cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/16660104
Consider supporting Lemmy development or donating to your local server if you have the means. Peace!
Thanks. I was about to post that I haven’t yet decided whether to donate to my instance or the developers. I might just go with your opinion
Edit: although after reading, I’m not entirely sure. Part of supporting freedom to discuss is also supporting freedom to discuss things you disagree with or even things that are genuinely hateful. I do tend to end up more on the free speech side than the cancel side. The posted thread from archive at least the complainant moved on: we need to be able to vote with our feet like that
Lemmy.ml is the devs instance, and they have a habit of banning anyone who even slightly differs from their opinions. Basically, if you’re not a tankie like them, they will likely ban you.
They’re not interested in free discussions.
But they just personally don’t want that on their instance while they create the lemmy software that allows for everyone to speak their opinions.
They have an extremely low bar for censorship, and I have already seen signs that they will abuse their role to keep their finger on the scale. For example, they selectively federate mod logs, and seem to be running a custom build which allows them to do this. What other forms of fediverse trust are they willing to compromise for ideological purity?
Slight correction: Lemmy.ml is their reach-out and diplomacy instance. Their actual instance is lemmygrad.
I guess their diplomacy with me was to follow me around and downvote everything I posted until I just abandoned my original account.
Yeah, they donated their spare time to give you a decentralized platform where you could criticize them because they want to stifle “freedom of discussion”… That the lemmy.ml instance is heavily moderated on stuff like imperialist propaganda is a non-issue for freedom of expression due to the nature of federation. The devs do not even want their instance (lemmy.ml) to be the biggest, but actively promote joining other instances.
You confuse your right to express your opinions with the privilege of someone else providing you a platform for you to express them on. The devs provide the former without obligating themselves to be the ones to give you the latter.
You’d have a better point if the rules against “imperialist propaganda” were more evenly enforced to include all forms of imperialism.
But at the end of the day, when given an opportunity to reflect their own values in the way they run their instance, they have chosen a very restrictive framework to that end. I don’t know how you can come to any other conclusion. It is clear that their development effort is not done to protect any speech besides what they have deemed acceptable, and as far as I am concerned, they have repeatedly shown that they will happily keep their fingers on the scale to whatever extent possible. This is why they will ban people for commenting on other instances, and then not federate the mod logs, etc. These things should absolutely be seen as evidence that they will exert control beyond their own instance if they can.