Hey all, I recently left reddit like many of you. I have a question regarding lemmy and the fediverse on the history of banning and defederation. I have noticed several posts calling for varying communities to be disconnected. were these removal requests as prevalent before the mass migration? Usually I am all for communities existsting in their own spaces, barring illegal content. I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.
Let’s not sugar-coat this: do not tolerate fascists and bigots in your spaces. Period.
A clear-cut and uncontroversial rule that will see little to no opposition, yes.
And in many cases it’s also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.
But in other cases, you’re going to run into trouble. A particular case in point; I don’t like the Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy. I have, in the past, been immediately called a sexist when I’ve mentioned that fact. But I personally don’t care one whit about the gender of the trilogy’s protagonist, I just think they’re bad movies. Maybe there are other people who actually do care and that’s the reason they don’t like those movies. Maybe there are people who don’t believe me when I say I personally don’t care about the gender of the trilogy’s protagonist. So, is https://reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/ a bigoted community? If there was a Fediverse equivalent, should it be blocked? Different people will argue different ways.
I can think of lots of other scenarios, I won’t make a big rambling list because I’m sure I’ll step on a landmine eventually. I’m just arguing that seemingly simple straightforward “rules” that are easy to agree with can still end up mired in complexity when people try to implement them in the real world.
I don’t feel like there is as much gray area here as you’re making it out to be. There is a big difference between
“The new star wars movies are bad cause they are WOKE!1!1!1!1!1 Women are bad!”
vs
“The new star wars movies were an incohesive mess due to changes between writers and directors for all 3 films”
But also it’s not like we will be defederating whenever people get in a slap fight, people are still going to have shitty opinions on any instance and get downvoted for that. This is for a pattern of behavior being tolerated and prolific.
The whole reason /r/saltierthancrait exists is because the folks at /r/starwars largely refused to make that distinction. It could be that “misogynist” was simply a convenient weapon to bludgeon the people who disagreed with their taste in movies and they didn’t genuinely believe that everyone who disliked those movies were misogynist, but the weapon was deployed nonetheless and resulted in a schism.
These words are just too convenient sometimes.
Yeah I have no doubt someone called him a sexist for not liking the new SW, but from what I’ve seen across communities online 99% of people are easily able to distinguish between someone critiquing films over being a misogynist. And there was def rampant misogyny in some places when they got released.
“No nazis or bigots” is a nice slogan, but if people turn off our brains and turn off our humanity and just start mindlessly chanting slogans that justify the punishing of our enemies, then there’s no difference between us and the typical German in 1938.
It doesn’t take a lot to end up in a bad place if we think we’re purely good and in the right and our enemy is purely evil.
lmao fuck off. Tolerating nazis leads to more nazis. The only way to get rid of them is to stomp them out.
We’re not talking about punishing anyone, we just don’t want to hear or see their bigotry. They can have their space and we can choose not to interact with them.
There is a really, really big difference between “we want to kill you” and “we do not want to be killed by you”.
Don’t tolerate fascists. However comfortable that centrist illusion is, you are signing your own death warrant and that of millions of others (most of whom will suffer the consequences of your actions long before they get around to the people who feel safe enough to argue that fascists must be tolerated).
That’s a bad faith argument they used against you for having a good opinion that they disagree with. In my personal head cannon I ignore the prequels and sequels because they cheapen the original plot. Rogue One I’ll take though.
I’m a fan of the Machete Order, which salvages two of the three prequels. The prequels weren’t good, but the story was reasonably sound at least and inserting them between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi actually does some nice improvements to the overall pacing IMO.
The concern you raised cannot be overstated. Accusing someone of bigotry or hate because their opinions of a subject are different has become a common invalidation and attack strategy. Another example is the Little Mermaid movie. By most accounts it’s just not a very good movie. But you’ll likely be called a racist by certain groups if you state that you don’t like it. I haven’t seen it. I don’t have an opinion on it. But I witnessed the resulting arguments unfold across the internet. It is okay to dislike works created by or starring POC. It is not okay to dislike them because they were created by or star POC. Some people seem to find it impossible to differentiate between the two.
in many cases it’s also clear-cut and uncontroversial whether someone is a fascist or a bigot.
Perhaps different life experiences. In many cases nothing is really clear-cut when it comes to people and their opinions. People who believe “they figured it out” inadvertently become totalitarians.
I am hoping that the new users are coming here with the intent to learn how this community works, before we try to remake the community we just left.
Yeah go and take a stroll through those instances and you’ll see quickly why their posts aren’t welcomed here.
“communities existsting in their own spaces”
In some sense that is what defederating does, no?
In fact, defederating can ensure communities can continue to exist in their own spaces without being harassed or being subject to bigotry
Is kbin a community, or a platform for communities to run on? I’m subbed to maybe 20 magazines now, and I can’t even tell you which one comes from which server.
I think of magazines as communities, and servers as enablers of the platform they run on. Sure there are purpose-built servers around a topic, but as a data point of 1, I haven’t joined kbin to be a part of kbin community, I joined because it seemed to be the most reliable provider for me to reach communities across fediverse.
I also have recently left Reddit. And I am all for blocking content that contains hate speech. Allowing fascist content to take root is unacceptable.
Seems to be popular to defederate from right-leaning instances. The Fediverse basically started as a far-left stronghold, so it isn’t surprising.
Most instances also defederated from lemmygrad (commies) so its not generally politically left either.
IMO, Stalinists aren’t exactly tolerant either. You’re still talking about a totalitarian and authoritarian viewpoint, even if they’re on the left on economic matters.
IMO, if your point is to make a community welcoming, then you have to get rid of intolerant voices. That–broadly speaking–means that you have to remove people advocating for any kind of absolutist, authoritarian rules. It’s easy to see at a macro level, but it’s all fuzzy at a micro level.
A lot of people in the Fediverse don’t seem to appreciate the concept that the political left is just as capable of intolerance and extremism as the political right.
