In the context of recent comments^[1]^^[2]^ made by the admin, I feel the need to bring up some thoughts I have on the relationships between free speech, moderation, impartiality and social issues....
Let me prefix that I am stubborn as well, but in the opposite direction. I would rather have a dead forum than one full of toxic discourse. If discussion is going to make people feel worse and not be of any real benefit to anyone, it might as well not take place at all. It’s similar to the issue of being open-minded; if your mind is too open your brain may just fall out and you would have been better off just being overly skeptical. There’s no benefit to absorbing any and all things presented to you, and presenting it as some sort of virtue is weird. You may not think you are (or maybe you do), but you are implicitly presenting it as a virtue when you tell individuals to actively filter their own content. It becomes whack-a-mole for each and every one of us and by making toxic content visible the default, it suggests that blocking it is just like a personal prerogative. That the person is somehow sensitive for not wanting those turds floating around and you keep allowing the same people to continue to pour buckets of turds into their pool.
We are in the fediverse now, and there is a very important line to be drawn in between “Subscribed”, “Local”, and “All”.
I understand that there is a possibility that someone vulnerable may browse by “All” and run into harmful content.
The problem is greater than that. As long as we are federated with instances rife with bad actors, their posts, comments and votes will appear in communities we are subscribed to as well. Fortunately (well, in a sense), most instances are better moderated than this one and so communities hosted on their instances will not be accessible to the worst instances. Their protection then extends to us (well… whoever ends up sticking around), but there’s nothing preventing hate groups from harassing people here via communities on this instance, via PMs, or communities on other unmoderated instances.
If I were to receive many user reports - and I mean reports of specific content - I may also take action even if these are not Local. But I am being asked to block things before users even run into any of this content!! As in, I am pretty sure users have had to go to other instances to learn about exploding-heads, because I have not had any issues here.
Whether you have “run into” bad content or not is irrelevant. If members of this instance are made uncomfortable by what they see in All, in comments here and there, or worse, in PMs, that becomes your problem because you are responsible for what type of content this place allows. I hope you read the article about evaporative cooling because regardless of how you feel about people being made to feel merely uncomfortable on your instance, those people will eventually go away and be replaced by people you may not want to represent this place. This will happen slowly and once you realise, it’s probably too late.
Another property of your stance is that it is inherently reactive. You require that people have a sour or harmful experience before maybe taking action, and based on your stated philosophy, probably not nearly as drastic action as would be necessary to really fix the problem. You can’t just ban a person from an instance full of equally ‘bad’ people and expect that to be enough. The core principle of not being presumptuous or excluding may come from a good place, but it’s misapplied and you won’t be appreciated for it by people you would want to appreciate you.
I’m being quite prescriptive here. But to moderate and maintain a healthy community you need to be proactive. Your job as a moderator and admin is to prevent people from having a bad experience. You are not a police officer that goes around punishing people for behaving badly in the name of justice. Banning and defederating is not a device for punishment, it is a tool for carving out your own space. One that reflects your moral values. And yes, your moral values should be reflected in how you run this place, because as I’ve already argued, a person can not be impartial other than by chance. Let people who find your moral framework agreeable come here and subject themselves to your judgement out of trust. That, in my opinion, is how a good, cohesive community organically emerges.
Again, trying to act impartial only obfuscates your biases and people can’t rely on your judgement if they don’t know where they have you. It only opens you up to complaints about arbitrary and inconsistent enforcement of whatever rules you may eventually come up with.
I want to know too. It’s time for this instance to establish some basic moral framework.
Open discussion and interaction for the purpose of exchanging ideas and learning from one another is essential, and that only happens in an environment where people feel encouraged and safe. (The word safe can be a trigger for some and is often misinterpreted, so let me narrow the definition to the sense that you feel in control over your own well-being so that you can push your comfort zone on your own terms and grow as a person without having your comfort zone invaded and vandalised).
If people are made to feel discouraged and unsafe by a foul atmosphere and repeated exposure to content/interactions that degrade their health in any way (directly or indirectly; short term or long term), they will not benefit from any supposed openness or freedoms.
Whether some content technically breaks any explicit rules or not is inconsequential to the impact it has on the well-being of a community, so I don’t want to see this place moderated under some false pretence of impartiality. Just keep it tidy and healthy so that we can focus on what we’re all here for. If someone wants to go swimming with the sharks they can very well do so on some free speech instance. We all know what those are like. And there is a reason they end up that way.
You are shifting responsibility of moderation onto users. What you should be doing for all of us, you are asking us to do ourselves. Each of us would have to moderate the same content, and with fewer tools to do it. Massive duplication of effort and needless exposure to harmful content (or perhaps you find value in that type of content?).
If this is your stance and you are done thinking about this, I mourn what this instance might have been.
Here is a relevant podcast episode by Sean Carroll (includes transcript). He identifies as an intellectual who is interested in open, rational debate, and gives some considered thoughts on how to balance moral principles like free speech vs people’s well-being. If you have time and interest, I can recommend it (and his podcast in general).
You seem to know this person so maybe you won’t be surprised by their posting history, but for anyone else, I recommend checking it out to get an idea of what to expect from that instance and some context to these discussions.
The fact that you even hesitate to defederate from them is reason enough for me to abandon this ship before it turns into an intellectual dark web hub.
slrpnk.net may be a reasonable alternative for some of us who are closer to the intersection of nature, science, sustainability, and decentralisation of power and wealth.
Dr. Angela Collier plays the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and talks at length about what went wrong with string theory, and how that affected science communication.
I've seen a lot of talks on the benefits of immutable distros (specifically Fedora Silverblue) but it always seemed to me as more of a hassle. Has anyone here been daily driving an immutable distro? Would you say it's worth the effort of getting into?
It's worth considering the environmental impact of spending a whole plastic bag (even if small) for what often amounts to rabbit-sized poop in case you have a smaller dog. I'm one of those owners that make contextual judgements about when to pick up and when to leave it or flick it into a nearby bush with a stick. I'm not picking up poop off-trail in the forest. Also generally not alongside car roads (talk about pollution).
I know owning pets is not environmentally sound, so all I can do is mitigate.
Not meant as an authoritative or absolute assessment, but this viewpoint may help you come to terms with the "fragmented" nature of the fediverse and understand why it's the reason we are here (or at least why you would want to be). Lemmy and the fediverse is not "the ultimate aggregation platform" or the new old reddit in any...
Perhaps I've misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I've got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!...
I don't think of the threadiverse as a link aggregation platform but as a network of communities engaging in threaded discussion. The federated model is an answer to the problem of platform lock-in, the network effect, and the lack of autonomy communities have on proprietary/commercial/centralised platforms.
Each instance separately may fill the role of link aggregator but mainly for that community (instance), with that community's values and moderation policies. The ability for an instance to federate with other instances with compatible policies is the benefit here.
It may actually help if you view an instance as the community, with its "communities" as its topics.
My comment was in response to the implication that people who exercise their right to not listen to everyone talking are using defederation as some sort of weapon to fulfil their chaotic, destructive agenda while free-speech instances are merely open to any and all interactions like exemplary participants in a civilised democratic society.
On the issue of moderation
In the context of recent comments^[1]^^[2]^ made by the admin, I feel the need to bring up some thoughts I have on the relationships between free speech, moderation, impartiality and social issues....
Blocking exploding-heads
It has blatant homophobia, transphobia, racism, vaccine anti-science misinformation, etc. What is mander stand on this?
What petty hill will you die on?
For me I say that a truck with a cab longer than its bed is not a truck, but an SUV with an overgrown bumper.
"string theory lied to us and now science communication is hard" (www.youtube.com)
Dr. Angela Collier plays the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and talks at length about what went wrong with string theory, and how that affected science communication.
Immutable Operating Systems: Yay or Nay?
I've seen a lot of talks on the benefits of immutable distros (specifically Fedora Silverblue) but it always seemed to me as more of a hassle. Has anyone here been daily driving an immutable distro? Would you say it's worth the effort of getting into?
I found a major communication problem with public perception of Lemmy. they seem to think a community is tied to a particular instance (www.reddit.com)
This is a big problem. It creates the illusion that /c/cats on one particular instance is the real /c/cats....
Discord is opening the monetization floodgates: get ready for microtransaction stores and paid 'exclusive memes' (www.pcgamer.com)
any way to change the default from "local" to "subscribed"?
Anytime I open up Jerboa it defaults my feed to local instances only. Any way to have it default to subscribed?
Over 100,000 Stolen ChatGPT Account Credentials Sold on Dark Web Marketplaces (thehackernews.com)
Over 100,000 OpenAI ChatGPT account credentials have been compromised and sold on the dark web. Cybercriminals are targeting the valuable information.
The Evidence is Building that Dark Matter is Made of Axions (www.universetoday.com)
Is leaving dog poo in the street really so bad? The science says it’s even worse than you think (theconversation.com)
Lemmy reached a user base of 150,000 (discuss.tchncs.de)
The Lemmy user base passed 150,000 in total users....
A shift of perspective: instances as communities; "communities" as subforums
Not meant as an authoritative or absolute assessment, but this viewpoint may help you come to terms with the "fragmented" nature of the fediverse and understand why it's the reason we are here (or at least why you would want to be). Lemmy and the fediverse is not "the ultimate aggregation platform" or the new old reddit in any...
I don't see how Lemmy will fill the gap of Reddit - it's resulting in fragmentation
Perhaps I've misunderstood how Lemmy works, but from what I can tell Lemmy is resulting in fragmentation between communities. If I've got this wrong, or browsing Lemmy wrong, please correct me!...