Skip Navigation

Calls for defederation - Is the idea of the open marketplace of ideas outdated?

Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:

  • Don't like their content
  • Dont like their political leaning
  • Dont like their free speech approach
  • General feeling of being offended
  • I want a safe space!
  • This instance if hurting vulnerable people

I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.

Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148

Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!

You're viewing part of a thread.

Show Context
143 comments
  • Is defederation and the call for authorities (admins) the right way to deal with this? Or should the recipient decide what the filters should be? Like in the email approach, the recipient decides if he wants to receive an email and even then it might get filtered out and land in spam.

    There's a key difference with email: that's opt-in communication. Generally speaking (outside of botspam which does get blacklisted) you have to sign up for a newsletter or ask someone to email you. It's opt-in, not opt-out. Lemmy/Kbin are by definition opt-out: a new user, browsing All, will see everything they haven't blocked.

    An admin, attempting to make the kind of user that they want to see on their instance feel welcome, does have a duty to curate it. If the first post they see on their New feed is a screed calling for the death of all LGBTQ+ people (for example), do you think a brand new user will calmly block the community and move on, or decide that this instance isn't the one for them? And a user that agrees with that hateful message, they have now gotten the message that this instance is friendly to their worldview.

    Curation determines userbase which determines content. I know which side of the coin I fall on there.

    • There's a key difference with email: that's opt-in communication. Generally speaking (outside of botspam which does get blacklisted) you have to sign up for a newsletter or ask someone to email you. It's opt-in, not opt-out. Lemmy/Kbin are by definition opt-out: a new user, browsing All, will see everything they haven't blocked.

      Good point!

      If the first post they see on their New feed is a screed calling for the death of all LGBTQ+ people (for example), do you think a brand new user will calmly block the instance and move on, or decide that this instance isn't the one for them? And a user that agrees with that hateful message, they have now gotten the message that this instance is friendly to their worldview.

      And here I disagree with you. The world is a horrible, dangerous, wonderful, exciting , murderous, funny, sad, depressing, manic place. Hiding that some people hate gays will not change the fact that some people hate gays. It will also not make these people disappear. Isn't it better to know reality and accept it as it is, deal with it as it comes?

      • I think that this has been a surprisingly productive debate. I may not agree with you on this, but I do understand where you're coming from and can respect it. I think I'll answer this and leave it at that:

        Isn’t it better to know reality and accept it as it is, deal with it as it comes?

        I don't need to read hateful things to know that hateful people exist. I've had plenty of people say far worse to my face IRL. I don't come to Lemmy and didn't go to Reddit to get into shouting matches with people who think me or my friends are less-than. My goal here is not changing the world, it's entertainment and discussion. Neither am I seeking some safe space with a strict blocklist and careful vetting of each user. All I want is a medium place where I can have good conversations without someone questioning my right to exist.

143 comments