We’re closing this thread. Everything that could be said has been said. Thank you


Original Post:
Today, we want to inform everyone that we have decided to defederate from https://exploding-heads.com/. We understand that defederating should always be a last resort, and individuals can certainly block communities. However, blocking alone does not prevent potential harm to vulnerable communities.

After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and multiple comments from the community, we have concluded that exploding-heads is not adhering to the Lemmy or Citizen Code of Conduct. Therefore, we cannot, in good faith, continue to federate with an instance that consistently promotes hate, racism, and bullying.

Examples:
https://lemmy.world/post/577526 - Community Moderator Harassment
https://exploding-heads.com/post/92194 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/90780 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/91488 - Systemadmin Post
https://exploding-heads.com/post/93725 - Community Moderator Post

Again, deciding to defederate from an instance is not taken lightly. In the future, we will continue to review instances on a case-by-case bases.

As for our community, please refrain from posting or commenting with hateful words as well. Arguing back and calling people names is not the solution. The best course of action is to report the posts or comments violating our server rules.

Lemmy Code of Conduct
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
Citizen Code of Conduct https://github.com/stumpsyn/policies/blob/master/citizen_code_of_conduct.md

“We are committed to providing a friendly, safe, and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”

  • @AWildRattata
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    821 year ago

    Good call! Thanks for creating a welcoming atmosphere for all!

    • @extendedStoccato
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      1 year ago

      It’s weird to say that as they defederate from a community. I don’t know anything about “explodingheads”, but I always prefer to choose what I do and do not see.

      I have no doubt that the “explodingheads” community is shitty, but I don’t like the precedent of protecting me from the world on my behalf.

      • Corhen
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        511 year ago

        The Paradox of Tolerance: If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people.

        To create a safe space for all ideas, the intolerant ideas cannot be tolerated

        • @Dakkaface
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          271 year ago

          It’s only a paradox if you view tolerance as an unambiguous virtue.

          Tolerance is not a virtue, it is a wide armistice held to by many groups. We tolerate each other so long as the tolerance is mutual. If one side starts attacking another and does not hold to the truce, then they’ve forsaken it’s protection. They need not be tolerated by anyone.

        • @aldamar
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          -61 year ago

          Yeah sure but “tolerance” and “acceptable” get redefined when it benefits only some, weird how that’s just like any other centralised social media

        • @lefte
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          -251 year ago

          The paradox of tolerance is grossly misused these days to censor any opposing viewpoint, as is being done here. The entire point of free speech is the allowance of viewpoints you vehemently disagree with, and to let reason and discourse sway opinion one way or the other. Today, people only seem to invoke this to de-platform, censor, and cancel others that they don’t agree with, especially in regards to the pride movement. Each individual user could be muting other users if they really can’t agree or don’t want to see their content, but the wholesale cutting off of communication with entire other viewpoints is very troubling. Creating “safe spaces” is not the goal of free speech. See https://fee.org/articles/why-the-paradox-of-tolerance-is-no-excuse-for-attacking-free-speech/ as a further explanation.

          • @Marruk
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            111 year ago

            “The paradox of tolerance is grossly misused these days to censor any opposing viewpoint” Patently false. It is used to censor viewpoints that are intolerant. Aka hate speech.

            “The entire point of free speech is the allowance of viewpoints you vehemently disagree with, and to let reason and discourse sway opinion one way or the other”
            Only according to the people who think racism, bigotry, homophobia, etc., are just “opinions” that might potentially triumph in reasonable discourse. Everyone else (i.e. everyone who isn’t human garbage) understands that “freedom of speech” means “not having to worry about government persecution for dissenting opinions” instead of “I should be able to say whatever I want, whenever I want to, without ever having to face any consequences”.

            • @aldamar
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              -71 year ago

              You proved his point

              • @Marruk
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                21 year ago

                Lol ok. Must be fun living in a world where anything that doesn’t agree with you automatically becomes proof that your position is right… because actually defending your position with reason is too difficult.

        • @GenericUser
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          -341 year ago

          The definition of intolerance changes with time. And in time you too may find yourself defined as intollerant

          • @blue_zephyr
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            411 year ago

            It’s actually suprisingly easy for most people to not be a piece of shit.

            • @DigitalPortkey
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              101 year ago

              Pfft come on, you know how difficult it is. We’ve all been there, sitting at a blank comment section, debating what we can say that would add to the conversation, and then bam, out of nowhere, you just start uncontrollably spewing antisemitism. That’s definitely how it works…

              /s

              Honestly, I’m very happy to find the enlightened centrists here in this thread, it allows me to block them so I don’t have to listen to “both sides are just as bad” or “this is against the spirit of free speech”.

              Excellent move by lemmy.world, very happy to be here.

            • @aldamar
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              -51 year ago

              Not for you apparently, I mean you’re not even trying to hide your power trip

              • @blue_zephyr
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                51 year ago

                And what power would that be? I’m equal to all other users of this instance.

          • Corhen
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            171 year ago

            and? so? Do you think thats a good argument against limits? If i was born to a different era, i might have supported slavery. Now we know its wrong. If i still supported slavery, that would be a bad thing.

            Life is about growth.

            • @MarxusOrlyius
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              -91 year ago

              Let’s say that was the case. Do you think you would just wake up one day and be anti-slavery all of a sudden? Or, is it far more likely you were brought to that position by debating the issue with other people and finding their arguments convincing?

          • @MelonTheMan
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            51 year ago

            People also change with time. Ideally we’ll get better at tolerating the tolerable and rejecting the previously tolerable.

            Word salad!

          • @breecher
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            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

      • @blue_zephyr
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        361 year ago

        Then maybe this isn’t the federation for you. I’m sure there’s at least one host out there without standards.

        • @TitanLaGrange
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          1 year ago

          And if there isn’t one can always become the host with no standards!

          I haven’t tried to run a Lemmy instance yet, but that it is possible is really cool.

        • @extendedStoccato
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          -181 year ago

          You’re probably right. I was hoping this would be a place that reminded me more of the old internet, where there wasn’t any intellectual guard rails.

          I guess those days are good and gone.

          • @Fearghas
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            221 year ago

            There were always ‘guard rails’ as you put it. If you spouted hate speech or made some other kind of post that offended people then you were likely to end up banned. That’s always been true whether it’s irc channels, phpbb forums, online chatrooms, reddit, lemmy or whatever the medium of choice at that time was.

          • @Freesoftwareenjoyer
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            61 year ago

            If you find an instance without moderation, it will probably have a lot of toxic users and will eventually get defederated by other instances. I saw someone talk about creating a lurker only instance where users can’t post anything, so maybe that would work.

      • @nexguy
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        321 year ago

        You are free to still join exploding heads and their instance if you want. That’s the beauty of lemmy. It’s also other instances choice to join with them or not. This one chose not.

      • @Skullgrid
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        261 year ago

        It means when choosing between allowing people who are minorities, or people who want to harass minorities, the admins here prefer the minorities.

        You can have one or the other. I know which I prefer.

        Also, horrible politically incorrect jokes are fun, however, the last few years have led to people genuinenly believing in them instead of making fun of them, so things are a bit more uptight generally in the world.

        • @rDrDr
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          191 year ago

          Your last point is so sad. I don’t know when it happened but at some point being awful on the internet went from a thing well adjusted people did occasionally for fun to an entire section of the internets’ entire personality.

          Like that “The first pride celebration” meme is kinda funny until you realize “oh, the person who made this is literally just an asshole”.

          • @TitanLaGrange
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            71 year ago

            That’s why I avoid making such jokes. It’s kind of a ‘first you form your habits, then your habits form you’ issue.

            • Ech
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              71 year ago

              “You are what you meme.”

          • @blue_zephyr
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            51 year ago

            Nah it’s always been like that. You just got used to being in a space that doesn’t tolerate the lowest scum of humanity. Places like /pol have existed since the dawn of the internet.

            • @rDrDr
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              81 year ago

              Not gonna defend /pol, but there was a time when /b was funny, right? Like fucking with westboro Baptist church rather than livestreaming mass shootings.

              • @blue_zephyr
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                51 year ago

                Couldn’t tell you. I’ve never felt to urge to go and use 4chan. In fact I’m pretty sure I’d rather dip my balls in batery acid.

            • @rDrDr
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              01 year ago

              deleted by creator

      • Hup!
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        1 year ago

        The thing is… it isn’t to protect you if you don’t feel you need protection. But this is a community, not a monolith. Consider that you always have the option to join a second community rather than forcing two communities to stay together for your convenience.

        And in an online space that’s federated, there is a really strong incentive for the admins and mods to keep us *informed when defederation is happening because the community on the other side are extremely likely to notice and let us know either way. So at least you can keep track of how censored these communities are is in some fashion.

      • @BlitzcrankAM
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        211 year ago

        You’re able to launch your own Instance and it will federate with everyone and you can do what you have stated.

      • @SlippiHUD
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        81 year ago

        The admins and mods are doing this out of a sense of duty to the community at likely a financial cost to themselves.

        I’ve abandoned many a website because moderating was ruining the experience because users wanted to give too many people too many chances (notably competitive gaming spaces)

        • @assassin_aragorn
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          181 year ago

          I fell into this mistake with a Discord server I moderate. I kept hoping the guy would reform and gave him way too many chances. He eventually crossed the line even with that mentality. There’s two big things I’ve taken from it.

          • Mercy shouldn’t come at the expense of innocents. Giving a bigot a chance to change, when they’ve used up several chances, is a disservice to the other users who have to deal with them.

          • I was doing this guy a disservice. He needed to learn that actions have consequences, and bigoted behavior earns you the boot. I coddled him by giving him the chances to change and it downplayed the seriousness.

          It really helps nobody to have lax moderation, except for the bigots who are proudly bigoted.

      • @ttmrichter
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        51 year ago

        And what’s stopping you from checking out exploding heads? The site runners have said that exploding heads stuff isn’t appearing on their property. They don’t, last I checked, have any control over what sites you visit using your property.

        See how that works? Freedom of speech means the shitheads at exploding heads can say what they like, but it doesn’t mean other people have to listen. You want to read shitfuckery, they’re right over there. Head on over!

      • @aldamar
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        -51 year ago

        This instance smells like Spez, good luck not getting cancelled here

      • Scew
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        -101 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • @Olgratin_Magmatoe
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          351 year ago

          Lemmyworld isn’t a state. If you don’t like bigotry being delt with here, go to a different instance.

          • Scew
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            -551 year ago

            I don’t like memetically enforced political agendas that parade around as people’s personal decisions. And you’re right, now that I see joining this instance was against my personal interests without realizing it but also understand why a larger instance would need to curate their content. Right-wing memes aren’t usually good at pretending to be a joke. Easy to censor half the politics in the country under the guise of being inclusive.

            • @Olgratin_Magmatoe
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              1 year ago

              Easy to censor half the politics in the country under the guise of being inclusive.

              It’s not censorship. The bigots at exploding heads are free to say whatever they want. We’re just not going to listen to it.

              Nor is it half the country’s political beliefs. Calling people slurs and making fun of people’s race isn’t a political belief that makes up half the country.

              Free speech doesn’t mean people are forced to listen to anything and everything that is ever said.

              • Scew
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                1 year ago

                While I understand and respect your perspective, I’d like to offer a different viewpoint. Let’s not forget that the principle of free speech is fundamental to maintaining a democratic society. It ensures that everyone, irrespective of their beliefs or ideologies, has the opportunity to express their opinions.

                The statement “Easy to censor half the politics in the country under the guise of being inclusive” raises a valid concern about how inclusivity might be misused to silence dissenting views. Certainly, bigotry and hate speech have no place in a civil discourse. However, it’s important to distinguish between these and legitimate, if controversial, political views.

                While you are correct that free speech doesn’t obligate anyone to listen, it does protect the right of individuals to speak their minds without fear of censorship. When we begin to label certain political ideologies as inherently offensive and seek to silence them, we risk creating a homogeneous society where only one set of beliefs is considered acceptable. This undermines the very concept of diversity and inclusion, as it prevents the representation of a wide range of perspectives.

                Furthermore, it’s a slippery slope. Once we start censoring political discourse under the banner of inclusivity, where do we draw the line? Who decides what views are offensive and should be silenced? It’s easy to pretend that defederating from an instance because there are SOME users posting ‘hate speech’ isn’t censorship of half the country’s political beliefs. But the people who can tolerate those people are also being defederated. In my own experience, those people don’t tolerate that behavior by choice, but are more understanding that a persons circumstances usually impact their habits and behaviors and that not everyone can afford enough therapy to straighten those things out.

                • @Aceticon
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                  271 year ago

                  By your definition anybody who does’t open their home to any travelling neonazi preaching their ideology is “censoring” said neonazis.

                  The impression that passes is that your black & white absolutist definition of “censorship” is just you just trying to weaponize the word for your own political ends rather than having given it genuine thought.

                  It’s not a “slippery slope” because it’s not the kind of situation were a little bit of limitation leads innevitably to total limitation: there is an actual point somewhere in the middle where somebody’s right to speech stops and somebody else’s right to not be drowned in the shouts of those they consider abhorrent starts.

                  No rights are unbound in a society because there are other people who want different things, often contraditory, who have rights too, and its mathematically impossible for everybodys rights to be unbounded, and that applies to the right of Speech as much as it applies to, for example the right of not being insulted or the right to Silence.

                  Those who are genuinelly trying to be fair about all this are not looking at the Right To Free Speech as an absolute right because any right being an absolute would trample on everybody else’s different but related rights - a situation of maximum unfairness against everybody else - what they’re looking at is were that right ends and other people’s rights start, or in other words the right ballance between everybody’s rights.

                  Personally, whilst I think Lemmy users should be allowed to, themselves, totally block instances rather than it being delegated to unelected server admins (and yeah, I know that sufficiently technically expert users can set-up their own instances - and I am one such user - but that’s not scalable and discriminates against most people, who have no such expertise), I see this as temporarily acceptable action given the current status of the code since anybody who wants to hear that speech can make an alt on that server.

                • @assassin_aragorn
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                  91 year ago

                  For all the times I’ve heard this, I’ve yet to actually see it happen. The only people who claim this happened to them turn out to be bigots of some kind.

                  There’s your line. Bigoted speech is not welcome. Value judgments about born traits are not welcome. You have to be a pretty pathetic person to dislike someone for a trait they were born with.

                  • Scew
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                    -81 year ago

                    It’s hard to understand what you’re responding to with the first paragraph, so I’m kinda lost on what you’re saying in the second one.

                  • Scew
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                    1 year ago

                    I’ll just post another reply since you probably already saw the other one. Hopefully it reaches you before you spend time writing a reply to the other one. Either way you’re just playing with identity politics. You say bigoted speech isn’t tolerated. The term “bigoted” refers to having or expressing strong, unreasonable, and unfair dislike or hatred towards a particular group of people based on their race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics. However what you’re doing is discriminating against a population based on how they express themselves. Sounds like bigotry. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Am missing the part where changing the word from discrimination to bigotry somehow excuses the thing you’re claiming to be against by doing the same action.

                • Hup!
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                  1 year ago

                  While this is a valid perspective, it’s important to understand and acknowledge the nuance between our values as ideals and our values as they interact with our other priorities.

                  There will always be concerns about how inclusivity might be used to silence dissenters. Yes there is a difference between trolling and hate speech vs. legitimate controversial views. But this exists NO MATTER the approach administrators take, or refuse to take. The difference is that admins can be held to account by the community that follows them. But dogpile flamewars that arise organically when there are no limits to free speech ALSO silence dissent. And unlike admins, participants in a gangland comment war cannot be held to account by the community in the same way.

                  And while you are right that it’s important for individuals to speak their mind without fear of censorship I seriously question whether disconnecting an automated P2P exchange of online posts rises anywhere close to the level of censorship you seem to be so concerned about here. We don’t risk creating a homogenous society from defederation because it’s not censorship, merely categorization and fragmentation.

                  Did the creation of cable TV risk censorship because people had to flip the channel to watch something different? I would argue the opposite. Comedy gets better when the people actively searching for comedy are it’s audience. Serious discussions are more insightful and productive when people know this is a place where we are comfortable speaking seriously. Creatives feel more open to getting weird and niche when they are in a space where diverse modes of creativity are encouraged.

                  How is defederation so different from creating more options for the tone or genre of content you’re looking for? There’s nothing to fear about the slippery slope of censorship so long as this community is not a whole entire society that can put limits on your internet browser. This fear seems to hint at a worry that people can’t be trusted to know how a web browser works.

                  And while censorship can be a slippery slope, we should celebrate how the admins are doing the precise opposite of that. I think it’s important to acknowledge that here we see a case-by-case investigation into whether the Instance is adhering to the agreed upon code of conduct, attempting to understand context prior to defederation. But we always knew there were trolls on the internet, and we always knew some of them would start hosting their own Instances. The function to defederate exists because the developers of the protocol realized this was an inevitable eventuality and that without safeguards, any space could devolve into 4chan.

                  • Scew
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                    1 year ago

                    Yo, they’re shouting ‘bout ideals, values, online fields. Sayin’ trolls be silenced, while admins flexin’ their alliance. Claimin’ it ain’t censorship, just some healthy fellowship.

                    Defederation’s the new sensation, but ain’t it just segregation? They say we’re innovating, but what if we’re just isolating? They talk of a better web we’re making, but is it freedom they’re really taking?

                    Edit: as an aside, I see what you’re saying. I probably will start my own instance, but I have this nagging feeling that it’s not quite as easy as ‘flipping the channel’ as you put it. ;)

            • @Tubbles
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              211 year ago

              Imagine thinking only people in the US uses lemmy.world

              • Scew
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                1 year ago

                It’s just not a funny joke though.

                Here because it’s the internet I’ll one-up you: Imagine that the only way you knew how to start a joke was by saying “imagine.”

                … see how funny.

                • @breecher
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                  1 year ago

                  deleted by creator

                  • Scew
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                    11 year ago

                    You’ve made two astute observations. How kind. Your time is well spent digging through trash.

            • @DarkWasp
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              10 months ago

              deleted by creator

              • Scew
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                -181 year ago

                “This is a private website, not a country where the government is censoring you.”

                In a world where other people need to narrate the setting for you so you remember where you are…

                “If you don’t like it for any reason you can easily sign up for another instance or create one of your own.”

                The only way to come across helpful information is by being beaten by a crowd for expressing dissatisfaction with administrator choices…

                “Nothing is even stopping you currently from signing up there and using both.”

                The majority rallies around the idea of the admins doing the work for them while repeatedly telling others if they don’t like it go do more work…!

                “America also isn’t the only country on Earth that uses this site.”

                And users repeatedly get stuck on the idea that a website that has a community called politics that seems to only post about the United State’s politics has minimal users from the United States itself…

                “Nobody is going to think you have good intentions when the place you’re defending for “free speech” are people freely using the n word and other slurs.”

                And the main character is so bogged down by having to repeatedly point out that conflating what they’ve said with a user’s own biased interpretation of what is happening to get anything else done.

                “The usage of the term comes across as disingenuous and people have a right to not want to engage with it or its members.”

                Unilateral decisions by the admin team rule, with hungry packs of users ready to pile on to an already resolved conflict, Reddit style…

                • @ttmrichter
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                  21 year ago

                  Somehow I don’t think this community is losing anything when you leave in a huff (or get banned).

                  • @aldamar
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                    -21 year ago

                    Classic passive-aggressive nazi-like minded degenerate who somehow thinks he’s in the right

                  • Scew
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                    -21 year ago

                    Oh, how fortunate we are to have a self-appointed spokesperson who possesses such an intimate understanding of the entire community’s sentiments. Your profound insight into everyone’s thoughts and feelings is truly awe-inspiring. Your ability to declare who or what the community is losing with absolute certainty is nothing short of extraordinary. We can all rest assured that your unilateral proclamation represents the collective will and consensus of every single member. It’s a true marvel how one person can possess such omnipotent authority. We are eternally grateful for your unquestionable wisdom and unparalleled ability to speak on behalf of an entire community.

                • @breecher
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                  1 year ago

                  deleted by creator

                  • Scew
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                    11 year ago

                    In our chat, you’ve cast a stone, Claimed I use a harsher tone. “Just” this and “just” that, you say, Diminishing what I convey.

                    But let me tell you, here’s the scoop, Your argument’s an endless loop. It’s clear that you can’t comprehend, So this charade, let’s put to end.

                    Not “just” this and not “just” that, Our talk is more than simple chat. Your words are weak, they’ve lost the fight, So off you go, into the night.

                    It’s written for a child. I hope you just understand.

        • @BlitzcrankAM
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          221 year ago

          You did ask, when you joined the Instance you kinda agreed to that instances Admins choices. I mentioned above but if you dont want a “nanny-state” because the Admins of this instance make choices you don’t like, you’re welcome to launch your own Instance and it will federate with (almost) everyone else at the start, and as the admin of that Instance you can disable who to federate with.

          • Scew
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            -241 year ago

            Yes, I can now see that my choice was poor with no prior experience with the protocols involved and just joining someone else’s instance.

            • @BlitzcrankAM
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              31 year ago

              I think a great many of us are learning how it all meshes, and interacts. Many may have a similar complaint to yours, and not aware they can launch their own Instance yet

      • @dustojnikhummer
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        -211 year ago

        Lemmy mods are no different from Reddit mods really

        • @Clbull
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          81 year ago

          Nah, the mods who jumped ship were the nice ones. It’s the authoritarian assholes like Awkwardtheturtle and iBleeedOrange who stayed on Reddit.

      • @DaveFuckinMorgan
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        -271 year ago

        Literally go and see yourself. It’s so incredibly lukewarm that it’s hilarious to see the level of groupthink and conformity in this thread.

        • @assassin_aragorn
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          201 year ago

          “I hate Nazis”

          “Damn I can’t believe the groupthink in this thread with everyone agreeing!”

          • @DaveFuckinMorgan
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            -211 year ago

            Who’s the nazi, point to me where, you guys will call anyone a nazi.

            • @Ryumast3r
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              111 year ago

              Sit at a table with nazis, get called a nazi.

              Repeat the rhetoric of nazis, get called a nazi.

              Defend nazis, get called a nazi, it’s pretty simple.

            • @aldamar
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              -31 year ago

              “Nazi” is everyone not agreeing with him, the modern jolly card… it doesn’t really help him that nazis have not been existing since 70 years