Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:
- Don’t like their content
- Dont like their political leaning
- Dont like their free speech approach
- General feeling of being offended
- I want a safe space!
- This instance if hurting vulnerable people
I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.
Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?
Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148
Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!
Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?
What a ridiculous question. “Is a stabbing really more hurtful than a gunshot?”
They’re both hurtful!
We can’t stop physical abuse in the real world by defederating with a hateful instance, but we can stop the hate speech from having an audience here.
Hateful content is routinely disguised as memes, “just asking questions”, “just a joke”, etc. Humans are human, and many of us are suggestible. There’s a reason Holocaust denial is literally illegal in Germany. If people hear something often enough, from enough people, it doesn’t matter what it is. They’ll start to wonder if it’s true.
It’s super easy to teach a child to hate, for instance. They believe everything they hear, and it’s very human to hate things and certain people. This doesn’t just go away when they hit the legal age to have an account here. Reddit allows 13 year olds to have an account. (Or is that Facebook? Whichever.) I don’t know what the official policy is of this instance or Lemmy in general, but the fewer 13 year olds we have reading literal hate speech, the better. It’s a black hole that it’s easy to get sucked into.
If every “good” instance blocks the hateful ones, then no one will see their content unless they go out of their way to sign up for that specific instance. That’s a good thing. It keeps the hate locked away where it’s hard to stumble into.
Now, what counts as hate? Whatever the admin decides. If the admin chooses to delegate that decision to the users, it’s still the admin choosing to do that. If you don’t like that, find a different instance.
Fuck hate. Fuck Nazis. Fuck the alt-right. Defederate them.
I’m really starting to like the term ‘defederate’…it’s so much more descriptive and applicable than ‘censorship’ or ‘cancelling’. Me intentionally choosing not associate with you isn’t the same as me actively trying prevent you from speaking. Me choosing a group that is choosing not to associate with you doesn’t infringe on your rights in the slightest. You whining about the fact that no one wants to listen to you is so far away from censorship that it’s almost humorous to listen to folks trying to shoe-horn it into the conversation.
By ‘you’, I obviously (I hope) mean the people whining about being ‘defederated’, not the commenter I’m replying to.
What a ridiculous question. “Is a stabbing really more hurtful than a gunshot?” They’re both hurtful!
Hyperbolic. Nobody is being shot, people feel offended for more or less valid reasons.
Hateful content is routinely disguised as memes, “just asking questions”, “just a joke”, etc
So? The burden of proof that this is hate is on you. Apart from this: Even if it was hateful, it’s not unlawful per se. If it becomes unlawful that’s a whole other topic.
It’s super easy to teach a child to hate, for instance.
Yes, children are children, they’re supposed to be stupid. They will hate another kid because it wears glasses, is fat, nerdy or because it’s Tuesday. You won’t change that, you just add another layer why certain kids will hate others. Hate because of hate. Doesn’t sound like a good plan.
If every “good” instance blocks the hateful ones, then no one will see their content unless they go out of their way to sign up for that specific instance. That’s a good thing. It keeps the hate locked away where it’s hard to stumble into.
Ah the hear no even, see no evil, speak no evil approach. Yeah that has always worked out pretty well, ask the French about Zemmour and Le Pen, the Germans about the AFD and so on.
Now, what counts as hate? Whatever the admin decides. If the admin chooses to delegate that decision to the users, it’s still the admin choosing to do that. If you don’t like that, find a different instance.
Ah there it is, the leftist authoritarian. Whatever Big Brother decides is good for me.
Fuck hate. Fuck Nazis. Fuck the alt-right. Defederate them.
Have a look at the state at which the right wing parties are re-emerging in Europe, look at Reassemblement National, Vox, AFD, etc etc.
That is only possible because people like you think that containment and oppression of dissenting discourse and opinion is a good thing. You’re the new Neville Chamberlain and I fear what the result of this new cowardice will be.
Ah there it is, the leftist authoritarian. Whatever Big Brother decides is good for me.
🤦♂️
Dear Lord, you are just grasping here. Go fight your straw man somewhere else. Each instance is run as a charity. The admin makes the rules. If you don’t like the rules, leave. If I don’t like the rules, I’ll leave. Take your techno-libertarian, infinite free speech bullshit somewhere else. Make your own instance where you are the benevolent dictator where your only rule is “Absolute freedom of speech for all”. Fucking christ…
I never said anything against “the admin makes the rules.” This is about users calling for defederation because “someone offended me on the internet.”
Looks like you’re exactly that kind of person and as you’ve proven yourself you’re absolutely incapable of engaging in a civil discussion. Feel free to leave… or participate, but if you do, people will disagree with you, no matter if that hurts your precious feelings or not.
Maybe the disconnect is what is meant by open market. You might actually be complaining that people have too much choice and are free to start an instance, using their own resources and choose to disassociate from some others users. If someone sets up a roadside stand and lets their friends sell things there but refuses to let a friend of a friend sell his swastika stickers there, that isn’t censorship if the guy is allowed to open his open stand. It’s just not being overly helpful. If no one wants to go to swastika guy’s stand, and everyone makes fun of him, or even discourages other people from going there, that isn’t censorship either. It’s only censorship if he isn’t allowed to set up his own stand by someone in charge of that sort of thing.
What it sounds like you want isn’t a censorship-free platform, but a platform that is restricted from not choosing to give everyone the exact same voice. That may sound more fair to you, but when it costs person A money to facilitate person B’s access, and you don’t allow person A the choice to opt out of that (basically raising the bar for person A to participate), you’re actually restricting A instead of being fair to B.
In the case where person A is actually a public resource, that’s where it becomes censorship to block person B’s access, because then it’s a position of authority determining who gets to say what. But when person A is a regular guy, hog-tying him into helping person B blather about something hateful, or even just annoying, to person A is actually infringing on rights instead of promoting them.
I think you nailed it. These instances can be started by anyone, for any reason, ran any way you want. Just as it is nazi guys right to be nazis on their instance, it’s everyone elses right to say no. That is not censorship, it’s freedom of speech. The owners of other instances are enacting their freedom of speech by saying “no”, and possibly even “fuck you”. To cry and piss yourself when other people don’t want to talk to you and say “wah wah you want a safe space” is pathetic. If you want a place where you can be as much as a douche you want, go start it! No one’s stopping you!
Exactly, and I think the disconnect here is that moving from the type of platform that is reddit or Twitter where those are practically bordering on being ‘public utilities’, they people don’t quite understand the concept that federation allows for everyone to exercise their own rights and preferences and that joining, or being alienated from, a group of freely associating people is different than being banned from a large centralized online platform. They don’t want the work of finding or creating their own group…or possibly more likely they just don’t understand the environment enough to realize that their complaint doesn’t have the same validity here as it did ‘over there’.
All very good points. I also want to explicitly state that freedom of speech typically ends when it’s causing harm. It sucks having to listen to Nazi propaganda but as soon as they start inciting violence or discrimination (which for them is pretty quick), they can no longer claim freedom of speech. That’s not to say we should preemptively ban communities. Just something to be aware of, so we can figure out the line where preventing direct harm is prioritized over being able to say whatever you want.
It also ends when you force me to pass along the message.
On a public forum it’s unconstitutional for the government to give a platform to one group and not another (within reason).
For a private individual, it’s not ‘anti freedom of speech’ if I refuse to let you use my copier to print your posters and expect me to go around sticking them up in my neighborhood, whether that’s hate speech or your grandma’s cookie recipe, you can’t force or guilt me into helping you publish content. You can still publish it, but if you want me to use my bandwidth or printer ink or even room on my pegboard you have too ask nicely and accept no for an answer, and you don’t get to cry ’freedom of speech’ and expect any reasonable person to accept that as an argument.
I’ve been on the internet for a minute… if you think unmoderated free speech works in a primarily text based medium then I have a bridge in Queens that just popped on the market. Oh look that’s a statement, i should defend that right with logically consistent arguments and citations and draw my conclusions from that and oh my God is anyone still reading this?
The most concise reason I have is that respect is a two-way street, and I haven’t met a lot of folks online who actually understand what it means to respect an argument. The barrier to entry for me is the ability to think critically, and that involves regulating your own speach and not having to rely on others to do it for you.
So let’s see… statement, some bullshit evidence, appeal to critical thinking, one more to go …
This is a falsifiable and testable theory … find me a site that promotes this and I’ll look and see how long it takes for it to fail my one simple criteria.
Your mixing the need for moderation which I don’t dispute with the call for defederation by users who feel offended by lawful freedom of speech.
So if you want to make an argument against what I actually said/wrote: Be my guest.
Defederation is a fancy term for shunning. Which is an appropriate response when a community fails to regulate it’s speech. Differnent communities will have different standards based on but not limited to local social mores, geographical region, language and probably a lot more. I appreciate your effort in defending Freedom of Speech on this platform, but the sad fact remains that most people on the internet have no concept on how Rhetoric, Logic, and Burden of Proof actually work so it just ends up with everyone throwing shit at eachother.
Defederation is a fancy term for shunning. Which is an appropriate response when a community fails to regulate it’s speech.
Partially agree here. Free speech has obviously limits (when it becomes unlawful or it’s weaponized) and moderation/oversight is needed. Every garden needs a gardener, without care and limitations even the most beautiful garden becomes a dangerous jungle (or a desert).
If what you postulated, a community fails to regulate free speech, happens I can see why defederation is considered to contain a growing issue.
However it seems that defederation, or at least the call for defederation, is now becoming a tool for the cancellation-fraction on both ends of the political spectrum so they can all together avoid talking or sewing their believe-system challenged. I see this as a great loss of opportunity on one side and also as a danger to society in the other.
Differnent communities will have different standards based on but not limited to local social mores, geographical region, language and probably a lot more.
Yes! And isn’t that an amazing chance to learn, debate, and grow? Federation can open up a world of new thought and concepts to someone who started his journey on a server in a country were religious laws restrict free speech, sexual liberation, human rights etc.
I appreciate your effort in defending Freedom of Speech on this platform, but the sad fact remains that most people on the internet have no concept on how Rhetoric, Logic, and Burden of Proof actually work so it just ends up with everyone throwing shit at eachother.
When I started this community a day ago I expected everything and was still somewhat pleasantly surprised by some contributions I would learn to understand and respect while still disagreeing on some aspects.
And even if shit is thrown around, it’s worth the effort and maybe I’ll still learn something, even if it is to moderate a bit better or to try to explain myself a little bit better.
These are private instances run by private entities. There is no “lawful freedom of speech” because no governments are involved. Furthermore, lemmy is global, not just American.
Lemmy is not private just because instances are owned by individuals. If you post or comment you broadcast which is public and regulated by free speech laws where applicable.
Just because you have the right to say something doesn’t mean I have to listen to it.
Just because you don’t want to listen you’re entitled to prevent others from listening.
We’re back at square 1.
Boycotts are a feature of an “open marketplace”
Boycotts as individual decisions yes. Boycotts as institutional warfare (top to bottom) are not.
You became part of a server which boycotts other servers when you made the individual decision to create an account here
I just wanted to say, I love how we can see the beauty of Lemmy in-action here.
Seeing both the upvotes & the downvotes, and all the suggestions of going to a different instance… it’s honestly a beautiful thing, and it’s like watching a small snippet of how human society works.
“I don’t like the way this instance works”
“Go somewhere else then”
“But I don’t want to/I don’t feel like it’s fair”
“But we do like the way it works”
Humans have truly never changed, and it’s a privelage to watch this play out in such a format.
Exactly, it’s like the argument is that letting people do what they want with their own resources and time somehow infringes on someone else’s rights. It’s almost exactly the entitlement they say they want to fight against.
If I buy a bullhorn, I’m not infringing on your rights by not letting you borrow it if you can literally go buy your own bullhorn. If you do buy your own bullhorn it’s not infringing on your rights if people tend to leave the area you’re blabbing in and gravitate towards someone else, or if they put up sound proof walls to hide behind. It’s not infringing on your rights if I don’t give you equal time on a stage I spent my own time and money setting up.