3 ms·

I've tried various Fediverse services such as Mastodon and Lemmy, and, based on my experience, I've noticed a stronger tendency towards censorship, self-censors

by kome 3y ago

I've tried various Fediverse services such as Mastodon and Lemmy, and, based on my experience, I've noticed a stronger tendency towards censorship, self-censorship, and ingroup behavior. In comparison, platforms like Twitter and Reddit still feel freer. But overall, the best solution is to use your own website for everything. But too much censure really stifles social media.

kstrauser 3y ago
Instead of "censorship", I'd say "moderation". To pick a random example, suppose you're on an instance run by, and dedicated to, right-wing politics. It may block connections from servers meant for and run by devout communists. The reverse would probably also be true. No one's saying fascists or communists can't run their own server. They're saying "I don't want to hear this stuff". It's legal to be an anti-Semite, but a Jewish instance doesn't want any of that nonsense. It's legal to be a white supremacist, but a server for black people doesn't want to deal with that trash. On the fediverse, instead of having a one-size-fits-all policy like "all legal speech is allowed" or "no anti-trans content is allowed", each group of users can choose for themselves who they want to talk to. That's the opposite of censorship. I own a Mastodon instance and I've disconnected quite a few despicable servers, because that's what my users ask me to do. Users who thing I'm too strict or too lenient can move to another server more aligned with their own desires. I'm not denying those other groups the right to publish whatever disagreeable content they wish to. I'm just saying we don't want it here on our server.
- ertian 3y ago
  This is true, but it does reinforce and cement in- and out-group dynamics. You're more likely to be exposed to unfamiliar ideas on a place like Reddit, specifically because you don't _have_ to pick an explicit bubble. When picking a Lemmy instance, you kinda end up aligning yourself with some worldview, and letting some set of strangers curate your environment for you. Incidentally, that's sort of the weirdest part of signing up for Lemmy. I can't be the only one who got to the "Pick an instance!" step and got kinda paralyzed. I'm a programmer, should I sign up to a programmer-centric instance? But I also have hobbies, political views, favorite forms & genres of media... Should those take priority? And by picking one of them, what curation or censorship am I going to be subject to? I appreciate the fact that Lemmy isn't under the thumb of one monolith, and that I can bounce from once instance to another if the first isn't working out. But I also like the 'big-tent' feeling of Reddit, where I can sub to all kinds of subreddits, even if the two groups don't get along at all.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I see what you're saying. OTOH, you can belong to several Lemmy instances at once. In that sense, it's kind of like phpBB. Which forum do I want to join? The set that covers my interests today! Maybe you like to argue about Star Trek vs Star Wars on a Sci-Fi Lemmy/phpBB, and learn to make soufflés the French Cuisine board of a Cooking Lemmy/phpBB. You don't have to join the Cooking instance and then limit yourself to looking for fellow chefs who also like Firefly.
    - ertian 3y ago
      Yeah, that's true. Others have said it elsewhere in this thread, but I wish identity was more independent in the fediverse. If federated services just used OAuth or something, your identity could be portable between Mastodon, Lemmy, and PeerTube, and you could use several instances without having to manage a bunch of different accounts. Heck, you wouldn't necessary _need_ accounts, they could just be implicitly created for you when you posted on a server.
      - kstrauser 3y ago
        I'm with you there. I'd love if that were the case. Even if it were only for associated services, like having a domain-specific SSO for mastodon.example.com, pixelfed.example.com, and lemmy.example.com so that you didn't have to maintain 3 accounts for those 3 services owned and operated by the same people, it'd still be super useful.
- iteratethis 3y ago
  I don't think that paints a complete picture. There's a shared covenant and there's shared block lists, both of which heavily influence what the norm is on the larger Mastodon network. Perhaps an even larger dynamic are activist-type admins that have an extremely low tolerance for content countering their political beliefs and will blackmail other admins into enforcing a block of a user or entire instance. None of this is a shocking revelation as a large portion of older Mastodon users are known for their excessive safety-ism. It's a perpetual conflict on the network versus those that want to be more forgiving and pragmatic. Anyway, the bottom line is that mainstream Mastodon is a left to far-left network, and content is moderated as such. The idea "just pick another server" doesn't really apply.
  - kstrauser 3y ago
    I vehemently disagree. In practice, I don't use those blocklists and neither do the neighbor instances we most heavily interact with. I'll occasionally hear from a friend that "new instance XYZ is sharing loli porn" or "instance ABC's moderators quit and now it's flooded with swastikas", and then I (and my neighbors) will verify whether that's true, and then disconnect those specific instances. I also think mainstream Mastodon is only left to far-left in the median, because far-right instances tend to be more of a pain in the ass to be around than far-left ones, and thus get themselves banned more often. If there were far-left instances running around posting memes "joking" that we should kill minorities, I'm confident they'd also get disconnected quickly. Put another way, I don't recall ever disconnecting with an instance because of its users' opinions, unless those opinions were utterly vile to the point that I'm completely unwilling to hear "their side of the argument". Most blocks are due to bad behavior, not unsavory thought.
    - iteratethis 3y ago
      I didn't mean to suggest that you're somehow unreasonable in how you run your server, I was mostly commenting on the larger concept of mainstream Mastodon. Indeed, right to far-right doesn't stand a chance there so they get blocked. They effectively move to a darkweb situation where you never see their content unless you're really trying hard to look for it. What remains, mainstream Mastodon, is moderated to the left, if not far-left. Or perhaps it's a very vocal far-left minority silencing the rest. It's of course not universal across the entire network, but roughly the vibe of the network.
Feathercrown 3y ago
> the best solution is to use your own website for everything You can host your own fediverse services and won't have to worry about being censored
iteratethis 3y ago
Mainstream Mastodon is basically hard-left Gen Z. Misfits and doomers, including the many joyless Twitter refugees. To each their own, but I learned that I rather have a little "too much" speech instead of this.

by kome 3y ago

kstrauser 3y ago

Instead of "censorship", I'd say "moderation". To pick a random example, suppose you're on an instance run by, and dedicated to, right-wing politics. It may block connections from servers meant for and run by devout communists. The reverse would probably also be true. No one's saying fascists or communists can't run their own server. They're saying "I don't want to hear this stuff". It's legal to be an anti-Semite, but a Jewish instance doesn't want any of that nonsense. It's legal to be a white supremacist, but a server for black people doesn't want to deal with that trash. On the fediverse, instead of having a one-size-fits-all policy like "all legal speech is allowed" or "no anti-trans content is allowed", each group of users can choose for themselves who they want to talk to. That's the opposite of censorship. I own a Mastodon instance and I've disconnected quite a few despicable servers, because that's what my users ask me to do. Users who thing I'm too strict or too lenient can move to another server more aligned with their own desires. I'm not denying those other groups the right to publish whatever disagreeable content they wish to. I'm just saying we don't want it here on our server.

ertian 3y ago
This is true, but it does reinforce and cement in- and out-group dynamics. You're more likely to be exposed to unfamiliar ideas on a place like Reddit, specifically because you don't _have_ to pick an explicit bubble. When picking a Lemmy instance, you kinda end up aligning yourself with some worldview, and letting some set of strangers curate your environment for you. Incidentally, that's sort of the weirdest part of signing up for Lemmy. I can't be the only one who got to the "Pick an instance!" step and got kinda paralyzed. I'm a programmer, should I sign up to a programmer-centric instance? But I also have hobbies, political views, favorite forms & genres of media... Should those take priority? And by picking one of them, what curation or censorship am I going to be subject to? I appreciate the fact that Lemmy isn't under the thumb of one monolith, and that I can bounce from once instance to another if the first isn't working out. But I also like the 'big-tent' feeling of Reddit, where I can sub to all kinds of subreddits, even if the two groups don't get along at all.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I see what you're saying. OTOH, you can belong to several Lemmy instances at once. In that sense, it's kind of like phpBB. Which forum do I want to join? The set that covers my interests today! Maybe you like to argue about Star Trek vs Star Wars on a Sci-Fi Lemmy/phpBB, and learn to make soufflés the French Cuisine board of a Cooking Lemmy/phpBB. You don't have to join the Cooking instance and then limit yourself to looking for fellow chefs who also like Firefly.
  - ertian 3y ago
    Yeah, that's true. Others have said it elsewhere in this thread, but I wish identity was more independent in the fediverse. If federated services just used OAuth or something, your identity could be portable between Mastodon, Lemmy, and PeerTube, and you could use several instances without having to manage a bunch of different accounts. Heck, you wouldn't necessary _need_ accounts, they could just be implicitly created for you when you posted on a server.
    - kstrauser 3y ago
      I'm with you there. I'd love if that were the case. Even if it were only for associated services, like having a domain-specific SSO for mastodon.example.com, pixelfed.example.com, and lemmy.example.com so that you didn't have to maintain 3 accounts for those 3 services owned and operated by the same people, it'd still be super useful.
iteratethis 3y ago
I don't think that paints a complete picture. There's a shared covenant and there's shared block lists, both of which heavily influence what the norm is on the larger Mastodon network. Perhaps an even larger dynamic are activist-type admins that have an extremely low tolerance for content countering their political beliefs and will blackmail other admins into enforcing a block of a user or entire instance. None of this is a shocking revelation as a large portion of older Mastodon users are known for their excessive safety-ism. It's a perpetual conflict on the network versus those that want to be more forgiving and pragmatic. Anyway, the bottom line is that mainstream Mastodon is a left to far-left network, and content is moderated as such. The idea "just pick another server" doesn't really apply.
- kstrauser 3y ago
  I vehemently disagree. In practice, I don't use those blocklists and neither do the neighbor instances we most heavily interact with. I'll occasionally hear from a friend that "new instance XYZ is sharing loli porn" or "instance ABC's moderators quit and now it's flooded with swastikas", and then I (and my neighbors) will verify whether that's true, and then disconnect those specific instances. I also think mainstream Mastodon is only left to far-left in the median, because far-right instances tend to be more of a pain in the ass to be around than far-left ones, and thus get themselves banned more often. If there were far-left instances running around posting memes "joking" that we should kill minorities, I'm confident they'd also get disconnected quickly. Put another way, I don't recall ever disconnecting with an instance because of its users' opinions, unless those opinions were utterly vile to the point that I'm completely unwilling to hear "their side of the argument". Most blocks are due to bad behavior, not unsavory thought.
  - iteratethis 3y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest that you're somehow unreasonable in how you run your server, I was mostly commenting on the larger concept of mainstream Mastodon. Indeed, right to far-right doesn't stand a chance there so they get blocked. They effectively move to a darkweb situation where you never see their content unless you're really trying hard to look for it. What remains, mainstream Mastodon, is moderated to the left, if not far-left. Or perhaps it's a very vocal far-left minority silencing the rest. It's of course not universal across the entire network, but roughly the vibe of the network.

Feathercrown 3y ago

> the best solution is to use your own website for everything You can host your own fediverse services and won't have to worry about being censored

iteratethis 3y ago

Mainstream Mastodon is basically hard-left Gen Z. Misfits and doomers, including the many joyless Twitter refugees. To each their own, but I learned that I rather have a little "too much" speech instead of this.