. I’m asking everyone on this platform to be wary of anyone who focuses on politics but is unable to explain the issues themselves. They are probably trying to deceive you, are virtue signaling, or projecting their own insecurities and you should be skeptical of their approach.
I would encourage all of you to think about incentives when presented with political drama online. It is easy to get engaged because politics has a direct and often scary effect on our lives. In this community, it is not difficult to find individuals who are regularly marginalized by politicians. Especially for these minorities, it is completely valid to get emotionally invested in politics and I would personally encourage doing so on some level, but we need to think carefully about the other parties present in a conversation and whether they are willing to listen or incentivized to do so. For the people who are hiding behind anonymity and posting to vent their emotional frustrations with the system they are likely not invested in the community we are growing here and it may be appropriate and healthy to ignore or disengage with these folks.
Forking
It is in this political context that forking from the main Lemmy development has been presented. People are quick to point to potential upsides of forking, but the upsides are an after thought presented as a means to bolster or justify forking. These justifications are for what is ultimately a moral issue. The question at hand is whether it is moral to use a platform developed by someone who has committed acts which one deems immoral. To anyone posing this question, I would ask them to consider what other technology they use every day and to trace the roots back to each invention along the path to today’s day and age. The world has a colonialist history, rife with violence and immoral behavior. Unless you retreat the woods and recreate technologies yourself from scratch, it’s impossible to live in a modern society without benefiting from technology built on countless dead bodies in history.
We do not have the technical expertise to create a new tool from scratch - all we can do is leverage tools that already exist to create communities like this. At the time we created this instance, the service we decided on was Lemmy. We did so with awareness of discussions around the politics of the main instance and developers. I think we’ve done a decent job outlining what we intend to do with this instance and explicitly made strong stances against hate speech and other behavior we do not agree with, including where we disagree with them. When taken in the context of computing in general, these political leanings are also not unique in their social and political harm as compared to some of the tech giants out there. The same is true in comparison to some of the famous tech inventors and innovators; in comparison to the history of computer technology; in comparison to the exploitation and problematic mining of rare earth minerals used in technology; in comparison to the damages we cause to the earth to create the energy used to power our servers. We can follow this path of thinking back all that we want to, and ultimately it’s just not a particularly fruitful discussion to zero in on whether the political leaning of the main developers and instance are in perfect alignment with what we want to accomplish. We are not explicitly endorsing their viewpoint by using their software and we are not tied to using this software forever.
I cannot stress enough how much bandwidth has been taken up by these discussions in recent days. It been brought up as frequently as every few hours across Discord, Matrix, inbox replies, comment replies, new threads, and other forms of communication. We’re currently dealing with a lot of other issues like keeping the server running, expanding to add more communities, moderating the communities amidst a huge influx of users posting and reply content from other instances, managing expenses, optimizing our server, planning for the future, and so much more. We cannot entertain philosophical discussions on all of the wonderful things we ‘could do’ when we’re struggling to keep up with what we’re already currently doing. We have not yet received a serious proposal for a fork which details operational needs when it comes to the maintenance, support, and resources needed to accomplish and maintain it. Simply put we do not believe a fork is necessary at this time.
How you can help
As a final note, if there are things you’d like to see in this community we very much appreciate your input. However, this community has grown so large that I am already finding myself unable to reply to everyone and address everyone’s concerns and I’m sure other admins feel similarly. Please consider whether your questions are better directed elsewhere - consider using the search functionality to see if others have answered the question; consider joining the matrix or discord to field questions to community members, or create a thread asking for help from your fellow users before reaching out to an administrator or a moderator.
If you feel strongly about contributing to Beehaw specifically or helping out with tuning or running the hardware, please join the Matrix or Discord and get involved in the relevant channels or discussions. If you want to contribute to Lemmy development, we would encourage you to dip your toes in, get involved, and get more familiar with the platform. Follow the Github and report bugs when you encounter them, or see what you can contribue to existing open issues. If you see technical issues arise with development, bring it to our attention so that we can act as mediators because we have collective power.
If you feel strongly about a longer term or larger project like creating a team to create documentation or helping us to legally become a nonprofit entity I also want to assure you that we love the enthusiasm, but unless you are coming to us with a formal pitch please spend your efforts self-organizing around this so that you can come to us with that pitch. Assume we know nothing about the field of expertise needed to accomplish any of these larger tasks and assume that we are extremely busy and unable to field or solicit advice without an executive summary and at least a draft plan of what the steps might look like, who would be responsible for those steps, anticipated concerns and plans for addressing them, and a timeline and estimation of resources needed.
My whole experience of moving to lemmy has felt like when people from another state move to a new one and complain about how awful it is and force it to change into where they left. If people are so absplutely offended by the politics of its originators, go create your own social media and stop harassing the poor mods, especially if the mods of this particular instance are trying to make your experience more palatable.
I settled on lemmy.world, but yeah 90% of the lemmy related discussion I see is “Why doesn’t this work like Reddit and when can I expect it to work like Reddit?”
I’ve tried to do my part in explaining this isn’t meant to be Reddit, but I’m already seeing an increase in hostility directed at devs for the lack of central authority (which is the thing they’re fleeing in the first place but fuck me for pointing that out lol.)
Hey server buddy!
I think it’s a mindset - with a company at the head, if you don’t like the product, you should complain.
They need to understand this isn’t a product - it’s a project. It’s not mature yet, and it’s trying to solve a very difficult problem - how do you make social media healthier and more resistant to exploitation. The design they’ve settled on is complex and ambitious, and I’m pretty impressed it’s been able to scale up this well
All that being said, the main complaint I’ve noticed (and I think is valid and it often gets dismissed) - to sign up users are given a choice (which server to join), and to make an informed choice there’s a minimum of a few pages of required reading
It definitely matters, and the way you’re presented this choice is pretty overwhelming
I’m working on a Lemmy client, and my thought is this - break up the options. Give users a choice of 3-5 options with a “next” button and a search option.
Another is the difficulty of finding and subscribing to communities - I’ve noticed a huge improvement with some recent changes, but there’s always more that can be done
Anything else you’ve noticed? Particularly if it’s something to keep in mind as I write the app
I just migrated from Reddit, and liked what I read about BeeHaw. Signup was a bit confusing, but eventually just sent an email to the team, wrote a bit about myself (education, family, interested, political leanings, probably massively oversharing 😅), and got an invite a few minutes later.
So far I really like the tone in here, and especially the quality of the comments. Feels like Reddit at its best, nice and helpful people.
I was on Reddit for 15 years (plus a few years lurking), and it’s been my largest casual time-sink throughout. Leaving sucks. In the end, I couldn’t accept losing my Android client — 10 year anniversary with Relay a few days ago — the thought of having to use the official app made me gag, as probably 95% of my Reddit time is on mobile. So I left for BeeHaw/Lemmy, and now I have to work with something that’s (from a UX standpoint) probably even worse 😅
It’s the principle, though; they’re fucking over their users so incredibly hard, and I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. Even if that means having to use a platform that isn’t mature yet. Fuck it, I’ve been here before, and I can cope with having to start over again. I hope Lemmy can get to a point where there’s a great experience to be had on mobile (I’m currently on/in Jerboa, btw). Maybe you’re the one to fix it? 😍
So — a few things that I’m struggling with that might be worth considering for your app:
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The ability to hide read/upvoted posts! This is my main pain point, by a very wide margin. As a Relay user, I’m used to a fresh screen with fresh new posts every time I open the app. Not so in Jerboa. Open app, and there is (potentially) a very long scroll ahead of me too get past posts I’ve already read and upvoted. I can look for upvotes, but I don’t upvotes everything, so not a perfect indicator. The only functional one seems to be a slightly greyed-out post title (dark theme). My current understanding (very limited, granted) is that this is a Lemmy thing in general, not just Jerboa. Something about lacking the ability to react to a post being previously viewed æ upvoted? Either way, I’d love a setting that would let me hide all posts that I’ve upvoted, or hide all posts that I’ve read (clicked). Also the ability to manually hide a post from the main list view (get rid of something without having to upvoted or click on/into). In combination with a Refresh-button, maybe?
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Better options for sorting posts (newest / popular / etc.). Probably also a Lemmy thing.
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Not having to manually scroll this text box up constantly because what I’m typing is disappearing behind the keyboard. Seriously, Jerboa? 😑
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The ability to hide the downvote button.
Sorry, have to go to a meeting, will try to come back to this later and add more suggestions 😊
Good luck with the app! Can’t wait to see it 😃 It’s for Android, right? 😬
I’d love a setting that would let me hide all posts that I’ve upvoted, or hide all posts that I’ve read (clicked). Also the ability to manually hide a post from the main list view (get rid of something without having to upvoted or click on/into).
Me too!
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Yeah. As a project, it requires input from users, not just a company.
All that being said, the main complaint I’ve noticed (and I think is valid and it often gets dismissed) - to sign up users are given a choice (which server to join), and to make an informed choice there’s a minimum of a few pages of required reading
It definitely matters, and the way you’re presented this choice is pretty overwhelming
I’m working on a Lemmy client, and my thought is this - break up the options. Give users a choice of 3-5 options with a “next” button and a search option.
I would even go further and allow a “don’t care” option which randomly assigns new users to an instance with auto accept. Even make this the default.
Those who want can have the option to get into the details and make an individual decision.
I just want a super easy clean simple interface which is what attracted me to reddit in the first place. I feel like anything more complicated than “simple” is a step in the wrong direction. I’ll withhold judgment for a while until I’ve settled in but like many other new users I’m finding the learning curve challenging.
I don’t know that the developers of lemmy intended this to be a space mirroring reddit, nor did they expect a mass exodus of users from reddit jumping on to lemmy.
That’s my entire point though - You’re asking for a Reddit clone, and Lemmy isn’t meant to be a Reddit clone. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, but people need to stop demanding the devs shift gears and make it a Reddit clone.
I disagree that I’m asking for a reddit clone. I’m saying sites like reddit and google were very successful in large part due to their extremely clean minimalist user friendly design. In an era where everything now “just works” it seems like a regression to increase complications.
I recently moved here and through my minimal interaction so far, I love it. I’m all about positive treatment and inclusion. I have only made two posts (as a somewhat personal experiment to test the waters) which would not have had any attention on Reddit, and people actually talked and congratulated me, which was a very weird but welcome experience.
And I love that the downvote arrow is removed in order to promote discussion rather than just vote and move on.
A service can always improve and get better in some ways, but the stance of beehaw is perfect imo
I agree with your sentiments! I love the engagement outside of all of these discussions and absolute flood of “how do I do xyz” and “it would be better if…” on like every single community and every post lol.
I want access to lemmygrad so I created another account, but overall I do like how beehaw is structured and all things considered I’m surprised at how much people are being critical of it, especially with Alyaza and Gaywallets very patient and thoughtful responses.
More what I’m getting at, though, in terms of trying to change lemmy is changing the culture of it. Regardless of where they are on the spectrum, it seems like most people on lemmy have been some flavor of leftist, and I could be wrong, but holy cow there are a TON of people "both sides"ing and using the example of discussion around gender affirming Healthcare not being a good convo to have here as something infringing on their free speech as if those conversations aren’t dogwhistles for transphobia. People can happily move to other centrist instances, or ones like exploding-heads if they want to engage in that crap. Again, I’m a newb here and I could be off and maybe this has always been a thing, but I was on mastodon years ago which is similar and I wasn’t too far off
I think in terms of technical development, of course there’s always room for improvement but I also feel that some things are the way they are for a reason, and endless expansion might not be what the developers want, over a more cohesive, personal community. I go both ways on that.
Like I never even thought about that aspect and honestly I don’t care as long as I’m not funding violence and hatred. And if that were the case I’d leave. It makes no sense to tell someone how to run their instance. It’s theirs.
Excellent response. I joined Beehaw because I liked Beehaw’s rules and philosophy. Kinda reminds me of Mozilla’s in beta Mastodon instance. Beehaw as an entity is completely separate from its technological roots and this post eloquently shows that.
I hope this eases any political harassment along those lines.
I like this post! I follow some people elsewhere who are mostly hyping up kbin because the main developer of Lemmy is a tankie and the main developer of kbin maybe isn’t - but it’s such a weird thing to apply a purity test to. Other comments mentioned it but Lemmy is FOSS, so even if you disagree with the political leanings of the developers, you are totally free to do what you want with it. Barring the presence of any backdoors (which would likely/hopefully be caught because, again, FOSS) the main developers don’t have access to any instances created with the software. I don’t really understand the concern.
Now, if there’s a functional concern with the Lemmy platform and how it’s being developed, then yeah, that’s when a fork should be looked at. It shouldn’t be looked at by an individual community (with a lack of people who can help), but a more widespread effort. But forking because the “lead” developer doesn’t match your purity test? Nah.
Personally I have a very poor opinion of tankies, but that doesn’t really affect how I use Lemmy…unless all the good instances are taken over by them. I find the obsession with effectively random people who don’t actually have that much influence over individual instance moderation a purity obsession.
I didn’t even know what a tankie was before today.
I follow some people elsewhere who are mostly hyping up kbin because the main developer of Lemmy is a tankie and the main developer of kbin maybe isn’t - but it’s such a weird thing to apply a purity test to. Other comments mentioned it but Lemmy is FOSS
Actually Kbin is FLOSS too: https://github.com/ernestwisniewski/kbin
Hopefully not repeating things others have said…
- Thanks for taking the time to write long thoughtful posts explaining the admin thinking, rather than just “we have decided X, live with it” posts.
- It seems entirely appropriate to me for the admins to set the tone of this instance, through explicit rules, through deciding who to add as a user and who to make a mod, and through deciding which other instances to federate with. Anybody who disagrees can always start their own instance. That you’re opening a coffee shop doesn’t mean anyone can come in without shirt and shoes (bad analogy like all analogies).
- It’s entirely possible that I (older white male with plenty of income raised in a homegeneous white suburb) have some opinions that would be appropriate on one of those defederated instances but not here. I can always make an account over there if I feel the need to post those opinions. Likewise, if someone on a defederated instance wants to post here and can behave themselves according to the house rules, they can create an account here. This doesn’t seem like a huge burden to impose on anyone.
- During a long career as a software developers, just about every successful fork I can recall came about because a majority of a project’s developers (not its users!) decided they had to leave a dysfunctional project. Until/unless Lemmy gets to that point it seems pretty silly to me to talk about forking the codebase.
This is what I have failed to understand about people seemingly worried about this instance wanting to be a safe space. If they do not like it, they can just jump to another instance.
“Safe space” also doesn’t have to mean milquetoast or self-censoring. I’m new to this particular community, but I expect there are all manner of topics that any of us could discuss passionately without being jerks. Reading the description of the founding ethos of this community suggested only that I make a commitment to being decent and that I respect the dignity and celebrate the validity of others who aren’t like me. I don’t see anything in there about restricting vigorous discussions about tax policy or guns or whatever the day’s hot topic is as long as you’re decent about it and start from the assumption that people can disagree in good faith.
Is it possible to have a list of de-federated instances from Beehive? I think it may be good for transparency, even if I am pretty satisfied about how things are being done here!
Go to the bottom of the page, click on the Instances link and you’ll se 2 lists, all federated instances and all defederated instances.
Ah great! Thanks for pointing it out!
A few years ago it turned out a very promising python documentation library was using another library for a core aspect of the docstring comment parsing subsystem. I don’t remember the names of either of these two, but as it turns out, the person who wrote the docstring comment parsing subsystem was someone who liked using the Nazi-Facing-Swastika as his repeating background image on his site and as textual glyphs to denote things like list items. He claimed it was everyone being too stupid to know he was using it in an eastern context, but he had an email like firstname_lastname88@gmail or whatever.
The point I made then is that even if FirstName LastName was running into a culture-shock situation, and even if they just happened to like the number 88 - or maybe they were born in 88 - there was simply no way I wanted to tie myself or my employer to that person. Nobody is going to extend any grace.
I guess I don’t even think that is necessarily a bad thing. Why should people stanning genocidal authoritarian regimes be extended grace? Is it only okay if they can give us something, like a nazi scientist building space rockets? Is it simply because they gave you something you can’t get anywhere else without paying more than you’d want to? I actually don’t have an answer for this. I felt fine telling PossibleNazi88
No, and AccidentallyLinkedCompositionalLibraryAuthorSorry, I'll pass, and in large part that is because Sphinx does exist and I can use it, even if I’d prefer not to. But what if this library were the only one? Would I just hold my nose and use it anyway?Same with Lemmy - can I get it in a different package? A similar fediverse community package, without the gross genocide cooties all over it? This is a practical question; maybe this is reason enough to want to host a kbin instance over lemmy, eventually.
But philosophically: What if the next fediverse community package is from a Patriotic American, who has no problem with all the first peoples genocides and chattel slavery history because they believe in America so much that it’s an intrinsic part of their identity?
It sucks because I want to make everything better, and I believe that to be true of Beehaw administration for sure as well, but navigating this shit is hard and even if you’re principled you’re probably only principled insofar as you’re aware.
Conversely, doing the thing you know to be wrong just because the alternative is hard and maybe impossible isn’t good either. But maybe you can use the genocide-fan’s product to do more good than harm? But now you’re back to nazi scientists making moon rockets, and nobody is happy.
I guess I’m just rambling while I admire the problem.
I definitely agree and feel with the arguments you have here. It’s a challenging issue to resolve. On one hand there’s the practical Rock of “transitioning to another asset and engaging in the practical burden that shifting gears brings,” and in this circumstance, that would come with the extra caveat of trying to commit to that transition during a busy period as is. On the other hand is the moral Hard Place of “you’re working with an asset actively developed by someone or something with known issues—are you willing to accept, and to some degree associate, with that?” I don’t feel like there’s a clear-cut path that’s both morally bright and practically realistic, and it’s not the kind of thing that makes me dance with joy.
If nothing else, it’s good to respect that we have a dilemma in our hands. Whichever way the community decides to collectively stand, both in the short and long term, I’m happy that we’re having this conversation at all. I think it’s important to acknowledge what we have and have a meaningful discussion around it. Putting our heads in the sand and pretending it’s a non-issue at best delays the issue and allows it to fester.
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navigating this shit is hard and even if you’re principled you’re probably only principled insofar as you’re aware.
That’s a great point I almost forgot to highlight. Even if I think I got my things sorted in such a way that I think my hands are clean in something, I typically end up finding out of nowhere that something down the line has some issues behind it that I need to resolve somehow. It’s a process that doesn’t seem to end, and it can feel exhausting sometimes.
You’ve captured my own confusing and conflicting thoughts as well.
I have so far loved my experience here (just been a few days) beehaw is exactly what is what to see in an online community
But despite the federated nature of lemmy the code ultimately is (so I’m learning in this thread!) currently in the hands of people who are the opposite of beehaw. That’s a difficult pill to swallow.
If there were ever a row between the devs of Lemmy and Beehaw, could they retaliate against us in some manner using the code?
I’m struggling to think of an example of this, but maybe something like forcing a “captcha” before every comment submission that requires you to type in something like “Long Lives Chairman Mao” or something like that. It is clearly antithetical to what Beehaw ascribes, but would be ultimately powerless to stop.
I don’t really get why the authors ideals and beliefs matter. For for-profit stuff, it does matter because I don’t want to be supporting someone with that lifestyle or someone who actively wants me dead.
But for the open source stuff, he’s not making any money off of me. And it’s pretty safe since other people are vetting the code and they’ll complain if something malicious is happening. In other words, since I am not contributing to the developer, his ideals don’t really matter to me
The authors ideals and beliefs are relevant, because those guided their decision to make a Free and Open Source, federated alternative to reddit, and avoid capitalist modes of funding (like integrating ads or other exploitative methods). That’s why this existed long before reddit was extorting through their API.
Something else to throw in to the mix: a lot of similar questions have likely been faced by developers to the FOSS community: “What if my library is used in abhorrent ways?” “Should I restrict usage of my software to ensure it’s used in morally good ways?” etc.
In my experience, not too many people seem to take issue with FOSS in these ways–any usage of the software is entirely put on the person using it, and the FOSS developer is not held accountable for it. If we apply the same logic here, I would posit that the usage of FOSS developed by a morally questionable developer should have a similar dissociation applied.
I’ll also challenge your analogy of nazi scientists. Hiring someone who has committed humanitarian atrocities is quite different from using FOSS produced by morally questionable developers. In the latter case, this person is not receiving any significant benefit (one could argue publicity, but the value of that seems debatable and minimal compared to a salary). A closer analogy would be something like: is it morally acceptable to make use of the code that those nazi scientists produced for an authoritarian regime? Still a complicated question, but more related to the issue at hand, I think.
I would love to have this as a generalized text to be shared between instances. I’d use the general mood of this post as basis for the rules for all my instances. Maybe on GitHub, which then can be edited through pull requests and discussed.
I originally joined Beehaw, but decided to run my own instance because why not. I still prefer subscribing the communities in Beehaw just due to this way of thinking. I hope the moderation works for you and doesn’t get too bad.
You’re welcome to take my text and use it as a starting point for self-organizing around governance to fit your needs.
I am curious of this. Just trying to get some perspective. You say some political “parties” facilitate hate speech. I guess I am curious how tight that belt squeezes.
For context, I am pretty far to the left politically. Farther left than any of the parties in the US. But some would associate the entire Republican party to facilitate hate speech. While a large bunch, if not most of loud ones on the internet do right now, a lot of them that I know personally, hate Trump and agree with most liberal social issues but are just against tax dollars being used for certain things. “Fiscally conservative” as they say. Conversations are fine with these people, we just don’t agree.
You are allowed to do whatever you want on your server and I can understand not wanting to pay to host something that disagrees with your values and beliefs. I am just trying to understand how this goes. If someone was having a peaceful discussion about a political non hateful subject without any hate in it, would they be removed purely because they revealed they are a Republican?
I understand the possibility of that hypothetical scenario gets lower every day unfortunately, especially on the internet.
I’ve explicitly stated that we are focused on the hate speech and only the hate speech. I don’t care what political affiliation you have. I only care if you’re spreading hate speech.
“Unfortunately some political groups build themselves around and choose to elevate or tolerate hate speech. These are the only political groups that we are incompatible with.”
I guess this is where it got muddy for me. Thank you for the response.
Hopefully this is not inappropriate, but regarding the “this platform was made by tankies”–argument:
Yeah lemmygrad will fade in popularity and lemmy.ml has already gotten so big it’s shifted politically. It also seems like the creators are fine with other ideas on their instance too. Maybe it’s just cause they know lemmy wouldnt get adopted otherwise but the only strict moderating against speech I see is against the obvious trolls and alt right fascists so far.
Then you have beehaw and the other instances outright blocking lemmygrad and things seem just peachy
This is from an outsider (non US) perspective, so I am sorry in advance if this is offensive to ask but Google doesn’t really help me here.
I looked up what a “tankie” is and that seems to be an insult to people who live in a communist state. Is communism considered a hate speech or otherwise hateful for people in the USA?
The common usage of tankie in left spaces is someone who parrots North Korean, Chinese, russian propaganda, someone who supports the use of violence and military action, and someone who will often downplay or deny the atrocities done by one side. For example denying the massacre at tienamen square or supporting Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. On lemmygrad there was actually a non ironic thread about celebrating Stalin’s brithday.
A tankie is essentially the leftist counterpart to the right wing fascist. They just support a different flavor of centralized military dictatorship.
Tankie usually means someone who supports the authoritarianism of communist authoritarian nations. Occasionally it’s also used to describe all communists
Communism is not considered hate speech, but it is commonly hated
Interestingly, I think this is similar to how “patriotism” is seen in Germany. Patriotism is commonly hated although probably not all patriots are die-hard Nazis. The dislike or even hate towards communism is very foreign to me but it is good to know, thanks for explaining.
Americans are highly propagadized to hate communism.
My wife is a political organizer, no matter what type of person she engages with people agree with Socialist/Communist policy. However if you start the conversation openly on what ideology that policy is based in people shut down or worse get angry/violent with you. It’s absolutely wild.
I didn’t realize lemmygrad was tolerating hate speech over there. That’s fucked up.
I think it has more to do with them being Marxist Leninists which is really problematic to a lot of people. You should go check it out and see for yourself what the posts look like.
What specifically about being a Marxist Leninist is so bad that it warrants lumping them in with racists? I’m not an ML and I disagree with them on a number of things, but they’re no Nazis. I looked around I didn’t see anything particularly repugnant.
Honestly I’m pretty much on the same boat as you and I feel like the frenzy is overblown, especially right now with the huge influx of people from a platform that by and large has some pretty lib takes. Some examples that people have given are their unwavering support of China, Russia, North Korea and denial about tianenman Square. I kinda side eye people who don’t have nuanced takes about North Korea or any of those places for that matter. I am also hard pressed to think that people eho specifically identify as ML’s wouldnt do their research, but of course there are all kinds. I am curious what specifically has been done and said that warrants hate speech on there to make it such a big deal. But yeah it’s not like people are screaming “LETS GENOCIDE PEOPLE!!!”. Idk
I kinda side eye people who don’t have nuanced takes about North Korea
Genuinely curious, what kind of nuanced take is there around North Korea to be had? My impression is it’s basically a slave state with a God King.
As a leftist the only positive take I have about most of these states is that A. The ideas were new and they didn’t know better, or B. The situation they came from was so bad they were justified to try something, but then they got power and grew authoritarian as people do. For instance I think Cuba had every reason to revolt. I also think Castro was a repressive dictator.
the American invasion of Korea killed 20% of the population and leveled 80% of the buildings - over 1.5 million died - and now the nation responsible annually conducts the world’s largest military exercises on the north/south border.
also some of the more outrageous stories and defector testimonies about north korea have turned out to be false, like the “all men are required to get haircuts matching kim jong un” story, which turned out to be unsourced claims from radio free asia, and contradicted the equally unsourced bullshit story that men were forbidden to get the kim jong un haircut
(I am the same OP, just using my lemmy.ml account now that the site isn’t down for me) The person who responded to this before I was able gave some pretty general information regarding my thoughts on North Korea here. I used to eat up all of the American propaganda just like everyone else and fancied myself a leftist as well. But as a leftist, we should all know that we should be highly critical of most news media. I’m also living in the US so that’s the perspective I’m bringing here, btw. Anyway, I have done a bit of research and that small amount has changed my mind drastically on how I look at communist countries.
I am not here to say that I think there is nothing problematic about the place, but their position was largely foisted upon them by imperialism. I cannot fault them for the extreme stance, whether I agree with it or not. Also, I feel that the hysteria around these countries whipped up by the US serves to distract us from how truly fucked up our country is. 25 percent of people in the US are food insecure, 21 percent are illiterate, there are daily mass shootings and constant acts of terrorism, train derailments poisoning towns all in the name of money, we are more and more becoming a police state…We can’t say for sure that we definitely have it better here just because we can leave, or that we live with the illusion of choice.
In your response, you wrote “My impression is it’s basically a slave state with a God King”. I would implore you, when you can, when you have energy, to do a bit of research on things like this when your impression is so extreme. You don’t need to change your stance, you can still feel how you feel, but base that on some semblance of research. If you’re curious I’m happy to try and whip up some articles or youtube videos for you to check out that might be interesting.
Outside of that, relating back to comparing the ideology of Marxist Leninists to hate speech: hate speech is defined as “abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.” I have not seen any of this kind of speech on lemmygrad, or from anyone who identifies as ML. In fact a lot of ML’s are staunchly opposed to racism, sexism, homophobia/transphobia, etc. and are part of marginalized groups. Marxist Leninists are not pacifists and from what I gather do believe that war and violence are necessary for revolution but I’ve never seen anyone advocate for genocide, so I feel that the connection is heavy handed. That being said, that’s just my opinion, man, and the mods for beehaw can do what they wish
Editing to add: I also don’t know everything, and there may be some context with lemmygrad that I’m missing, so feel free to educate me if I’m being reductive over here
they aren’t
Unless you retreat the woods and recreate technologies yourself from scratch, it’s impossible to live in a modern society without benefiting from technology built on countless dead bodies in history. This makes complete sense, I also think open source and federated platforms like this give users the most autonomy from the creators of the software when compared to other platforms. I do wish there was the ability to port users and communities across instances, though, kinda like you can do with mastodon. I understand that would be hard for the developers to create, but I think it would help with the creation of a truly free platform.
Furthermore, I think some of the concern around some primary instances is a little overblown, as most of the larger ones have their own policies against bigotry and fascism. However, I understand that the type moderation between instances differs, and that is the best part about federated services.
I don’t pretend to change anything of how this place works, specially considering it’s federated and, as you say, presumably different spaces can be forked and “set up their own rules”.
I remain, however quite keen to see if the “no hate speech” is a consistent thing or simply a “hate is ok against the right targets” and “being on the other side of X issue is hate speech” (e.g.: any controversial topic such as being against a particular war, being in favor of/against political party X, expressing views opposed to government policies, not sharing a specific view by the demographic majority of the site (Usually US/UK/AUS)).
Ideally, I can set up something where I can get exposure to many views and go here and there without having to feel I’m in X circlejerk and the narrative is packet Y, that comes with all these predetermined views in this overton window.
In a way, the more I have access to, the better. Because I can move from side to side learning about the others. Obviously, this view is not shared by many and thet would gladly censor 75% of the space to preserve the right way, claiming it’s “moderation”. I don’t disagree on moderation but I think that we’re too interfered at this point that we don’t even see how little room we have for discussion (which then creates very narrow discussions in different niches).
In any case, sorry for the stream of consciousness. Excited to see how all this works and hopefully I’m able to participate and gain insights from a wide array of perspectives in a wide descentralized network.
As is stated elsewhere, we are explicitly intolerant of the intolerant. Hate speech in response to hate speech is perfectly acceptable - calling Nazis out is cool and correct.
To be absolutely clear as has also been stated in depth elsewhere (please read the other philosophy posts in the sidebar) we are not interested in creating echo chambers on issues which do not involve hate speech or violate the explicitly safe space we have here. You’re welcome to discuss politics with other people, so long as neither of you are advocating hate speech. We recognize that often hate speech comes from a place of ignorance and needing education because we internalize many values from society which are colonialist, but if we treat each other with good faith we can learn a lot from diverse opinions.
Absolutely love this philosophy! Keep up the fantastic work.
I’m very glad to have you running a space like this. It is spectacular.
At the same time I can sympathize with what he said to a point. I don’t want to see hate speech just casually existing in public forums, but I also sometimes look at the spaces they use, out of a sort of morbid curiosity of what they are up to. It is often depressing and I consider it a bad habit, but knowledge is also power, and knowing what they are thinking can help a person avoid it.
With the nature of the fediverse and how accounts can be made on multiple instances no issue, I don’t think it is by any means your job to facilitate that sort of thing.
But you have not addressed my main concern regarding the definition of words. Here’s a perfect example from your comment:
Hate speech in response to hate speech is perfectly acceptable - calling Nazis out is cool and correct.
I already see based on the comments here that anyone who votes for a Republican is going to being considered a Nazi and therefore used as justification for the rules to be applied unevenly against certain political affiliations.
Do you at least see and acknowledge my concern? Because this is going to turn into another dead and boring echochamber extremely quickly if these questions are not addressed head-on upfront.
You claim that this is a non-partisan space. Is it or is it not? Be upfront about what the rules are if you want real honest and well-intentioned engagement from a diverse group of opinions.
I already see based on the comments here that anyone who votes for a Republican is going to being considered a Nazi[…]
other people have covered the rest here, so i’ll just point out that if you’re interested in soapboxing about “well-intentioned engagement from a diverse group of opinions”, you should probably take a second to consider on why you’re seemingly unwilling to consider such engagement from the other direction–or to even engage with why people might believe what you’re describing. i feel comfortable saying this because you were also unwilling to hear out the other side in a previous discussion on here, even when provided with evidence and points from multiple users that directly contradicted your assertions.
I’m in a forum where I am dominated by opposing viewpoints. To say that I’m unwilling to engage is laughable.
And the linked example is a back-and-forth with disagreement. Everything was completely civil. Are you saying that disagreeing with the established hivemind-narrative is “refusing to engage”? Disagreement and debate should be encouraged as long as it’s civil. I really don’t understand the point that you’re trying to make here. And I absolutely loathe the Reddit-like behavior of digging through someone’s post history with the ill-intent to smear them.
Everything was completely civil.
Later in that thread you say
Ah so you’re just a left-wing partisan conspiracy theorist. … Or you’re a troll. Which is probably the case.
Which doesn’t really read as “completely civil”.
To say that I’m unwilling to engage is laughable.
The discussion that was linked quite literally shows your unwillingness to engage. I don’t get lying about something that everyone can check, I can only assume this is your genuine POV. That coupled with your comment earlier in this thread about how “here anyone who votes for a Republican is going to being considered a Nazi” gives the image of someone who does not actually care about “well-intentioned engagement from a diverse group of opinions”. It just reads as a persecution complex. You can’t even give well-intentioned engagement for your opinions!
digging through someone’s post history with the ill-intent to smear them.
It’s a conversation you had with that person like 3 days ago that helps highlight the bad faith engagement here. It’s not like they pulled out some unrelated tweet you made 8 years ago, lol.
He spit out a conspiracy theory and I called him out on it. Jesus Christ.
Nazism is not Republican
Be upfront about what the rules are
I have been explicitly upfront about what the rules are. Please review these two posts for more information.
You haven’t defined the rules until you define ‘hate speech’ which is a core part of the so-called rules.
This concern is explicitly addressed in the links I have provided you.
They have defined the rules - multiple times and at length. If you’re dissatisfied with the lack of formal definition of ‘hate speech’ then that’s fine, but even vaguely defined rules are still defined rules.
Yeah. Don’t want you to feel the need to justify yourself. I appreciate the efforts regardless of whether we end up agreeing on moderation policies (and I think not agreeing on everything and coexisting is awesome). Was just adding my 2 cents, which I feel will be different from many.
I obviously have my concerns on the “call out a nazi” because holding the wrong ™ opinion will get you called a nazi but that’s just par for the course. I don’t particularly need a safe space and it would be bad (imho) if ALL spaces were so but, again, presumably the ability of a descentralized network is that, that everyone will always be able to launch their instance with their rules to mitigate that concern.
I’m perfectly ok to play by the rules here and see how it goes.
Any advice on how I can remove beehaw from my all feed in Jabora?
I find these types of environments produce echo chambers where suddenly I’m not even able to give my perspective on gender as a nonbinary person because it goes against some mainstream perspective.
I have other reasons, but yeah 😝 Fuck mods trying to control politics, I want free discussions, otherwise I’d just stay on Reddit lmao!
If anyone can give me instructions on how to remove beehaw that’d be greatly appreciated.
–edit–
Also if anyone can recommend any instances for open discussion!!
We’re explicitly a safe space for minorities. I’m non-binary myself. But you don’t have to participate here if you don’t want to.
Same, I chose Beehaw in particular because of its stance on providing a bigotry free platform… that being said as a federated service you have many options for a “home instance” but if you still want to interact with a community on another instance you will still be subject to that communities and instances policies. As a lot of people like yourself have chosen Beehaw for its safe space nature, you may miss out on communities you would feel welcomed in if you were to completely swear off Beehaw, although you do have the freedom to choose that.
If you want to do that specifically. You could start your own instance and defederate beehaw and you would see any content from it. That’s kind of the point. Alternatively, don’t subscribe to any beehaw community and click on “subscribed” and you won’t see beehaw content. Or find an instance of your liking and then browse “local” and you won’t see beehaw content.
Regardless of the current situation, I think the option in general to “unsubscribe” from an entire instance could be useful. I know we can create our own instances and defederate, but not everyone has the skills, money, etc. to be able to do that.
Echoing the thank you for taking the time to explain and elaborate on yalls stance. I wasn’t even aware of lemmy’s roots - but I see beehaw’s roots and that’s all I care about. Looking forward to spending time and energy on kindness and love in this little space.
Bravo, I couldn’t care less about the historical context of the tool. I do care deeply that we have no hate.
…
It’s so easy to spot AI generated text (unless it is made to obscure it).
(Not that I oppose its use here. I think tldrs are a suitable use for LLMs.)
Off topic but how can you easily spot AI generated text?
It has a particular style of writing that pops out after you read enough of them. The caveat is that it can be made to change it up enough that you can’t tell. Just tends towards a certain style by default.
Thank goodness for that
