At least for me its very difficult to make the line between preventing hate speech and allowing the freedom. I’m thinking to launch a lemmy instance, but the targeted audience is very sensitive to religion topics, and i’m sure if i allow it, this could lead to hate speech at some point and may fuel violence. Also, from my prospective, i just want my audience find new good things far from porn, porn sites are a lot, and i don`t want to mix it with other topics that can very constructive.
So please tell me your opinion, if banning these 2 topics can effect the freedom of speech.
To me, what is great about federated platforms like Lemmy is that we can think and speak about these issue in a great way !
The way I see it, is that your instance is like an event you organize at your house, or a bar you own. Your place, your rules. Thoses rules depends on your culture, you intents, the people you want to welcome. Like in your house, you could ban anyone, for any reason you like. But like real social circle, if throw out people for no reason, or reasons other people don’t like, those people won’t stay, as they are free to go elsewhere.
And that is great. Because moderation is a difficult and subjective job. You can legitimately want to ban someone for something you deem innacceptable, while the person banned can legitimately think you are suppressing his freedom of speech. Because you could have different values, different cultures.
That is clearly different than the problem concerning centralized media or social network. Facebook for example created a place where everybody is and has to follow their rules. And if you disagree, you cannot leave and go to another instance. So the moderation is a huge issue. You have to protect freedom of speech there because users are stuck there. And alternative social networks like mastodon are not viable alternatives for now since the main interest people have in social network is that most people are there.
So yeah, I don’t have any problem with different choices of moderation in different instances. The only case I would see a legitimate problem would be if you create a place that is dangerous for the rest of society. Exactly like any social place. I’m for a variety of bars and clubs, with specific rules. But I will fight against the existence of a fascist bar because it’s dangerous even for people that do not chose to go there. The same way, it’s not because I promote diversity in instances policies that I think any instances with any rules should be allowed.
This final question of which social place should be allowed and which shouldn’t, that is a purely political question, and I could talk about it for hours, like many people here ! My view here in this : diversity good, fascist bad. Why no fascists allowed in my diversity ? Because they are the ones against this diversity in the first place.
Sorry for the long answer ! <3
Thank you so much for your effort.