Does Lemmy have more freedom of speech than Reddit?
Hello, Im kind of new here and trying to get used to Lemmy and I was wondering about if this is true since I am considering donating on this site to support alternative projects but wanted to hear other users before doing so. That being said, what have been your experiences?
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There is three questions to consider.
One is the site itself. Reddit inc has their own policies that apply site-wide no matter what. Lemmy has no central organization like that, although each individual server operator has their own acceptable use policy for what they allow on their server. This means it is both more free and more confusing- if you want to post potentially objectionable content like porn, there are plenty of servers that allow it or you can always run your own, but you have to make sure you are on one.
Next is individual group moderation. Both Reddit and Lemmy have this, community level moderators that apply whatever standards particular community requires. There is much less of the 'power mod on a power trip' situation than on Reddit currently, at least in my experience. I think some of that is because the overall traffic level is less, so it will be interesting to see what happens as Lemmy grows.
Finally there is culture and self-moderation. You see this on mass market platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where someone will say like they were roped at a party and want to buy a pewpew to unalive themself or some other such bullshit. Unfortunately that brain rot is spreading into Reddit, even though it is not at all required. Fortunately Lemmy seems pretty free of that so far.