There’s a lot to this. I’m going to try to cover my views, hopefully briefly.
With the fediverse there is no central censorship. Anyone can set up an instance, and decide what they want on it. Each instance can choose what they want on their instance, and that includes the “All” feed, which is posts from every instance they federate with. As an example, we federate with Beehaw. We federate with Lemmy.world. But Beehaw does not federate with Lemmy.world. Beehaw is curating the space they want, and can make these decisions for themselves. It does not affect anyone else. This is a great feature. You don’t have to split into separated clusters, instead there’s a complex network of who federates with who.
It seems to me that there is already a tool available to users (block community, though not block instance) who choose to not see the stuff that these people post.
Currently the tools are very poor. As you’ve mentioned, users cannot block instances. Also, neither admins nor users can block a community or instance from showing in the All feed while still allowing users to subscribe to communities from those instances.
But removing the choice from users to block/not block the community is a bit extreme. I fully support mods who ban users who post the crap in lemmy.nz as we want to promote an inclusive and welcoming community here.
As mentioned, there are not great tools for this currently. New users coming to our instance may see alt-right content in the All feed and get the wrong idea about who we are. Logged out users have almost zero control (e.g. they can’t block a community).
Also, communities on other instances are part of the community here - it’s all part of the content that people access from this site. If the content on those communities does not meet our code of conduct, we should not have it available on our instance.
There are some really shitty people in the world, pretending that they don’t exist by removing the content preemptively removes the opportunity for someone to learn and generate a little resilience by making the choice that “I don’t need to see that shit…block community”.
One issue is that, especially with regards to “conspiracy theory” type content, minor exposure increases the risk of being sucked in. Even joking about COVID hoaxes or talking about how ridiculous they are can increase the number of people believing there is something going on, leading to real life harm. If people want that content, they can go to another instance. Accounts are free, and there are apps available with easy account switching. There’s no reason for us to partake in that sort of content. Basically the idea of removing the choice from the user isn’t true. If this were reddit they would just shut down a community and that would be it. On lemmy, anyone has the choice to seek out those communities but we don’t have to make our instance an entrypoint. Users should seek a home instance that aligns with the experience they want. They can then subscribe to and participate in lemmy.nz communities, so long as we federate with that instance.
We also only have 2 blocked instances. I don’t know what this looks like for other instances of our size, but the bigger instances each block dozens.
If we want this server to be inclusive, then we don’t want (e.g.) people of colour creating an account, logging in, and seeing a whole lot of racist stuff.
We also don’t want that stuff showing when logged out!
I guess from my perspective, lemmy.nz is a site. We are responsible for everything on our site, and it all needs to meet our agreed code of conduct.
The fact that some of this content comes through from another source doesn’t change this.
Good point on visitors having even less control, I was only considering lemmy.nz members. We want to promote as many people to come to Lemmy(.nz) as possible and need to consider the needs of visitors, so that they want to sign up.
I’m really hoping that Lemmy will grow. But I also want people to be better in general; when someone says something hateful (racist, anti-trans etc…) the ability to look at oneself and think “I’m worth more than your comments” and realise that it says more about the person saying the thing than who it is directed at, is a very resilient and powerful thing for someone.
I still have my Reddit account and am using it, but I am choosing Lemmy far more often. I am hoping that over time Lemmy can fully replace Reddit as my go to social media. That will just have to wait for the more esoteric subs to start creating communities. r/Taupo, r/OLKB, r/Aphantasia, r/Onyx_Boox…to name a few.
There is a difficult balance between protecting people and empowering people to protect themselves. There is some very interesting discourse to be had on this topic.
But I also want people to be better in general; when someone says something hateful (racist, anti-trans etc…) the ability to look at oneself and think “I’m worth more than your comments” and realise that it says more about the person saying the thing than who it is directed at, is a very resilient and powerful thing for someone.
I agree, but I also think that there is a difference between casual racism (where you can call them out in it and they may not have even realised the harm), and the edgy, trying to offend people or just angry at the world hateful comments.
And as has been mentioned, it’s virtually impossible to understand the relentlessness of it if you aren’t in one of the targeted groups. For many people, an online space is the only sanctum from their day to day real life attacks. Let’s not make people see hate speech they don’t want to see.
It’s also not our job to convince nazis that hitler was wrong. You can’t change peoples values through discussion, values must be lived to be changed. You could argue that by geting nazis and LGBTQIA+ to meet and get to know each other can help the nazis change their views, and this is possibly true. But this required a dedicated space where people choose to participate, and that is carefully facilitated. Lemmy.nz is a general NZ community and is not in a position to take on a role like that.
I get where you’re coming from, but let’s first built a welcoming and friendly community. If we let the hate speech in with the hope of empowering people, we will end up with no community at all.
There’s a lot to this. I’m going to try to cover my views, hopefully briefly.
With the fediverse there is no central censorship. Anyone can set up an instance, and decide what they want on it. Each instance can choose what they want on their instance, and that includes the “All” feed, which is posts from every instance they federate with. As an example, we federate with Beehaw. We federate with Lemmy.world. But Beehaw does not federate with Lemmy.world. Beehaw is curating the space they want, and can make these decisions for themselves. It does not affect anyone else. This is a great feature. You don’t have to split into separated clusters, instead there’s a complex network of who federates with who.
Currently the tools are very poor. As you’ve mentioned, users cannot block instances. Also, neither admins nor users can block a community or instance from showing in the All feed while still allowing users to subscribe to communities from those instances.
As mentioned, there are not great tools for this currently. New users coming to our instance may see alt-right content in the All feed and get the wrong idea about who we are. Logged out users have almost zero control (e.g. they can’t block a community).
Also, communities on other instances are part of the community here - it’s all part of the content that people access from this site. If the content on those communities does not meet our code of conduct, we should not have it available on our instance.
One issue is that, especially with regards to “conspiracy theory” type content, minor exposure increases the risk of being sucked in. Even joking about COVID hoaxes or talking about how ridiculous they are can increase the number of people believing there is something going on, leading to real life harm. If people want that content, they can go to another instance. Accounts are free, and there are apps available with easy account switching. There’s no reason for us to partake in that sort of content. Basically the idea of removing the choice from the user isn’t true. If this were reddit they would just shut down a community and that would be it. On lemmy, anyone has the choice to seek out those communities but we don’t have to make our instance an entrypoint. Users should seek a home instance that aligns with the experience they want. They can then subscribe to and participate in lemmy.nz communities, so long as we federate with that instance.
We also only have 2 blocked instances. I don’t know what this looks like for other instances of our size, but the bigger instances each block dozens.
deleted by creator
We also don’t want that stuff showing when logged out!
I guess from my perspective, lemmy.nz is a site. We are responsible for everything on our site, and it all needs to meet our agreed code of conduct.
The fact that some of this content comes through from another source doesn’t change this.
Good point on visitors having even less control, I was only considering lemmy.nz members. We want to promote as many people to come to Lemmy(.nz) as possible and need to consider the needs of visitors, so that they want to sign up.
I’m really hoping that Lemmy will grow. But I also want people to be better in general; when someone says something hateful (racist, anti-trans etc…) the ability to look at oneself and think “I’m worth more than your comments” and realise that it says more about the person saying the thing than who it is directed at, is a very resilient and powerful thing for someone.
I still have my Reddit account and am using it, but I am choosing Lemmy far more often. I am hoping that over time Lemmy can fully replace Reddit as my go to social media. That will just have to wait for the more esoteric subs to start creating communities. r/Taupo, r/OLKB, r/Aphantasia, r/Onyx_Boox…to name a few.
There is a difficult balance between protecting people and empowering people to protect themselves. There is some very interesting discourse to be had on this topic.
I agree, but I also think that there is a difference between casual racism (where you can call them out in it and they may not have even realised the harm), and the edgy, trying to offend people or just angry at the world hateful comments.
And as has been mentioned, it’s virtually impossible to understand the relentlessness of it if you aren’t in one of the targeted groups. For many people, an online space is the only sanctum from their day to day real life attacks. Let’s not make people see hate speech they don’t want to see.
It’s also not our job to convince nazis that hitler was wrong. You can’t change peoples values through discussion, values must be lived to be changed. You could argue that by geting nazis and LGBTQIA+ to meet and get to know each other can help the nazis change their views, and this is possibly true. But this required a dedicated space where people choose to participate, and that is carefully facilitated. Lemmy.nz is a general NZ community and is not in a position to take on a role like that.
I get where you’re coming from, but let’s first built a welcoming and friendly community. If we let the hate speech in with the hope of empowering people, we will end up with no community at all.