OC Unlike previous attempts at trying reddit alternatives (like Voat), kbin and much of the lemmyverse doesn’t seem to be plagued with extreme far right buffoonery.

MonsieurHedge, 11 months ago

Through constant vigilance, anyways. Every time you see some little fuck dogwhistling about FREE SPEECH or CENSORSHIP, you gotta make sure they aren't welcome in these parts.

pollodiabolo, 11 months ago

??? wat

MonsieurHedge, 11 months ago

"Far right buffoonery" starts with people batching about how they're being """censored""" for saying slurs or trying to have "honest conversations about race" or whatever.

Nip 'em in the bud and voila, no Nazis on your kbin.

Spiracle, 11 months ago

I remember concrete dog whistle accusation generally falling into two categories:

1. Checking their comment history revealed either actual Nazi apologia or a general destructive behaviour if you looked deep enough.
2. Checking their comment history revealed that the accuser was a pro-censorship and didn’t like dissenting opinions.

My conclusion: dog whistles are a reason to look deeper. Keep an eye on those people. However, don’t just condemn them.

The very point of dog whistles is to appear innocuous and even invisible to "normal people". False positives are inevitable, and after seeing a dozen actual dog whistles, pareidolia will make you see their shapes everywhere.

entertainmeonly, 10 months ago

Et voila*

I agree wholeheartedly friend.

sethw, 11 months ago

they're just asking (((questions))) ugh

CrabAndBroom, 10 months ago

That reminds me of that story I saw on Twitter, ironically enough:

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, “no. get out.”

And the dude next to me says, “hey i’m not doing anything, i’m a paying customer.” and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, “out. now.” and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, “you didn’t see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them.”

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it’s always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don’t want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it’s too late because they’re entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, ‘oh damn.’ and he said “yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people.”

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven’t forgotten that at all.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

beefcat, 11 months ago

There's a Lemmy instance perfect for you then: exploding-heads.

We are more than welcome to decide what behavior is and isn't appropriate in our own community. If you don't like it, then you don't have to be here. You aren't entitled to our friendship.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

Hello_there, 11 months ago

Discourse can't exist when one party believes the other party has no right to exist

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

Yes exactly. Both sides need to take a long look in the mirror and stop projecting their self hatred on the other side.

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

want a place free of authoritarian policies that don't limit actual human discourse.

You've already been given a suggestion for just that kind of instance. If you want to see that kind of content, there's a spot for that.

Or are you just upset that there are places who don't welcome those kinds of dumbfuck takes? Is it that you want to see the content for yourself, or that you want to make the content and force everyone to see it?

Either way, this instance isn't the place for you. Exploding heads is. Go there, be happy.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

Do you prefer having a centralized authority dictating your exposure to content? What prevents you from personally blocking instances you disagree with and allowing others to make their own choices? Is it possible that the idea of critical thinking is discomforting and it's more convenient to be shielded from diverging opinions, rather than exercising personal discernment?

Drusas, 11 months ago

Blocking a person or instance still allows the bigotry to spread.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

The problem here is what gets defined as bigotry and who gets to define it? I was called a nazi for expressing the same opinion I'm expressing here. Do you think that might be a bit much? How long until the bubble of acceptable thoughts and opinions shrinks so much YOU get defined as a nazi?

Drusas, 11 months ago

Your argument is known as the "slippery slope fallacy", @Kantiberl.

Edit: I'm guessing it's a bug, but I can't get this comment to reply to the right person.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

It's not a fallacy when it has already slipped to calling all Republicans (or even people who wish to hear their opinions) nazis and fascist. Why don't you think it will slip further?

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

Yeah, it's weird.

Why do people think that?

It's such a mystery.

One of those enduring conundrums of the universe.

Will ever figure out why Republicans keep getting called facists?

It really is one of life's unsolvable riddles.

How could anyone come to such a conclusion?

I guess we'll never know.

MachineTeaching, 11 months ago

Oh no it's true, not all republicans are Nazis.

Some are just sympathisers.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

Yep that is true.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

Who defines what counts as "bigotry"? I think the guys over at beehaw are extremely bigoted. does that mean that we should prevent everyone from speaking with them simply because I think they're bigots?

MachineTeaching, 11 months ago

Fuck off to your sad shithole, nobody has any obligation to be nice to Nazis. To the contrary, every decent person should feel obligated to strongly tell them to fuck off. You don't have a space here, we don't want you here, you are not welcome.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

I'm not talking about letting nazis be here, I'm talking about not calling everyone you don't like nazis.

MachineTeaching, 11 months ago

I know what you pretend you mean, nobody is falling for that.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

What I pretend I mean? Why would you even say that?

danknodes, 11 months ago

The community itself is kindly asking you to fuck off with its comments and downvotes, no central authority needed

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

This is the approach I support. don't like certain content? block, downvote, move on. don't demand that everyone else be prevented from seeing it.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

EXACTLY. Downvotes and disagreement are the cornerstone of a functioning human society. It shows that we're engaging in a discussion where various perspectives are presented. What I'm advocating for is not an echo chamber where everyone bows to some transient and fluctuating ideal of "correctness", but a platform for the diversity of thoughts and ideas. So, the downvotes don't bother me, but rather embolden the importance of speaking what I believe to be true and attempting to understand the beliefs of others. If people like me don't speak up then we will just create echo chambers of intolerance on both sides of the spectrum. Debate me, prove me wrong. Downvotes don't prove me wrong, they only prove discomfort and anger. Despite engaging in several discussions, I've yet to understand the benchmarks being used here for branding someone a 'nazi'—a very strong term used liberally here and even against me in another thread for sharing views similar to what I've expressed here. I shouldn't be called a nazi for believing in individual autonomy, it discredits a persons entire argument if they can so easily warp a terrible insult like that just to fit their own narrative. The ease with which people advocate for authoritarian censorship, despite having personal control over their content exposure, genuinely worries me. I find it unsettling how readily people will relinquish their intellectual freedom.

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

Do you prefer having a centralized authority dictating your exposure to content?

Like, you mean, a website? That's what you mean by "centralized authority", right? A website? With its Terms and Conditions, following the applicable copyright and IP laws, following the relevant laws of the jurisdiction it operates in? Yeah, I'm fine with that.

If you're not, go to Exploding Heads. They welcome you. They want you.

We don't.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

I don't want exploding-heads. I would have blocked the instance myself if it hadn't been blocked already. My issue is I don't like having content blocked FOR me because I'm a functioning adult that can make my own decisions about what I see and think. You should be careful with how quick you are to cede control of what you're allowed to see to others. Might make you pretty susceptible to hate and give you a false sense of reality.

Not_Leader, 10 months ago

deleted_by_author

Kantiberl, 10 months ago

Yes.

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

My issue is I don't like having content blocked FOR me

Oh, I see. You want 4chan.

Well, good news! 4chan exists! Go there.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I like how you're acting like you aren't toxic yourself

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

When did I say that? I'm very toxic towards people who are cool with the view that I should be either "sentenced to death" or "hunted with dogs".

Oh, you're not cool with it, you just want to force me to listen to it anyway. That's so different.

Go back to 4 chan, otaku.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I'm not an unreasonable person. I just wanna chat, share my thoughts, share what I'm into, without being censored to hell because some perpetually offended people took offense at regular everyday human things, or noticing things going on in society and thinking about what might cause such.

I don't want to send people death threats, I don't care to say the slurs everyone knows are slurs (but fuck you if you're gonna declare regular speech to be a slur, or medical terms to be a slur).

I just wanna be able to talk to people online? why is that so hard for people to accept? Why should I be literally banned from civilization simply for acknowledging the medical science on my own diagnosed medical condition; merely because some perpetually offended morons were offended by science?

Why should I be silenced, simply for wanting to discuss things without blindly believing idiots with money?

Are those exploding-heads guys dicks? sure, probably most of them are. are they correct about what they're saying? I don't know, I'd like to talk to them and hear where they're coming from, and tell them about my own thoughts. why do you feel the need to get in the way of that discussion when you aren't even a part of it? if you don't wanna chat with those guys, why is it so hard for you to just use the block button? why must you prevent everyone from speaking with them?

I genuinely do not understand that viewpoint, and no one who is on the side of "censor everyone" seems to want to explain it. They'd rather just block/censor/ban you and shut down the conversation entirely. why? are you afraid you might be in the wrong?

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

That's not the same and you know it.

Oh, is 4chan too much freedom for you? What happened to your whole "no rules, just right" attitude?

It's sounding more and more like you don't give a single fuck about seeing this kind of content; you want to force us to see this content. All the places you could go to get it, and you're still arguing that we should have to see it too or we're not free.

You're right. We're not free. We're sad, pathetic, chained little sheep beholden to a "central authority" that doesn't allow hate speech. Run while you can! Flee, quickly! Or you, too, might get consumed by the woke mind virus and start thinking that maybe the Jews are ok people!

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

Nope.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

The issue I have with this overzealousness to censor is that the people who are most eager to censor others, are often the most bigoted, hateful, and misinformed. The suggestion of going to exploding-heads is just dishonest. They are undeniably right-wing. What I wish for is an open platform where left and right can speak freely to each other in polite discourse, not simply just be exposed to whatever dogshit takes some far right people post. going to exploding-heads would then limit my ability to see other positions.

Are you suggesting that I should have an account on each fediverse instance, just to get all of the content? If so, then what the actual fuck is the point of federation in the first place?

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

What I wish for is an open platform where left and right can speak freely to each other in polite discourse

Oh, I see. You're delusional. You honestly think I should be having "polite discourse" with people who either want me dead, or are ok with voting for people who want me dead.

Because, see, what's left? What makes a Republican want to claim to be a Republican other than the culture war bullshit? What do they stand for? They haven't stood for "fiscal responsibility" or "small government" since W was in office. The straight-up write things like "We stand against teaching critical thinking in schools" (see: Texas GOP party platform) into their guiding documents. And you think they're going to have a civil conversation? You think I owe them a civil conversation?

Every server we allow those people on freely will become exploding heads or 4 chan. Go look at r/politicalcompassmemes if you need an example. I don't know how many times we have to watch it happen before you get the picture, or maybe this is your first ever internet community experience. But you're wrong. Their bad-faith rhetoric, carefully-stated death threats, and direct personal attacks will drive everyone who isn't one of them away, leaving only Nazis. If the admins call them out and ban them for that stuff, they'll end up banning all of them and we'll be having this same conversation. If the admins allow their speech, but don't allow us to say "Fuck off, weeb, nobody likes you" without censure, then guess who gets to control the "discourse"? And if the admins don't ban anyone for it, we'll become Voat. Since only the slimiest members of humanity can tolerate that vibe for long, guess who ends up owning the server by default?

You wanna see that shit, you enjoy being called slurs and told to go kys, you are free to seek out the communities who will do that for you. But fuck all the way off with telling me I must put up with it, too.

Oh, I can block them? No I fucking can't. I blocked you days ago, and your shit still shows up in my notifications. So, again, fuck off. If I have to listen to whatever dumb shit spills out of your brain, against my will, then you get to listen to my toxicity.

Are you suggesting that I should have an account on each fediverse instance, just to get all of the content? If so, then what the actual fuck is the point of federation in the first place?

...you... honestly thought... the fediverse... was supposed to be a centralized content aggregator...?

What.... uh, so, what... what do you think the fediverse is?

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

Oh, I see. You're delusional. You honestly think I should be having "polite discourse" with people who either want me dead, or are ok with voting for people who want me dead.

have you.... talked with them? I try to speak with everyone and pretty much none of them actually want me dead. If you want to talk about voting criminals into power, look at the democrat party, who legit rigged the 2020 election to vote a known pedophile rapist and warmonger into power. a guy who literally pushed racist and homophobic policy. a guy who literally is fighting to repeal racial equality. a guy who literally openly said he'd deny me healthcare. should we then shut down conversation with every democrat voter? why are you so eager to shut down conversation? do you not realize that creates echochambers, which increases the extremism and polarization?

Because, see, what's left? What makes a Republican want to claim to be a Republican other than the culture war bullshit?

If you actually spoke to them and tried to understand where they're coming from, maybe you'd learn that :) instead you choose to shut down conversation, ban them, censor them, any chance you get. So of course you don't understand why they hold the views and say the things they do! you never listened to what they had to say!

Regardless of how offended you might feel or say you are, the reality is that there are actually decent points to be made by people in both major political parties; as well as the varying 3rd parties. Personally, I found my own view on things that matches neither cleanly, so where's that put me? should I just be on the side of censoring both democrats and republicans? or are you suggesting that anyone that holds any view other than your specific view should be censored and banned? is anything other than openly accepting and celebrating human sacrifice something that should be silenced, censored, and banned? serious question. is going against that "being hateful and intolerant"? where is your line? how about pedophilia? are people against pedophilia just "hateful bigots who are intolerant and mean for no real reason"? where is your line?

The reality is that there's a lot of, and growing, opposition to progressive ideology because it is causing harm to real people. Surely, if something is causing harm, we should try to stop that harm? IMO the proper thing to do is to try and base our views on science (not feelings), and to try and heal and help as many people as possible reach their potential, while also avoiding societal setups that would inevitably lead to problems. Is this an unreasonable stance?

They haven't stood for "fiscal responsibility" or "small government" since W was in office.

I think you'll find if you talk to a lot of registered republicans that they do actually hold those views, but that many of the establishment career politicians hold different views than the people voting for them. Ironically, people who are against sending obscene amount of money to ukraine are now called "bigots". so if they push for small gov and fiscal responsibility, they're a bigot. but if they don't, they're a hypocrite? aren't you being unfair?

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

You think I owe them a civil conversation?

I don't think you owe anyone anything. I think that you're in the wrong, and are an authoritarian tyrant and bigot yourself, if you try to shut down a conversation between two consenting people who are completely unrelated to you and aren't addressing you. If you don't wish to speak to someone, that's on you, feel free to ignore them or block them. But it says a lot about you if the second you run into a disagreement, or if you think someone's doing something wrong, instead of helping correct their behavior or ideas, you instead shut down the conversation and let them keep doing what they're doing. Do you have no feeling of obligation to help improve society? if not, I'd say that puts you as worse than them. While they may be misinformed or perhaps hateful due to their ignorance, you are openly admitting that you don't wish to improve society. I'd much prefer a misinformed and ignorant group who want to do the right thing, than someone who neglects the possibility of improving society.

Every server we allow those people on freely will become exploding heads or 4 chan.

I thought "reality has a liberal bias" and all that? Surely, if we allow people to discuss, to debate, to converse with each other, and to let everyone speak rather than a few, we should arrive at what is true, yeah? if you're saying people will become conservative after fair uncensored debate and discussion, then surely they are right? No one is asking for 4chan. there's a difference between fair, uncensored, civil polite discussion, and shitflinging slurs around. exploding-heads themselves have a ban on slurs.

Go look at r/politicalcompassmemes if you need an example.

One of the best subreddits for actual discussion between people of differing ideas? I'd prefer if more places where like that, personally. What issue do you have with them? They're a meme sub but the civility there is awe inspiring.

Their bad-faith rhetoric, carefully-stated death threats, and direct personal attacks will drive everyone who isn't one of them away, leaving only Nazis.

I can't say that's ever been my experience in right wing spaces. I've only ever had that experience in progressive spaces. Perhaps what you're experiencing isn't a problem with right wing people, but rather the hostility and polarization between two groups that are constantly at each other's throats because they refuse to hear each other out?

If the admins allow their speech, but don't allow us to say "Fuck off, weeb, nobody likes you" without censure, then guess who gets to control the "discourse"?

Why do you feel that their insults shouldn't be allowed, but yours should? Isn't that unfair? Either we prevent all insults and have civil discussion (my preference), or we allow all insults from both sides. Surely that's fair?

You wanna see that shit, you enjoy being called slurs and told to go kys, you are free to seek out the communities who will do that for you. But fuck all the way off with telling me I must put up with it, too.

The opposite is actually happening here. You are trying to push your content preferences onto everyone else. All I'm saying is: let the users decide. If you wanna block them, go ahead. Craft your own echochamber. But why should you being offended at civil discussion mean that no one else can discuss things?

Oh, I can block them? No I fucking can't. I blocked you days ago, and your shit still shows up in my notifications.

Fair enough. This seems to be a bug then. I agree that should be fixed. blocking should prevent you from seeing the blocked content.

...you... honestly thought... the fediverse... was supposed to be a centralized content aggregator...?

My understanding was that I'd sign up on a single site, and then have access to content from across the federated sites. Not: have to sign up an account on each individual site, and only see that one site's content. Isn't that latter way just a centralized platform? where is the "federated" part then?

What.... uh, so, what... what do you think the fediverse is?

Sign up on one site -> see content from all the sites. is this not the point of the fediverse? are you really saying the fediverse is: sign up on one site -> see only that site's content? because that just sounds like a regular centralized platform to me.

cereal_port, 11 months ago

Yeah but it’s basically impossible to have a civilised discourse between “I think some people are subhuman and should have fewer rights” and “equal rights for everybody”.

You’re making it out like there’s no place to discuss difference of opinion on economic policy.

C4RP3_N0CT3M, 10 months ago

This is how ignorance is actually propogated.

HipHoboHarold, 11 months ago

If me and you are having a discussion, but the topic is the fact that I want to kill you, how long will it take before you stop wanting to talk to me?

"But it's just words!"

Well, we know that's not true, so how long would it take before you stopped wanting to be around me?

Oh, also I promote pediphelia. Just as a little fun thing. Just the casual story of raping kids.

I get the appeal. I do. I 1000% do. I get it. But also fuck Nazis. I don't want to be around them. I'm gay, so they don't want to be around me. Fuck pedophiles. I don't want to be around them. So if a site is filled with Nazis and pedophiles, I'm gonna go to a different site. Now you have an echo chamber of Nazis and pedophiles. The thing you wanted to avoid. But you're stuck with only talking to Nazis and pedophiles.

Meanwhile the bubble without Nazis is a really large bubble encompassing everything except Nazis and pedophiles.

Which hardly looks like a bubble.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

I'm not advocating for unchallenged platforms for nazis. What I'm concerned about is the dangerous broadening of the term 'nazi' to include any viewpoint differing from one's own. Neither you nor I hold all the answers. However, I'm not the one categorizing wide-ranging groups as 'nazis' to conveniently dismiss dissenting views, while complacently considering myself superior to all those being arbitrarily mislabeled as 'nazis'. It SERIOUSLY weakens your entire argument when you throw that word around so carelessly.

HipHoboHarold, 11 months ago

Well we don't use it for just anyone who has any different opinion. So the problem right there is solved. We do use it frequently. But that's when we see thing like homo/transphobia(Nazis hated queer people), antisemitism(another group Nazis hated), racism(also Nazis), and sexism(once again, Nazis). There seems to be a pretty fucking large overlap of what modern day Republicans preach and what the Nazis preached. Including as of lately "eradicating transgenderness" and "erasing communities." As well as the amount of terrorist attacks that ha e actively been encouraged.

So if you would prefer we could just call everyone bigot, since that includes them all and not everyone personally considers themselves a Nazi, but I hardly see the difference between a Nazi, the KKK, Proud Boys, 3%ers, etc, when they all preach the exact same stuff. At that point you're not arguing anything except semantics. It's like the whole "race realism" thing. It's racism, but more palatable to racists who think the name racist is mean, but not the mentality.

I guess another way to look at it is as people keep bringing up, but there's a German saying about this. If you have a table with 9 people and 1 Nazi, you have 10 Nazis.

This also doesn't change the actual argument being made, which is about a forum that is open. In which case, you do get Nazis. Like not even what we mean when we call Nazis as Nazis, but people who call themselves Nazis. We have seen that over and over and over. You get Nazis, and you get pedophiles. Then everyone else starts to leave and you are stuck with Nazis and pedophiles.

So once again, I get the mentality behind it. In a lot of ways I would love a site like that. But it's also a little different for those of us that are having people call for our deaths on a regular basis.

Anomander, 11 months ago

I don't think I jive with the notion that kbin is somehow "above" hating Nazis.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

Okay nazi. everyone should now hate you because I've labeled you a nazi. and you agree everyone should hate you, because you're a nazi.

See the problem?

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

How do we define 'nazi' and who is the authority that applies that label? If the word 'nazi' is carelessly applied to anyone exhibiting even slightly right-leaning tendencies, it diminishes its significance and undermines your credibility. This kind of naive approach and severe lack of nuance will lead to an intolerant echo chamber.

Fuck nazis, but also fuck anyone who dilutes the meaning by inappropriately labeling any viewpoint they don't like as nazism or fascism.

Anomander, 11 months ago

Carefully, on a case-by-case basis; and the community.

It's not nearly as complicated as it seems on the surface - and you're trying to make any definition of "nazi" as complicated as possible, because you're wanting to delegitimize any rejection of nazis or nazi speech.

Remember how you said you don't care if people like you, you just want to push your topics on other people?

it diminishes its significance and undermines your credibility.

No one cares if the Nazis think they're "credible" or not. Each and every one of them will tell you they're not a nazi and they 'hate' nazis - while defending themselves and their nazi buddies from critique by insisting the label for their ideology is, for example, "cheapened" if applied to anyone who is not a card-carrying, armband-wearing, farcical exaggeration of stereotypical Nazis in full Reich dress regalia.

They always send the clean cut, quiet, polite one in first. And that guy puts a foot in the door, argues that their pals aren't really nazis, and that everyone in the room are the real baddies for judging those other guys unfairly - and tries to pry the door wider so their Nazi buddies can come in. Sure enough, every time, you let enough nazis in the room and the room is a nazi space now - so the whole gang of them don't have to pretend at being polite non-nazis anymore. The polite veneer, the deep care for "debate", and "respect for all viewpoints"? Those are all just tools, trying to whitewash and re-legitimize an ideology whose end goal is harming other people.

Notice how I'm casually referring to you like you're one of them? That's not some wokist over-use of the term. You're standing here defending them, you're trying to shove a foot in the door for them, laying down apologia for their views and their right to share them - you've spent like a week around the Fediverse arguing against any actions that have served to limit Nazis access to polite and adult spaces within the Fediverse as a whole. I don't care what you believe about yourself, or your views, or your ideology.

If you're going to stand with Nazis, if you're going to stand for them, consistently and repeatedly - don't get all offended and playact at being victimized when people assume that you are a member of the group you chose to stand with.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

I'm not aligning with nazis, but advocating against the misuse and overuse of the term (which is utterly rampant here). The problem with using such powerful labels casually is that it muddies the waters and blurs lines that should be clear but now aren't precisely because of the misuse of the term. It's this very misuse that is leading to misinterpretations, such as the one we're facing here, where I'm inaccurately labeled as standing with nazis. My stance is about nuanced understanding and precision in communication, not about sympathizing with hate ideologies. I am defending thoughtful dialogue, not nazis, and it's important not to conflate the two. Since everyone is so happy with misusing the term, what are we going to call ACTUAL nazis so that we can differentiate people you disagree with and ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS. The semantics you're playing with are a dangerous game, and do nothing but prove my point.

Anomander, 11 months ago

You're aligning yourself with nazis while engaging in sophistry to pretend that neither you nor they are nazis.

All these wild mental gymnastics to explain how it's not like that, or the farcical posturing of academic exactitude and "nuanced understanding" - those are the exact same shit as nazis sending in the quiet well-spoken guy to break the ice and get a foot in the door.

You're doing triple overtime to figure out ways to argue compassion for cryptofascists and nazi sympathizers, while going even further out of your way to avoid having the faintest shred of empathy for people who simply want nothing to do with any of that bullshit.

You can call them whatever you want. You don't get to demand that we call them what you want us to. You don't get to demand that we ignore your choice to align yourself with them, to defend them, and to try and make their views sound more palatable and more reasonable than their end goals.

Since everyone is so happy with misusing the term, what are we going to call ACTUAL nazis so that we can differentiate people you disagree with and ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS.

I completely understand that you absolutely refuse to get it and will continue to avoid getting it forevermore - but I'm going to say it for the rest of the room anyways.

Those guys are the "ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS".

They just understand that pretending that they're not is the only way to get through the door of spaces dominated by the reasonable mainstream they'd like to sell their ideology to. They know that the reasonable mainstream wants nothing to do with "ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS" so the "ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS" dress up as the people you're currently defending and trying to make this conversation about. And anyone in that group that you're trying to defend the nazis by pointing towards, any single person among them who doesn't want to stand with nazis - changes where they stand so that they're not with the nazis anymore. You're staying still while trying to defend that decision.

The "ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS" don't dress up in SS Uniforms and 'heil' each other in the comments sections - they pretend to be reasonable mainstream people and in order to present their views and their talking points wrapped in rhetoric that masks its nazi roots. They want to win over the mainstream, they want to convince people they're "on to" something, they want to exploit our willingness to engage in discourse to sell their views and advance their ideology. They are not here to engage in debate - the debate is merely a vehicle towards seizing power and then acting out an ideology of violence and hatred.

I'm not 'playing semantics' - I'm not even engaging with yours.

We are not going to split hairs and massage academic definitions until "ACTUAL FUCKING NAZIS" aren't actually nazis anymore. Either you're a useful idiot and not qualified to try and talk down on folks about the intricate semantics of "nazi" - or you're actually on their side.

C4RP3_N0CT3M, 10 months ago

You accusing them of being a Nazi was inevitable it seems. You don't even realize the irony.

ondoyant, 11 months ago

thats weird. i never get called a fascist, and nobody i know gets called fascists, and i've never had to worry about other people calling me a fascist when i disagree with them. huh...

StenSaksTapir, 11 months ago

I was called a fascist on Reddit for saying that punching nazis is a victimless crime, because punching people, merely because they want to eradicate other people, is a well-known staple of fascism.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

Yeah but if everyone slightly right of center gets labeled a nazi then you can just call anyone you don't like a nazi and you can do whatever you want to them. That's a problem.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I get called a fascist nazi all the time merely for agreeing with the 1st amendment of the USA which guarantees the right to free speech. If simply supporting the right to freely speak means you get called nazi/fascist, then I'd be wary of anyone who wasn't accused of such.

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

KoboldCoterie, 11 months ago

Dude… almost every comment you’ve made has been to insult someone or put them down or pick a fight with someone. Are you okay?

Kantiberl, 11 months ago

I don't believe I've insulted anyone but if you think I have could you point to an example? I'm expressing my opinion (which certainly appears unpopular) and if that is seen as insulting or fighty then I don't know what to tell you. I'm going to keep expressing my opinion.

KoboldCoterie, 11 months ago

I apologize - that wasn’t meant to be a reply to you; I’m still getting used to these new apps. :(

ondoyant, 11 months ago

sure. i'll bite. how about you tell me exactly what opinions have gotten you branded in this way? please. tell me what exactly are the kinds of things you say that get other people to call you a nazi.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

Hi person from beehaw. let me just say all beehaw users are nazis and fascists. now you are someone who's been accused of being a nazi and fascist.

ondoyant, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

i'll drop the tone. i've looked at your other comments, have a general clue about what you're about. i'll just say this: there are specific patterns of behavior and ideas which are either attributed to or linked to the Nazi Party, or more generally to fascist ideologies, which have, throughout history, led to oppressive regimes. when people see these patterns or ideas expressed, there is a tendency on the left to reject these ideas because of that association, because they have proved to be potent tools for the spread of fascism, and encourage the dehumanization of minority groups.

transphobia, and specifically appeals to the pedophilic nature of queer people? this is unambiguously Nazi shit. trans people were the some of the very first people the nazi's actually threw into concentration camps in nazi germany. this process included the burning of medical literature describing the proper treatment of transgender people. it also included the denial of an explicit description of the gender spectrum, as observed by medical professionals of the time. so if you are dismissive of or make a political issue out of trans identity, call queer people groomers, any of that bullshit, even if you are "not a nazi", many of the information sources publishing anti-trans rhetoric today have explicit ties to real neo-nazi organizations, or are politically aligned with movements calling for the "eradication" of """transgenderism""".

to anybody with an education on the historical circumstances of Nazi Germany, this exact rhetoric and the modern political movement against trans people, is unambiguously mirrored by the actions of modern republican politicians, including legislating restrictions against cross-dressing (happened in nazi germany), restricting transgender medical care (happened in nazi germany), and revoking the ability for trans people to be recognized legally as trans (happened in nazi germany). people who are queer or trans both do not necessarily want to be confronted with this rhetoric wherever they go online, as it can be extremely distressing seeing people parroting literal nazi talking points in the modern era, and do not want that kind of rhetoric to spread, because it was nazi propaganda that lead to the execution of human beings.

while theoretically somebody might "misuse" this label, call somebody a transphobe or a nazi when they aren't explicitly talking about this stuff, you may be able to follow the logic from here. if transphobia, questioning the validity of transgender identity, calling for the restriction of transgender medical care, restricting access to books about queer people, if this has explicit links to nazi ideology and activity, what do you call people that want to open up a space for these people to spread their beliefs? what do you call people who accommodate or legitimize these beliefs which have led to the genocide of people groups? well, for a lot of people, if you accommodate the people who accommodate the fascists, that really isn't that different from letting the fascists run about.

maybe you don't think of yourself as somebody who does that. maybe you really do think of yourself as a moderate who wants productive discourse, and believes that if everybody just talked to each other, all these political divisions would be easier for us to solve. for the people who would be impacted by the threat of violence behind these beliefs, that isn't so easy. for the people who see the striking similarity between the modern transgender panic and the genocidal escalation of yesteryear, it isn't worth the risk to allow in the would be monsters, willing to execute the people who are not like them, even if that means that some reasonable people are caught in the crossfire. hopefully that gives you at least some insight into why productive dialogue isn't a very convincing argument on this side of the fence. you've called yourself a moderate in other posts. tell me, what is the moderate position between genocide and tolerance? between eradication and acceptance? if you're moderate about that shit? well, that just sounds like bigotry to me.

i would encourage you, if you aren't just a nazi concern troll, to look into the Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft, and the history behind the persecution of transgender and gay people in nazi germany, and try to conceive of why people believe that they are right in rejecting those who display sympathy towards the right wing of the United States, especially in light of their modern retreading of old bigotry. i would love to give people the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they are truly just advocates for free speech, concerned about authoritarian censorship, all that jazz, but the content of what opinions people like you are defending the right to have are historically ruinous for minority groups, a harbinger of a horrifically violent regime which killed countless people, and burned the records of what had been learned about their humanity.

SporkBomber, 11 months ago

Obligatory nazi bar story copypasta:

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

NaoPb, 11 months ago

See, I would totally fall for that, being all naive.

It is good that people post these things. I'm all accepting but not when people try to abuse it.

offendicula, 11 months ago

that bartender was a real one. bravo.

AndrewZabar, 11 months ago

Fascinating tale! Wow so maybe the bartender didn’t hate anyone just a crotchety guy who’s nevertheless pretty decent at his core.

HipHoboHarold, 11 months ago

One of my good friends does tattoos, and he doesn't do them for pretty much this exact reason. Like on one hand, fuck Nazis and he doesn't want to do it. On the other hand, money is money. They're gonna get it done, so might as well be the one that gets paid.

But ultimately he doesn't want to make anyone else who comes in uncomfortable, and he doesn't want to slowly become known as the guy who does all the Nazi tattoos. It makes him look bad and means he will get fewer people. So it's best to just tell them no.

riseupagainstthem, 11 months ago

I left reddit because of the censorship there and the freedom here. how does that make one a nazi wtf o_O

MustrumR, 11 months ago

It certainly doesn't. It's just that alt rtght absolutely abuses good will and rules to the extreme and systematically hijacks certain phrases.

See Elon Musk's Twitter as a light example (giving in to authoritarian censorship, and skewing content visibility, while constantly touting himself a "Free speech absolutist"), or the_donald from Reddit, which was mostly made of bots, conspiracy theorists and some sane, but malicious people, banning anyone who's even slightly misaligned.

Some people like the previous commenter are then incorrectly shortcutting hijacked slogans to the alt right. Which was their goal to start with - increasing the friction, uncertainty and division.

To elaborate about free speech we want to mantain sensible environment. So we need to give a boot to astroturfing bots and far, far right neonazis. Though as with most things, moderation is the key.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

that I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition.

This would get you permabanned and muted on r/news

T0rrent01, 11 months ago

Elon's acquisition of Twitter serves as an insightful case study of how a corporate CEO can turn what used to be a diverse, tolerant, and bountiful community of netizens with no home for hate speech and misinformation into a sad capitalist bloodbath.

Please take note, Huffman. And please take note, the internet in general.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

Yeah TWITTER was "a diverse, tolerant, and bountiful community of netizens" before Musk took over. This is the most insane thing I've read all week.

kluevo, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Maybe their impression of Twitter b4 Musk's takeover is stuck in... 2010?

BaroqueInMind, 11 months ago

Same. I hate censorship there and came for the freedom here

patchw3rk, 11 months ago

What censorship and freedom are you talking about?

BaroqueInMind, 11 months ago

I once said in the World News subreddit during the initial days of Russia invading Ukraine "fuck Russia. Also fuck China" and made it clear I was talking about their governments, and was banned. I also commented in Old School Cool subreddit a benign mention that OP's mom was attractive and got banned. I also told the mods of another subreddit that allowed comments on how to encourage violence at drag shows (can't remember where now) they were fascist pieces of shit, no mincing of words, and literally had an account ban from reddit due to too many strikes.

I can tell fascists and tankies here to go fuck themselves here consistently without fear of reprisal by a fat unemployed useless mentally retarded moderator on a power trip.

Fuck reddit and it's inconsistent censorship.

slicedcheesegremlin, 11 months ago

Wow, the only reasonable comment talking about "censorship" in this thread.
Another example I can think of is when the CCP announced that they were going to put restrictions on depicting "feminine men" in media, so I went to r/GenshinImpact to see the riots that would unfold from having their femboys taken away. there was a post about it that appeared on google but had been removed, so I went on there using removeddit and found several with over 3k upvotes each that had all been removed, undoubtedly by the mods shilling for the Chinese government.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I completely disagree with your views here but completely support your right to say it. Why's it so hard to allow people to simply speak to one another without some uppity censor-happy/ban-happy authoritarian fuckwits getting in the way and preventing conversation?

GataZapata, 11 months ago

What stuff of yours was censored?

That is the key question.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

I was banned from a bunch of subs all at once because I said in one (I'm still not sure which one), that I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition.

smokinjoe, 11 months ago

Banning you should be a social media tradition.

sour, 11 months ago

African_Grey, 11 months ago

I’m so glad I signed up on Beehaw where I can flip my app to local only and makes these dog whistling conservative bigots disappear. It’s wonderful. I also never see any downvotes.

MonsieurHedge, 11 months ago

What an excellent example of the kind of person who can fuck right off and out of the fediverse forever.

sethw, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

What a boring and unnecessary opinion to have. You're not their doctor, they arent your patients, what business is it of yours? and to go on about sharing that uneducated, untrained, unsolicited opinion online and then complaining about censorship when your medical advice is not well received.. I just can't wrap my head around the entitlement.

QingQangQong, 11 months ago

So ban people with dissenting opinions unless they are an expert. Seems like a great totally not authoritarian plan!

awsamation, 11 months ago

I have opinions on when and how children should be allowed to access cigarettes, alcohol, and motorcycles. Are those opinions also boring, unnecessary, and entitled?

BarbecueCowboy, 11 months ago

If that medical opinion wasn't backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community, I'd imagine that opinion probably would be.

awsamation, 11 months ago

The medical opinion backed up by doctors and the majority of the medical community used to be that alcohol for minors was fine and that cigarettes were good for you.

The medical community is perfectly capable of being wrong and prescribing societal dogma over anything else.

Zibani, 11 months ago

Yes, they are perfectly capable of being wrong. But guess what, they are less capable of being wrong than you are, because they have actually spent years of researching these topics.

Sure it’s possible that they’re wrong, but they are astronomically less likely to be wrong about this than you and the fear mongering anti-trans media are.

anlumo, 11 months ago

You’re dismissing all of modern medicine there, which IMO is even worse. Knowledge might change, but until it does, we have to follow the current state of science. Otherwise we’re back to guesswork.

awsamation, 11 months ago

No, I'm dismissing the idea that the "medical consensus" is unquestionable truth.

If questioning the medical consensus was always wrong then we'd still believe that handwashing was a waste of time, and cigarettes would probably be lauded as a way to resist the miasma.

When the consensus changed to say that cigarettes and underage drinking are bad, that didn't overthrow the idea that handwashing is still good. And when the consensus changes to say that the modern approach to transitioning has caused more harm than help, that won't overthrow the idea that underage drinking and cigarettes are still bad.

anlumo, 11 months ago

Questioning the medical consensus is ok, as long as you're a medical researcher with a study to show that there's a problem. I don't get the feeling that you are.

awsamation, 11 months ago

Laypeople are perfectly happy to give baseless opinions on my actual field of expertise, only fair I return the favor on other fields. Also how do you propose we get a study which shows the problem if you aren't allowed to ask the question which prompts the study until after the study is done?

Besides, when societal dogma is driving more than anything else then the only expertise you need is to be a member of that society. And nobody can deny me that qualification.

anlumo, 11 months ago

I'm in software development. If people give uneducated opinions, we all have a laugh and move on. In medicine, people die when this happens. This is not comparable.

awsamation, 11 months ago

That's a fun way of admitting that you have absolutely no qualifications regarding medicine. The only thing you can do here is point at the dogmatic opinion and pretend that there's nothing wrong with letting social pressure silence any uncomfortable questions.

Noumena, 11 months ago

You have some points, but "not well recieved" would be downvotes. I think banning is censorship and can be a fair complaint.

With that said, maybe the sub had posted rules that were violated. It isn't like OP couldn't create their own sub if that was the situation.

Banning people from communication spaces though should be a concerning behavior. It goes both ways.

WalrusDragonOnABike, 11 months ago

If your goal is to have a safe space for an oppressed minority group to express themselves, allowing transphobes to go about "just asking questions" and harassing people shuts down conversation of a group that actually has their freedom of expression threatened. Allowing harassment is more censorship than banning it. And no one should have the expectation of being able to just go into anyone's house and shit on their floor without consequence. And that might mean being banned from going to all of their friend's houses as well.

Noumena, 11 months ago

But you don't know what they said or what the community was. You are missing my general point. Please don't support general fascism behavior, whether it is from the right or left.

On top of that, this isn't somebody's house. That isn't a good analogy.

chaogomu, 11 months ago

They already said quite clearly that they're transphobic. The "I don't think children should undergo gender or sex transition" is almost verbatim an anti-trans talking point.

Here's some actual research on the subject of trans people, including trans youth, and suicide risk. With citations;

Bauer, et al., 2015: Transition vastly reduces risks of suicide attempts, and the farther along in transition someone is the lower that risk gets.

de Vries, et al, 2014: A clinical protocol of a multidisciplinary team with mental health professionals, physicians, and surgeons, including puberty suppression, followed by cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery, provides trans youth the opportunity to develop into well-functioning young adults. All showed significant improvement in their psychological health, and they had notably lower rates of internalizing psychopathology than previously reported among trans children living as their natal sex. Well-being was similar to or better than same-age young adults from the general population.

Gorton, 2011 (Prepared for the San Francisco Department of Public Health): “In a cross-sectional study of 141 transgender patients, Kuiper and Cohen-Kittenis found that after medical intervention and treatments, suicide fell from 19 percent to zero percent in transgender men and from 24 percent to 6 percent in transgender women.)”

Murad, et al., 2010: "Significant decrease in suicidality post-treatment. The average reduction was from 30% pretreatment to 8% post treatment."

De Cuypere, et al., 2006: Rate of suicide attempts dropped dramatically from 29.3% to 5.1% after receiving medical and surgical treatment among Dutch patients treated from 1986-2001.

UK study: "Suicidal ideation and actual attempts reduced after transition, with 63% thinking about or attempting suicide more before they transitioned and only 3% thinking about or attempting suicide more post-transition.

Heylens, 2014: Found that the psychological state of transgender people "resembled those of a general population after hormone therapy was initiated."

Perez-Brumer, 2017: "These findings suggest that interventions that address depression and school-based victimization could decrease gender identity-based disparities in suicidal ideation."

Here's a study showing that children know what gender they prefer and don't change their minds on it.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35951394/

Here's another meta study on trans youth who received gender-affirming care, and who saw a decrease in suicide risk.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33320999/

GataZapata, 11 months ago

Thanks for finding the sources

Noumena, 11 months ago

Transitioning is One solution, and it is valid to be able to discuss other options. Your citations bring good discussion points, but shouldn't be used to ban people.

My point is about censorship and the race to the bottom thst it can and often brings.

Anomander, 11 months ago

Except that's a sidestep. The viewpoint you were defending was saying that this one specific option, that has substantial academic backing for positive outcomes for kids, should not happen or should be prohibited.

That's not "discuss other options" - that's discussing this option and arguing that society should take it away.

That you're now trying to argue that it's just discussion and it's reasonable debate and - forgive my bluntness - being openly dishonest about what the original speech was that you're defending with "free-speech" and anti-censorship talking points is like ... the example case for how this thread started. The nazis and the transphobes and the hateful bigots can always, easily, spin their own takes as righteous and reasonable debate - if you let them lead the dialogue and frame their discourse through the most-appealing lenses possible. And they can make valid-sounding and appealing arguments for why you, too, should defend them and their right to speak.

But inevitably they are also going to use any and all space you clear for them to be hateful and bigoted and call for harm to other people - that is their goal. Everything else is just a setup play.

chaogomu, 11 months ago

I don't know, I'm always in favor of banning transphobes. Their arguments are always based in hatred, not any verifiable science. I gave you the science.

GataZapata, 11 months ago

If the scientific community overwhelmingly and independently comes to the same conclusion over and over again, insisting on being able to discuss other solutions, especially not in the context of academic exploration (because it IS important for the scientific process to check opposing hypothesis and to peer review) but in the Context of telling a baseless opinion easily disputed, then no.

That's like the people who insist on 'discussing other explanazions' for climate change.

And it is more than understandable that this insistence then is seen as the Opposite of good faith arguing and met with resistance. There is no point in giving a forum to harmful lies. That is not productive discourse

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I'm literally transsexual, have transsexual friends, and don't think children should undergo gender/sex transition. that isn't an "anti-trans talking point" it's common sense backed by medical literature and scientific studies.

WalrusDragonOnABike, 11 months ago

They repeated what they said, which is good enough reason to ban them from dozens of communities. People generally portray themselves in the least controversial light possible in these circumstances, so that's the best case scenario.

Many subreddits are the personal spaces of groups of people. Doesn't matter whether it's literally a physical house someone lives in or a metaphorical home for marginalized people. It's still their personal space. They're justified in excluding people even for trivial reasons such as liking the number 7. Blatant transphobia is an obvious reason to ban people from such spaces.

Blocking people from harassing marginalized people is not fascism. Excusing the persecution of marginalized people otoh...

JasSmith, 11 months ago

In society we routinely have opinions about things which don't affect us personally. We have opinions about murder, for example, and we made it illegal. None of my family have been murdered before. I'm neither a police officer nor a judge nor criminologist. I'm the least qualified person in the room to have an opinion on this, and yet, democracy gives me that right. I choose to continue to vote to make murder illegal because I think it is immoral.

Likewise, I think it is immoral to do this to children:

In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11-years-old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.

“When we asked him regularly how his back felt, he said: ‘I’m in pain all the time’,” she added.

tikitaki, 11 months ago

You're not their doctor, they arent your patients, what business is it of yours?

ok, so if you're not a doctor you can have no opinion on healthcare now? ridiculous statement. i think healthcare should be free. i don't work in healthcare or health insurance. so am i just supposed to shut the fuck up and know my place?

no, I have my opinion and I'm going to share it and @JasSmith has his opinion and he's going to share it. that's the whole point of having discussion boards. the last thing i want is this place to become an echo chamber

i think kids should be able to transition. but it's also not so simple a conversation when you're making permanent changes to teenage kids - https://nypost.com/2022/06/18/detransitioned-teens-explain-why-they-regret-changing-genders/

kids are fickle creatures and fads catch on - all of a sudden we see a dramatic rise in kids wanting to transition - like 4400% increase in girls wanting to transition to boys. is it because we are now more accepting as a society or is it social contagion? probably both and it's a serious topic we need to address if we actually do want the best for the kids. we need to keep ideology out of healthcare and make sure each individual kid is taken care of with whatever is best for them - transitioning is not always the best option. but sometimes it is.

sour, 11 months ago

because transphobes are just people with different opinions

._.

electriccars, 11 months ago

This is an uncomfortable conversation that needs to be had, but it sadly likely won't until too many lives have been irreplaceably altered.

Now firstly, I support trans people! I support all LGBTQ+ people, and Cis Straight people, to find themselves and be themselves and accept themselves for who they are! People need to learn to love themselves and not need to change to find happiness. Trans people are unfortunately stuck in a body that doesn't match their brain so they need to change to become who they are inside. Just as everyone's fingerprints are unique, everyone's brains are unique, and sometimes the brain is so different from their sex that they need to transition to truly be themselves. But IMO not all people who say they are trans actually are, let me explain why.

People want to support minorities, and lonely people want to find a community that will support them. So some people will surely become a minority just for the social support being a minority offers, not necessarily because they actually are that minority but they may convince themselves that is the case even if they aren't. But the issue is there's no easy way to know who's who in this situation, and it's arguably not our business to challenge them in their personal decisions. These are lonely people who need people to hear them and be their friends regardless of what they choose to do, and people who preach anti-trans arguments often aren't able to do that and instead are very hateful.

People today are lonely, in large part because of social media's affect on our psych. And what support is there for straight cisgender people? Essentially none. Especially white straight cisgender people who are practically seen as the "bad guys" throughout history (Which isn't necessarily an unfair assessment considering what Europe has historically done to basically everyone (including each other for that matter) but that was largely the actions of the wealthy few again). Why do so many kids and adults commit suicide? Where's the support network for people who need it regardless of minority/majority status? Real life social networks are dying. I'm sure there is some support, but it's not as visible to those who need it.

There's a conversation that needs to be had which is being shutdown because of the "look everyone a bigot(!)" mentality that bringing this up has. However, there's no simple way I can see to really separate that honest discussion from those who do want to ban the practice entirely, so it's understandable why the reaction is the way it is. It really is a shitshow from all sides. (Transitioning should not be banned BTW in case I haven't made it clear that that's my position.)

I think that some kids should be allowed to transition, based on their physicians and families assessments of the situation. But in the end it's not my business if someone believes they truly need to transition to be happy. I do think currently too many are transitioning because it's become the new social fad like being goth or emo, though perhaps I'm wrong. But if I'm right than it's a lot harder to reverse being trans, if it's possible at all.

Personally, I'm just dropping the subject IRL because of the reaction that happens after any mention of that honest concern comes out.

I expect someone will say I'm a bigot just for this comment showing any concern at all that too many people think they're trans and are harming themselves long term. My goal is the largest amount of happy people who love themselves as possible. And sometimes in trying to do that society inadvertently causes some people unnecessary suffering as I'm sure is the case here, but there's nothing we can really do about it, it is what it is. So just love everyone and accept everyone and do your own thing. Things will work out for most people in the end if you just accept people and don't worry about things. Which is what I try to do.

XiELEd, 11 months ago

Isn’t gender dysphoria part of an assessment with a psychologist to determine whether or not you are eligible to transition?

DaniAlexander, 11 months ago

It's so funny to me this person don't ever seem to have the same concerns about the nose jobs, boob jobs, lip enhancements, etc that are also being done on teens AND CHILDREN. I hear nothing from you about the performance enhancing drugs for teenage boys, or the altering of the bodies of gymnasts who also start in their early childhood. In the case of the latter, they get stunted growth because the intensive amount of training affects hormones and delays puberty. Gee what other thing that you argue about sounds similar to that?

Maybe you didn't know about those things before. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. But now I fully expect that you go to all of gymnastics forums where they're talking about young female gymnasts and male athletes,l and tell them that you don't think they should do those sports anymore. You're totally going to do that right? Right?

JasSmith, 11 months ago

It's so funny to me this person don't ever seem to have the same concerns about the nose jobs, boob jobs, lip enhancements, etc that are also being done on teens AND CHILDREN. I hear nothing from you about the performance enhancing drugs for teenage boys, or the altering of the bodies of gymnasts who also start in their early childhood.

I mean, you don't know me, or you'd know that I also think those things are wrong. I also tell people that I think those things are wrong. Don't you?

gigachad, 11 months ago

I mean the top comment is a guy who was banned because of his opinion on gender/sex transition... And the person you answered to expressed their opinion on that topic. Why would they talk about nose jobs or whatever? If you want to discuss these topics why not ask them about it instead of assuming their political agenda? Not saying I agree with them, but that's not how debates work.

tikitaki, 11 months ago

we aren't seeing a 4000% increase in kids becoming gymnasts

it's a poignant social topic. instead of attacking my credibility, aiming to represent me as biased, you should try to attack my argument

having said that, i support kids transitioning. i'm more upset about the "wrongthink" mentality where someone can't even share their opinion without getting pounced on. he isn't sharing hate speech he's just talking

GataZapata, 11 months ago

Can you cite a source on that number

tikitaki, 11 months ago

was in the article i linked

between 2009 and 2019, children being referred for transitioning treatment in the United Kingdom increased 1,000% among biological males and 4,400% among biological females.

i guess it's too much to expect people to read things

Anomander, 11 months ago

So "transition treatments" have gone up 4000% ... in the time period following the treatment becoming available. If being a gymnast was illegal until 2009, or nobody had invented a trampoline until then, you can certainly bet making it legal or possible to do floor routines would result in a 4000%+ increase in people who were openly and publically gymnasts.

Trans people, trans kids, have always existed - we just didn't have the technology to provide the treatment in that article.

That article is choosing to cite the numbers on the treatment rather than the condition because the treatment's very recent launch means it allows the presentation of a scarier number.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

Indeed, I've been finding myself hesitant to chime in on this because I know I'm inevitably going get lumped in with transphobe Nazi facists because at some point I'm going to say "hey hang on, there's some nuance here that you're missing."

C4RP3_N0CT3M, 10 months ago

Nuance is cryptonite for central authority.

sour, 11 months ago

we aren't seeing a 4000% increase in kids wanting to transition

BasicTraveler, 11 months ago

If you cherry pick the dates of comparison you can probably come up with 4000%

Check. Mate.

awsamation, 11 months ago

Sure, I can go harass people on gymnastics forums if that's what you want. But in that case it's only fair that I start harassing people on trans forums as well. I wasn't doing either of those things before, but you said I have to so I guess it's time to go bully some trans people.

I have no problem with condemning the people who push children into intensive training for competition gymnastics. And no, I don't believe them either when they argue that "the child wanted this." The parents wanted a child who fits a certain mold and the child is just trying to make their parents happy, or atleast not angry depending on how externally abusive that parent is being.

Also I absolutely support the idea of banning under 18s from getting nose jobs, boob jobs, lip fillers, taking PEDs, etc. Heck throw in piercings and tattoos as well for all I care. No procedure and no parental permission exceptions.

awsamation, 11 months ago

See the problem here is that you forgot that opinions are only allowed to include concerns or nuances that are on the approved list.

Anything you might be concerned about that isn't on the approved list puts you straight into wrongthink, double plus ungood.

fritz, 11 months ago

Ah yes the great source of the New York post. I don’t think you are being harmful on purpose but I do believe that by spreading shit like this you are harming trans people. There is no trans epidemic or social fad. That opinion is absolutely ridiculous. I have a close family member who is trans and the difficulty of even getting hormones is extreme. Multiple meetings with psychologists and endocrinologist, many exams and paperwork, not even mentioning the bureaucracy you have to deal with afterwards. And this is as an adult, transitioning as a minor is way way harder. No one just gets transitioned in an accident, and 99% don’t regret it. Now on the flip side 30-50% of trans kids want to commit suicide due to societal pressure and bullying. The only „cure“ for gender dysphoria is, shocking I know, transitioning. So when people say to protect trans kids, it’s literally protecting them from self harm or from getting attacked. Also, do you really think that more people identify as trans because it’s a „fad“ or maybe it’s because your can finally openly talk about it! It’s like saying that the rise of left handed people after them not being retrained in school anymore is a social fad. It’s a stupid opinion. Whenever you have more societal acceptance of something more people will feel safe coming out. I understand that some people are scared of their kids being transed by the woke liberal teachers but the same people also think that Obama turned the frogs gay.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

Ah yes the great source of the New York post.

Are you questioning that Chloe exists? She's been speaking at length about her de-transition because the whole experience has destroyed her body permanently. You can read about her on her Wikipedia page. It's cool to question sources, but you didn't even take a sec on Google to check if your ad hominem attack was valid.

Here is another example. Sweden went all-in on "temporary" puberty blockers for gender affirming care until children started experiencing life-long injuries. They are now effectively banned for gender affirming care for children.

In one particularly shocking case, a girl who wanted to become a boy began taking hormone-blocking drugs at just 11-years-old. Almost five years after the treatment began, the puberty-pausing drugs induced osteoporosis and permanently damaged the teen’s vertebrae, severely limiting the teen’s mobility.

“When we asked him regularly how his back felt, he said: ‘I’m in pain all the time’,” she added.

spencerforhire81, 11 months ago

Chloe's case is a tragedy, for sure. The issue I have is that people are calling for bans rather than enhanced oversight.

Healthcare, at its core, is a numbers game. No effective treatment we've ever discovered is completely without risk. Every surgery or treatment, no matter how innocuous, could lead to complications or death. To use a recent example, the Covid vaccinations. They're considered extremely safe, and over 13 billion vaccination doses have been given to date with over 5 billion people having been vaccinated. Given that Covid kills or permanently disables 2 in every 100 unvaccinated people, and vaccines lower that rate by at least 90%, that's nearly 100 million lives that have been safeguarded by the vaccine. However, the vaccine has certainly harmed some people with extremely rare side effects. We accept that tradeoff, because saving 100 million lives is worth the risk of harming a few thousand people.

Gender affirming care for children is the same thing. We know that trans children are at extremely elevated risks of self harm and suicide, and gender affirming care is proven to be effective in preventing those outcomes. We know that some will regret their decision to transition because those cases are inevitable in any population that transitions. The focus should be on reducing the cases of regret with better screening and more oversight.

So, to debate this seriously, you need to answer the following question:

How many regretful de-transitioners are you willing to risk in order to save the lives of successful transitioners?

If the answer is zero, then you're not willing to seriously debate the use of a medical treatment and your opinion is dogmatic and carries no semantic value.

If the answer is very few, then congratulations, you're on the same side as many allies who want more funding for care and screening for trans issues.

Chloe would have likely been helped by more psychiatric care and screening, as from her story it's clear that her sexual assault as a minor precipitated a complex regarding her sexuality that was misdiagnosed as a desire to transition.

tikitaki, 11 months ago

Also, do you really think that more people identify as trans because it’s a „fad“ or maybe it’s because your can finally openly talk about it

i think it's both. i don't know at what ratio, but kids really do follow fads. one kid kills themselves at a school and it raises the chances for all of them to do so. ideas are contagious. a kid that may just be going through the regular teenage angst period searching for an identity might latch onto the trans label to explain their feelings when really it's just a normal teenage thing to go through identity issues

again, i'm not trying to say kids shouldn't transition. i view transitioning as healthcare so to block kids off from it is absurd. but i think we also need to be careful and talk about the elephant in the room - that the rate of trans kids increasing so dramatically points to some issues with the ways we are doing it. when something jumps up so dramatically we should be asking questions

someguy3, 11 months ago

It’s like the prevalence of left-handedness shot up dramatically once it was socially acceptable. You can’t look at changes alone and say that things changing is a concern because it’s changing.

C4RP3_N0CT3M, 10 months ago

This is false equivalence if I've ever seen it. The treatment for left-handedness was to sit on your hand, not do a fucking life-altering permanent surgery.

someguy3, 10 months ago

What are you on about? It’s about how prevalence is hidden when it’s beaten out of people.

sethboy66, 11 months ago

The problem is that there's a very big difference between wanting a blanket ban on transition preparation and wanting the actual people involved (the trans kid, the parents, and the doctors) to do a better job of evaluating the situation and working out the best path for each case.

While your opinion may be more reasonable you should be careful to not assume they share your opinion. A lot of people don't realize that the common choice for "transition" treatments for teens does not transition them, but rather delays/suppresses puberty in such a way that they can choose which way to go at a later time. Banning this treatment forces a choice and disallows a trans person's ability to fully transition once of age.

Zibani, 11 months ago

The opinion that you have flies directly and explicitly in the face of some of the most trusted and respected medical organizations in the world, then no, you shouldn’t have that opinion.

Because on the one hand, we have people like you and right-wing talking point media . On the other hand we have the opinions of the American Academy of pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and gynecologists, the American Society for Reproductive medicine, the American College of physicians, the American Association of clinical endocrinology, the American Academy of child and Adolescent psychiatry, the American Academy of pediatrics, the American Academy of Physicians assistance, the American Medical association, the American nurses association, the American Counseling association, the American medical student association, the American Psychiatric association, the endocrine society, the Pediatric endocrine society, the National Association of Social workers, the World Health organization, the world medical organization right.

When you put those two lists side by side, you have no fucking point. I would put one of those organizations above your opinion on medicine, but every single one of them has come out in support of the idea that it is better for a trans child to transition. Your argument holds no weight aside from baseless Fear mongering

GataZapata, 11 months ago

I get why subs that consider themselves safe spaces for trans folk would ban you for that.

Transitions are Never done willy nilly. Several doctors and psychologists will be in contact with that person before. If they agree it is fine, as Healthcare professionals, then it must be that forcing the person to stay their birth gender will do more harm

jcrm, 11 months ago

Lmao, yeah you deserved to have your trash take "censored". Gender affirming care saves lives, and has a less than 1% "regret rate". For reference, knee replacements have about a 15% rate. Shocking how trans-inclusive spaces don't want transphobes around.

patchw3rk, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

I think the problem with your opinion is that it conveys that you believe children are being throw into surgery rooms and given sex transitions loosely and without thought to the consequences.

I think your real opinion is that you believe children shouldn't be given unnecessary surgeries. If that is true, the large majority of the population would agree with you.

In addition, have you explored what Doctors believe is a necessary sex transition for a child? What are those parameters? If you don't know, then I would consider your original stance to be of ignorance. Since you really never dive into the subject, most people will assume that you haven't explored those parameters and don't understand the reasoning behind them. That is why you're facing aggression with your opinion.

beefcat, 11 months ago

You're entitled to your opinion, but the consensus among the medical and scientific communities is that you are wrong. They are the experts here, not you. At some point, blindly repeating falsehoods based on prejudice stops being an avenue for constructive debate and instead just wastes everybody's time and makes people angry for no reason.

You're advocating against life-saving treatments. Of course you're going to get shit on.

Th4tGuyII, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Yes, but the "censorship" and "freedoms" they talk about isn't about malicious censorship (I.e. Spez going around quietly editing dissenting comments) or freedom about how our content is used (I.e. Reddit refusing to let people delete their comments).

Their version is about spreading misinformation and hate speech of all kinds, alongside racist and facist ideologies unfiltered and unimpeded. They're malicious actors acting like victims.

We don't want any of that, we want all folks to feel welcome, which is why we have to shoot that down. To maintain a tolerant society, we must only be intolerant of the intolerant.

GataZapata, 11 months ago

Karl popper babyyyy

mPony, 11 months ago

the guy who gave us the Paradox of Tolerance also gave us Falsifiability, They should teach him in grade school.

chaogomu, 11 months ago

I always say that there is no paradox of tolerance, because tolerance doesn't work that way.

It's not a wide open door. No tolerance is a compact. It's a peace treaty. A social contract that can be violated, and those who violate it can then be excluded from it until they stop being hateful idiots.

Ragnell, 11 months ago

Going to bring it up again, the Paradox of Tolerance disappears when you consider tolerance a social contract rather than a moral standard.

Nazis base their identity and politics around not tolerating the presence of various minorities, and therefore aren't entitled to tolerance themselves.

TERFs base their identity and politics areound not tolerating trans people, and therefore aren't entitled to tolerance themselves.

Furries don't base their identity on excluding, invalidating or persecuting someone else, so furries are entitled to tolerance.

So, the furry boards stay but we need to defederate Nazis and TERFs.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

There's always going to be some fuzzy edge cases, unfortunately. When tolerance becomes such an important and powerful thing it will become easily weaponized and subject to misinterpretation, deliberate or otherwise.

Ragnell, 11 months ago

Oh yeah, but honestly if we can just keep the big troublemakers out and set a line in the sand we can put up with the fuzzy edge cases. It would also be necessary to consider tolerance a concept that goes beyond interpersonal interaction. Like, okay, this guy is civil but what he's saying is that genocide is okay. Or, okay, this guy is rubbing me the wrong way but at its core "Archer is a better Captain than Sisko"* is not fundamentally about race, it could honestly be he just prefers Archer.

*Sisko is a better Captain than Archer, this is fact. But sometimes people are just wrong and that's okay.

anlumo, 11 months ago

Which captain poisoned the atmosphere of a whole planet just for his personal vendetta against one guy?

Which captain initiated the murder of an innocent diplomat just to get his way?

Don’t get me wrong, Sisko made for better stories, but being a good captain is a different category.

Ragnell, 11 months ago

I knew I'd get one.

Archer's problem is that he's weak, kind of cowardly, and a bully. I watched the whole series, but you only need watch Cogenitor to see it. Even Lorca would've kept a promise to one of his crew.

Sisko did some stuff we can argue about, but he has the courage to make the choice according to his principles. I can't put Archer in Sisko's situations and see him coming out better.

Also, Sisko punched Q. Knowing FULLY who Q was. Nothing can detract from punching Q.

ElleChaise, 11 months ago

we want all folks to feel welcome

That's another thing they'll tell you, to add to your point. They'll say general society, or lefties, are unwelcoming hypocrits for expressing the need for inclusion while not including fascists.

They'll word the same opinions in a million ways until they find the way that gets you to allow them to continue blabbering intolerant bull crap.

Th4tGuyII, 11 months ago

It's true, those types will use your own rules against you to wipe you out if you let them. It's one of the oldest tricks in the playbook of bad faith arguments.

I bet you we'll see a version of that very argument with the Fediverse when Meta brings "Threads" onto the scene. They'll preach inclusion then use the old EEE tactic to kill us off.

Ragnell, 11 months ago

That's the Paradox, they use tolerance to fill the space with intolerance.

I said it in a comment below and I'll write it out again because it is a great point (that I have seen several times on Mastodon, not that I thought up on my own) that the only way to resolve the Paradox of Tolerance is to understand tolerance as a social contract.

Nazis start from not adhering to the contract, because they refuse to tolerate certain identities. TERFS refuse to tolerate trans identities. Neither the Nazi nor the TERF viewpoint is entitled to tolerance. Compare to Furries, who have no problem with non-furry identities but are often not welcomed because they are so very very strange. Tolerance is for furries, not nazis.

Hyperreality, 11 months ago

I'm a big fan of free speech.

Nazis scare minorities into not being able to fully exercise their right to free speech.

So censoring the far right actually results in a net gain in free speech for society and communities as a whole.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

many people on the fediverse are extreme authoritarian progressives who call literally any other political view "nazis"

sethw, 11 months ago

fascism doesnt play fair in the marketplace of ideas, if you invite a nazi to sit at your table you've made it a nazi table. free speech is necessary and important, but we still draw lines for things like defamation and hate speech. another line is not offering a platform to fascists, they arent entitled to a seat at the table to spread fud.

you're like "but i'm not a nazi" , great, let's keep it that way.

siuvhne, 11 months ago

how did this discussion devolve into Nazis? I'm afraid you're probably part of the problem.

EvilColeslaw, 11 months ago

extreme far right buffoonery

Like the title said, it basically started off with Nazism. No devolution of discussion required.

siuvhne, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Thank you for calling that out.

I may have misunderstood the intent of the post. sometimes I skim without meaning to.

beefcat, 11 months ago

Importantly, "free speech" is about government, not privately owned spaces.

We believe the government should not be given the power to censor speech, because people are born into it without a choice. Governments could use this power nefariously, and their citizens would have no meaningful recourse.

Nobody is born into Reddit or kbin or Lemmy. If someone doesn't like the rules of a given instance, they are welcome to leave and free themselves of this burden.

Elevator7009, 11 months ago

Genuinely curious what word you should use if you think people should be able to say whatever they want in any space without getting kicked out or censored, as opposed to being able to say almost anything without getting arrested by the government. As it stands right now, some people mean the first definition when they say “free speech” and some mean the second.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

Reddit was filled with a special brand of retards always trying to police language always acting smug about taking about some weird moral high road it is exhausting to deal with. People irl dont have such tight asses about speech. And permabanning someone for having an opinion you dont agree with is an abuse of power (not like it matters much to people who are so zealous about policing public morality). Obviously dont be a shitter and start spouting off trump supporters special brand of koolaid but if you feel like trans women should not compete with biological women in professional womens sports then you are free to think that way.

Dr_Cog, 11 months ago

Speaking of speech:

Using the word “retard” as a derogatory term is pretty offensive to those born with developmental defects. It’s similar to how we used to use “gay” in a similar way a few decades ago. It’s pretty shitty.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

Speaking as someone with a speech impediment, using the word "the" is super offensive to me. It's basically a slur. If you don't stop using it immediately, I have no choice but to report you for being a Nazi.

Dr_Cog, 11 months ago

That’s sounds tough. You should probably not report people for generally benign speech, though, just because you personally find it offensive. Have you tried simply informing others of your problem with this language?

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

I would say that "retard" is less offensive than the Q slur used to refer to LGBT people. You say there's a problem with calling stuff "gay" whereas I'm actually same sex attracted and have no issue with that. THe bigger issue is the Q slur.

if you're gonna just say "well my dictation of language is the only one that matters!" then you're just being an authoritarian fascist nazi and are literally the problem.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

you are free to feel that way but the mods are not free to ban me for my shitty vocab. they can just call me an asshole and move on like every other website

patchw3rk, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

You are entirely in control of what you say.. but it sounds like what you meant is not in line with what you're saying.

Do you deliberately want to belittle people with developmental issues? It doesn't sound like it. I think what @Dr_Cog is trying to say is that you should consider lining up the words you use with the message you're actually trying to convey.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

If we're to start declaring how people speak, can all you word nazis please start cracking down on those people who use the Q slur to refer to LGBT people? it's a literal slur, has been used to attack and harm large portions of the community, yet people will happily broadcast it.

I feel that's a better use of time than pushing offense over the word "retard" which ultimately doesn't hurt anyone and hasn't been used to hurt anyone.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

Do you deliberately want to belittle people with developmental issues

no one is attacking people with developmental disabilities by calling something retarded if you want to take it that way your are free to do so its your opinion not mine and even if you try to twist my words to suit your fucked up narrative i know what i mean and thats what matters to me

patchw3rk, 11 months ago

Sounds like you've had this conversation before and you are comfortable being on the merry-go-around.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

sure thing boss have a nice day

Emotional_Series7814, 11 months ago

I’m honestly sure you don’t mean “retarded” as a personal attack against people with developmental disabilities.

There’s also a very long history of people using that exact same word to attack them. Many people who make arguments like yours, that they should still get to use the word, tend to also be prejudiced against these people and treat them poorly. Maybe you’re not like that, but using that word does make you look a lot more like these people.

You making an argument to try to keep using the word, even though it hurts people, essentially tells them “I will not change one word in my vocabulary to accommodate your feelings and history of being hurt by this word.” Your choice on if you want to change your words to in an effort to get people to interpret you in a way that better matches your intent, or if you’d like to stick to your guns even if it means lots of people will get hurt. After all, people are free to interpret words however they wish, including in ways that you don’t intend them to and ways you don’t mean. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people affected by this word to not want you in their communities if you want to keep using that word, at least if they didn’t promise you absolute freedom of speech.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

Hey if the mods want to remove folks like me so be it. Do i make extensive use of such slurs in my day to day vocabulary? (Not really) i mainly want to test the waters and see how hard the mods and the community comes down on me for it. Can i speak like normal or will i have to sing song dance around subjects like on reddit.

Dr_Cog, 11 months ago

That sounds kinda sad, tbh

Grimpen, 11 months ago

Technically depends on the instance. The Fediverse supports free expression in the sense that you can spin up your own instance and say whatever you want. Flip side, any other instance can de-federate with your instance if they don’t want to listen to your BS^1.

For instance, my instance^2 would probably police my ability to use slurs. Which is fine. I certainly am a member of some groups for which slurs exist, and if some asshole started spewing that BS in my house, I would express myself by kicking them the f*ck out. Likewise I chose an instance where I can be comfortable, and not have to deal with being harassed for who I just happen to be. My choice of an instance is largely founded on its Code of Conduct. In exchange, I extend the same courtesy to others on my instance.

It’s almost like a social contract…

Anyway, point being, as a consequence of different instances having different Codes of Conduct (even if just minor changes), you will technically be bound by both the CoC of your home instance and the home instance of the community/magazine.

Suddenmoose, 11 months ago

lol ok i just want to hang in a place that isnt all uptight or uppity about language

Anomander, 11 months ago

Good luck with your quest. May you find that place eventually.

Grimpen, 11 months ago

Yep, the Fediverse can totally provide that. Self-hosting puts you in total control. I’m just making the point that free expression cuts both ways. Each instance is a free association of members who consent to that instances CoC. Each community/magazine has a home instance, and by joining that community you are also consenting to abide by that instances CoC.

This does mean that in effect you can be banned from either the community or your home instance.

Flip side of all this, is you have a bunch more variety of instances. You should be able to find one where you are comfortable, but still be mindful when participating in wider communities. You’re visiting someone else’s house in effect.

Finally, instances can de-federate if they don’t want to deal with another instances nonsense.

Dr_Cog, 11 months ago

I didn’t say anything about banning you, or stopping your speech. Just pointing out that most people look down on those who use that kind of derogatory language.

Jellybean, 11 months ago

Exactly. I posted on a sub talking about the fact I thought the covid lock downs went too far (ironically enough I’m actually a junior doctor as well) and just from this one comment where I did not say anything remotely controversial immediately got banned from about 50 unrelated subreddits. Now I’m usually not too fussed but I just thought it was ridiculous that I can be banned from posting on r/cutepics or whatever because of one comment.

However I’m a bit worried with lemmy about the defederation thing and would like to know how it’s different from this.

T0rrent01, 11 months ago

In my experience, the people ranting about "free speech" the loudest are the most flagrant violators of the "my right to move my arms ends at your nose" maxim.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

ehhhh..... I think it says a lot about a person if they don't care about free speech, or the encroaching censorship from the rich 1%ers. That's literally the entire appeal of stuff like the fediverse.

If you want a strong crackdown on speech, then go back to reddit?

ENEMYGUNSHIP, 11 months ago

this partisan nonsense is the biggest threat to the fediverse rn. when will people understand that the real fight is down vs. up, the little guy vs the elite mafia. left/right as an endless blamegame they use to keep us fighting each other, while they steal from everyone. the old divide & conquer, still works like charm. every other platform is already infected with it. if it gets to the fediverse, we're just gonna end up with a bunch of oppressive echo chambers much like reddit. if that happens I'll be gone

SolarNialamide, 11 months ago

Left vs right is literally the same thing as down vs up.

ConfusedLlama, 11 months ago

The way I see it, is that they are not exactly the same, but there seems to be a greater tendency in the "up-directed" people to be also right-leaning, also a greater tendency in the "down-directed" people to be also left-leaning, which makes sense, since many elements in those pairs of tendencies/ideologies almost line up, or are at least very compatible.

However, there IS also right libertarianism, and left authoritarianism, but those seem to be less probable than the opposites.

Take a look at the Political Compass mappings of famous politicians and political parties in different parts of the world: The up-right and down-left quadrants are almost always the most populous, while there are dots in the other two quadrants.

(See the "Elections" section on the left column, click on several elections in different locations.)

sethw, 11 months ago

they dont mean up down on the political compass, they mean working class vs owning class

JasSmith, 11 months ago

More poor people vote for Republicans than Democrats. So are the oppressed on the right, and the "owners" on the left?

Zombiepirate, 11 months ago

Why do you say that?

Pew certainly disagrees.

ConfusedLlama, 11 months ago

Ah, my misunderstanding, then. Thanks for the correction :)

GataZapata, 11 months ago

While I agree with you, class Co sciousness and warfare requires unity. I cannot stand with someone, be our situations as similar as they might be, if their stance is 'but not the brown/gay/whatever people'

All or none. I will not stand for discrimination. Not overt, not veiled as 'discussion', not ever.

CynAq, 11 months ago

Little guys lapping up right wing propaganda sure make it extremely difficult to fight the elite, tho.

They become merely another instrument of the "up" of suppressing the "down" when you're feeling frustrated, helpless, and hopeless all the time.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

As opposed to the clearly smarter, enlightened little guys on the left. You're going exactly what they're describing.

TaleOfSam, 11 months ago

I’m trans and I will provide a safe space for kids even if you won’t. And you can’t stop me ^^

smokinjoe, 11 months ago

You're just upset that your right wing hatred constantly gets called out.

Kraiden, 11 months ago

You're implying that the left and right suppress each other equally, but frankly it's only the right trying to fuck over their fellow man for profit and power. Got nothing to do with being more enlightened or smarter. Compassion though... Ye, the left are more compassionate.

Of course feel free to prove me wrong...

jiml78, 11 months ago

Lets just take this to the extreme and see where shit lands.

Take the common leftist view. What happens to the country if we "got" our way. Everyone has healthcare coverage. Everyone with regard to their gender, orientation, race are treated equally and with dignity/respect. Everyone has a living wage. Everyone that wants to go to college can go to college without huge debt. Oh, we have to figure out how to pay for it.

Man that sounds fucking awful.

Now take it where the common right wing idiot that is consumed by the culture war wants to take it. Gay marriage outlawed. Transpeople wiped from the face of the earth. Fuck minorities. No minimum wage. Lower taxes for the 1%. Privatized social security, privatized medicare. No federal minimum wage. Gov't restriction of free speech.

And yes, I say right wing dipshits want to restrict free speech because they are the morons removing books. To quote Rage Against the Machine, "They don't have to burn the books, they just remove them" That is exactly what the right wing morons are doing.

The right getting their way leads to a dystopian shithole where only the wealthy have decent lives.

I would actually be ok arguing economics with a conservative. But the conservatives lost that fight when they embraced the religious right and decided to economically spend just as much as the liberals. Both parties are big spenders. So economics aren't a talking point anymore. It is purely a culture war that the right started.

bluGill, 11 months ago

Maybe you need to step back from the first order effects that your bias is saying and look deeper.

What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?

What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest.

there is a lot more to both. I'm countering your left wing bias by doing the same as you: cherry picking results that fit my narrative.

Anomander, 11 months ago

What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?

Taxes.

Except that you guys are paying retail + markup + profit for the investors + "we have a monopoly" fees + "lol, your other option is dying" surcharge.

We just buy healthcare at-cost and wholesale.

I pay like $2K a year in taxes towards healthcare. $2K invested in a socialized healthcare system buys services, service time, and supplies that would cost an American hundreds of thousands of dollars when paying for them as an induvial in a for-profit healthcare system.

Yeah. Sometimes I pay for healthcare I don't use. Sometimes there are inefficiencies in the system. It is not a perfect system. But it's also not making anyone go bankrupt due to a medical emergency.

Paying $100K just to save $2K is never going to be good math, no matter how creative we get with the accounting.

Primarily0617, 11 months ago

What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?

The US currently has one of the worst cost-to-outcome ratios for healthcare of any developed country. So if anything, the cost would decrease.

the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone

"lower taxes for everyone" helps the 1% the most, and harms the bottom whatever% the most

more money that can be used to invest.

trickle down economics isn't a thing

jiml78, 11 months ago

Going to take an easy one for you.

"What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest."

We have the data over the past 70 years to show that is 1000% false. Straight up false.

Go look at economic investment in the 1950s to now. Seriously, go look it up. When we had the highest tax rates, especially corporate tax rates, we had the highest level of investment into research and salaries.

When you have the lowest tax rates, what you get is stock buybacks and huge salary payouts to executives. You obviously have done very little research in how low tax rates work in reality. Hint, it doesn't trickle down. And we know because we have hard facts and how the markets have worked over time.

EDIT: And I want to give you the reason why high tax rates lead to more investment. If you have a choice between lowering your tax burden by using it for research and salaries, you would rather do that than give it to the gov't. That is why high tax rates work.

MachineTeaching, 11 months ago

What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?

Taxes.

What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest.

That's funny because the bottom 50% already just pay 3% income tax on average.

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income-tax-data/

This is of course by design and good, we want poorer people to pay less taxes.

It's also very funny because maybe "the right wing" says that's what they are for, but that's not what they do. No, what they do is write disingenuous bills that cut taxes the most on the richest 5% and actually

And if you ask me, what they do matters more than what they say they would do but don't. (Just to be clear, what they do is handing more money to the extremely rich and making poor people poorer, and lying about it.)

Also it's just straight up wrong. "More money to invest"? Less money for the government to invest, so it either has to borrow more or cut spending. And you can go on about "government bad" all you want, the vast majority of countries with the highest standard of living don't have very low taxes, quite the opposite. You can guess what kind of countries have extremely low taxes.

Niello, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Definitely smarter than the group that thinks Trump should be a president and tries to deny science at every turn. You don't need me to tell you which group it is that denied global warming, denied the existence of covid-19, denied universal healthcare, host the Nazis and white supremacists, and so on, do you?

And when confronted with these kinds of questions the typical reaction is to ignore it or make excuses rather than looking at their own group with insight. Any conservatives who think it's okay for Nazis and extremists to house themselves in their group might as well join them. Otherwise, stop making excuses and look at the problems.

siuvhne, 11 months ago

it's important to see that both sides have extremes and to assume that anyone who tips the scale "left" or "right" is somehow more right or more wrong is what keeps us from being able to find common ground. turning the words "conservative" and "liberal" into slurs is equally damaging. we both have ways of lashing out at each other when we are not the enemy. I bet we can agree that extremism is dangerous regardless of which side of the fence it resides on.

ErnestDoodler, 11 months ago

Ha, you're being downvoted for being reasonable and speaking basic truths. Has this place already become what made reddit such a shit show?

siuvhne, 11 months ago

I hope it's not.

siuvhne, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

MonsieurHedge, 11 months ago

Good. If the concept of not tolerating hate speech bothers you, get out.

siuvhne, 11 months ago

I don't tolerate hate speech, on either side of the fence.

MonsieurHedge, 11 months ago

God I am so curious as to what you consider hate speech "on the other side of the fence".

VoxAdActa, 11 months ago

Yeah, me too.

We won't get any examples, though. At least not any examples of things real, relevant people actually said. The best they'll do is drop a dumptruck's worth of strawmen before flouncing off in a huff.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

Yeah it's /r/Politics levels of "if you don't agree with you YOU'RE HITLER!!!!!!1!"

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

They're probably being downvoted because presenting the political divide as an arbitrary choice between two equally valid options is a perspective that many would find naive at best and actively malicious at worst.

Politics is mess, I don't want to pretend that there's no nuance (I certainly don't agree with quite a lot of online leftist orthodoxy), and I won't pretend to have an answer for our increasing polarization, but the simple fact of the matter is that we are not dealing with two equally valid sides. "Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?", "Are vaccines a conspiratorial attempt at government control?", "Is climate change a severe and man-made phenomenon?", and "Are LGBT people basically just evil perverted pedophiles?" are not subjective questions one can have a casual opinion on. They are objective questions with objective answers, and to pretend otherwise is simply wrong.

Again, I'm very much not saying that the vague left is perfect by any means, but you only see one side start shooting at beer cans because a trans person had the audacity to exist.

siuvhne, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

let me start by acknowledging that I merely wanted to express that it's not just "extreme right buffoonery" that's a problem. to claim that there is no such thing as "extreme left
buffoonery" is misleading.

my comment clearly stated that the extremes on both ends are to be despised. politics is a game I don't wish to be judged on because I'm seriously apolitical. we do need to meet in the middle. I'm not saying we need to forgive the "buffoonery" but cut out the rotten fruit and make a fucking jam. ideals are not arbitrary in any way. our ideals are built through life experience. I'm seeing a whole lot of each side trying to dehumanize the other for not agreeing with their politics. The "right" has rational, reasonable, kind humans who believe in human rights. but the fact that they may have a stance on the nanny state that the country is becoming somehow makes everyone who's not a professed Democrat evil.

regarding hate speech, frankly I've experienced more than my fair share. but that doesn't count, right?

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

I get your point, really, and I don't even strictly disagree. As I said, I disagree with a fair bit of your standard Online Left positions. I unironically like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and have the audacity to generally listen to economists; suffice it to say I've gotten more than fair share of online political hatred lol. Leftists will call me a shit liberal and conservatives will call me an evil gay communist.

But what must be realized is that the Republican party as it exists today is simply not an equally viable and rational alternative group of people who simply have some different thoughts on tax policy and the scoped of government. I direly wish it was, but it simply is not that. Polarization sucks, and I don't really have a clear answer for it, but the answer must not be taking the questions like "Are gay people secretly grooming your children?", "Is climate change a hoax?", "Was the 2020 election stolen from Trump?", "Should we legally impose Christianity at every level of society?", and "Is Hillary Clinton secretly a bloodthirsty cannibal that feeds off the youthful vitality of children?" and deciding that there are valid points on both sides.

I get that politics is exhausting, but being "apolitical" is a political choice. It's the decision that you're okay with the status quo and that you don't think it's worth making a fuss about. I'm originally from deep rural Missouri, and while it has since been voided by the Courts, I have (adult) trans friends who began developing suicidal thoughts because the state was going to ban hormone therapy. This was a regime that ostensibly claims to be for limited government arbitrarily inserting itself in the private medical decisions of consenting adults for no reason other than to appeal to a base of bigots. Things like this matter, whether you choose to pay attention or not. Being able to ignore them is a luxury not everyone has.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

Reddit is just an empty framework that got filled by communities of humans. The shape of the framework did have some impact, but ultimately human nature is the biggest influence on the form that those communities took.

The Fediverse is a different framework, shaped a little bit differently but still basically the same. The same basic humans are building communities in it. I think all the smug "we're better than Reddit" stuff is going to look rather silly once the Fediverse gets anywhere close to being as big as Reddit is.

HipHoboHarold, 11 months ago

I would argue the up vs down is left vs right. Because it's ultimately a fight against capitalism and fascism. Because while it is ultimately rich vs poor, they're using the bigotry to get people to follow them, and simply ignoring genocide in order to hopefully get poor people put of poverty just means millions die along the way. We can't just say fuck it let the trans people die cause I'm poor. Then you're no better than the people you claim to be against.

So it should just be rich vs poor, but it's not, because too many people fall for their rich's tactics.

siuvhne, 11 months ago

left, right. up, down. it's just a way to divide us so we aren't united against the common enemy...

Steampunk, 11 months ago

Say sike right now

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

I always love it when people reduce debates around whether the public existence of LGBT people is actually pedophilia or whether Black people being routinely murdered by police is an actual problem to being nothing more than a mere distraction against the Real Fight against the evil elite lizard people.

Listen, it's cool that these are the kinds of issues that obviously don't affect you or the people around you. But not everyone actually agrees that literally every issue ever can be reduced to being a sideshow of a greater class-based conflict. Do you not see how deeply patronizing it is to be told that the debates about your core identity are meaningless distractions that we need to stop talking about? I can see it being easy to believe that if your core identity isn't routinely made to be a political issue that can be debated, but not all of us are so lucky.

chaogomu, 11 months ago

What OP doesn't seem to want to understand is that Left vs Right is Up vs Down.

The origins of Left vs Right as terms come from the days of the French Revolution. There was a vote called to ascertain the power of the King. Those who wanted to grant the King an Absolute Veto were asked to sit on the right side of the speaker's podium, those who were against, or wanted no king at all, were asked to sit on the left. There were many such votes.

Thus left vs right was born, the left represented the power of the people, and the right represented the power of the nobility.

Then conservatism was created, replacing birthright nobility for those who were merely rich and powerful.

Right and Left then became shorthand in the press for Conservatism vs those with more Democratic ideals, be it communist, socialists, or merely those who believed in taxing the rich and using that money to improve the lives of everyone. The press in Europe used the terms from almost the beginning, but it took a while for those terms to reach America.

Sadly, the Right figured out pretty quickly how to suppress and demonize the Left. They also figured out how to turn hatred to their advantage, to expand the ranks of the Right Wing supporters at the expense of the Left. Because you don't personally need to be super rich if the people you're taught to hate are super poor.

The thing is, the Left cannot abide attacks on those people. Which is why minority and lgbt+ rights are such a big part of the platform. Because those people are in fact part of The People, and the Left is the Power of the People. The goal is to lift everyone up, to protect everyone equally under the law.

After all, as Frank Wilhoit said;

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition …There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect"

smallerdemon, 11 months ago

"The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I for one welcome our intolerant of intolerance server admins across the fediverse.

cybersandwich, 11 months ago

Tolerance is not a moral absolute. It’s a peace treaty.

When you think about it like that, there is no paradox.

GataZapata, 11 months ago

I like the comic.

ripcord, 11 months ago

Nice, though the very first panel misspells "intolerance".

lvxferre, 11 months ago

I get why you're posting this comic and I contextually agree with you. However, the comic itself is bad, and it distorts quite a bit what Popper said.

The quote in the Wikipedia link that you've shared is considerably better:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Zagorath, 11 months ago

Sorry, but what comic are you referring to? Some other users also referenced panels of a comic, but I don’t see any comic—or any link other than to Wikipedia.

Has the user edited it out?

Mr_Figtree, 11 months ago

Either it was edited in and that edit didn't reach your instance, or Lemmy doesn't like something about how Kbin does images. Either way, here's a direct link to the comic (you'll have seen it before, it's posted a lot).

Zagorath, 11 months ago

and that edit didn’t reach your instance

Annoyingly, I can’t view the post from its own instance because it seems like Kbin requires an account even to view?

Would love if someone has a Lemmy link to any instance other than mine so I can rule out that first possibility.

or Lemmy doesn’t like something about how Kbin does images

This is definitely very possible. I’ve already encountered cases where Kbin users weren’t able to interact with my images from Lemmy in quite the same way Lemmy users could.

Mr_Figtree, 11 months ago

Kbin.social doesn't require you to log in to see content, or at least it doesn't when I try. Here's a link to the same comment on lemmy.world (I don't see the comic) and on fedia.io, a different Kbin instrance (also no comic). No idea why it's only showing up on this instance.

Zagorath, 11 months ago

Kbin.social doesn’t require you to log in to see content, or at least it doesn’t when I try

Huh, weird. When I click the “view comment at its home instance” button the Lemmy UI shows me, it takes me to this URL:

kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/116828/…/461059

Which redirects me to:

kbin.social/login

Interesting that the image doesn’t show up embedded even in another Kbin instance. @Otome@kbin.social you seemed to have some knowledge, do you know what’s up?

Mr_Figtree, 11 months ago

I'm also getting a login page from your link (‘copy url to fediverse’ on /kbin) when logged out, but not from this one (‘copy url’ on /kbin).

Zagorath, 11 months ago

Interesting. Does that mean there’s a bug in what Kbin is reporting as its “copy url to fediverse” URL? Or is it a bug with how Lemmy displays its “copy url to fediverse” links?

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

lemmy users can't see embedded kbin images in comments. here's the link to the embedded comic.

kokoapadoa, 11 months ago

I like to think of it as tolerance as a social contract. If you aren't tolerant, you break the terms of the contract and are not privileged to benefit from it.

Otome-chan, 11 months ago

you are the intolerant one, so we should not tolerate your intolerance? do you support yourself being banned from the fediverse entirely, due to your intolerance?

jeena, 11 months ago

But we have out fair share of Mao and Stalin lovers and Xi loveboys. It’s very simmilar. But I guess they are mostly contained to one or two instances.

Tomassci, 11 months ago

Yeah, that also sucks, but on the other side Reddit had those too. Over half of leftist subreddits was plagued by them in fact.

smallerdemon, 11 months ago

Indeed, people tend to forget that the left-right meet isn't a half circle, but a full circle. You lean far enough one way on either side and you start wandering into the other side.

Kichae, 11 months ago

That's some real Enlightened Centrism bullshit right there.

Goatan, 11 months ago

To true nothing pisses tribalists off more than pointing out there tribes only really differ in style.

nameless_prole, 11 months ago

Nah, horseshoe theory is bullshit. Militant far left, and militant far right are shitty for very different reasons.

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

I wouldn't say it's fully bullshit. The far left and far right, despite having very different ultimate goals, do have one very significant common point in both being opposed to the status quo, and in that opposition, you see some common tactics and ideas develop, such as a tendency towards authoritarianism and an increased tolerance for violence.

Consider that weirdest kind of leftist who's so far down the "America bad" rabbit hole that they unironically support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, despite Russia being as close to a Christo-fascist sexist homophobic authoritarian hell hole as currently exists.

Th4tGuyII, 11 months ago

When the destination is militant authoritarism and fascists, how you got to that point doesn't really matter.

Fascists, alt-right, tankies, and other extremists will kill any chance we have of talking normally in this place, so they cannot be allowed to take root in the mainstream instances.

quandoquando, 11 months ago

That’s simply false. Tankies are a nuisance, but outside of social media they basically don’t exist, and leftist activist groups are shunning them quickly, because they’re impossible to work with.

Leftist activists nearly universally reject violence against people, meanwhile there’s hordes of fascists hoarding guns, they’re (in) the police, they’re in the military, they’re actively threatening people, trying to overturn governments, and more.

If you think these things are even remotely comparable it shows you have no idea what you’re talking about.

sludge, 11 months ago

horseshoe theory and the political compass are both kinda silly tho, left and right are more like collections of allied ideologies than a precise value that can be placed on a graph or spectrum.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

Indeed, the world is far too complicated a place to be reduced to just one or two dimensions.

I'm somewhat fond of the "8 Values" test, which reduces the world to four dimensions. Still way oversimplified, but at that point people are far more likely to compare themselves and see "we may differ on this axis but we actually agree on this other axis," which is very helpful for discourse.

EnglishMobster, 11 months ago

I really liked /r/latestagecapitalism but I got banned for talking smack about China, and how the authoritarianism of the USSR and its child states didn't line up with the values they tried to espouse.

Permanently banned. Appeal ignored. Disappointing, but good riddance I suppose.

nameless_prole, 11 months ago

Tankies make us all look bad

GunnarRunnar, 11 months ago

They went to the deep end at some point. Though that sub was always somewhat weird, gave me astroturf vibes or that they've some hidden agenda. I think I've been banned from there as well.

nivenkos, 11 months ago

I haven't seen any, just block political communities.

jeena, 11 months ago

That’s like closing the eyes. I like tje political communities, that was the main reason I was on reddit.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

/r/Politics was a pretty terrible place. I hope you aren't suggesting you want that here.

jeena, 11 months ago

I think /r/Politics was just about US politics, I haven’t been there much.

jerome, 11 months ago

after reading your comments, you hate anything that leans left.

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

The Lemmy Devs are tankies

nivenkos, 11 months ago

But they don't post about it so who cares?

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

They run lemmy.ml and censor people talking negatively about the CCP

Maxcoffee, 11 months ago

On their own instance, that they run. So again, who cares?

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

It sucks that the official instance from the devs of the software denies human rights violations and supports authoritarian governments.

That should not be where people land when looking for a reddit alternative.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

It's not the "official instance", though. There isn't an "official instance."

They're the devs that got the software started, but anyone can be a dev or fork the repository. Or write a new compatible server from scratch, like kbin.

Maxcoffee, 11 months ago

We're not even using their software now. It shows the power of open source that all of this can coexist peacefully despite differing opinions.

Kichae, 11 months ago

So don't use Lemmy.ml?

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

I don't, still sucks that the Lemmy devs are tankies and censor people.

Kichae, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

It's an open source, open contribution project. It has one maintainer who's confused being angry at the capitalist class with a call to reflexively defend people who use the word "communism" to justify whatever they want, but he's not "the devs".

No none seems to care when for-profit projects are backed by the slime of the Earth. Actual fascist Peter Thiel financially backed Reddit a decade ago, and people didn't care. And Tencent, with actual and direct ties to the CCP has been a major investor in Reddit for years now.

Reddit ran off of the direct support of white supremacists, anti-democracy advocates, and CCP supporters, and none of that was an issue for anyone. Instead, it was spez getting stupid with some small developers that alarmed people.

The tankie guy's political influence will be miniscule in the long run. You can't say that about Thiel's or Tencent's.

Mane25, 11 months ago

They don’t have that power, they don’t control most of the instances, if they do that on their own instances that’s up to them. They couldn’t even secretly embed anything in the code to push an agenda since it’s open source.

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

They have that power on their own instance which is the "official" instance and very popular.

And it just sucks that the software is associated with tankies.

They could silently change their own instance if they wanted to, there has already been some nonsense with them blocking kbin useragents.

Mane25, 11 months ago

There’s no “official instance”, it’s free software - lemmy.ml isn’t even a recommended instance at join-lemmy.org .

It’s you that’s perpetuating that association.

You can’t base your software choices on whether or not you agree with their creators political beliefs or else you won’t use anything. The creator of Javascript has expressed controversial opinions about same-sex marriage and most of the web uses it.

NotAPenguin, 11 months ago

Come the fuck on buddy.. lol..

Also it's number 1 under popular on that page.

Mane25, 11 months ago

That’s because it’s a popular instance.

Feel free to use what you like, of course, that’s the beauty of the fediverse, but I don’t understand what you’re hung up about now having explained it to you.

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

This is one of their announcement posts.

Hey all, longtime Marxist-leninist, recorder of left audiobooks, and megathread shitposter here.

Posting this in light of a recent one week Reddit ban I earned for shitting on US police, as I'm sure many of us have gotten in recent weeks.

So I've spent the past few months working on a self hostable, federated, Reddit alternative called Lemmy, and it's pretty much ready to go. Unlike here we'd have ultimate control over all content, and would never have to self censor.

Obviously as communists, we agitate where the people are, so we should never abandon Reddit entirely, but it's been clear to all of us from day one, that communities like this stand on unsteady ground, and could be banned or quarantined at any moment by the white supremacist Reddit admins. This would be both a backup and a potentially better alternative. Moderation abilities are there, as well as a slur filter.

Raddle isn't an option obviously since it's run by this arch anti tankie scum, ziq.

I wanted to ask ppl here if they'd like me to host an instance, and mod all the current mods here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

I really don't think it's a wild stretch to say that the people who run an instance that is moderated with a clear political agenda, who actively say that their intent is to promote that agenda, and who are officially promoting that instance in their capacity as developers - are in fact doing so in order to promote that agenda.

But hey, maybe that's a reach.

Mane25, 11 months ago

I don’t really see what that has to do with anything in the context of what I’ve said. There’s no official instance, they don’t have the kind of influence you seem to think.

redcalcium, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Thanks to the beauty of both open source models and activitypub, the fact that the lead developer is a tankie does not affect Lemmy users in any way because their sphere of influence ends at lemmygrad and lemmy.ml . If you’re a user of those instances and want out, you can just create another account in another instance and still can access any communities you want.

dukethorion, 11 months ago

I keep hearing this, and I still don't care. Being from America, I've never even heard that term.

Reddit was run by a capitalist corporation. In America, the Left should hate that, but most of Reddit was decidedly liberal.

See? It doesn't matter. Use the platform or don't. Block what you don't want to see. People are going to post different opinions in public spaces.

PabloDiscobar, 11 months ago

These instances are like pirate ships pursuing us.

But they don't write from their original instance name... nonono, I'm sure that they are popping up here with a fresh duplicate account:

"Hello, let me explain some politics to you, but first let me nuke your reputation with a few multi accounts".

And you end up discussing with a whooping 5 downvotes as a starter. It gives the tone for the other people who want to discuss and see you as "this guy".

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

This is one of the major benefits of upvotes/downvotes not being anonymous in activitypub, IMO. Anyone can run a bot that detects patterns like this and calls it out for all to see.

fresh, 11 months ago

Oh believe me, there are definitely people from either extremes on here as well. What's different on Lemmy/kbin is that server admins can just straight up block and defederate these servers, which means for the most part you won't be seeing these posts unless you specifically look for them.

lvxferre, 11 months ago

The demographics being pissed are different.

When Voat, and then Ruqqus, were formed, people leaving Reddit were

• a minority of informed people, smelling the bullshit from a distance, and genuinely concerned about freedom of speech; and
• a majority of clowns, who don't really give a damn about free speech - they were pissed that their specific discourse was being banned.

That is not what is happening now. The ones leaving are not doing so due to "I can't say slurs any more! ;_;" like that majority, or "I'm concerned about deeply abstract matters" like the minority. The ones leaving are the most contributive people, who know that the boat is sinking, are seeing it sinking, and want to get away ASAP.

anteaters, 11 months ago

Voat was created as an alternative for all the nazis that got banned on Reddit so it was always designed to be full of shit. This sphere of the fediverse managed to keep clear of these people. They are able to create their own sphere that is not federated with this one but that is not a problem for us here.

GunnarRunnar, 11 months ago

Wasn't it spun off/got popular because fatpeoplehate or something got banned? It was just a hole for shit crawl towards to for their freeze peach.

BraveSirZaphod, 11 months ago

Yeah, that was the explicit event that set things off, so it's hardly surprising it went the way it did.

52fighters, 11 months ago

I'm surprised there isn't a fat people hate here. They got all sorts of politics from that group.

DreamySweet, 11 months ago

It probably exists in some obscure instance somewhere. I don’t like that kind of content though, so I won’t be looking for it and will be blocking it if it ever shows up in my feed.

anteaters, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Haha, I remember that Reddit episode. Yes, fatpeoplehate getting clubbed created the first wave of filth wandering off. Banning r/incels and r/pizzagate and the other nonsense around qanon helped Reddit shed off some more.

aidenxy, 11 months ago

I’m gonna take a big guess as to why we see less of ‘em. It may be a bit complicated for them to join. Many are used to a one-stop-shop website. Strength in numbers, I suppose.

average650, 11 months ago

I mean, there instances that exist as havens for far right folks. But they are not defeated with the bulk of the instances. See the exploding heads thing.

And main original dev is apparently a "tankie" which appears to be a communist apologist of some kind. For this part I'm just reporting what I've seen others say. I know nothing about him myself.

Kichae, 11 months ago

A tankie is specifically an apologist for militant authoritarians who claim to be communists. There are many, many more theories of communism than Leninism and Stalin worship.

Shit, the Fediverse is functionally an experiment in anarchism.

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

It's ironic that one of the main points of Marxist communist theory is that communists shouldn't actually need to do anything to make communism come about, that it will just be a natural evolution of a capitalist economy over time. And now it's wound up being used as a synonym for totalitarianism.

livus, 11 months ago

Tankies get their name from the people in the West who still supported Soviet communism in the late 1950s and saw nothing wrong with the USSR sending tanks into Hungary to quell a worker uprising.

onethreeonetwo, 11 months ago

A tankie is a Soviet communist apologist/Stalin fetishist. Communism by itself isn't something you need to really defend in that way, as it just means that the plan is to distribute the means of production and decision making abilities. For example Tito in Yugoslavia held a multiethnic state in the fucking Balkans so well to the point that people still identify as Yugoslavs even if its not an ethnicity but a state affiliation for a country that hasnt existed for 30 years. Same thing goes for Greece, WW2 would have been a complete Nazi victory if the communist partisan militias hadnt held up the Italians and Germans for so long.

The thing with tankies is that they are too blinded by ideology to notice that the Soviets and Maoists were/are just Totalitarians in disguise.

T0rrent01, 11 months ago

Do you think the term "tankie" is a slur?

nameless_prole, 11 months ago

This is my thought exactly. As it becomes easier and easier to use these sites, with apps and everything, we will start to see more crazy and stupid conservatives.

They're too stupid to figure it out at the moment. Most of them at least. And the ones who aren't, are the ones who are aware that they're ideology is trash, but they are using it for financial and/or tax reasons.

anteaters, 11 months ago

As long as they create their own spheres that aren't federated with this one I don't care. They'll probably run into the same problems as Voat did and get kicked by their hosters sooner or later.

Rhabuko, 11 months ago

Nah we had/have them here. Couple of days ago, there was drama because of a the_Donald community on a server (got deleted by the admin of said server after pressure) and there is a alt-right instance that has a meltdown because more and more people de-federate them. During the disscusions, we had enough free speech absolutists that were against "CeNsOrShIp" but they lost.

I_AnoN_I, 11 months ago

No its because we get banned from instances for having even slightly right wing opinions. I’ve been banned from 3 communities for making jokes about communism

sj_zero, 11 months ago

I will fully admit that I went to some of those alternatives, and left because I’m just not interested in seeing extreme hate for people I don’t actually hate.

I think the difference right now is that the people being driven off of Twitter aren’t just the lunatic fringe, it’s a lot of normal people.

Tmi, but when I was young my parents got a divorce, and so I end up in a situation where I was walking on eggshells because if I said the wrong thing to either one of them it would cause a civil war and I would have to deal with consequences of that. I ended up constantly watching every single word that I said, and it was really bad for me. It wasn’t until much later on in life that I realized that I could open up to people and I wouldn’t get in trouble when they saw who I was. For that reason, I’m extremely sensitive to free speech issues. Not because I want to go off and hate on anyone, but because I’m here to explore ideas, and sometimes when you’re exploring ideas you have to step away from the orthodoxy. I don’t want to go back to those days where I was carefully calculating every word to make sure I didn’t piss somebody off and start a civil war.

On the other hand, a lot of the people who left don’t have my story, and they left because they weren’t able to talk shit about Jews anymore. And because of that, not only did freedom of speech get a bad name but those websites weren’t really very nice to be on. If you’re being totally honest, you ended up with the exact same problem because instead of watching out if you are starting to criticize a minority, you have to start watching out if you are about to praise a minority. The world is a complicated place you might have to do both you, you know?

So I think it’s a good thing that finally the spaces are starting to get filled up by people who yearn for freedom, not so they can be a jerk but because they just want to be free to be themselves and to do so using the tools that they desire.

pipyui, 11 months ago

I'm so happy you're here 😭

sj_zero, 11 months ago

That’s a really nice thing to say, thank you.

I hope that everybody understands that although I get into the weeds sometimes examining ideas, I’m really happy to see everyone here. What’s happened with Lemmy in the past month has been a real gift to the world.

Jaysyn, 11 months ago

I made a block-button happy trip thru the moderation logs of the larger magazines, got all the trolls & fascists in one fell swoop.

jcrm, 11 months ago

Low key using this thread to do that. Lots of closet fascists being shitty in here, but hey, the nice thing about them is they make themselves easy to spot!

Col3814444, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

Someone posted a huge list of “reddit alternatives” and I went through them one by one, Kbin/lemmy links were right down the bottom but I’m so glad I persisted- there were SO many far right “anti woke” style websites on that list all trying to become social media, it really opened my eyes. im positive this is not a coincidence, & would not be surprised if there are some pretty bad folks/nation states are behind setting these things up to try & propagandise people.

Anyway, this place seems pretty cool, will hang here for a bit i think.

jcrm, 11 months ago

A list I saw had Freedom Social and Parler on it entirely seriously. Really shocked me to see, and made it a lot harder to figure out what was going to be the replacement. I'm glad I stuck with Kbin.

DreamySweet, 11 months ago

It’s easy to just block the things you don’t want to see. As long as the communities you use don’t allow that stuff, they will be banned if they bring it there. The same thing would have happened if more people joined those other reddit alternatives, but no one was willing to do it.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

Every time people are reminded that they are in control of their own experience here, they downvote and reply, "no! I want to control your experience too!" What a terrible attitude to have.

DreamySweet, 11 months ago

Yeah, I joined VLemmy.net because they do not defederate with anyone and the admin made this post. Specifically the part where they said:

I feel it is important as many people have mentioned to “leave the power to the users” and let them decide the content they wish to see.

The great thing about the fediverse is that you can join a site that caters to what you want, or if it doesn’t exist you can make it yourself.

JasSmith, 11 months ago

I think I need to make an account there.

!deleted120200, 11 months ago

deleted_by_author

FaceDeer, 11 months ago

One major feature of IRL conversations that keep them more civil than online ones is that the downvote button can be a physical punch to the face.

Though granted, this does mean that sometimes IRL conversations can become far less civil than online ones once that button gets pushed.

jcrm, 11 months ago

Man if you're complaining about getting banned of dogwhistles, you should re-evaluate how you align yourself. It's not enough to just turn you attention away from the Nazi shit, it has to be stamped out. When we do the "well just don't look at it" thing, we allow them to keep recruiting and pulling vulnerable people in with their propaganda. Fascism is an evil ideology, flat out, and has no place in the world.

geuxbacon, 5 months ago

The tankie stuff is just as bad. Funny how you don't mention that......

janNatan, 10 months ago

I thought kbin was a Lemmy instance? Is it not?

Machindo, 10 months ago

It’s a different app/organization altogether but still federated like Lemmy and uses the ActivityPub protocol.

Jobe1105, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago)

I would still be careful though. Some instances here on Lemmy have some really bad censorship on certain issues (like criticism on the Chinese government).

pizza_rolls, 11 months ago

This thread has been great for cultivating my block list, thanks OP

argv_minus_one, 11 months ago

Don't forget to report bigots as well as blocking them.