I’m writing this post to inform you all that I have decided to defederate from the exploding-heads[.]com instance.
After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and comments from our community, content on exploding-heads is clearly mostly—if not completely—in violation of our instance rules, including content posted by the instance admin themselves (a large factor in the decision to defederate any instance).
On other fediverse platforms I run, such as Mastodon, I would typically respond by “Limiting” such instances, since the main goal is to avoid the publishing and promotion of such topics on our public (“All”) timelines, rather than control what you can or cannot access. Unfortunately, Lemmy does not yet offer the fine-grained moderation controls to make this possible, so complete defederation is our only option to avoid the re-publishing of content which is consistently hateful and discriminatory.
Defederation from other Lemmy instances is not taken lightly, and in the future I will continue to review instances on a case by case basis.
I am a huge proponent of free speech - as in, I don’t think it’s appropriate for any government to tell you what you’re allowed and not allowed to say.
I am also a huge proponent of helping people find out when they fuck around and abuse that right while expecting zero consequences.
#MakeNazisAfraidAgain
I don’t agree. I think a government should absolutely have the ability to limit speech, but not any speech in directed towards criticizing said government. If the last few years have proven anything “citizens” aren’t not up to the task of preventing or stopping hateful rhetoric.
That’s a fair point… but my issue with that sort of setup is that it depends on the government not being co-opted or corrupted by those very same people, which can’t necessarily be guaranteed. To wit: Florida, Texas, Idaho, etc.
These days it feels like a crap shoot either way.
This sentiment always pops up when the topic is discussed, but it doesn’t really make any sense.
Any sort of setup depends on the government not being co-opted or corrupted.
Free speech absolutism does nothing to prevent a corrupt government from censoring you.
You can’t really use that as an argument for free speech absolutism when it suffers from the exact same issue.
Do you believe governments counties like Saudi Arabia, Russia and China should have the ability to limit speech, as long as it’s about things other than government criticism?
Your approach would suggest that you think it’s acceptable that the Russian government is censoring any “LGBT propaganda” and retaliationg against citizens for it with fines and prison time.
The problem with people who have conditions for free speech is that they think they (or those who they agree with) will be the ones deciding what those conditions are.
I don’t think all speech should be protected.
You can’t abuse a right. That’s why it’s a right.
Also you’re confusing Free Speech with the First Amendment. It’s concerning that it’s a very common mistake from people with strong opinions on the topic.
Free Speech is not exclusively about governments. It’s a principle that ideas should be allowed to be exchanged without restriction. Yes, even the ideas that are pretty much indefensible.
The reason isn’t because we want indefensible ideas to spread, it’s because we can’t trust any entity or even the society to decide what is acceptable to express. For example, in many countries you will simply get beaten up for expressing support for LGBT rights, regardless of government censoring you. They are using the “fuck around and find out” approach.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech :
Emphasis mine. You’re not a huge proponent of free speech. You sound like you’re only a proponent of the first amendment.
Nah. You’re off-base here. You’re very clearly falling prey to the Paradox of Tolerance.
I’m not sure the fine folks that come crawling out of the woodwork to defend free speech specifically when it’s Nazis are falling prey to anything, unfortunately