Somehow, I feel like the federated network is still centralized, because there is still censorship; it’s just distributed across more servers.
I mean, it definitely gives users more rights to free speech, and I’m not worried about privacy issues. However, the removal of content and the banning of accounts are things that are diminishing my passion for sharing my thoughts publicly(on reddit).
I just dont want this happened on here but I am seeing some…
Censorship is also decentralised which means no single entity will be able to completely control the information, but that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want without consequence of all the decentralised instances agreeing that particular information should not be shared. Decentralisation does not guarantee you an audience!
I'm just wondering what you are sharing that is getting you censored off of most of the major instances. Something illegal? Something morally reprehensible that most regular people take objection to it? Like I understand Beehaw being very uptight about what they allow (to the point of defederating most major instances) but world just seems free for all but the most extreme views, ml will allow straight up genocide and warcrime denial as long as it's China or Russia, and shitjustworks seems to be gamers in general, left or right.
Like there are instances that are just basically unmoderated free speech zones if that's what you're looking for. There are even instances that are echochambers for your political leanings if that's what you are actually looking for. But most of the major instances are going to be catering for a more general userbase. Afterall, part of the reason world became the biggest is because it's the one most former redditors were pointed to.
And the reality is, and part of the reason I'm apprehensive about Meta joining the fediverse, is because even in a decentralized environment, communities, opinions, topics and activity all becomes centralized around whichever community is the biggest. The internet itself is a decentralized network, but since everyone gathers in the same places, it ultimately became centralized around sites like reddit, insta, youtube, and twitter. That's one of the reasons we are encouraged as fedi users to join smaller instances. Not just to save on space and traffic, but to encourage the activity in our local communities to grow.
Thx for explaining these to me bro, your point about the defederation of some instances is important, as it highlights the diversity and autonomy within the network, even though it might cause some fragmentation. And indeed, while every instance is privately operated, the option to host one’s own instance provides individuals with the freedom to set their own rules.
Its decentralized nature isn’t due to censorship, or a lack of it, but its structure. Of course there’s going to be some degree of censorship because instances all have individual rules which, if you break, you’ll be penalized for which can take the form of removal of content.
The only way to have total free speech is create your own instance which is a total free for all but then you’ll attract the worst sort of people and your instance will end up defederated by instance owners who don’t want content from literal Nazis federated to their instances.
Centralized vs decentralized is a structural decision.
Censorship is what can be done within that structure. Centralized censorship means one group is able to block content, whereas decentralized "censorship" means that you can go to another platform with little to no fuss.
I use quotations because censorship is when you censor someone and stop their message from being seen, which you cannot do in federation. No one is required to megaphone info or opinions they don't want to share, so it's not really censorship to block content on your own instance.
However, the removal of content and the banning of accounts are things that are diminishing my passion for sharing my thoughts publicly(on reddit).
I just dont want this happened on here but I am seeing some…
Those post/comment removal and user banning are for a good reason. For every one innocent content removed there’s a large amount of harmful content removed as well.
Your right to choose is the same as everybody else’s right to choose. You can decide to post something, and others can decide they don’t want to see it. Decentralized just means there is no one entity to make those decisions for you.
Wiremin appears to be more for a chatroom with defined participants. Not really a public forum type of app. If it is supposed to be, it would suffer drastically from a growing userbase. It looks more like a messaging system with defined recipients.
The fediverse being decentralized means that there are many servers/instances, each with their own codes of conduct (or lack of one). Similarly, different communities on those servers can have different rules they might want to enforce with removals of posts or comments. For example, a community about cat pictures will have a rule about posts having to be cat pictures and will remove a post about your grandma's vegetable soup recipe.
If your comment/post was removed, that probably means your post/comment was either against the rules of the community or against the code of conduct of the entire server/instance. If it's the former, look for or create a community where that kind of content is appreciated. If you're running up against the code of conduct of the instance, look for a server/instance where your content wouldn't be violating the code of content or make your own server/instance where you're the one defining the code of conduct. Of course, that code of conduct would only apply to communities on your server.
If your server becomes a source of constant shit, admins of other servers might decide to defederate from your server. Think of it like making your own email server: if too many of your email server's emails are spam, other email providers might decide to designate your email server as a spam factory and block all emails coming from it.
If its a german instance they have to follow german law.
Just like if you’re an american living in germany. You don’t get to follow american law in germany. You have to abide by the local laws.
Take for example, the irish hosted lemmy defederated from another instance that allows posting … questionable/underage anime content. Its treated the same as CSAM under Irish law. Federating those instances would mean the admins of the irish instance would be liable for any data pulled over onto their instance.
This issue should be solved if you could just set lemmy to not cache federated NSFW images (without fully disabling NSFW on your instance) since then users would load the images from the remote server and not the homeserver.
True, guess not caching remote content at all should be an option as well. Then you can just block caching for every instance that doesn’t enforce proper tagging.
No, defederating would block all flow between instances. The problem is with hosting content that you don’t want to or arent allowed to host. Currently if I view a image from burggit, the image gets saved to the monero.town and then served whenever someone else views it from there, which is a problem. If instead every time someone wants to view that image, it gets pulled from burggit again, monero.town isn’t in trouble for hosting it anymore.
Centralisation in this instance refers to control over the network and standard itself rather than control over what's posted on it. There's no single authority that can unilaterally change how every Fediverse instance and system works - for example, there isn't anyone who can decree that from now on Lemmy will no longer allow connections from Canada, or that nobody is allowed to post pictures of capybaras any more.
It's intended to prevent a /u/spez or Elon Musk situation where one asshole can bring down the entire ecosystem built around an API. Nothing stops anyone else from hosting their own instance if they dislike lemmy.world, whereas if you don't like Twitter, you can't just host your own copy of it.
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