this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Asklemmy
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Censorship. All the major subreddits became political echo-chambers. Reddit was founded on free speech and open discourse, especially when it was really uncomfortable. I'd love to see the same for Lemmy. Over the years I've seen authoritarianism creep into the moderation policies of most major subreddits. Today, even posting on the wrong subreddit is grounds for being banned from dozens of major subreddits. Even having a polite disagreement about, for example, anything to do with "trans," is grounds for being banned.
So the one thing on Reddit that you wish to leave behind is mods deleting transphobic comments? Lol
Would you please quote where I wrote that?
Can you be more specific about the type of authoritarianisms you wish to avoid?
Many centrist are closet transphobes and often use the verbage of authoritarianism as a dog whistle.
I'm a centrist with a trans kid and no issues beyond worrying how they'll be treated by transphobes
Being a centriphobe is still bigotry
"Being a centriphobe is still bigotry"
Generally it's not bigotry when your critizes peoples choices. It's usually reserved for things people can't change. Like their race.
Example
"Centrist ideas are usually not well thought out"
See this isn't bigotry because you could have better ideas.
I'm glad your good with your trans kid tho.
The Cambridge dictionary definition of bigotry
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bigotry
Beliefs can be changed. Beliefs are just opinions really.
Hatred of proponents of political affiliations generally isn't viewed as bigotry because it is quite easy to stop being a proponent of a political affiliation. It is much more difficult (or impossible) to stop believing in your religion, to not be gay, to not be black.
I don't like bigotry and centrism is, depending on your interpretation, either support of the wretched status quo or support of a mixture of progressive and backwards policy. Neither position is respectable.
I definitely get what you mean and I think the idea that you can get away with no censorship is naive. However, they could just as easily be talking about r/conservatives use of conservative only posts and their banning of anyone sharing opposing viewpoints.
I doubt it. Just the word authoritarianism has been mostly co-opted by the ultra right in American colloquialismz.
I don't know of many people on the left in the US that are complaining censorship.
That's the same here unfortunately.
It also sucks when you're not American, like Reddit auto-banned a load of Irish and Brits discussing stopping smoking due to the colloquial term there.
Unfortunately all these American-based websites really force the American views and positions on everyone.
Well that explains it. I'm not American either and I really feel like I'm being forced into their weird social war. I just want to talk about cool gadgets without some culture warrior banning me everywhere because I didn't show the requisite fealty to whatever the current thing is.
Yeah, one thing I hope to leave behind with Reddit is every major subreddit farming outrage w.r.t. American politics.
It just became exhausting and made me unsub from a lot of the big subreddits. So far, Lemmy has been quite positive! It's refreshing.
I don't know if it is true but I feel like Lemmy is not really USA centric at the moment. More like assuming that a user could be from any country. I think that we should keep it that way.
Fediverse is really international since instances are everywhere in the globe
Yes! I haven't seen a single answer starting with 'in my state' yet and I'd like to keep it that way.
A subreddit I moderate, /r/moderatepolitics, has had to do a delicate balancing act around this. There are site-wide rules banning many statements around trans people, and the red lines are not well defined. Reddit's "Anti-Evil Operations" (site-wide moderation team) frequently swoops in and deletes comments that are offensive to trans people, but well within current political discourse in the US. That has undermined our mission of being a forum for diverse voices to hold productive but difficult discussions. At a certain point, we entirely banned the discussion of trans issues because one side was able to speak freely and the other side was walking on egg shells. I'm solidly pro-trans, but that's no way to have a conversation.
This likely was done to try to keep Reddit from becoming a cesspool like the "free speech" sites like Gab, but it has turned out to be a lazy way that short circuits necessary conversations.
No matter how politely stated your disagreement is, if it boils down to "I don't think I should have to respect trans people's identity"/"I don't think trans people should have rights" then it's transphobic and I'm 1000% fine with that being bannable
Anything to do with "trans"?
I think some people did take it too far, which seems to be a problem with a lot of social justice oriented communities, in particular people who are not part of a marginalized group making decisions to ban or otherwise censure your people on behalf of that group (I've seen it on both Reddit and Facebook in relation to trans and autistic people specifically).
That said, a lot of "polite disagreements" on Reddit really are/were transphobic, and even many questions were just bait to set the stage for anti-trans rhetoric, so I can see why it was easier for mods to come down heavy-handed.
The whole trend of "You are autobanned from subreddit X because you replied to a front page post from subreddit Y" did get extremely annoying though.