this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now "free speech purism", so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.

Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.

Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.

(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn't truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago

Funny, during the boycott of Reddit when squabbles was growing, I signed up and created two new communities - one for earbuds and one for vaporents (dry herbal vaporizing).

My earbuds community was quicky approved, but the vaporents group took almost a week before it was approved. It's almost like the site's owner (since back then he had no mods or admin team) was hesitant when it came to something possibly clandestine in nature. I guess drugs aren't cool, but hate speech is?

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sucks. We had lots of fun there when it first started. But I've deleted my account now. It's hilarious to watch Jake try and make an empire. What a loser.

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[–] febra 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I've legit never heard of Squabblr or this... Discuit? What even are these?

[–] JJROKCZ 24 points 1 year ago

Reddit alternatives that didn’t pick up a lot of steam yet. We’ll see if they end up winning out over the fediverse or reddit itself, looks like squabblr won’t if it’s already gone the truth social route

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Squabblr was called squabbles until a very recent rebrand. You may've known it under its old name instead.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (6 children)

That was this stupid Reddit + Twitter mix, right? Never understood why some people were hyping that platform up so much.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It's pretty alright. The dev is pretty fast, churned out a majority of the site between a month before reddit killed 3rd party apps and today. Decently responsive to requests and stuff too. But the site just didn't grow, and the head dev was never okay with giving up sole leadership.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hot damn. I was reading the name and thought first its about squabbles, which I considered to be checking alongside lemmy how it develops.

So I was briefly shocked about this development, then I realised this says squabblr and not squabbles. And then I read your post.

Rollercoaster.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why non-federated services are crap.

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[–] MeanEYE 27 points 1 year ago

It's already falling apart and I haven't even heard of it. Sounds about right when it comes to chats and social networks these days.

[–] SulaymanF 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

“Let’s copy Twitter and Parler, those are soo successful!”

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[–] MargotRobbie 23 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Have they learned nothing from the failure of Voat?

[–] Carighan 18 points 1 year ago

Nah, in the minds of right-wingers that just means they were unfairly censored by the woke trans left jewish globalist elite.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

The sole motive behind transforming a three-month-old online forum into a "Limited Liability Company", which they did, appears to stem from either intentions of selling it or the reception of funding, consequently relinquishing your authority over it.

[–] bemenaker 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

what the fuck is squabbler?

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

It's starting to worry me that "free speech" has become something to be feared and avoided. Avoiding confrontation to your beliefs just makes you and your beliefs weaker.

[–] Carighan 59 points 1 year ago (28 children)

Of course, but it's important to keep in mind that so-called "free speech absolutists" don't actually want free speech. They want freedom of consequences for their very specific, narrow, non-free speech. They would love to censor the living shit out of everybody else.

So there's a difference between free speech, and, well, "free speech".

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Yup, that's been my experience of listening to them as well.

It's so enticing to people that are unfamiliar with the narrative that free speech absolution is the ideal and that these guys are standing up for it. When you pay attention they bend their own rules for themselves all the time.

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[–] SeatBeeSate 29 points 1 year ago

The term is being abused as a dog whistle for freedom to pass prejudice and discrimination. Being apposed to a "free speech" platform risks you as being against said free speech. It's falling under the paradox of tolerance concept.

[–] Skepticpunk 17 points 1 year ago

"Free speech" has become an anti-feature now due to the prevalence of people who use it to justify enabling bigotry. It's sad.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Your comment history is a cesspool. Yikes.

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[–] balderdash9 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

The sole dev of Squabblr (Jayclees) really needs to hire someone to do the community management/PR side of things. He is great at programming but he keeps making snap top-down decisions that go against what the userbase wants. And his use of language (i.e., "free speech platform") sounds like a fkn dog whistle.

All these big names on Squabblr going to Discuit like the devs can't do the exact same thing over there. I'm tired of migrating platforms. If Lemmy doesn't work out, then I'm going to just go touch grass for fun.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

It sounds like a dog whistle because it is a dog whistle.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Since "free speech" is a dogwhistle, what should a hypothetical place actually interested in free speech as more than just a bigotry shield call what they're trying to do? Some place interested in allowing discussion of objectionable topics without bigotry?

Yes, whatever, those don't exist anywhere, you don't need to respond with that tidbit. Humor the hypothetical here.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Call it "Open Discussion". Make it clear that the purpose of the site is to allow for discussion from all walks of life and perspectives, but that it has to be actual civil discussion. Outright hatred and bigotry, as well as arguing in bad faith, aren't helpful or productive in an open discussion, and as such would be shunned and banned. This way, you can still have opinions that aren't "mainstream", but you won't be removed as long as you're civil and respectful about it. Doing this will attract people who are really interested in hearing other perspectives and sharing their own, instead of alt-right shitheads looking for another place to infest.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How about hate free (tm) free speech

Or "I can't believe its not bigotry"

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[–] Kerandir 12 points 1 year ago

Here I go deleting an account, sigh, I liked the platform there

[–] Skyline969 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I may not be onto anything here, this may just be a coincidence. However, the timing of these two events are suspicious.

1: Squabbles.io rebrands to squabblr.co. The .io domain explicitly forbids anything that may be considered illegal by any country. The site could be shut down if this is violated. You know what would be considered hate speech by some countries, such as Canada? Discrimination of someone based on their gender identity, ie trans people.

2: Squabblr rebrands to a “free speech” website and removes all explicit mention of LGBT+ being protected under their ToS. Within microseconds (slight exaggeration, but within less than 24 hours) people are chiming in with the “trans women are not women” statements.

Was that planned, or just extremely unfortunate timing?

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (7 children)

IMO if sites want to take a "free speech" approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don't have free speech, we have what's known as "freedom of expression". Essentially, we can say whatever unless it's hate speech or bigoted.

Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it's essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.

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