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.
“Lemmy insider who is scared of being exposed”
What are you on about? Exposed for what? What’s a “Lemmy insider”?
Why did you quote this part twice?
This is always a weird question to ask in text-based discussions where you can just read stuff again, especially when the person you’re responding to is just using the exact plain English words for simple and complete points.
False advertising, I guess? You tell me, you’re the one that came up with the strategy.
I have no guess for who you think is going to ban me for you. I think it’s kinda hilarious (but more concerning) that you seem convinced there is some powerful Lemmy (open source reddit clone) insider who would be worried about me exposing them with my posts about Tor integration or something.
Emphasis
It’s just an expression based on how absurd I thought your last point was.
Literally no-one cares or views ‘federation’ as you do.
That you have to ask this demonstrates how basic your understanding of the fediverse is.
No, this sounds like something you’ve made it up in your head. I never said that a “Lemmy insider” exists. That’s what you said. Dude, I’m not even on Lemmy.
OK, but why the emphasis?
I didn’t ask what you had to say about your own wording. I pointed out that it’s weird, especially in this particular context.
Incorrect, and you know it. Is there a particular reason you’d pretend otherwise, except to gaslight me?
Didn’t ask, don’t have to ask, not sure why you thought that.
Not sure what you’re trying to say here.
I didn’t ask if you did.
No, I implied you seemed to think it. I never said you said it.
Didn’t ask, don’t care, replying from Lemmy.
Who gives a fuck? I told you why after I saw you commenting on it.
How do I “know it is”, exactly? I know of no such thing. I’ve never seen anyone hold this bizarre interpretation on federation as you do. Almost everyone in this thread disagrees with you.
You speak of “Lemmy insiders” but you don’t see have a clue how the basics work.
You claimed that I “seem convinced there is some powerful Lemmy insider who would be worried about me exposing them”. This is not true. I never said anything about a lemmy insider. You were the one who proposed that. Not me. I laughed at the idea.
You made up the idea that I think a “Lemmy insider” exists.
But you did claim that I did. It’s on record. Full quote: “I think it’s kinda hilarious (but more concerning) that you seem convinced there is some powerful Lemmy insider who would be worried about me exposing them with my posts about Tor integration or something.”
Seemed to think it based on what? You bought up the idea of some “Lemmy insider” and I queried it as a nonsense.
My point here is that why would someone who doesn’t use Lemmy here specifically think this at all.
About what? I don’t feel like reading the part you quoted to check
Not sure what you’re saying here, still don’t feel like checking the context
Know what is?
Not sure what such thing you mean but OK
Still not really following but alright
Didn’t ask, why waste time typing that?
Again, not sure what you’re trying to say
Correct.
No, it was true.
I didn’t ask if you did. Why waste time typing that?
I didn’t ask if I was. Why waste time typing that?
I still didn’t ask.
Didn’t ask if you did.
Correct.
Did what?
Hard to tell if you mean something that’s actually on the record or not since I don’t feel like checking what you’re talking about and you keep lying constantly
I didn’t ask, why waste time with this quote?
Seemed to think what based on what? That some “Lemmy insider” would ban me? Why do you keep acting like you need so much stuff repeated?
I have no idea what this is supposed to mean.
Soon after “my point here is” this sentence seems to become complete gibberish, so kinda hard for it to be a point.
The way you’ve broken up my quotes, splitting sentences apart makes it impossible to respond to. I’m 100% convinced all of this is a troll at this point. You’ve split my sentences is to the point where they have no context, and it makes it impossible to respond to you. You keep saying “I didn’t ask if you did. Why waste time typing that?” when I directly to your claims about me made only a few posts back. So I’m just going to focus on one thing.
I didn’t say you did “ask”, but you did accuse.
Here’s you claiming I believe some Lemmy Insider exists.
You attempted to put words in my mouth and claimed I thought some “Lemmy Insider” would ban you.
I didn’t ask. Why waste time typing that?
Again, didn’t ask.
Still didn’t ask.
Incorrect. I keep saying that when you waste time typing random shit. You’ve wasted like 12 hours today.
I didn’t ask how many things you were going to focus on. Why waste time typing that?
I didn’t ask what you said. Why waste time typing that?
Yet again, this is a link, not a screenshot. I don’t know what makes you think I’m clicking your links when I keep saying I’m not. I clicked one, did that ctrl+f thing, it was extremely embarrassing for you, that was enough for me.
incorrect
Incorrect because the “and” makes it seem like I also attempted to put words in your mouth, when the part I actually did was claimed you thought some “Lemmy insider” would ban me.
Imagine having no self-control that I’m to blame for your inability to stop replying.