It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
This is it. Self hosting, federation, not for profit is the way. We need an internet that is made by just regular people for no better reason than it’s fun. Not just social media either. We need an entire open internet, free and clear of all ulterior motives (or more likely still having bad actors mixed in, but at least they’re not pulling any strings at the upper levels).
I don’t know how possible that is, but I know we need it.
Fully agree! Thanks for putting my thought into much better words.
The only issue I see now is how to surpass bad mods and admins? The balance between filtering off topic or bad content versus anything goes but then nazis come out seems to be a challenge plus power tripping.
That’s a never-ending process of everyone voting and discussing where the line is and where it should be.
There is no “final” solution, instead the solution is for people to collectively and continiously keep solving it every day.
I just don’t understand why it’s a problem that the nazis come out. Would we not rather they utter their opinions in the open so they can be refuted? That way people can also just ignore that user if they don’t like viewing what he has to say.
It’s not like they don’t exist just because we ban them here… They’ll go somewhere to discuss where only other people who agree with them is allowed to be.
Unless we’re talking direct threats or doxing I’m always an advocate for free speech online.
I used to think this way, but no. Nazis should be shunned and banned and feel unwelcome everywhere. No one should ever think their rhetoric is harmless or ignorable. Those who tolerate Nazis enable them.
And yeah, folks can wring their hands about slippery slopes and where we draw lines, but the beauty of federation is that if someone is too loose or too draconian, we can go somewhere with more agreeable policies. We can decide as a society where the line is drawn, and it’ll be fuzzy but as speech gets closer to Naziism, it will be rejected more and more places, as it should be.
Well said
I never said to tolerate them or not let them know why their ideology is fucked up.
The problem with your statement or at least how other people act on those same thoughts is that the cut off for when someone is a nazi becomes less and less.
I was called a nazi sympathiser and banned from a sub lemm.ee for asking if being against DEI equals being a nazi now.
Nobody wanted to even discuss it. They just assume the very worst of you, call you a nazi and then ban you.
That’s how you end up with echo chambers.
And the reason for the sudden concern for Nazis being suppressed is made clear now.
People are on edge. There’s basically a nazi president - or near as makes no difference. Now is not the time for hair splitters to shine, you know?
MentalEdge is right though, it’s a constant conversation that has to happen under a more even power dynamic - and deplatformimg actually does appear to work, given past examples.
Why is now not the time? If it’s now a lot of them comes out the woodwork it’s now you have a chance to change their mind or at least argue the other side so they hear opinions that doesn’t align 100% with their own.
A good example from some influencers recently is asmongold and hasanabi.
Asmon had some opinions about Israel/Palestine that were pretty aggressive. Instead of ignoring him Hassan had a multiple hour long conversation with him and at least to a degree, managed to change asmongolds stance.
Had he just said “nah I don’t talk to people with that opinion” , nothing would have changed…
This is the crux of the matter. Actual nazis don’t engage in good faith, and so it is harder to get people to trust in your good faith when actual nazis have all the power. The lines have been drawn for us, whether we act like it or not. If you’re able to pick your battles so well that you never engage with bad actors and you’re able to find common ground, that’s amazing. But you can’t go around expecting everyone to have an appetite for going out on a limb to split hairs with you, when many more people are more focused on protecting themselves from bad faith arguments.
I kind of like splitting hairs. It’s a god way to hone my opinion on things.
If people don’t want to do that they can just not respond to my comments… It’s not like I’m spamming posts or attacking people. I don’t understand how I deserve to be banned for that.
I addressed the slippery slope argument exactly as I meant to. If you find yourself repeatedly getting censored due to anti-Nazi sentiment, either go somewhere with looser tolerance or check yourself and ask what you are doing that crosses the line. I don’t see a problem here. An echo chamber is a problem when that’s the only information you are getting. Sometimes, it’s just a reprieve from spending time in uncomfortable spaces.
Regarding your specific case, I looked at the modlog for that and that doesn’t change my response at all. Right now, fascism is ascendant and you are an apologist for one of their policies.
Frankly, this is not the environment to be splitting hairs. For example, one can be anti-Islam (either as an atheist or adherent of another faith) but specifically attacking Palestinians over their faith while Israel is committing genocide against them is obviously going to be seen as taking a fascist/Zionist/pro-genocide (take your pick) stance.
Every battle doesn’t need to be fought all the time, and for anyone who struggles with that, it’s not surprising that such contributions are going to be unwelcome.
This might seem like a personal attack, and if so I apologize for lacking the skill to say this more gently. I assure you I put effort into trying to be neutral and helpful.
I did ask myself. I don’t think I did anything wrong here though…
Usually I get banned for being a liberal leftist cuck or whatever the right side calls you when they disagree with your opinion or can’t handle push back on theirs…
It’s just on leftist leaning subs I get banned for being a mazi…
You think me asking if being against DEI equals to being a nazi now, should result in an immidiately ban? Is that really crossing some line?
I’m not a mod and there was a lot more context in the thread. I didn’t look at any other history, but as a user I’d’ve ignored it and moved on. I also disagree with your stance and I have to separate my dislike of what you have to say with whether I think it crosses a line, but also making sure I’m not erring too far the other way.
At the end of the day, you were arguing in favor of a fascist policy and it’s not at all clear from the context I saw that you argued in good faith. I can see why a mod might make that call, but permanent ban is not one I’d’ve made. But also I can’t see how many other reports folks have made. I don’t know how many times they’ve been borderline and decided not to act.
Mods aren’t just enforcers of civility, they are curators of a social space. I have frequently supported mod actions that others saw as capricious or uneven just because someone was a big asshole in a space and I thought they made everything a worse place to hang out. In fact, on those occasions it was generally someone I’d blocked myself already.
So if you are frequently an argumentative asshole in that space, I’d have banned. If you were just having a bad day, I’d have let it go with at most a cooldown. But if I modded a large board where people are frequently contentious and I had a large backlog and I didn’t recognize you, there’s every chance I’d have glanced at that thread, wanted to keep everything calm and happy, and booted the person arguing pro-fasc talking points out of caution and mistrust.
I’m trying to give both sides a little grace here. I’ve never been a mod. I have no idea what it’s like. But I do support folks curating a space they think people will enjoy discussion and reading, and in the fediverse there are plenty of other places to go or you could start a new one of your own. You have infinite options and have been booted from one. Because the scope of a ban is limited in a way it wouldn’t be in a non-federated platform, I’m giving more leeway to the mods here.
Which comes back to my original point. You got removed from one space. That’s society warning you that you’re stepping into that gray area. That’s okay. Being opinionated and disagreeing with the zeitgeist are things I respect. I am not afraid to register my own disagreement, but I do it and take my downvotes and move on. I don’t stick around and argue the point when clearly folks aren’t having it. I made the point to readers who might not have a dog in the fight that it’s okay to disagree and in the end those are the only people you’re ever going to reach. You’re not going to argue me into agreeing DEI needs to be abolished, though I’d here arguments about how you’d do it better if you had a more cogent and novel than the fascist “do nothing and everything will be fine.” You’re not disagreeing to win me over, you’re disagreeing to not let the group-think go unchallenged. So you challenge it and move on, and I think you avoid bans and prevent an echo chamber.
Normally I’d try to edit this down in size as I’m sure I rambled a bit, but I don’t have time. FWIW I haven’t downvoted you because I don’t think you’ve been an asshole here, even if I disagree with you. Good luck, mate.
The problem is that even your solution of letting them talk in the open and refuting their talking points is paradoxical. If they’re always corrected then that alone will drive them away from platforms for fester in private channels
Lemmy really is speedrunning the reddit arch.
This place is toxic af, way worse than reddit.
There’s a door, then. Make use of it. Vote with your feet and the adoring followers you brought with you will really show this place!
Nazi punks, fuck off.
It’s far easier to lie than it is to correct a lie. When the Nazis come out into the open they spew a stream of lies in minutes that can take months to refute, leaving the field to the lies to spread and fester.
And that’s even assuming you think refutation works at all. (Protip: it works so rarely that you can treat instances where it did as statistical aberration.)
Try one of their lines and I’ll refute it in 2 sentences…
None of what you said is a good argument for censorship in my opinion.
You’ll disagree with it. You won’t refute it. You’ll walk away feeling better and convinced that you “won” but in reality you’ll have just marked yourself as an “enemy” to be ignored. (The human brain is very adept at compartmentalizing things.)
Actual refutation of a toxic idea whose seed has been planted requires detailed deconstruction and reconstruction. It is time-consuming, it is exhausting, and it is unreliable to boot. (C.f. above that compartmentalizing of things.) There is a reason why governments and centuries come and go but culture remains recognizable over the millennia. Once minds are set, they’re ludicrously difficult to unset.
I’m going to guess, however, that you will not take this to heart. Ironically for the same reason that your “refutation” (actually mere disagreement) won’t take.
Refutation does not equal correction in this circumstance. Simply discrediting their rhetoric in a discussion does not necessarily reverse the effect it has on the less critical-minded. They can overwhelm via a strategy of “lie early, lie often”.