I am exploring Lemmy right now and what I see is very worrying to me, but I also don’t understand wth is going on with some instances here. I don’t know if it’s smart to post this, but here we go.
I am partial to Marxist and anarchist ideology, but lemmygrad looks completely unhinged to me. Is it a parody? Some content is fine and some of it is insane.
On the other hand, beehaw looked super inviting from the outside and I even applied to join them. Then, I looked closer and that instance’s moderation looks totalitarian and rigid in the other way. (I understand why they blocked lemmygrad though…)
I’m seeing this impact other communities in different ways and there’s some kind of witch hunt happening on both sides…
I want to interact with people that can respect each-other and that can hold open-minded discussions about any topics without devolving into some tribal war.
Edit:
I realize my post is not a simple question… Let me clarify some thoughs:
-I do not mean beehaw is far-right. The just seem strict and that’s their right.
-I worry profiles can “inherit” the bad reputation of instances they interacted with and get pre-emptively banned.
-People are used to reddit and tend to centralize. Is the “just switch community” really an option?
-English is far from my first language and I might’ve judged things too quickly/harshly so take my criticism with a grain of salt.
Defederation might be a good thing, and I don’t think we should assign a taboo to it.
What I believe, is it establishes a direct chain of responsibility. Instance owners are responsible for what thier users say and do on. This incentivises moderation, but unlike other systems, defederated instances don’t cease to exist. In fact, they could thrive, and even mutually contribute to other instances. A new insurance could even preemptively defederate from instances they know won’t gell well, allowing communities to build without facing threats of harassment.
I believe, it gives the opportunity for Lemmy users to create a diverse collection congruent communities. Not everything can, or should, be consolidated into one great house.
I don’t think we should defederate, instance owners shouldn’t be able to control what the users see. All this would accomplish would be a more centralized lemmy, which at that point why even federate.
I believe if you want to get around that issue, you can run your own instance?
I will do that when I can afford it.
From what I hear, for a tiny instance you can run it on a Raspberry Pi or a little $6 a month Digital Ocean VPS ☺️