I might get hate because of my instance here, but in an attempt to better understand Lemmy I’m wondering if some of you can shed a light on why you chose this instance, what’s great about it, what could be better, is the instance rivalries something that affects your use of the platform or is it just background noise?
I’m not trying to start a fight or mud slinging, it would be good if several people could say their piece and nobody shame or attack them for it no matter how much you disagree.
Spot on. Taking countries as an analogy for fediverse instances, we shouldn’t make all the citizens of those countries into an ideological monolith: there’s always a diversity of views, even if some views are more predominant than others because they’re encouraged from the top.
And above all we should not be alienating and unecessarily divisive to those who, with a little education and prodding in the right direction, will side with the majority of the world’s workers. Our job is to make allies, patiently educate, and create more caring people.
I’m responding to you, with respect, knowing full well the eventual outcome will probably be that you instance ban me.
How come you seem to allow communities who are moderated by a single user who repeatedly bans people just because they don’t like what someone says in an instant?
Are you seeing your instance as a means to patiently persue a certain ideology rather than allowing free speech and open uninterupted and respectful discourse? This is a genuine question, but you’re welcome to ignore it.
I am one of the people you could have persuaded. I think you got very close, until yesterday. Hence this post. One of the mods blinked, and I what I saw what nothing but monolithic thinking, and as a worker, someone who is described by most people in my life as left, I have through the years become more pragmatic and I understand change is gradual and happens in stages. Pedulums swing.
The vast majority of people have good in their heart. Russians, Americans and of course the people from the Federated States of Micronesia. I don’t understand why we need this division, and though you decry it in your comment, through actions or inactions, communities and moderators on your instance are allowed to amplify this division.
To be instant banned for a few paragraphs. Then being name called by that mod, in a community without any rules, and then being banned with the reason ‘Zionist’ while I am just about 180º the opposite is not the way to persuade people like me.
You may have the right intentions, and I have had many people on .ml with whom I have had lovely exchanges. However, the fact is this prejudijice exists and I think at some point, if we actually care about MAU of the fediverse to get some uptake, instead of the current flatlining, having all instance admins setting aside their differences, perhaps making some apologies or demanding apologies, or just even listening to one another, could be a first step.
Your comment reminded me about what someone once said about my personal relationship with a close family member. I listed the challenges, how hard it was to communicate, how I was past the point of all hope to see it ever improving. Then the person said to me: “Good. So what are you going to do about it?”
Thanks for taking this on board in the spirit in which it was intended. And if you are somewhere involved in the development of this platform, thanks for your hard work.
We have no obligation to platform pro-genocide, patriarchal, white supremacist, cissupremacist, homophobic, or otherwise oppressive speech, and more, we have a moral obligation to silence those bigoted groups, deprive them of their right to speak, and prevent them from spreading their harmful views, and not only for the mental health of our users, of whom many are members of those targeted groups, but because we know that its the modus operandi of these white-supremacist/bigoted groups to set up nazi bars on social media platforms to spread their views, get people to associate and agree with them, and grow. The correct answer has always been, and remains, to deny them a platform.
If other servers, following the line of reddit and other US social media companies, want to platform those views to increase ragebait engagement and their user counts, there’s nothing we can do about that, but at least here we can think about the long-term mental health of our users, which is far more important than user counts.
Fediverse instances are like email servers, if they call something spam and don’t want to host it, then that’s their prerogative. Arguments for “free speech” do not require them to host what you want them to host.
We also don’t buy the liberal notion of “free speech”, and think that even if there was such a thing, liberal countries and spaces don’t actually practice it. Much like all liberal countries have a long history of banning anti-capitalist / anti-imperialist speech, organizing, and communist political parties, the instance you’re on also doesn’t adhere to “free and open speech”: they’ve blocked the most popular leftist instances in the fediverse (hexbear and lemmygrad), to shield their userbase from those views.
We have a be respectful rule here, and we do enforce it with temp bans, however it is unavoidable that some people (especially when venturing outside of lemmy.ml), encounter extremely bigoted and pro-genocide takes, and that makes them understandably angry. Still, if you see people from our instance breaking that rule, then report it, and we’ll get to it when we can.
I don’t know the circumstances, so you’d have to be more specific, linking examples. We made the modlog public, and its possible to link to every modded item to see what happened.
Despite ideological differences, and some loud users on other servers demanding more defederations, we actually have good relations with most other fediverse server admins and runners. We don’t make demands on each other, each server has full autonomy to take mod actions on both local and federated users, and that autonomy is respected.
Thanks for laying that out.
Hours after my incident, you went in the same community and performed the same action as the community mod. Well, not the same, you used a temporary ban, which I believe is more appropriate. The reason you typed was “rule 1”, but the community doesn’t not list any rules. If you saw my comment you would have banned me too.
From a noob perspective, your communities would greatly benefit from having a “instance rules (linked here) apply”, as right now, a fresh new account wanders into your instance and has no idea, begins a good faith conversation, without realising they have wandered onto a platform where a viewpoint they see as just valid, is completely outlawed.
If I had known that, I would have not followed these communities let alone wasted time trying to have respectful discourse.
I like your email server analogy, I just think we need to have a slightly more universal approach to how the rules of the instance (and how much they matter) are communicated.
The people who are chronically online often assume new users understand the Fediverse or the inner complexities or history, but many see it as just the alternative to reddit, as seen in some responses in this thread. Some blame no doubt falls onto the mobile clients, which possibly need to be updated to allow the distinction between the instances to be clearer before a user views or posts in a community.
Thanks for allowing this discourse.
Well run back to the instance that is a 501© (3) that’s tax exempt, like churches, and possibly takes US federal money, and whinge. Surely a soothed ego and props for your
troublescrucifixion is more productive than taking it in and actually learning from it.