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.
This is the classic argument of “banning nazis just makes them stronger, we have to debate them away!” No, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.
Who said anything about debate? You mock and demonize them openly. You make it not cool to be a nazi. Look at what Chapo Trap House does for example. They aren’t afraid to mock these clowns for their moronic ideologies.
Banning it and taking the “holier than thou” approach just makes it cool and edgy to be extremely far right. It’s extremely easy to get people very upset with almost no effort, so of course that’s going to be what edgy kids gravitate towards. Same reason the edgy kids were “Satanists” back in the 70s and 80s. It wasn’t that they were persuaded by satanism, it was easy to get a reaction from the Christian fundies and took no effort at all.
If you allow people to make a fool of themselves it dissuades others from doing that behavior.
I agree with this, but what you’re missing is that you don’t need them to be here to make fun of them. Screenshot their shit on whatever hole they’ve squandered off to, and mock them with that. You don’t need them to be a part of our spaces to mock them.
It isn’t really a matter of need or wanting something, they exist, and they will spread their views regardless of what we do. That’s the reality of the situation.
You can’t just ban them from the fediverse like you can ban them from a website, because such a capability is not built into the fediverse. It’s like saying we should ban nazi websites. That is impossible because they can simply set up their own websites on their own servers in countries that don’t care or even support their views. The same is true for the fediverse, they can (and already have) setup their own instances which are friendly to those kinds of views.
I think it’s prudent to talk about how things are and what the best way to deal with them is, rather than how things ought to be. Most people can agree that genocide and racism shouldn’t exist.
This is not true, it is a lie specifically spread by nazis to convince you not to do anything about them. Banning nazis works. Nazis can’t be banned from the fediverse this time, but you can block their instances. It accomplishes the same goal, cutting off their ability to spread their ideology.
If banning nazis truly worked, then there would be no nazis to ban in 2023.
But as you said, the best that can be done is to block them, and I again suggest also mocking them. Block & mock.