1y ago

Looking for a free speech instance

I am looking to change my instance since many defederation and censorship decisions on lemmy.world.

Anyone knows of any instance that has a rule against defederation and is more free speech oriented. Of course I am looking for an instance that forbids illegal content like CP. But I want an instance that does not censor hate speech!

The instance should be hopefully federated with mostly everyone, unless defederated because of CP. I was considering lemm.ee, but I saw a comment from an admin saying that they could consider defederation if certain propaganda reaches front page.

Before anyone accuses me of anything, I just want to be exposed to different viewpoints, and I am not offended so easily, so I can tolerate offensive content. What is important is that the rules on defederation dont change in the future.

38 comments

You've got a terminology problem.
Free speech has become a coded term.
It shouldn't have, but it did. Now, when people say they want "free speech" they don't usually mean that they want all speech protected. They mean that they want specific kinds of speech protected.
Those kinds fall afoul of the "tolerance paradox" because the people crowing the term around are specifically the neo nazis, gay bashers, extremists and kkk friendly sorts.
So, if you find a "free speech" instance, that is exactly who will dominate the instance. That's just a fact now. Every instance that has laid claim to free speech gets taken over by those people.
As such, defederation is the only realistic option because those same people refuse to follow the rules on other instances. It has happened recently with hexbear. It had previously happened with exploding heads. And, frankly, it was always the case with lemmygrad, though they were usually not as bad about ignoring rules elsewhere.
The other type of thing you get on "free speech" places is kiddie porn. Sometimes just the drawn kind, but sometimes the real stuff.
Being real with you? You will not find an instance that allows hate speech that isn't dominated by it. Period. It doesn't exist. If you specifically enjoy that kind of thing,, that's on you. But that isn't the same thing as people having a different opinion. That's people wanting other human beings to be anything from oppressed to eradicated. If that's something you think is just a matter of opinion, you might as well head on over to exploding heads because you aren't going to last long anywhere else. You'll get banned from most places by virtue of trying to defend hate speech.
- This is fantastic. Well explained.

Run your own instance. It's the only way you'll be able to set your own policies. Otherwise you're subject to policies of the instance you're on and those policies may change at any time.
- If your going to run a free speech instance, I advise running the server in the US and using a server provider that is free speech friendly. It will also not hurt to use a domain registrar that is pro free speech. By running the server in the US, you got first amendment protection
  
  @thecam
  Doesn't the 1st apply to US citizens only?
  @Grouchy
- Well I posted this to see if there are instances that already have similar principles, without creating my own.

You aren't going to find an instance that both tolerates hate-speech, and is federated with mostly everyone. That's not how that works. Sorry, you cannot have your cake, and eat it too.
Federation is a two-way agreement. Instances that do not allow hate-speech will also not probably federate with instances that do allow hate-speech, because of all the hate-speech.

If you think hate speech is acceptable, you may want to stop and reassess your life. You dun fucked up.
Try building a life that doesn't revolve around worrying about other people do that doesn't affect you, it's far healthier.
- Thank you for taking your time to reply, but you misunderstood my question.
  
  I didn't misunderstand your question, I ignored answering your question and instead gave advice to a person who would ask such a question.
  You will die an unhappy person if you make hating other people a priority in your life.

An instance that proliferated hate speech would likely be defederated quickly. There are other social medias that actively promote hate speech you could join.
- I am not looking for an instance that promotes hate speech. I am just looking for one that is not planning to defederate.
  
  It may not plan to defederate from anyone, but it might get defederated. It work both ways.
- That's not what he asked

Hey everyone, before you start dogpiling this person, take a step back and understand we're all one family.
When I first joined Lemmy, I joined Beehaw. I can't speak for all of the admins, but Lionir is one of the kindest most helpful people I've had the pleasure to meet. That said, between them not allowing community creation and defederating with the instance my football communities are on, I realised I had to find another home. If I was asked to articulate that at the time, I would've had no chance.
Our friend here is simply asking for an opportunity to commune with people beyond that of which his current admins enjoy. We don't know what it is. I can't speak for all of the people that were banned from anywhere. I know that I've met wonderful people from all servers. Yes even the terrible ones. Don't judge people by their instance. Unless they're admins and their instance is full of Nazis. Then please judge them.
I don't understand why you would take someone wanting to branch out and find their wings as a personal insult or threat.
Please just remember that we're a team. We make this place good by interacting civilly with one another.
Also if you are familiar with Rust or PostgreSQL, please take a look at the Lemmy Github and see if you're capable of contributing towards getting account migration sorted.
- Exactly, I am not necessarily planning on participating in these communities, I am just trying to be open minded and see what is posted there, who knows maybe there is something interesting.
  
  Thing is, if you actually want to hear a diverse range of opinions, it's in your best interest to listen in places that remove hate-speech.
  Because spaces that allow hate speech are at best unpleasant, and at worst actively unsafe, for the people who that hate-speech is aimed at. So those people, those large and diverse groups of people, will not speak freely in those spaces. They will leave those spaces. And so you will not hear their perspectives.
  And basically all hate-speech is same idea. It is a rephrasing of one, single thought: "Those others, who are different to us, are inferior, and a threat to our way of life."
  There is no such thing as a space where all ideas can co-exist, you must choose: Either you can hear the voices of a diverse group of people with varied life-experiences. Or you can hear the voices of an increasingly narrow segment of the population who are supportive of bigotry against those diverse people.

does not censor hate speech
federated with everyone
Yeah okay OP someone definitely isn't some flavour of racist
- Yeah there's two 'main' kinds of people who want a platform where users are able to post hate speech and reach "everyone" with it.
  People who want to be hateful and want access to the targets of their hate. They want to upset people, they want to 'own the libs' or be able to toss slurs at minorities, and those things are unrewarding for them if they don't get to see how upset they've made their targets.
  People who want to recruit people to being hateful. They want to convince normal people to share their prejudices and their biases, they want "debates" or would like to share "statistics" and are seeking a soapbox that can reach people who might find their views convincing.
  This is a huge part of why defederation works, why platforms like Voat or Gab rarely thrive for very long. Being hateful in an echo chamber towards people who are outside the room is rarely fun for those folks, and very often results in in-fighting and fragmenting of the movement. Moderates and 'normies' are driven off because now they're a target rather than a participant or spectator.

It's not really possible to have an instance that doesn't remove hate speech but also hasn't been defederated by other instances, since most instances do not tolerate hate speech.
You're more likely to be exposed to different viewpoints in a reasonably moderated instance that doesn't allow hate speech, which would be federated with a lot of other instances, rather than an instance that allows it, which would most likely be in a hate speech bubble with other similar instances.

What you're asking for is impossible. Any server that doesn't police your speech heavily online will get defederated by other servers. Its not up to the admin of your server which other servers defederate.
Defederation is a powerful tool for an admin. They're the ones that make the rules, why would they make a rule against defederation? Who'd enforce it on them?

Dunno how your instance fares regarding moderation, but looking at the modlog of my instance, Kbin Social, moderators seem to act only against disruptive behavior, like spam and gratuitous offenses:
https://kbin.social/modlog
And I haven't seem people complaining elsewhere, like on Discord, about Kbin-related instances, unlike certain Lemmy-related instances, so it appears to be fine for now.

The lemmy devs and users are rigidly against hate speech / free speech. they are afraid it will push away many users who are more sensitive, and ruin the quality of discussion. they don't tolerate free speech instances.
but who knows, they might be right.
- Normal people do not like reading hate speech.
  Communities without moderation quickly turn to shitholes.
  This is not a Lemmy issue, it’s human nature.
- The devs don't stop anyone from running their own instance, like most of the Fediverse they just won't federate their own instances with hateful ones.

So true, bestie. All I want to do is let the minority-beaters have a platform. Who knows! Maybe this time they’ll have a good point. Lick my farthole in Minecraft, one love

I've argued with tankies at length on lemmy.ml, and just this morning I posted this, and I've never had any kind of problem with being banned or having posts or comments removed. I had my posts removed from both the right and the left on reddit, which pissed me off in both instances, but I've literally never seen it happen yet on lemmy.world.
I suspect that what you want is not "free speech," because as far as I can tell, that already exists here to a pretty firm degree. If you really want to federate with everyone, you can run your own instance. If you want someone else to do the work of running the instance, but for them not to be able to defederate to protect themselves from abuse or illegality, I'm not sure what to tell you other than good luck with that.
- Well the removal of posts and comments cannot be avoided. What I want is just to be able to see everything on my feed, and to be able to decide the communities I want to ban instead of admins doing that for me.
  Well sure running my own instance would work, but I don't think it is necessary really, as I am sure there are people who think similar and have instances dedicated to this.
  
  So, as weird as this is to say after I joined with others in telling you your question was bad / unfair, I actually think pretty similarly to you in terms of the value of free speech. I have an instance set up which I've been neglecting as I work on some other projects, but once I get time to get back around to it, I plan to operate it as a semi-production server, and to federate with some of the "banned" right-wing instances mostly out of curiosity to see what's on them.
  If you're interested in an account on my instance, send me a DM and let's talk, as I do somewhat support your mission. Just I would repeat that as far as I can tell, defederating in practice has not a lot to do with "free speech" and more just with operational sustainability (choosing who to federate with not because you object to what's being said on certain servers, but just as a matter of keeping illegal or clearly destructive behavior off your instance so that it can continue to function well.)

38 comments