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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: December 31st, 2023

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  • (1) it’s basically a million times more apologetic than anything that I’ve ever seen coming from Lemmygrad.ml, lemmy.ml, or hexbear.net. e.g. here’s an example where the mod says that he wants to kill the OP, then doubles down as to why he wants to shoot him, then finishes off with “I hope you die soon”. Yes, I’m absolutely saying that this Lemmy.World mod is 100% better than that.

    (2) It explains the reasoning why she did what she did, and what was coming next. Overall, if you don’t like the way she mods, then don’t post in her community? Be part of the change… At least she was clear in her approach, so that people can make informed decisions.

    (3) But the part that is perhaps most relevant here is how it was delivered 3 days ago. The interim time was spent by the admins crafting an amendment to the ToS, but this mod herself offered her thoughts immediately after the event. The word here I believe is “responsive”.

    Here’s a good (imho) specific example of one part of her apology: https://lemmy.world/comment/13830560.


  • (1) irrelevant, bc I was discussing their fears, but really the admins can do whatever they wish, at any time, for any reason. We are free to cry about it, or leave, but it’s theirs to do with whatever they will.

    (2) Fox News in the USA had to pay nearly a billion dollar settlement for their misinformation. OAN was shut down. More importantly, CSAM exists and people fear to have it on their servers, and regardless of the direct ethical implications there are some extremely strong legal ones as well. Piracy websites likewise get taken down constantly, even for “only” sharing links to where content is hosted “elsewhere”. I am sure that if someone legitimately wanted to know the direct answer to your question (not me) they could perhaps spend some time searching for the answer?

    But again, aside from you changing the subject of this conversation, it’s irrelevant in the first place, bc the fear itself is real.



  • Not according to the very mod who did the action, which you can read about here. The admins panicked over the (very real imho) threat of police repercussions, so they told her to stop such posts and comments (in retrospect, she wished that she had preemptively locked the post so as to be able to hand out fewer bans while still muting the topic for awhile), and then later the admins said to reverse course so she apologized, reversed the bans, and told people to wait on this updated ToS, which took time to draft and get consensus for. It was all extremely quick, including her apology mere hours after the event?

    So yes the ToS itself took a few days to arrive, but the decision to stop handing out bans for the topic happened days before that, long before most of this upswell of resistance even had time to propagate much.


  • Nothing is ever truly “free” - e.g. you are “free” to fly, but you still need a plane (or helicopter, spaceship, hang glider, rocket backpack, or some other means of conveyance) to make it happen for you. And like, how would one even “speak” on the internet, without some device to send the electronic signals out? Plus there needs to be a recipient machine, to receive those signals, then further broadcast them literally around the entire world…

    On Lemmy.World, people are “free” to discuss matters - so long as they do not violate either the community standards (if you don’t like those, make your own) or the instance rules aka ToS (same).

    It’s their machines, it’s their rules. At least they offered a clarification here as to what, more precisely, they will be moving forward. In a more nuanced take where since “absolute freedom” is a ridiculous concept that never exists (even the sun will go out one day, due to entropy - everything, literally everything must bow to at the very least entropy, and every other physical rule of the universe as well), this rule clarification actually increases “freedom of speech”, by more clearly delineating what someone is allowed to say on Lemmy.World, so that they can type it all out and not be (as) fearful of it being removed and thereby (mostly) wasted.

    Anyway, I thought I would offer that thought for consideration just in case.


  • Okay, but to be clear: the admins panicked against the very real possibility of police shutting them down, and took a moment to make certain that Lemmy.World can continue to exist to serve this or any needs of people across the world. The bans have already expired, the mod who did it apologized and said that no new ones would be forthcoming, the ToS have been clarified, etc. Yes there was “suppression”, but for like 1-3 days, and it’s already over?

    Unless you mean that people should be free to advocate for future murders, and I would argue that there are other (e.g. anarchy) instances for that, but Lemmy.World is free to do as they please, and to restrict such on their own hardware.

    I am saying that “suppression” seems too harsh a word here imho, when the ToS now clearly delineates the line between what is or is not allowed on the LW instance and thereby communities located on it. Isn’t that a success then, to define the parameters within which the instance is allowed to discuss these matters (again, by police, a very real external factor that definitely truly does exist - and can come down HARD on those who would want to FAAFO), so kinda the opposite of “suppression” then? Well, according to some manner of using the term at any rate - not everything is allowed, but definitely not nothing along these lines is either.

    Like, surely you’ve seen the veritable FLOOD of posts and comments in just about every community imaginable across the entire Fediverse lately, alternately either promoting this guy as a hero or decrying him as a terrorist? That’s not “suppression” in my book - again, the jury nullification matter was, days ago, but that’s already over? The nuances here are important, b/c we cannot have true freedom without being responsible to keep this place alive & kicking & not shut down.




  • It’s their computers, their network storage, their internet hosting costs - they can do as they please. So too can you, e.g. move elsewhere, or even spin up your own instance. This shit gets expensive though, and people have irl jobs as well - this is VOLUNTEER efforts on their part!?!?

    Be the change that you want to see in the world. And then watch as others are similarly not impressed.

    Fwiw, I for one am impressed though, at the speed with which they got all of this done. I am not advocating that people use Lemmy.World - in fact I think they should not, but for other reasons of decentralization rather than this - but I do appreciate their efforts on behalf of keeping the entire Fediverse alive and going (as opposed to e.g. the police being able to shut the server down, which may or may not have happened but anyway it’s a legit fear that they were reacting against imho), which enriches us all.


  • Society is breaking down, thereby leaving us open to someone claiming to offer to restore “order & authority” and “the rule of law”.

    Exactly how the conservative Alt-Right used “bUt ThE eCoNoMy ThO” and the situation in Gaza where “BoTh SiDeS sAmE” to win the recent USA election. It worked then, why wouldn’t it work again now, to make “free speech” illegal?

    Well, huge caveat: I have no idea if this will happen, I only worried about the possibility that it might, hence starting my comment with “I would not be too surprised to find that…”

    And to break out into a meta-discussion: damnit, now I’m hedging my words again, reiterating over & over again the caveats and bounds outside of which I did not mean to extend my words into territory that I never said, yet I seem to feel that others will undoubtedly accuse me of having stated (almost as if I had done so directly?) nonetheless - just like I used to have to do with Reddit. I really hate how one cannot seem to say anything genuine on the internet without being accused of all sorts of crap. I think it’s b/c you cannot have adult discussions with children (of whatever physical age) around. Meh, it is what it is. This is “social media” and meant just for fun & casual conversations - we will never solve anything of substance here though:-).


  • Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. I think you’re spot on.

    I think you just answered your own question:-).

    Follow the money / incentivization trail. If such media blitzes were not happening, then the people behind them aren’t doing their jobs properly and they should be causing more, according to “that way” of thinking, imho (or perhaps we’re too small, and yet here we reflect what is being discussed elsewhere too, so even if only by trickling in from the outside, such trends should still be visible here?).


  • Before you go too deep, the mod responsible apologized, the ToS were amended, and this is all being discussed out in the open. The 24 hours mutings are already rescinded, and no new bans are said to be planned as a result of discussing the topic moving forward (as you said, unless it looks to be planning something in the future, which is just a whole other thing entirely). i.e. in the face of this huge event the admins PANICKED, but ultimately everything is already calming down and returning to a semblance of normalcy - and that whole process took less than half a week! This is nothing at all like spez’s take-it-or-leave-it Reddit.

    That said, it’s good to take advantage of decentralization anyway, and yes the anarchy instance (that you mentioned below) looks awesome (I enjoy much content hosted on it and greatly respect its admin and their overall contributions to us all here:-) and I think you will be happy there. If this event caused you to question your priorities and what you hope to see moving forward into the future, then that’s a good thing to increase your future happiness level:-). Though I wanted to point out that in that case it’s less “Lemmy.World = bad” and more that you are finding a better fit for your needs. LW is what it is, and it’s not Reddit, even if it is not anarchy either. I for one find it absolutely fantastic that both can exist on the Fediverse side by side together, enriching all of us, each according to our own needs and desires:-).


  • I would not be too surprised to find that there were… “sources” promoting the recent uptick in violent rhetoric. Not that the underlying current of resentment did not already exist, mind you, but pushing it forward more strongly in order to sow FUD?

    Either way, I expect that if such is not here already, it at least will be on its way. The excuse that this will give Trump to shut down avenues of free speech is just too perfect for me to not at least suspect some kind of involvement beyond mere coincidence.




  • They can be fun to talk with. They can also be extremely harassing, though tbf more for people who don’t know what !ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net is all about - i.e. who have not read its sidebar text. And yet, many apps (like Voyager, and the basic mobile browser web UI) do not show that? Like porn, it’s mainly only bad if you stumble upon it unawares - e.g. while at work - and would have to opt-out of it. Which, if Lemmy was that way, then many people would have to simply cease checking Lemmy while at work on those devices.

    Many of the users on lemmy.ml who are seen harassing people the most outside of the actual Hexbear communities are self-admittedly alts of Hexbear accounts. Consent means nothing to them, apparently, so when hexbear.net was defederated from Lemmy.World a year ago, they simply shifted over to an account that wasn’t blocked. Like an incel who will never cease telling you what a “nice man” he is, they simply WILL NOT stop.

    Which is all the more sad considering how many legitimately nice conversations go on daily inside of the many other Hexbear communities. But those conversations aren’t why Lemmy.World and so many other instances chose to defederate from them. In the post whose link I sent earlier are a bunch of other links where each instance makes its own determination and offers links to exact posts and comments that they felt justified their decision to defederate, if you want to read through some examples. Tbf many have since been deleted by their creators, though that should tell you something right there, about the transparency and integrity of Hexbear users who when blamed don’t always retort with the truth so much as do whatever they hope will work so as to be able to dunk on people (and thus when caught, lie, even the instance admins, to other instance admins even!?!?!? which I also put a link to that event as well in that post).

    TLDR: I get it, it is not literally every single comment, user, and/or community that does it, but it is there, if you spend more time looking. There are exact links there if you want help finding them.


  • Woah.

    Ofc it won’t stop alts from leaking through - nothing can stop that - but in fighting against spam, every little bit helps.

    img

    Will you now be using it as your primary instance recommendation on Reddit? There is perhaps literally nothing better for that, so this is fantastic news that may help even the non-USA parts of the Fediverse by allowing the bringing in of more users who will feel safer to talk than they would have before, due to harassment for having a USA centrist (which let’s be real translates into a global and especially from the EU perspective, right-leaning) viewpoint. Comics, memes, hardware, woodworking or more techie Maker stuff and so many other hobbies, I hope to see more discussions about them all, with this helping people on Reddit to now be less resistant to joining.

    🎉🥳💐🎇


  • Well stated, e.g. Reddit is both “dead” (to so many of us) and also “not” at the same time. But the contract I meant is more related to per-person - the admins & mods get to act however they like, and so too do we. It’s a contract that was written prior to humans existing, as in actions and reactions. If they go too far in whatever manner as to piss off their users, then they lose them. Whether piecemeal or in large chucks or wholesale or whatever.

    They can then remain kings and queens 👑 of their sad little hill if they like. On the other hand, if a mod pisses off an admin too badly, they are removed, and if an instance pisses off the law too much, the whole thing gets shut down. Mods therefore have to do that balancing act between their community members and the admins, just as admins do at the next higher level up of the law. A fact which hasn’t seemed to feature all that prominently in most discussions of this topic that I’ve seen yet so far.