I’ve been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.

When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken “federation” system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it’s never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy’s official docs say you can’t even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won’t actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.

So you can only ever have the “average joe lemmy” and “average joe reddit” with everything approved by the authorities, and then “tor copies of lemmy” and “tor copies of reddit” where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.

People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But it’s the exact same thing, it’s reddit.

When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldn’t let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they won’t let you talk at all.

Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.

It’s not actually a solution to reddit. It’s not designed to be different, it’s designed to match the past today and then match reddit’s present tomorrow, while being part of a system that’s about the same in past, present, and future.

Last year, this year, and next year, you’re posting somewhere it won’t be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. There’s no difference here.

Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.

Edit - I was banned from my instance, and before being unbanned, some of my comments seem to have been removed. I apologize if I hurt anyone’s feelings, but it seems pointless to try to discuss this topic here. I’ll give a few more replies, and then suggest any further responses be directed to me on nostr, where there are no bans. I’ve also had a good time posting on PieFed while I was banned, so I’ll probably keep spending time there. If anyone’s curious, I had a thread about this topic on PieFed too. Btw, instead of the misplaced focus on bots, I should have said filter spam, not people earlier in this post.

  • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
    0·
    19 days ago

    But less censored than most places, and they’re a shithole.

    Incorrect. Twitter, X, and 4chan so far have all been more censored than most places have been throughout human history, contributing to their shithole statuses.

    No, I did not.

    Yes you did.

    That’s not what I meant.

    Didn’t ask. Not my problem. Get it looked at by a professional.

    You’re just wrong.

    Nope.

    So now into personal insults, are we?

    I don’t know, are we? I definitely am.

    Have you heard of the burden of proof?

    Yes, I mentioned it earlier in this thread. The person it should be on in this context is you, since you’re the one making the outlandish claims and offering nothing to back them up.

    Okay, that’s not what you seemed to say initially.

    Incorrect. You understood me fine, you’re just pretending otherwise as a form of gaslighting.

    But so how is lemmy.world specifically “run by glowies”?

    My understanding is they mainly use keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen for inputs, while using screens to see what they’re doing.

    Why did you just make me explain that? Dumb as fuck.

    “My own poor ability to explain what I mean shouldn’t be clarified. People should just know my clearly bizarre mindset”.

    Stop putting your own statements in quote marks, it’s weird. And maybe you should stop wasting my time if you can’t handle clarifying your own statements.

    They aren’t pressured into having rules that they hacvve chosen to have.

    Incorrect, as I assumed.

    That’s what Lemmy means when they talk about self-hosting.

    What I asked was why waste my time with it when I didn’t ask. This doesn’t seem like a reason.

    You seem to be operating under basic definitions of words that no-one else does.

    Incorrect. Maybe what you mean to say is I’m one of the few people who still tend to use “literal” and “literally” correctly.

    • Skavau@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      19 days ago

      Incorrect. Twitter, X, and 4chan so far have all been more censored than most places have been throughout human history, contributing to their shithole statuses.

      You think they’d somehow be better if they weren’t censored? Both Twitter and 4chan have less rules than Reddit or Lemmy.

      Yes you did.

      No, I did not.

      Didn’t ask. Not my problem. Get it looked at by a professional.

      You made an accusation, I reject it.

      I don’t know, are we? I definitely am.

      So should I report you? That’s usually against instance rules.

      Yes, I mentioned it earlier in this thread. The person it should be on in this context is you, since you’re the one making the outlandish claims and offering nothing to back them up.

      What claims have I made? Be specific.

      Incorrect. You understood me fine, you’re just pretending otherwise as a form of gaslighting.

      No, you specifically said: “Because they’re glowies”. No nuance.

      My understanding is they mainly use keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen for inputs, while using screens to see what they’re doing.

      What is your definition of “glowie” here? My understanding is that it’s supposedly an undercover government agent. Got any evidence for this for lemmy.world mods?

      Stop putting your own statements in quote marks, it’s weird. And maybe you should stop wasting my time if you can’t handle clarifying your own statements.

      I’ll do whatever I like. And I wasn’t clarifying my statements, more noting your complaining about being asked to clarify.

      Incorrect, as I assumed.

      No reason to believe they are “pressured”. You’ve never backed this up.

      Incorrect. Maybe what you mean to say is I’m one of the few people who still tend to use “literal” and “literally” correctly.

      You don’t really use any words correctly. They’re all a bit off.

      • iloveDigit@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
        01·
        19 days ago

        You think they’d somehow be better if they weren’t censored? Both Twitter and 4chan have less rules than Reddit or Lemmy.

        Not sure what you’re trying to say here. Get better at typing.

        No, I did not.

        Is repeatedly lying making you feel better about any of this?

        You made an accusation, I reject it.

        Sounds like a you problem.

        So should I report you?

        I don’t care, but your question baits me to say something you could try to use to justify getting me banned, which sucks. Try asking on nostr, where I can’t be banned, if you want my answer.

        That’s usually against instance rules.

        Didn’t ask.

        What claims have I made? Be specific.

        What’s in it for me?

        To be clear, that’s a rhetorical question. I understand that you have nothing real to offer anyone.

        No, you specifically said: “Because they’re glowies”. No nuance.

        Misuse of “no” since this doesn’t change what I said, which is still true.

        Also, didn’t ask.

        What is your definition of “glowie” here?

        The colloquial one, originating from Terry Davis.

        My understanding is that it’s supposedly an undercover government agent.

        Yep.

        Got any evidence for this for lemmy.world mods?

        Do you read what you type?

        I’ll do whatever I like.

        Didn’t ask. You should stop putting your own statements in quote marks, it’s weird.

        And I wasn’t clarifying my statements, more noting your complaining about being asked to clarify.

        Again, didn’t ask, didn’t finish reading this sentence, stopped at “more” since you keep refusing to explain why you wasted time typing things after I waste time reading them and ask why

        No reason to believe they are “pressured”.

        Incorrect.

        You’ve never backed this up.

        Incorrect again.

        You don’t really use any words correctly. They’re all a bit off.

        Incorrect yet again. I’m basically the most fluent English speaker alive (and quite monolingual).