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.
If by “the bulk of the fediverse” you meant “all users except the first person who started the first one,” then you are wrong both about what “the bulk of” means (a majority, but not one as extreme as all but one of billions of people) and what would happen with a zero-censorship Lemmy network (the bulk of people would block it, not an all-but-one version of “the bulk”)
If by “the bulk of the fediverse” you meant “the bulk of the fediverse” then you must have meant something different from “completely mute” when you said “completely mute.” Maybe you meant “censored enough to please me, but still leave me feeling anxious enough to feel the need to exaggerate”
Regardless, these are all pretty simple words, why do you have to use them wrong? Please try to reply to me using words correctly. Be literal here. We don’t agree, I’m not bantering for fun, I’m trying to discuss the real world.
The dictionary is more than enough shared ground for me. My simple way of defining “authorities” would be “those who are given authority,” which I’m sure is not in conflict with the dictionary.
So you’re saying there’s a big network of instances with child porn, terrorism plots, and piracy, but the authorities haven’t decided yet to crack down?
Or you’re saying you’ve used Wonder Woman’s rope on every server admin to get the true answer why they don’t run Lemmy instances that allow child porn, terrorism plots, and piracy, and not a single one of them said “it would get blocked,” and when you asked “so you think it wouldn’t get blocked?” they were all like “maybe it wouldn’t, I have other reasons for not trying it”
Or is this yet another reply I have to deal with from someone engaging in bad faith, making me explain/repeat stuff that shouldn’t need so much explanation/repetition?
No, I mean the people who use the Fediverse now. I suppose I mean the audience and admins of Lemmy, Piefed and Mbin.
See what I mean about you taking words literally?
I have not been “given authority”. I am no more an “authority” on the fediverse than you. The instance owners and admins have actual authority, and it derives from their ability and willingness to run these servers. If I don’t like how a server is run, I can take my interest elsewhere. That’s it. I have no actual regulatory power.
No, I am saying that those are the only scenarios in which they might intervene.
Well, I suspect its both. If I was an instance owners I both would want to block CSAM, and also would be legally obliged to. I assume you don’t oppose the removal of CSAM and terrorist content?
I’m not sure. Maybe you know I deserve recognition for arguing in good faith, and your comments on “taking words literally” are you struggling to convey that while you yourself find good-faith discussion difficult. Or maybe you just enjoy gaslighting people who are more honest than you, and the comments on “taking words literally” are succeeding as intended when they make me feel disrespected instead of recognized.
We all have actual regulatory power as humans. Humanity collectively is the world’s decision-making regulatory body right now. Politicians aren’t a different species from you. And not only that, but we live in the era where this is fucking commonly understood, where we use a language with the word “democracy” and everything, so why does this have to be another point of contention? Seems like you’re doing a gish gallop, confirming that probably what you mean about the “taking words literally” is just gaslighting.
But that’s neither of the possibilities I presented (which would kinda justify your overall point), nor a third possibility that somehow justifies your overall point, right?
It’s not an assumption, I’ve stated pretty clearly that I’m aware censoring humans is bad.
Then “authority” is a word of no value or utility by your logic. Indeed, its impossible to not have authority by your logic. Everyone has it.
But the only authority actual of any instance on the Fediverse are the instance owners who fund the instance, maintain it, and can terminate the instance if they see fit.
Everyone has authority, and some of them used to have convenient authority over who could have a savings account, until Bitcoin was invented and made it a lot harder to exercise authority over that.
I’m not asking for a world where nobody has any kind of authority, I’m trying to get a more Bitcoin-like Lemmy brought into the world.
So, mainly the MAGA base’s figureheads, right now - they’re the ones “printing” the money (funding the instance), clicking the buttons on ICANN screens to keep an instance online (maintaining it), and can terminate the instance if they see fit.
Which seems like it should be recognized as a huge problem by the community, but it’s not, because it’s just “mainly,” and aside from those “main owners” you also have “leftist sub-owners” who right now are allowed by the MAGA base to have an inverse-censorship space (to “prove” the false MAGA point that “leftists are the ones into censorship”), and the censorship fetish is so widespread, plenty of supposed “leftists” seem happy with this “small-scale inverting the censorship,” instead of big-scale erasing it.
But this is vague. Clearly a member of the FCC has more power than I do on topics like this, for instance. What I am concerned about is who with power might seek to censor or shut down lemmy or piefed instances.
Has any specific instance been shut down or pressured by ICANN?
You’re inventing a legal relationship hierarchy and then imposing it on the “leftist sub-owners” (as you call them). Have you got any evidence of ICANN being compromised by MAGA zealots just waiting to shut down instances?
And what do you mean by “censorship fetish” exactly? No instance owner here would be happy with some regulatory body intervening and shutting them down.
Every instance has been pressured by ICANN. Even if there are instances at onion address, ICANN forcibly preventing them from using more mainstream addresses should clearly count as “pressure.”
I’m not sure if any instance was on a domain name/IP address before being shut down or moving to an onion address or something.
How?
Is this a strawman or do you have some reason for asking me for evidence of some random thing that incidentally uses some of the same words I used?
“Censorship cultism” would be more accurate, but also harsher and less approachable wording.
Notice how many times in this thread I’ve had to copy and paste the “censorship fetish” part because people wasted my time trying to justify censorship, or pretending it isn’t happening, because they enjoy seeing it happen to the people it happens to right now and somehow that makes it not count (italics for the “absolutely batshit insane nonsense they really must be fucking embarrassed they haven’t snapped out of” part)
Then every instance owner should be using Tor for hosting and federation
When was lemmy.world or lemmy.zip or piefed.social pressured by ICANN? Pressured to do what?
How is that a strawman? You specifically said that Fediverse only exists because MAGA allows it, implying that they could just press a few buttons if they wanted to completely wipe it all out. This seems nonsensical.
I don’t see what’s wrong with “justifying” basic rules on a community or instance against child porn, incitement of violence, threats, general personal abuse etc. I don’t think that’s a censorship fetish anymore than a place of work having basic decorum standards has a “censorship fetish” or is in a “censorship cultism” trance.
It’s a hypothetical risk that’s never happened.
When they were created, they were pressured to censor non-spammers, such as people who share CSAM or other forms of “child porn.”
It’s not. That’s how DNS and IP addresses work, they can be blocked by pressing a few buttons. I also implied MAGA could make it permanent by using their guns on non-MAGA staff at places like ICANN offices, which is also true, not nonsensical.
I addressed this in my original post. This place (Lemmy/Earth) is overrun with people who are into stuff like this. You know that, and you’re willingly ignore it, since you quoted it with the words “censorship fetish.”
Making me repeat myself isn’t gonna magically make Lemmy do much better than reddit.
Making me repeat myself also won’t move past and present events out of the past and present.
So you think its bad to remove CSAM and death threats?
From the entire internet? Of course it’s bad, unless you can do it by dealing with every perpetrator and forcing each one to take back their own posts
From your own social bubble? Not bad, it can be very healthy to protect yourself from bad people