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.
Yes. So do lemmy instances.This is because community moderators don’t actually own any part of the instance they operate on. How is it you imagine Reddit users can somehow not grant it?
But ignoring that, any user-made community has specific topics and themes in mind for what it wants to focus on. This necessarily requires focusing on those things to the explicit censorship of other topics.
By coding a decentralized P2P reddit and moving there, I guess.
Or just a tor version of Lemmy could be good.
Right, and you can’t pick those other topics for your community, because federation is broken.
The Fediverse existed for disgruntled reddit users.
Huh? Community owners (I’m talking about the equivalent of subreddits here can pick the topic and focus of their communities). And in terms of instances, an instance owner can absolutely choose the theme of their instance. There are many different instances with different vibes, aesthetics and political persuasions across the fediverse.
Didn’t ask.
Don’t get what you’re trying to say here.
Incorrect. Federation broken, which prevents this. How many times do I have to say this?
Incorrect. All of them are in the same pro-censorship bubble so far, because Lemmy so far is designed with broken federation to promote that outcome. How many times are you going to make me explain the same shit again?
How does federation allegedly being broken mean that lemmy.blahaj can’t be an LGBTQ focused instance? How does federation allegedly being broken mean that slrpnk.net can’t be a solarpunk themed instance? Or that adult.swim isn’t themed around animation?
Are you of the opinion that a “pro-censorship bubble” is somehow a single theme on its own and that there’s no difference between hexbear.net and maga.place?
What would distinguish an instance from each other in your mind? Also, the federation system has no relevance here to the culture of the Fediverse. Even if the Fediverse was on TOR - it would not stop instances having federation standards.
I don’t know. I would bet that’s not even true. Why do you ask?
Again, I don’t know. Again, I would bet that’s not even true. Yet again, why do you ask?
Nope. I have no idea what hexbear.net or maga.place are, and overall don’t even understand what you’re asking.
Are you asking me for dictionary help again? Why can’t you just check “distinguish” in a dictionary? I never said or implied I use it differently from the dictionary “in my mind”
Didn’t ask, why waste time typing that stuff?
Bet what isn’t true? That lemmy.blahaj isn’t pro-LGBT?
Bet what isn’t true? That slrpnk.net isn’t solarpunk-themed?
Hexbear is an overt Marxist instance. Maga.place is a pro-trump instance. Do you think they have the same culture? The same themes? It’s also of note that you’ve not heard of hexbear, as to me that makes you quite uninformed about the entire fediverse.
I didn’t ask you for the definition of “distinguish”. I asked you what sets instances apart. What makes lemmy.world different from sh.itjust.works, according to you?
The point is your grievances here with federation wouldn’t change.
Whatever the premise was of the question I was replying to. I’m pretty sure lemmy.blahaj is pro-LGBT so if you were asking why they’re not, then maybe yes, “that lemmy.blahaj isn’t pro-LGBT” except I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what you asked.
Whatever the premise was of the question I was replying to, but I have no idea what slrpnk.net is, so it couldn’t have been that.
Didn’t ask.
Did they pay you for advertising? I didn’t ask what they are.
You tell me, you’re the one spamming about them, I never heard of them before this
I didn’t ask, why waste time typing this?
Good, because it almost seemed like you did.
I assume you mean actual existing instances, so:
I feel high certainty lemmy.world is run directly by glowies and some certainty sh.itjust.works isn’t (directly - like, the admins themselves)
Your inability to imagine the future seems like it’s more your problem than mine. I think you shouldn’t be bothering me with it.
I said: “And in terms of instances, an instance owner can absolutely choose the theme of their instance.”
You replied: “Incorrect. Federation broken, which prevents this. How many times do I have to say this?”
I asked: “How does federation allegedly being broken mean that lemmy.blahaj can’t be an LGBTQ focused instance? How does federation allegedly being broken mean that slrpnk.net can’t be a solarpunk themed instance? Or that adult.swim isn’t themed around animation?”
The point is that different instances have different local cultures, rules, themes etc. That’s my point. Federation not working properly, as you claim, doesn’t change that.
Yes, I did.
Okay then so there are different instances, active instances with different cultures, rulesets, themes.
Yeah, about that, got any evidence of lemmy.world being run by glowies?
Your future imagined here would require all current active and used instances to become completely anti-censorship in the way you want. Which they won’t.