I’ve been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken “federation” system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it’s never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy’s official docs say you can’t even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won’t actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
So you can only ever have the “average joe lemmy” and “average joe reddit” with everything approved by the authorities, and then “tor copies of lemmy” and “tor copies of reddit” where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.
People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But it’s the exact same thing, it’s reddit.
When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldn’t let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they won’t let you talk at all.
Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.
It’s not actually a solution to reddit. It’s not designed to be different, it’s designed to match the past today and then match reddit’s present tomorrow, while being part of a system that’s about the same in past, present, and future.
Last year, this year, and next year, you’re posting somewhere it won’t be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. There’s no difference here.
Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.
Edit - I was banned from my instance, and before being unbanned, some of my comments seem to have been removed. I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings, but it seems pointless to try to discuss this topic here. I’ll give a few more replies, and then suggest any further responses be directed to me on nostr, where there are no bans. I’ve also had a good time posting on PieFed while I was banned, so I’ll probably keep spending time there. If anyone’s curious, I had a thread about this topic on PieFed too. Btw, instead of the misplaced focus on bots, I should have said filter spam, not people earlier in this post.
Great post. All of your downvotes prove you were exactly right! It’s crazy that a place like Lemmy, which likes to complain about censorship in mainstream media, loves censorship so much.
Lemmy does not like differing views or opinions. They love to censor that shit out.
ActivityPub is designed to create platforms that enable customized moderation experiences in order to resist corporate/commercial influence.
ActivityPub also resists government censorship, because a thousand copies get made for every post, one for every federated instance.
If you’re looking for a platform where your personal speech can be forced upon others then ActivityPub is quite literally the opposite of what you’re looking for.
Apparently you ignored my whole post.
Lemmy does not allow “customized moderation experiences” to “resist corporate/commercial influence.” They have to allow corporate/commercial/“government” censorship via IP/DNS blocking, according to Lemmy’s docs. That’s what I explained in my original post.
I never said anything about forcing my speech on others, it’s straight-up mentally ill how you talk like I did.
The purpose, 👏THE.👏PURPOSE.👏of the ActivityPub protocol is to give ultimate moderation power to instance owners (as opposed to a singular, usually corporate, owner).
That is (and I can’t stress this enough) the entire point.
So if Lemmy is part of that, someone should fix the issue so that it can do that
We’ve had disagreements in the past, but I can’t agree with you more in this case. It’s the entire point
Lol, well if we agree on something then you know it’s serious. This guy doesn’t seem to understand that his issue with “Lemmy” is a fundamental one.
So you’re just mad it doesn’t work over tor?
I’m annoyed people are wasting my time with replies like this, and I’m also pointing out that Lemmy won’t really be useful until federation works properly, which would currently require Tor.
While I agree on the general message, I very much disagree on the “completely free speech part”, for the same reason the paradox of tolerance exists.
That makes no sense. Why would you not be able to tolerate anything without tolerating everything? Or, why would tolerating one thing force you to also tolerate some other unrelated thing? And if that’s what you believe, how do you pull off absolute intolerance in a fair and peaceful way? Don’t let anyone talk? Just have everyone censor whoever they disagree with because that’s “fairness?” It makes absolutely seriously no sense.
Everything has limits. Water is good for you but too much will kill you. Most people don’t want to take the moral and legal risks of running a completely uncensored site.
Why did you reply with this where you did? What does it have to do with the post you’re replying to? I didn’t ask about what some percentage of people is doing this year
It’s an overall response to your post. If you want to take the risk of allowing unfettered speech then run your own Lemmy server.
It sounds like you haven’t even read my post. My whole point (as I’ve repeated many times throughout this thread to others acting like you) is that I cannot solve anything about Lemmy by running my own instance because federation is broken.
Find the other posters complaining about absolute free speech and y’all can post to each other on your instance.
My biggest request of the Lemmy devs is that they censor people like you specifically.
It’s failed like Reddit already and is tiny. The sheer amount of botspam, fake accounts, spam instances, etc makes Reddit look curated.
Lemmy is designed to fail the same way as reddit when reaching the same size
I didn’t ask you about this. Why waste time telling me about it?
So you want to block people who block people? There’s no corporate centralisation, that’s a huge fundemental difference. Big Daddy’s not there, its more anarchic.
I think I got cancer reading this post.
My problem with reddit was not censorship, and I can’t think of why I would want to visit a forum with absolutely no censorship. I want “right” or “good” censorship or however that ends up relating to my values. Lemmy was not designed to address your problems with censorship, but it definitely addresses some problems of censorship.
Why are you wasting my time like I want replies from liars?
“Right” or “good” censorship, as you call it, is censoring bots from political discussion, or censoring pedophiles from a kids’ TV channel, not censoring humans from political discussion.
Personally I use other platforms for uncensored discussions.
Unfortunately they’re filled with insufferable twats like yourself, but that’s the price we pay for free speech.
It’s obvious for everybody except for you, that Lemmy isn’t intended as a free speech platform, but a means to form your own community based on shared interests and values. That inherently comes with some amount of censorship at the discretion of instance operators. I’m a free speech advocate, but I value and respect individuals’ right to maintain their property (Lemmy instance) as they see fit.
If you want free speech, hop on Simplex where you can yell racial slurs until you’ve satisfied yourself.
Or spin up your own lemmy instance. I’d be happy to join and engage in some debates.
Personally I use other platforms for uncensored discussions.
No you don’t. We use other platforms for less censored discussions. Maybe you use nostr like me but that doesn’t mean either of us has overcome this era of censorship.
Unfortunately they’re filled with insufferable twats like yourself, but that’s the price we pay for free speech.
Yep.
It’s obvious for everybody except for you, that Lemmy isn’t intended as a free speech platform, but a means to form your own community based on shared interests and values.
This is self-contradictory. Which is it?
Not intended for free speech?
Or indeed intended for free speech (freedom to form your own community (discussion space) based on shared interests and values)?
If you want free speech, hop on Simplex where you can yell racial slurs until you’ve satisfied yourself.
Simplex isn’t what I use for free speech, nostr is, and my slurs are generally not racial.
How would you even use Simplex for more free speech? Does it have group chats or something? (I don’t actually care, I’m just mildly confused)
Or spin up your own lemmy instance. I’d be happy to join and engage in some debates.
I will not be spinning up instances of anything. I will seed hashes in bittorrent-like P2P networks, I will put my posts where they fit, I will look for posts from others in the most anti-censorship ways I can find, and I will hope devs and server admins create a version of Lemmy that’s fitting for more of my posts - while hurrying toward a possible future where Tor isn’t enough to make Lemmy relevant anymore, because P2P networks become the only place worth posting anything.
This is self-contradictory. Which is it?
It’s not self-contradictory. Any user created community will have rules designed to keep on-topic. Whether or not its a music community, video game community, national community, pottery community. “Free speech zones” so to speak are contradictory to those goals.
It is self-contradictory.
Reddit has the authority to hijack a subreddit and change the mods and the rules, or just ban it. Reddit staff take that authority, and reddit users grant it.
If you want Lemmy to improve on that, which I also want, that area of improvement is what we call a form of “free speech.”
You cannot accurately say Lemmy should offer this improvement over reddit, but it is not related to free speech. That is just incorrect.
Reddit has the authority to hijack a subreddit and change the mods and the rules, or just ban it. Reddit staff take that authority, and reddit users grant it.
Yes. So do lemmy instances.This is because community moderators don’t actually own any part of the instance they operate on. How is it you imagine Reddit users can somehow not grant it?
But ignoring that, any user-made community has specific topics and themes in mind for what it wants to focus on. This necessarily requires focusing on those things to the explicit censorship of other topics.
How is it you imagine Reddit users can somehow not grant it?
By coding a decentralized P2P reddit and moving there, I guess.
Or just a tor version of Lemmy could be good.
But ignoring that, any user-made community has specific topics and themes in mind for what it wants to focus on. This necessarily requires focusing on those things to the explicit censorship of other topics.
Right, and you can’t pick those other topics for your community, because federation is broken.
I absolutely think nazis should be censored from political discourse in communities I am involved in.
Didn’t ask, but why did you tell me?
So you seem to think that should never happen?
So was there a reason you told me? I asked this above but you still didn’t answer it
That question baits me to say something I could get banned for here. If your goal is actually to learn something and not just get me banned, try asking me on nostr.
I don’t think you would get banned for saying you don’t believe nazis should be banned.
That’s not what you asked, and it’s much easier to answer, but it can only be answered with a question: banned from what?
They should be banned from eating food non-Nazis need at the same time, but not banned from political discussion, for example.
You’re free to read and respond to any comments you want, you’re the only one who can waste your time.
Talk about blaming others. Interesting person.
Yes, it is interesting that people who discuss things in good faith blame bad faith discussion (and the time wasted therein) on those who choose it.
Incorrect.
Willingly baiting someone to read nonsense in bad faith makes you responsible for wasting their time. You don’t get to blame the victim for being willing to engage in good faith.
Bad faith is bad, good faith isn’t, that’s why they’re called that.
How did the person “bait” you? How is it nonsense? How does the responsibility, how you spend your time, shift to someone else? How are you a victim? How are you arguing in good faith?
So much to unpack.
How did the person “bait” you?
Why do you ask? Is the context deleted now? I don’t feel like scrolling up to check
How does the responsibility, how you spend your time, shift to someone else?
What do you mean? Why would one person’s responsibility shift to someone else? Is that even a thing?
How are you a victim?
Are you asking me to consult a dictionary for you, or asking me to repeat what I said above?
How are you arguing in good faith?
Again, can’t tell what you’re asking here other than “help me use a dictionary”
So much to unpack.
You could get better at doing gish gallops but luckily I’m pretty good at handling them
Hahahahahahahahaha what the fuck. I did not bother reading past your first section. Why should I? Waste someone else’s time.
You asked questions, I answered them.
“Waste someone else’s time,” but unironically. I hope you won’t waste mine anymore.
Same here. I joined lemmy for privacy, the federation that allows smaller communities with very specific interests and moderation and an escape from the capitalist reddit that doesn’t care about it’s users at all.
I’ve found that the other replies don’t really express my personal take on this, so I’ll go ahead and write mine down.
First of all, and it’s important, people’s take on such topics is heavily dependent on the country they live in. It’s legitimately hard to imagine why you would want to break government rules hard and be a good person if you live somewhere in Norway. And it’s legitimately hard to imagine a world where you really trust your government and think that the current levels of censorship is actually good if you live in a dictatorship country.
With this in mind, a comfortable and universal level of censorship simply doesn’t exist.
I think the lack of Tor support is valid criticism if you’re in a dictatorship. Of course, DNS-based solutions are not good-enough for you. I hope you’ll find something that solves your problems. Unfortunately a simple Lemmy instance is not a solution for you.
Generally, if I’d advise something, I’d suggest to look at what the project actually aims to do, not at what you think it should be doing. E.g. visit https://join-lemmy.org/ and there it says:
Lemmy is a selfhosted social link aggregation and discussion platform. It is completely free and open, and not controlled by any company. This means that there is no advertising, tracking,…
Well, does it sound like a solution made for people in heavily censored environments? To me – not. If you want to present your case and incentivize the Lemmy devs to ADD another perspective or direction to the software that they’re spending time developing, prepare your case and argumentation well. Explain your situation (e.g. “I’ll be hung if I speak freely where I live”, or more relevant, “my country heavily DNS-censors 90% of the good existing Lemmy instances, I’m deprived of good information you have circling here”), propose some solutions or offer help. I don’t know really. It’s up to you. Good luck with your seach
I explained my situation. I want to shift towards a cluster of zero-censorship instances, but I found out they apparently can’t exist because Lemmy blocks Tor (?), so I’m better off just spending less time on Lemmy.
I don’t care that much if devs fix it, I’m just explaining the problem. If it gets fixed, good; if not, the devs who would fix it will do some other good thing; if that’s not enough for the planet to survive, it’s that there aren’t enough good devs, not that they aren’t focused enough on Lemmy. I hope there are enough good devs for the planet to survive, and also for Lemmy to get fixed, though.
i disagree that tor or tor-level anonymity is some magical requirement to defeat corporations.
you speak as if lemmy isnt a bunch of independent instances. maybe step outside the lemmy tree and take a look at the ap forest
I didn’t say anything about anonymity. It’s not convenient for the authorities to block Tor connections, like it is when directly using DNS or IP addresses. The question isn’t anonymity, it’s whether there’s actually a place for everyone to come together and join in discourse, or just a centralized corporate filter system for making sure the “wrong people” are never listened to.
Well the Fediverse isn’t centralised so there is no corporate control of content on here.
You couldn’t make it 3 paragraphs into my post? Yet another reply where I have to ask if it’s in good faith
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken “federation” system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it’s never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy’s official docs say you can’t even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won’t actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
People didn’t leave reddit because the authorities were blocking posts. They left because of fundamental disagreements with how the site is run.
The part of your post where you worry about state censorship is a hypothetical fear for the future.
I am banned from reddit and I’m not the only one.
I’m surely not even the only one on Lemmy.
Did you make me explain this in good faith, or are you just posting incorrect shit willingly?
We are censored by the authorities in the past, present, and future, not just the future.
Okay. Some people are here because Reddit banned them. Many aren’t though. I imagine most people who got banned on reddit also ended up getting banned here.
I would argue that it is not the primary reason for why most active users come here.
But did you make me explain that in good faith, or were you just posting incorrect shit willingly?
And do you have anything for me or are you just trying to troll me because you don’t like me?
What I need to understand is how you envision a 0-censorship community working when there’s content that should at all times be censored, like CSAM. I don’t hear solutions to these cases, or even an acknowledgement that not all content should be protected from any sort of moderation, just complaints about content being moderated at all. Furthermore, you keep accusing everyone of arguing in bad faith but we’re all just saying the normal shit every other Lemmy user knows about Lemmy and ActivityPub.
And if I missed some point of yours, which seems like you think most of us are, blame it on laziness or smith, I’m boarding a plane and can’t be bothered
What I need to understand is how you envision a 0-censorship community working when there’s content that should at all times be censored, like CSAM.
If you mean actual CSAM, just imprison/kill the people making it until there is no more.
If you mean “CSAM” like a girl sending nudes to her boyfriend, then by “should” you mean “could,” and then why reply to someone who’s clearly more honest?
I don’t hear solutions to these cases, or even an acknowledgement that not all content should be protected from any sort of moderation, just complaints about content being moderated at all.
If you call killing child abusers when there’s enough food and everything “moderation” then I’m against moderation.
If you call corporations doing dishonest advertising “moderation” then I’m strictly absolutely against moderation.
If you call imprisoning child abusers, or killing them when there’s not enough food, “moderation” then I’m more favorable. That’s a weird way to use the term “moderation” but it’s fine.
And in the middle ground, if you call “moderation” banning a guy from a Roblox discussion forum for saying his gf sent him nudes while the Roblox discussion forum is funded by Roblox and has no real direct connection to politics / is honestly trying to be a “non-political space” then I don’t really care. And I think that would actually be a perfectly fitting example for the definition of the term “moderation.”
Furthermore, you keep accusing everyone of arguing in bad faith but we’re all just saying the normal shit every other Lemmy user knows about Lemmy and ActivityPub.
The majority of replies I’ve gotten have seemed extremely bad-faith, and you denying it is where your reply starts to feel extremely bad-faith too (though it was creeping up to that line from the beginning).
And if I missed some point of yours, which seems like you think most of us are, blame it on laziness or smith, I’m boarding a plane and can’t be bothered
Planes pump pollution directly into the upper atmosphere and waste a lot of non-renewable resources. This ending makes me dislike your comment more than any other in this thread, although there are others that seem more extremely bad-faith.
You’re correct, but I doubt anyone here will listen.
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I think the downvoting of this is showing exactly why Lemmy will fail. Why cant people have a different opinion than most? Why downvote it? You guys love your little bubbles dont you.
I want to also read opinions i dont agree with. It doesnt bother me the slightest.
Downvoting doesn’t stop you from reading the opinion?
He can have an opinion, but have you seen how he’s behaving in the replies?
No didnt read it…
Yeah, he’s not behaving with grace.
Nah, he’s being downvoted because he hates censorship, and you’re hence disagreeing/downvoting him.
I think he’s awesome and fully agrees with him.You think I’m the only person downvoting and disagreeing with him?
You fully agree with him? You want CSAM to be on the fediverse?
You was plural, and sry of editing my comment afterwards i haven’t seen your answer.
You want CSAM to be on the fediverse ?
States already make it illegal, and that’s not what he was talking about(, you should know that he expressed himself clear enough).
States already make it illegal, and that’s not what he was talking about(, you should know that he expressed himself clear enough).
No, he explicitly said it here.
You don’t really want zero censorship.
Not sure what you mean. I really want a dev to make a version of Lemmy with Tor federation so we can have a zero-censorship Lemmy cluster. That is definitely true, not false.
The meaning is closer to “it would not be in your best interest, and you could never hold yourself to it” than “you do not desire it in the abstract”
Depending on how literal you are with “let people send ANYTHING over tor 🐒🔨😃🤜🤛😀💰” I’m downright uncomfortable with this whole concept
Incorrect. It would really be in my best interest. I am holding myself to that right now, by reiterating it in this reply.
What are you actually trying to say? What’s your train of thought here? Just cryptic gaslighting, right?
Not that long ago, after the first big exodus from Reddit to Lemmy, there was a group that decided to mess with Lemmy any way they could.
They spent weeks DDoS-ing it and when that failed to get a reaction there were sudden posts of extreme gore and very explicit child pornography across the front page.
Free speech is nice in theory, but for true anarchist style freedom of speech to exist we would have to tolerate the intolerable.
Free speech is nice in theory, but for true anarchist style freedom of speech to exist we would have to tolerate the intolerable.
No, you would have to stop.
If you think raping and bombing people is tolerable, but showing you pictures of it isn’t, you are intolerable to me - and I am absolutely the one who’s right, in that conflict.
If you think raping and bombing people is worse than showing you pictures of it, stop fucking around with bullshit and try tolerating the tolerable while not tolerating the intolerable.
If most of the human population is into rape and bombing, wipe out most of the human population until the front page is full of better posts, don’t just shield yourself from posts and call it “not tolerating the intolerable”
If it’s only a minority of the human population, outvote them to fill the front page with better posts
Use modern technology to make the world a better place instead of trying to ruin the technology and the world
Most importantly, just stop being fucking dishonest
I think you need to take your meds.
Weak gaslighting attempt, glowie. I just smoke weed. Stop being fucking dishonest
You’re an actual psycho
I didn’t ask.
While we’ve got you on the line, what is the appeal of a platform like Nostril? Is it Bluesky for crypto nonces?
You ignored my questions, but I’ll answer yours before asking again.
You can’t be banned from nostr and you’re not tethered to a single “instance” (and Tor is supported a little better). As for “nostril,” I bet spelling things wrong on purpose goes hard af when you have 62 IQ.
Now, what I asked before:
What were you trying to say before? What was that train of thought? Just cryptic gaslighting, right?
Go ask the wind, my guess is lots of people ignore your hard-hitting interview questions
Again, this must go hard af when you have 62 IQ
Libbest post of the year here.
You come here complaining this doesn’t meet your made-up expectation of 100% uncensored full audience reach. Who ever said that’s what any of this was?
Since you seem to have such a strong opinion of what the world needs, why don’t you go fucking make it if there’s nothing out there that suffices for your grand vision?
Libbest post of the year here.
What?
You come here complaining this doesn’t meet your made-up expectation of 100% uncensored full audience reach. Who ever said that’s what any of this was?
You, just now, right? I don’t see anyone else accusing me of making those complaints or making that shit up, seems like that was just you in the sentence before you asked?
Since you seem to have such a strong opinion of what the world needs, why don’t you go fucking make it if there’s nothing out there that suffices for your grand vision?
Why are you pretending I’m not, when that’s exactly what my profile shows me doing?
Are you suggesting Project Zymogen and all of its follow-ups should be so easy and fast to finish, there shouldn’t even be time for Lemmy to develop? I don’t think that’s what you’re suggesting, because that would be extremely fucking insane, but the alternative is that you’re just making shit up about me based on nothing and you don’t even know what Project Zymogen is, which is about the same amount insane.
I have no idea what that is and it sounds like you just pulled it out of your ass, but good job. You’re not going to convince anybody here to join your hellhole though. That’s not what lemmy is about.
I have no idea what that is and it sounds like you just pulled it out of your ass, but good job.
I’d thank you if you actually understood what you’re saying, at all. But there’s not one iota of sincerity or comprehension in those words.
You’re not going to convince anybody here to join your hellhole though.
That depends whether I have a hellhole, but I probably won’t have one, indeed. Kinda random though - why’d you bring it up?
That’s not what lemmy is about.
So again, why bring it up, but also why add this part?
are you terminally online?
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What do you mean?
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I asked why you brought up whether I’d try to convince people to join a hellhole
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I asked why you added “that’s not what lemmy is about” to your own topic
yeah ok, anyway, have fun with your zygote project and censorship free whatever
Strange how there are people calling for me to be banned, but not you, while you’re trolling to waste my time, while I’m trying to organize resistance.
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The no-censorship crowd is funny. “I wanted to block everyone whose admins block someone, in order to find the people whose admins don’t block anyone, so I could talk to the few people I hadn’t blocked because they don’t block people.”
(And that’s ignoring the traditional entitlement in that people somewhere else deciding not to listen to you somehow means you’re censored locally.)
Hypocracy – and conspiracy-level rambling – aside, there’s actually an interesting kernel of commentary here on how we talk about joining and administering Fedi. On the one hand, we say that newcomers shouldn’t worry about which instance to start out on, because every one connects to every other, but on the other we celebrate how the instanced architecture allows admins control over which other instances to connect to. And then you have the deeper issue of the vast majority of the software assuming DNS, so even if admins do want to connect to Tor instances, they can’t feasably do so without a fair bit of host-system tweaking. Yeah, those mixed messages are just the emergent result of which layer of abstraction we’re talking about in any given conversation, but it would be nice if we could find language that doesn’t take literally the opposite tack on each successive layer.
I don’t know how to respond to this comment. Upvoting and leaving a confused reply.
