Recently there have been some discussions about the political stances of the Lemmy developers and site admins. To clear up some misconceptions: Lemmy is run by a team of people with different ideologies, including anti-capitalist, communist, anarchist, and others. While @dessalines and I are communists, we take decisions collectively, and don’t demand that anyone adopt our views or convert to our ideologies. We wouldn’t devote so much time to building a federated site otherwise.
What’s important to us is that you follow the site rules and Code of Conduct. Meaning primarily, no-bigotry, and being respectful towards others. As long as that is the case, we can get along perfectly fine.
In general we are open for constructive feedback, so please contact any member of the admin team if you have an idea how to improve Lemmy.
Slur Filter
We also noticed a consistent criticism of the built-in slur filter in Lemmy. Not so much on lemmy.ml itself, but whenever Lemmy is recommended elsewhere, a few usual suspects keep bringing it up. To these people we say the following: we are using the slur filter as a tool to keep a friendly atmosphere, and prevent racists, sexists and other bigots from using Lemmy. Its existence alone has lead many of them to not make an account, or run an instance: a clear net positive.
You can see for yourself the words which are blocked (content warning, link here). Note that it doesn’t include any simple swear words, but only slurs which are used to insult and attack other people. If you want to use any of these words, then please stay on one of the many platforms that permit them. Lemmy is not for you, and we don’t want you here.
We are fully aware that the slur filter is not perfect. It is made for American English, and can give false positives in other languages or dialects. We are totally willing to fix such problems on a case by case basis, simply open an issue in our repo with a description of the problem.
Wouldn’t that imply limiting their freedom?
Yes. We don’t want fascists to have the freedom to spread their hate on this platform.
Yup, limiting the freedom of fascists is okay, lest they spread their fascist ideas.
Wouldn’t that also mean you don’t respect their free will?
EDIT: To clarify things, I don’t care about fascism or the slur filter, everyone has the right to say what is on their mind, but the creators have the right not to provide them the platform for them to converse and spread their ideologies, because, at the end, this is their software.
“Free will” is the concept that someone chooses to do what they want instead of it being pre-determined by the universe. It has nothing to do with whether other people want to tolerate or allow them to do it or not.
I think you and I are on the same page
A lot of people think the slur filter is a deal-breaker, but they forget that a lot of the platforms they use on a daily basis, have these systems in place, or if they don’t, they ban you for “breaking community guidelines”.
That does not justify making the same mistake as them.
Not justifying the choices of the developers, but if it’s a deal breaker for you, you always have the option of not using the website.
I’ll probably stop using the website eventually, but I could also just remove the filter completely. Those are my actual options. ;)