Thanks I will try read it. Authoritarianism does to me seem a big problem

The thing is if you segment the racist from the main community and then they just go form another, probably with a new instance of lemmy what do you think is going to happen? They are going to be more radicalized because opposing views become totally gone. Then you get more shootings. I thought the shootings were connected to 8chan and facebook ?

There should be no value in debating the existence or nonexistence of any race but you can debate differences in races because there is differences (did I just commit a thought crime saying that?).

I defend voat, ruqqus, thedonald because they allow speech not because they are white supremacist, which they are not, except well voat is…

So I am getting mixed messages, on one side apparently instances can do what every they want then on the other lemmy is only going to allow certain speech? So does that mean lemmy can, will or will try control instances some how? hard code in certain filters?

Yes I get that and I do use other platforms I am genuinely trying to understand the motivations behind lemmy. There is now a lot of platforms doing their own development, many open source and this seems wasteful. Lemmy interests me. I am wondering if like one of my favorite platforms saidit should migrate to it? Should I advocate this to magnora7 and d3rr? I know d3rr is interested in lemmy.

I don’t know both the nazi and commies had gulags. There is too many similarities to me but I guess much of it stems from authoritarianism. I should probably read more on it because if Trump is setting off red flags as a Hitler we have a problem.

As the OP I disagree L-) but hey what would I know about my own opinions and beliefs? Couldn’t be more than you? /s

I think I am arguing in reasonable faith. No it was the call to ban me that sad hey look theres censorship. I have changes views, have you?

The point to interact with people you disagree with is to change minds. If I had not intent to have mine changed I would not be here. I found the anticapitalist aspect of the definition of the left quite enlightening.

I am concerned that non agreeable forums could not still link somehow.

Why? If one forum is an absolute cesspool of toxicity and abuse, then why should my forum link to it? Why should I be forced to implicitly participate?

If you force me to host content I’m highly against, I’m just going to shut down the whole service. I don’t owe you or anyone else an uncensored space and I definitely shouldn’t be forced to provide it.

Well no I would not force you to link to it or participate, you seem to have missed the point I made which is if things get banned etc the conversation could continue. For that end I would guess that lemmy have some open api that you can continually pull content from.

I am not asking to force you to do anything, you can restrict speech however you want just don’t expect to be popular at all or to be beneficial to society or to achieve those utopian socialist goals you probably aspire to, no one has yet and infact free capitalist society is the closest yet L-)

it is clear that the current round of censorship that is hitting most is from the left.

Lol, have you even read up on American politics lately? Who is trying to suppress voters, the ultimate form of censorship in a democracy? Who is spewing misinformation to down out all the facts? Which president keeps saying that journalists who report on him negatively should be fired and threatens to cut funding to universities if they don’t agree with him?

Yes I follow politics very closely. If you think voting is the problem you a few levels not deep enough. Your vote doesn’t matter at all, you are not even given an option. The fact you think you have an option is how effective they are at this. You are watching theater all designed to convince you it’s real.

As a capitalist I think government should not fund education at all, in fact I think many of the societal problems with for example woke culture and identity politics and disconnect from reality socialist ideologies are a direct product of socialized government funded education.

The thing is speech in of itself does not cause harm.

You’re objectively wrong. Anyone who has been verbally or emotionally abused can attest to this. Anyone who has been stalked or doxxed, or had their intimate pictures leaked can attest to this. Anyone who has their life ruined because they were accused of something they didn’t do can attest to this.

Stalking is not speech, doxxing is used to produce a physical threat so it is problematic, verbal abuse is not great but you can learn to resist it, for example police put up with it daily and the effect wears thin. False accusations are a problem. I had always thought doxing was only a tool used by the left or well the examples I have seen are that, can you show me opposite examples?

Now just because some people can not control themselves in reacting to certain speech does not necessarily mean you should stop certain speech

If you say something knowing that someone else could see it and cause them to do something violent, why shouldn’t you be liable? If I told someone else to beat you up, knowing they probably will after hearing me, am I innocent because I didn’t personally do it?

The person doing the physical harm should always be responsible. Obviously there is laws where say if a person asks harm to be done and it is they are responsible. It gets complicated for certain like that, because you can have for example criminal arrangements where speech is like pulling the trigger on a gun. One person orders others to commit crimes etc. Still the speech is not the direct cause of harm it can be viewed as a link, but the speech in of itself does not do harm.

You seem to be arguing in borderline bad faith but you can not show me possibly one instance of speech causing harm.

You seem to think harm means physical harm when mental/emotional harm can just as easily break a person. People have been permanently traumatized or even committed suicide over verbal abuse or false allegations. People have literally killed themselves over racism, sexism, homophobia and all manner of other non-physical bullying, try telling any of them or their friends and family how harmless those words were.

Again these are peoples response to the speech, its the response that is causing the harm. I mean you literally give the example of suicide which is self harm. You will I think find that society has become much softer verbally and also much more sensitive, they go hand in hand. You can toughen and handle these with mental exercises. I am most sensitive to their problem but the thing is why does anyone have the right to control others speech when they can’t control their own emotions? This is a problem of responsibility and passing your own problems onto others only makes you less or even not in control of them.

Interesting problem you bring up like with homophobia, this is a persons response to the expression aka speech of someone overtly homosexual, by your reasoning it’s the homosexuals problem because it’s his speech that is caused the problem for the homophobe. You see where this is going? you can draw similar reasoning for most anything even sexism or racism. Another thing is I am not so sure gays fair to well in socialist utopias…

All speech is meant to be legal in the US but exceptions have been carved out for a variety of reasons.

In order of increasing severity: Slander, threats, aiding and abetting less serious crime, obscene material, aiding and abetting serious crime, and child pornography are all banned and all for very good reason. Those are all non-physical things yet they’re all harmful, so what’s that about speech not being harmful.

I disagree and agree. Again the speech itself is not causing the harm, but it’s the response to the speech, in those cases, like particularly slander stopping the speech seems the most effective means to prevent the problem. The thing is in many cases no one is sure if someone is slanderous until it is too late. Like with child porn too there is a gray area where it can be hard to guess an exact age. People get really sick having to filter it so like on saidit a general porn ban is just much easier.

on the right they have far more impulse control and so are less likely to react so the left will always be at a disadvantage to freer speech as they have less impulse control and as with their favorite word “triggered” so easily.

If you literally can’t debate in a polite and civilized manner, which includes not dropping offensive words left and right or attacking your opponents, then your opinion probably sucks.

Not a fan of comedy I take it? Well it can be really good and uses a lot of language. Given that you just used offensive language to me what am I to think? What if I just start being offended by more and more words you use? I could easily throw this back at you and say if you can’t get past words that could be considered offensive in a debate your mind probably sucks, and I apologize I really do not mean to insult your mind it’s just an example.

And I’m not even going to comment on what kind of person you are if your “favorite” word is a slur that objectively has a definition meant to insult a certain group.

Words truly only have the power you give them, by being offend and labeling things slurs etc you are literally creating the problem around the word. Again it’s not the speech but the response that is the problem.

If I started abusing you in a foreign language which I can, and you didn’t understand it at all, didn’t use a translator etc, how would you feel? Remember you don’t know it’s abuse, you don’t even know what it is except some weird words. Like if I typed some numbers 234234 and they were an encryption for a slur etc? I still used a slur I still abused you but you had no response, these things rely on the response and trust me you can control that. By insulating your world you are actually making that control harder.

With no discussion there will be no real progress and to that how can you call yourselves progressives?

Discussion, not abuse. Spewing slurs is not discussion. Attacking people is not discussion.

Fair points. I get abuse, I get slurs, but attacking? You have to attack the ideas of someone else to have a good discussion and that can mean their beliefs and identity sometimes.

It is sad the segmentation of communities online, it makes it harder for people to talk to each other and fosters bubbles, which will push further separation and in some cases radicalization. I look at the riots as a product of this. The super sad thing is this play is straight out of divide and rule or conquer. The rich minority that controls everything are the ones that benefit from this. The internet should be the most powerful tool to bring us together and organize but instead it seems to be ripping us apart.

I would love to fix our democracy, and that means people knowing they are represented and by who and that those people share their values and ideas instead of just their geography… I get you probably believe in socialism, but I hope we at least share in a belief in democracy. I would be very willing to concede that a lack of democracy was the major flaw in communism. I hope for a startrek future where physical products are so easy to make wealth and capital become irrelevant. but we are very far from that future and to get their is going to take a lot of smarts and work still. You may despise capitalism but someone like Elon Musk having all the money and power he has now is our best hope we make things better. Because ultimately it doesn’t matter about most terrestrial problems something eventually a huge asteroid something else will destroy us here so we better move off at some point.

You prove my point, seeking to ban me because I disagree with you. This line of thought is very communist and at the heart of why communism failed. Let my quickly archive this though so it’s more evidence to the problem L-)

No I haven’t read it I said I didn’t have time, I will try now.

So if I look at the conclusion “While their name did include the word “socialist”, their policies and treatment of left-wing opponents show they were not socialists in any meaningful sense.” The treatment of “left wing” people does not define socialism. Socialism is in part a state organized economy and more, which is what the Nazis had but also in general things done with a view to the society as a whole which the nazis did a lot of, their conquering of Europe is evidence of that. Maybe they were not as socialist as Russia but they were still quite socialist. You can have varying degrees of socialism like all things.

Next point of notice is “Historians have regularly disavowed claims that Hitler adhered to socialist ideology”. Hitlers eugenics program is a perfect example of a socialist ideology.

Overall that article is weak, the talk of the Nazis banning parties and other groups is to me also an aspect of socialism, communism behaved the same but worse. Communism and Nazism are both socialist they both require authoritarian power to be enabled. The reason for the lefts dislike of this association is the critical player behind socialism and communism and antifa, the jew, is hated and persecuted in Nazism. The funny thing is this bias is not for some greater good because under socialism far more people and groups are more hated and persecuted and the general outcomes for society far worse. In fact even in socialism the Jew too is hated and persecuted but he must be rich lol. To me it is all insanity stemming from group programming in all of us. You should listen to Bret Weinstein (a jew :-) on it. And if using the word jew makes you uncomfortable well that is the distinct problem of the left. Things do need a label to be discussed and if we can’t categorize and discuss things well we are dead as a society. Which maybe that is the goal of the left to handicap our speech and so destroy us through it.

Oh as for the famines in China, they are very very clearly the result of the policies of Mao. Maybe you can say it is was not socialism, but communism that did that and more particularly the dictatorial part of communism after all we have socialist democracies too. But the fact remains China was well stuck in a hole until they most though-roughly abandoned much of socialism…

Nice talking

I am sorry but I disagree as the Nazis were most definitely socialists. One it was in their name and 2 it is documented in history through their actions. It is most certainly an uncomfortable truth because the left loves socialism so much but detests the Nazis.

Me personally I think socialism is a disease but think some aspects of it can be good. I dislike both the Nazis and Communists. My politics are a mix of left and right, but generally I am libertarian and so free speech is a main concern of mine. Protecting speech I dislike is actually not really an issue because there is not really any speech I dislike, it is all just words on a screen to me, some I agree some I disagree. There is speech that solely seeks to disrupt like spam or some very bad faith conversation, like low on the pyramid of debate. I wouldn’t delete it still and just hide it under some optional filter :-)

On communism I could probably know more but I know they by far killed the most people in history, they won the war against Hitler and where responsible for pushing human progress with the cold war. I am a fan of Oliver Stone by the way :-)

I will seek to read up on the links you provided I don’t have time now sorry, I am enjoying talking to you.

Capitalism as a general theory is fine

It’s a system built on exploitation of others for your own gain, that’s literally the point of it. For someone to rise up in capitalism they need to push others down. It’s also why we’re in a massive environmental crisis.

I am going to have to disagree with you on this. Capitalism is a system of exchange and mutual benefit, yes it can seem people are exploited and in some cases they are but overall capitalism is a very efficient and beneficial system. The most stark example of this is the switch of China from communism to mainly capitalism and the resounding progress they made after.

All of the bad sides of capitalism are because of flawed implementations of it. The costs of the environment not accounted for, the exponential benefits of accrued wealth not penalized, shields from liability like with vaccines and environmental damage, no liability for share holders, too many rights given, like IP rights given for too long or given at all, I am against IP at all :-)! The list is many but the fundamental cause of these problems is a broken political system. To say it in short we do not have democracy and never have. I can go into this with you in depth when I have time, but no problem we have will be fixed unless we can fix our government and free speech is absolutely crucial for that to happen.

The point is to create a distributed forum. The fact that it’s mostly leftists in this instance does not reflect what the entire network will look like once it’s established. Maintainers of each instance can moderate however they want, and the other instances can choose either to connect to them or block them. It’s literally just a bunch of independent forums but with plans to be able to link agreeable ones together.

Thanks for you detailed reply. It’s good that yes anyone can use this platform to make any instance they like. It is after all open source. I am concerned that non agreeable forums could not still link somehow. I am also concerned that given the lefts pattern of censorship too much focus with lemmy will be put on that instead of how to be against censorship.

Then on the left there seems an obsession to silence anyone or thing they don’t like

Really? Try disagreeing on the “the donald” site and see how fast you get banned. Try it in /r/conservative on Reddit. The fact that you think that “leftists” are the only ones that do this is ridiculous.

I am going to have to agree and disagree, it is clear that the current round of censorship that is hitting most is from the left. We even have a case now on thedonald.win of someone having their smses blocked and shadow banned by their carrier for mentioning thedonald.win. This is in clear violation of common carrier laws. The left also has a long list of nonos when it comes to speech, you only need to look at the rules on this site for an example. The right however has a history now of establishing sites that protect speech, with for example voat, ruqqus, saidit, 4chan, 8chan etc.

Yes I would agree if a leftist goes to a right haven like say voat you will get destroyed, verbally and with votes etc and probably banned. I see this though as even more incentive that solutions that truly protect speech are found so it doesn’t happen. For example maybe you allow instances to store content and users from other instances but also block moderator actions. So if for example like we have on reddit now where popular or controversial posts will build many comments and votes but get deleted they can still continue somewhere else.

You’re confusing this instance with the entire fediverse. This instance might be moderated tightly but not all of them will be. Again, it’s an open source forum software that anyone can run, for better or for worse, just like your more traditional forums.

Ok so I did cover this before, but to reiterate I am not confusing them I understand that is how things are and will work. My concern is given the stance on this instance and some developers like nutomic I am concerned with the development path. I would really like you had more focus on tools to protect speech and less on looks, though from comments on ruqqus your looks do need some work but I mean to me how hard is it to make text work ok?

I actually disagree that “censorship” is objectively bad. Yes, political censorship in general is objectively bad, but there are things that are actually harmful to people and shouldn’t be tolerated at all: racism, sexism, discrimination in general, content depicting or advocating sexual abuse, pedophilia, stalking/doxxing, threats, slander, incitement of violence, the list goes on. Those things cause actual, tangible harm, so why shouldn’t they be censored? The law agrees with me too as many/most of those things are outright illegal in most countries. Unmoderated social media always turns into a cesspool of racists, sexists, edgelords and other general toxicity. Show me one unmoderated place on the internet that doesn’t follow this rule.

Yes not all censorship is bad, the problem comes when who gets to decide what to censor? The level of censorship on for example reddit has gone well out side what you describe but then also allows racism and sexism and discrimination if it is from a certain group to another certain group.

The thing is speech in of itself does not cause harm. Speech is not violence. Violence in reaction to speech is harm. Now just because some people can not control themselves in reacting to certain speech does not necessarily mean you should stop certain speech but more that it is you should give tools so certain people are protected from certain speech. Which is largely what moderation is. It’s just not everyone needs protection. Think like a website block that stops your kids seeing porn, but you don’t ask the porn sites to be deleted do you? Well maybe in some extreme christian cases they would. The point is content doesn’t need actually be deleted to achieve moderation just hidden from the people that don’t want to see it.

With regards to laws they vary widely, just because something is illegal does not necessarily make it wrong. All speech is meant to be legal in the US but exceptions have been carved out for a variety of reasons. The problem when you get into stopping speech is where do you stop? On the left there seems to be no limit to seeking censorship.

You seem to be arguing in borderline bad faith but you can not show me possibly one instance of speech causing harm. The light puffs of air from a mouth and taps of keys or movements of a pen are not physically capable of harm. It is the linked actions to speech you claim as harm. And that I think is the problem, as on the right they have far more impulse control and so are less likely to react so the left will always be at a disadvantage to freer speech as they have less impulse control and as with their favorite word “triggered” so easily. This is a fundamental problem though because to be civilized you must be less triggered and able to discuss things without resulting to destructive actions. There is value to be had on discussing everything, including race and sex and more. With no discussion there will be no real progress and to that how can you call yourselves progressives?

I wasn’t saying Reddit is far right it’s what I read nutomic write. I assumed it was lemmys general position. I can agree that capitalism has some deep flaws but they are in relation to the powers given from government which it shouldn’t have. Capitalism as a general theory is fine and much better than socialism which has proven to be horrible in both forms of National Socialism and Communism. If lemmys main goal though is to reduce corporate power then more power to you as I can only support that!