Since Lemmy is federated, and the admins of each instance choose what’s allowed and what’s not in their own instance.
How do you feel about what’s allowed and what’s not in your current instance ?
I’ll start: I’ve read people complaining about my instance admins, but I haven’t experienced nor seen anything I specifically disagree with.
And I’ve read things they wrote that I absolutely agree with, like not federating with Meta under any circumstances.
So for now, I’m happy with it. If I get banned randomly, I don’t think I’d go to a different instance, though. I’d probably just stop visiting Lemmy altogether.
“Censorship” has become a buzzword and lost all of its meaning
It simply means that somebody stopped you from talking.
That’s it.
It’s meaning in abstract is simple, but it’s actual manifestations are usually quite complex. Self-censorship for example: If you self-censor out of fear of a negative social reaction, to what degree is that actually someone else stopping you from talking? Everyone else, or the idea of everyone else? I would say that any view that’s held by a group of people that’s pervasive enough to cause others to calibrate their words towards them, any cultural context strong enough that visitors feel a need to adjust for it, automatically and unconsciously practices censorship.
My experience with it has always been “they don’t like me talking so they stopped me”. Pretty simple. I speculate that this is the general case.
But yes, I have encountered the odor of that second variety a few times. Just the odor tho. I am not one to restrain my speech for fear of offending. On social media anyway.
The line is at least very blurred with moderation. One person’s moderation is another person’s censorship.
Its the same thing. People are just primed into thinking that censorship is universally bad in every instance.
What censorship?
Can you point us to some disagreements the people in your instance have had with moderators? Do you have any specific links for us to view? If censorship is happening I’d like to know more about it.
I’m an instance owner (it’s very small) and the only thing I don’t tolerate is hate messages and subversive spam (“www,BuyGoldHere123,Spam,me”). I haven’t yet needed to delete anything my users created.
Can you point us to some disagreements the people in your instance have had with moderators? Do you have any specific links for us to view? If censorship is happening I’d like to know more about it.
No because there aren’t any. There are very few active users on WG and I have no desire for it to ever become very big. I originally created it for myself to experiment with and I don’t really promote or advertise the instance itself even though people are welcome to join.
The people who have joined tend to share common interests so things have mostly remained the same as when it was just me. The “walled” part of WG is more or less the application process itself, since it removes easy access for troll and bot accounts.
I’m an instance owner (it’s very small) and the only thing I don’t tolerate is hate messages and subversive spam (“www,BuyGoldHere123,Spam,me”). I haven’t yet needed to delete anything my users created.
I’ve seen some of these spam posts in our communities before but always from outside instances. They are very easy to keep under control and I wouldn’t consider that censorship, just garbage removal.
Ironic instance name for one you’re implying is uncensored.
Ironic instance name for one you’re implying is uncensored.
I think it’s quite fitting for federated social media.
I have encountered very little if any at all
Lemmy.ml does censor a lot of profanity, but other than that it doesn’t seem any more or less overtly heavyhanded on censorship than other instances.
That being said, I suppose self-censorship among the community is another factor to consider as well, as I’ve seen a lot of instances purge their own versions of wrongthink depending on which mod is on a power trip.
Yeah the profanity censorship can be a bit weird but its nice that I don’t see slurs
From what I’ve read, in our instance, it’s being critical of China that gets you banned.
But I don’t know how much of that is people being straight-up racist/xenophobic and then conflating it with being critical.
Why don’t you try saying something critical of China but not racist, and see if it gets removed?
Why don’t you try saying something critical of China but not racist, and see if it gets removed?
Me? Sure.
The Tianamen Square Massacre was shameful.
It sure was, those American backed separatists that stole military weapons should be ashamed of themselves for killing that many people before the army could respond.
You guys are so obsessed with America.
Stop trying to be the centre of the world for five minutes.
No but literally the CIA infiltrated the college at the square, lead the assault, and provided the weapons.
And look at that, it didn’t get removed
The brave Tianamen Square posters here envision themselves as their mythological ideal of Tank Man, which they invented without so much as even watching the video of the guy and the tank.
It’s the second IME. We talk all the time about our concerns with the CPC, our hopes and disappointments with their foreign policy, and our thoughts on their political economic situation. Critically discussing China is pretty much half of what we do in the news comm.
The people who say “I was banned just for being critical of China” never seem to want to specify what those criticisms were, but every time you go looking through the modlog you find the same shit: Commie hivemind spy balloon Winnie the Pooh uyhgur tinyman square. It’s like going up to some people talking about Korea and saying “don’t you weirdos know that they eat rats and push the trains by hand”? It’s not just the propaganda that gets them banned; everyone starts out full of propaganda, and most people here will paitently clarify things for you if you ask. No, it’s the smug doubling and tripling-down on ignorance at every turn that gets them the boot. Then they run back to their home instance to tell the story of how the tankies murdered them, and the mythology builds.
Example of someone being banned from Hexbear pretty much for saying “somehting is going on with the Uyghurs” – https://hexbear.net/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=13910
Americans are so heavily inundated with anti Chinese propaganda that they consider not being rabidly against China to be blind allegiance to the CPC.
The automated censorship that keeps out CSAM and blatant trolling and scams? I love it.
The moderation that’s done over the whole instance. That’s understandable as it’s a large attack surface for regulatory or state actor interference.
The community mods, that depends on the /c and honestly it’s the same as it’s ever been. It’s wildly variable from person to person.
My instance has no censorship and federates with all, and moderation only happens for obvious illegal content, not someone having an opinion that is not popular.
To me, it’s what the fediverse is supposed to be, so very happy.
Same
Mostly I haven’t had issues with it, I was banned from an egg_irl community on one instance, I forget which, for not espousing violence though.
If there is any I have not noticed it.
My instance is great.
If I get banned randomly, I don’t think I’d go to a different instance, though. I’d probably just stop visiting Lemmy altogether.
In that case check the modlog and if it’s unreasonable why not try out another instance?
You’re on one of, if not the most heavily censored instances and you should try something else out
Say something about the Big C and you get hit with a message from admins.
They’re not on .world, where you can get instance banned for suggesting Ukraine might lose or trump isn’t marginally worse than Harris.
World and ml are both really bad for the same reasons just different sides yes
You really have to try to get banned in ml. You’ll get banned on world for disagreeing with the US Democrats.
Or banned for asking why something was removed and quoting the mod log
I haven’t been banned from either, but I have had .ml mods remove comments speaking negatively of hexbear based on completely imaginary rules that aren’t listed anywhere. Meanwhile, in that same discussion, hexbear users were brigading me and making literal death threats and their comments were allowed to remain.
I generally disagree. Lemmy.ml is more broadly federated than slrpnk.net or Lemmy.world, as an example, so really it’s just “censorship” of a different bias and a different manner. All instances “censor,” whether it be removing content that breaks the rules or defederating from instances that are ideologically opposed. This is especially prevalent on Lemmy, as the demographics largely fall ideologically into either the liberal camp, the Marxist camp, or the Anarchist camp, and these camps are concentrated on different instances.
Correct on being more federated yes, but ml and world are both just too heavy handed with overzealous mods. I’ve started using a couple other accounts that are on instances more federated and less moderated than this one
More gets removed from Lemmy.ml as a consequence of its own broad federation, which appears as overzealousness.
Not bad. The thing with “censorship” is that there are no real “free-speech” instances, all instances have opinions they deem intolerable, and many selectively federate and defederate in a manner that makes one camp of thought more dominant, ie liberalism on Lemmy.world via defederation from Hexbear and Lemmygrad, etc.
What this ultimately means is that the answer is to openly admit bias, which exists in everyone, and accept that as a natural consequence of the fediverse model.
that there are no real “free-speech” instances,
such spaces fill up with nazis anyway as decent people leave because there are so many nazis around
Absolutely, it’s why “free speech” advocates and “nonviolent activists” indirectly end up supporting the most heinous speech and most violent systems, by defanging any resistance towards injustice, injustice thrives.
I think that the new(ish) conservative community on lemmy.world is the biggest proof positive of this.
I run my own instance, so supremely displeased as expected.
My instance admin is also extremely oppressive.
Same
I heard the admin is a nazi commie alien on that instance.
literally me
As you should be.
Won’t somebody save me from myself!
I’m happy with it. I’ve gotten a few temporary suspensions for saying things that I still believe I had a right to say - but that’s the thing, they’re temporary suspensions for a reason. You sit through them, seethe a little bit, and champ at the bit for the opportunity to say the same thing again but angrier.
The only instances Lemmygrad defederates with are porn and fascist instances, which I think is fine - I’m not anti-porn, but you just make a second account for that stuff.
The only things that I think the Lemmygrad admins have a hard time adjudicating are “Internet Leftist” boutique issues - stuff that is rarely taken seriously by actual people in the real world but weirdos on the Internet think are very important.
How do you feel about the level of censorship in your current instance ?
It’s pretty gay and removed
Not my instance, but hexbear is so lame. They are supposed a political instance, but you are not allowed to debate any point they dont agree. So whats the point of debating? Also, they want a revolution but are also afraid of meat and offensive words.
The point of politics isn’t to debate, debate is largely useless as people largely license themselves to believe what they want to believe based on their own class interests, changing minds comes from internal investigation. Believe me, I know (and am trying to be better about that). Hexbear is an openly Left-Unity community for Marxists and Anarchists to hang out in, it isn’t a revolutionary organization.
Further, Hexbear isn’t “afraid” of meat, they take a firm pro-vegan stance for ethical and environmental reasons, this is not contradictory to being pro-revolution. Moreover, there isn’t a “fear” of offensive words, but a desire to root out bigotry and chauvanism. This framing of their stances as being based on “fear” and not due to being principled is wrong.
it made me get off of lemmy.world
What was the issue there ?
Admin’s didn’t like Luigi discussions to the point of not allowing discussion of Jury nullification. It wasn’t not supporting violence but not supporting most discussion of this topic. To me, that shows protection of a certain neoliberal class. Like the opposite of lemmygrad.
They do support violence, just the old terror, as Mark Twain would put it.
by that you mean state terror?
Capitalist system terror and opression, though considering USA is at the stage of imperialism for which merging of capitalism and state is characteristical, we can say it’s the terror of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Damn, that sucks. The users there must be missing out on so many good Luigi memes
more than just sucks; seeing it happen there as well as facebook, twitter & reddit makes it clear what .world’s intentions are.
Lemmy.world is incredibly hostile towards Marxists, or anyone too critical of the Democrats or the US’ involvement in the genocide of Palestinians. I imagine @[email protected] has similar complaints based off their username.
My name is a pun off of miao being meow in chinese but sounds similar to Mao. But yes, that is where their censorship is and I disagree with it, but I also disagree with lemmygrad/hexbear censorship.
I elaborated on my views in my top level comment here, but you can’t avoid “censorship.” You can only pick which bias you want to see more of. Lemmygrad and Hexbear are more open with their biases, and can be trusted to uphold that bias very reliably. Lemmy.world is more subtle, it focuses on selective defederation and selective removals and bans in order to carefully prune a demographic.
Dbzer0 is interesting, it’s mostly tech nerds and those enthusiastic about Anarchism, while remaining federated with Lemmy.world, Hexbear, and Lemmy.ml while defederating from Lemmygrad. As such, it generally leans techy Anarchist with a large influx of Liberals from Lemmy.world and some Marxists from Hexbear on occasion. It isn’t as heavy handed with removals as Lemmy.world is in my experience.
Thanks for the knowledgeable break down :)
I didn’t know much of that especially dbzer0 federating hexbear but not lemmygrad. Wonder why?
You’re smart about knowing the clear biases versus the more subtle one’s. Well said!
I never had any particular problem at lemmy.world but I really didn’t like their Luigi decision. The admin of dbzer0 seems nice. I directly asked about not liking ai, which is their focus, and they were very chill in their response
dbzer0 as an instance considers Lemmygrad to be “fake” Marxist-Leninists, the geopolitical stance of dbzer0 as an instance is contrary to Lemmygrad and thus the admins deemed this to be an absolute difference. That said, dbzer0 themself is more symapathetic towards Hexbear as Hexbear has a very large number of Anarchists as well as Marxists, and dbzer0 is an Anarchist.
As for Lemmy.world, I have had my own issues with it and been thoroughly soured by them, you can check my modlog if you want to see it, I don’t really want to turn this into a drama post.
In case you check my modlog, here is the context for the [email protected] ban. The moderator banned me for calling out their regurgitation of white supremacist “anti-DEI” nonsense about non-white people being included in God of War. They since deleted their account and locked the sub, now its just bot posts for the most part.
Thanks for further explaining! How did you learn all this?
How do I check your specific modlog? I’ve also had some people randomly attacking me….
They want to keep their noses clean so they can continue being the main character of Lemmy.
All hail the non-offesive median opinion and saying Lu1g1 to bypass filters.
Yep, and they can’t even handle their own current position, hence them attempting to make Sublinks a thing and make their own, worse Lemmy.
Sublinks GitHub looks pretty dead
Figured it’d die, Lemmy has been in dev for years, starting from scratch to rewrite a new form in Javascript (IIRC) seems like far too much effort for far too little return.
Skill issue. @[email protected] would simply rewrite it from scratch in Clojure in a month.
0·3 months agoJava, not javascript
I thought sublinks was beehaw’s project https://beehaw.org/comment/3809526
Kind of a joint effort from what I’ve seen.
why does your name show banned?
