this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Two things.
First, you can opt to follow that instance still, but I don't know why you would want to hang out with a bunch of Nazis.
Second, I liken it to cutting out a cancerous growth. If you have an instance infested with Nazis and those Nazis are not being stopped due to a lack of admin and/or mods or worse actively being promoted by an admin then defederate them to keep the Nazis from spreading.
Look at the incel and redpill movements that happened on Reddit. Failure to act quick enough helped the movements grow. They were vitriolic to most people but most of them didn't break any rules. They were destructive in nature and validated misogyny but Reddit didn't act until it was a very vocal and well established community on its platform. Now, even after closing down their major subreddits, those users who weren't the most extreme still actively espouse the values of those communities and have created new subreddits.
Or in this case Beehaw has some very progressive ideals, with rules that require a lot more active moderation, they can't handle the influx of everyone jumping ship from Reddit. Instead of leaving the gate open for people who will ignore the rules it's better to shut it and open a smaller "apply to join" door creating a protective barrier from individuals that may be Nazis.
In closing, I've both been a shitty redditor and seen shitty redditors and I appreciate that the fediverse has tools to decouple and recouple as needed. And again, if you like hanging out with Nazis that instance still exists and you can willingly hang out with Nazis.
Except there are many users who get banned by the Beehaw admins because they dared disagree with the admins. Beehaw's adminstration has an extensive history of this sort of behaviour, silencing any critics they can.
Well before the reddit blackout wave, they literally had a “no sources” rule because users kept questioning the mods. Likewise their current “rule set” states what they say, goes, and that everything is up to them, not the rules. They say that with all cases (except obvious trolls), they will always warn first. I have yet to ever see any kind of warning from any of their admins.
Truth is they were being questioned on sh.it and on lemmy.world, so they blocked both. You can check their modlog to see just how little spam they have to deal with. Instead they spend most of their time on discord.
I was a victim of their abuse -- I personally got banned because I got into an argument with the admin there. They wrongly assumed that I was American and made a claim to counter my argument. I then pointed out their mistake that their claim doesn’t apply to my country, and then – Boom, banned, no appeal, no warning, nothing.
I did. :)
I think my "progressive ideals" point covers what you're saying. Progressivism on the internet has a lot of positive ideas but a lot of authoritarian enforcement if you don't agree all of the time.
I understand all this but I just don't personally see it as a problem the same way many others seem to. I constantly read comments I strongly disagree with (for example when discussing this topic) and it's fine. A racist comment here and there doesn't bother me much. If it's written in "good faith" but I disagree with it I'll either downvote or not engage. If it's just pure hate with no content I block the user and I don't need to deal with them ever again. I'm an adult capable of deciding myself what I don't mind seeing on my feed and what I do. I view it as a kind of a science experiement. I like exposing myself to ideologies even if I strongly disagree with them. I find it interesting when people have a completely different world view to me.
When it comes to stuff that's illegal it's a different story. Ofcourse I need to deal with it wether it personally affects me or not.
Also nazis are not the point here. It's just an extreme example. We could be speaking of flat earthers aswell.
There are also instances made to host spam bots (when they host it themselves they can make as many bots as they want and as fast as they want without having to worry about captcha) and instead of blocking each bot manually, our admins have the option to block that bot instance entirely. That's a pretty powerful moderation tool. They may of course also use this to block communities with a different ideology than them to avoid conflict. If you don't want this, you can join an instance that doesn't do this (that choice is the cool thing about the fediverse) and you could even host your own instance if you have the know how.
He didn't say anything about spammers though, just dissenting opinions. Obviously if your instance is filled with 99% spam you ban the spam. Nothing to do with the nazis thing he was talking about.
For what it's worth, i agree with you.
It seems we are a minority though, everyone is talking about safe spaces.
I suspect what they really want is a leftist echo chamber.
I think the beauty of federation is that each instance can have it's own moral code, I figure we will see everything-not-illegal-lemmy.com at some point, without any conmunity except meta ones, with admins that just do not de-federate from anything else.
You can be part of any instance that aligns with your values. And each community can decide which instance to live in. If some community wants to live in an instance which allows everything so anyone can comment, then maybe they move or start their own.
And I don't think only horrible people would want this. I figure some community like suicide watch might want to allow everyone to comment no matter where they are from. Making de-federation the only option would suck, but it's not. There can be different bubbles, and bubbles which contain them.
And when that instance is created, it will get defederated from immediately
Ah but see you're a well functioning adult with the ability to rationalize and self correct. A lot of people on the internet see a lot of up arrows so they follow the up arrow. If they themselves can't get a coveted up arrow when they talk but it's easier to get a down arrow they will get attention that way.
I surround myself with people who don't share the same views as myself, I try and avoid echo chambers as much as possible but even with being careful I can find myself drawn into groupthink because we're hardwired to identify with groups. What hope is there for the people who follow the almighty up and down arrows instead of questioning why?
Look on any ballot in the US. The average voter can't tell if they're voting a Nazi sympathizer or a Communist enthusiast into office. All they see is two different letters and the option to vote whichever letter their group supports.
When the masses don't follow groupthink and the majority apply discourse instead of verbal attacks then we can have a social media platform free from censorship. I feel like this is more that we sort of suck as a species when we have no consequences for our actions so we put in consequences for those actions (albeit imperfectly) to make the ones who suck the most not bring down the rest.