So, it seems like PieFed is becoming a real alternative to lemmy.
What are the differences between these two? From a tech perspective, and also morality/ethics, if you want. Any differences in vision for these services?
Say whatever is on your mind. I want to know.
On which one should we put our weight?
Non-nazi conservatives already can use the existing general instances. Every ‘free speech right wing’ instance that has been created immediately became nazi bars that welcomed fascists. Tolerating the intolerant will simply push away the non-fascists from participating, which is what ultimately caused previous reddit alternatives like Voat (and Bitchute, Nostr, Odysee, etc) to fail.
The majority of conservatives are not nazis even if they unknowingly support them. It does makes sense that nazis are looking for a home and colonized offshoots like lemmy though as the explicit ones would be forced from mainstream outlets.
Obviously there is a line there, where do you draw it? From banning out and out nazis, to what? Who says who is a nazi, or a fascist?
We should have a clear set of rules, and violations, or censoring, should go through a process ending in a jury trial of users before any final decision is made. Not only would it be fun to run such jury trials on violations, and give a sense of community, but it would prevent moderators and developers deciding for us what we can see and prevent abuses of their power, and prevent government and business interests getting their hooks into the moderation.
In the case of banning instances idk about that even, my instance doesn’t block any instances and I’ve seen no nazis. Even if I did, so what, I could avoid them, same as I do with tankies. It’s better to be able to see what they are doing anyway, insight is valuable at times. The instance could have a banner explaining they are condemned by the other instances, where you have to affirmatively click on it like a nsfw post.
What about people critical of Israel? Israel’s superfans insist it’s bigotry to not support their final solution against their others, to question them forcing millions of people into ghettos. Are we to censor anyone disputing such narratives because bigotry is alleged? Because they equate criticism of their policies as naziism, quite literally, while themselves being nazis of a new sort. The bad (worse) guys always accuse their victims/opponents of doing what they are doing. Why should developers and site administrators decide truth on their own?
I do not see what good it does banning instances in the first place. You think your own users are going to become nazis after seeing their posts? To protect their weak minds from wrongthink? It doesn’t really work like that, and people not being exposed to it can make it more likely they get seduced to it not less. And it’s not in the best traditions of western culture to censor viewpoints as such.
What prevents that is the base structure of the fediverse itself. Anyone can spin up a new instance, and choose to federate with whomever they wish, and users can choose which instance most closely aligns with how they want their experience to be. That’s not possible on centralized services like Reddit.
If a business were to somehow place themselves as admins on an instance and it became pro-corporate, it would be easy to defederate them, as 90% of instances already have done to Threads.
That’s a strawman argument, as it implies that any allegation, no matter the evidence behind it or who makes it, will somehow be enough to justify defederation.
You don’t just defederate on allegation, you verify based on actions. If an instance is openly pro-genocide zionists, or openly fascist, or openly encouraging or tolerating racism, bigotry against minorities, etc, then they should be defederated if you don’t want to turn into a Nazi bar.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a Nazi Bar. The short version is: If Nazis frequent your bar, and you don’t kick them out, more Nazis will come, the rest of your clientele leaves, and your bar will become a Nazi Bar.
You can’t give some nazis just a couple booths of your bar and tell the rest of your patrons to ignore them, the other patrons will leave and not come back, because they don’t want to associate with nazis.
If you federate with nazi instances, they will not engage with the rest of the fediverse in good faith, they will disrupt and troll and put off normal users from wanting to engage with the platform at all (many people have said that the high tankie presence on Lemmy is offputting enough to avoid it, as an example, it would be even worse if nazis were also welcomed).
I think it’s rather close minded to reject the jury trials for violations on instances, under clear rules. Moderation, both site wide and in communities, is a big reason half the people are on here. You expect them to shop around to every instance to find ones where their beliefs are in alignment with moderators, and how they could read a disagreement you may have with people on here, that could be misunderstood or taken out of context, or downright wrong?
To say jury trials could be co opted, not if you set it up right, it would be less able to get co-opted as imperious edicts from administrators as you are advocating would be.
Your arguments in favor of censorship always boil down to us trusting the people running the joint. If a drastic step like banning an instance is taken, then it wouldn’t be hard to prove that to a jury of your peers. And other remedies could be available as I said, like hiding their posts under a nsfw with an explanation.
Reasonable people can differ on where to draw the line in banning instaces, as I said you would have to ban the nazis (talk about strawman,) you keep using in your definition, but the majority of conservatives are not nazis. It would be like banning all left groups for tankies that purport to be left.
This kind of thinking is why the fediverse hasn’t taken off. We have all the wrong people in charge, from business to government, to developers of lemmy apparently, and their cheerleaders promoting censorship to protects us from wrongthink, out of a sheer contempt for our intelligence.
You keep calling it censorship like defederation blocks any ability for a user to access the defederated instance. It doesn’t. A user can still visit it directly if they really want to, and they can move to an instance like yours that doesn’t defederate anything if they really want to.
You are very dismissive of admins or moderators who may not want to take on additional moderation load of dealing with nazi bars. Lemm.ee shut down due to admin burnout, moderation load is not a triviality that can be glossed over.
Except on the most popular instances; Sysadmins, admins, and moderators are all putting in a not insignificant amount of effort keeping their servers maintained and updated, removing spam, illegal material, trolls, etc, all without receiving a dime. The fediverse is mostly all volunteer effort. To sustain that effort, you want to make the job of keeping all this going at least somewhat fun.
If you demand that they federate with instances that only bring with it endless trolls, fights, spam, fascist and racist material, it will stop being fun. Coming to the site will feel like a slog, and burnout will crop up quick. This is a studied problem.
Anyone can be in charge of their own instance, you yourself could be the change you want to see. Instead, you seem to dislike the idea that most instances don’t agree with your views on federation, despite the federated nature of the fediverse allowing for the instances you desire to exist. We just don’t want to talk to them.
Do you feel like non-nazi conservatives are not able to use the general instances?
What do you mean federating with instances that bring endless trolls, fights, spam, fascist and racist material? As I responded on a different reply I gave a brief recount of my wandering onto a hexbear post not knowing they were tankies and getting mobbed by like 100 replies, then having some follow me onto other threads for a few weeks. I got suspicious and caught a couple of them and called them on it and they stopped.
My crime, and I thought they were just super politically correct at first incensing me to argue back even more, was saying they are trying to turn us into an eastern style government, where we aren’t allowed to disagree with leaders or policies. Did not understand the vitriol. Really dumb trolling too, lots of moving pictures, gifs, I fucking hate those things. God rot gif givers, with exceptions.
But just being federated with them, their users come onto your threads and talk trash? But if not federated they can’t come onto your threads? What if my instance is federated with them, and your isn’t, and we are all on the same thread on an instance we all are federated on, can they only see my replies and not yours?
idk all the ins and outs. Less censorship is better in my opinion and other options short of blocking whole swaths of users could be employed but yes at a point you have to block them, can’t have nazis, or agent provocateurs could even be used to say illegal things and then try to get the authorities on that instance for not having it removed in time kind of thing. There is a line where you have to censor. I think that line should at least be under clear rules enforced faithfully, and the best way to enforce them faithfully would be for major decisions to be decided by a jury of users. Including decisions to permaban users, especially that.
All of the right-wing instances that were created housed that material and those types of users. Most instances defederated from them because of it. They did not defederate from them because they were John McCain style conservatives who wanted small government and lower taxes, they defederated from them because the admins of those instances allowed and approved of genuinely far-right fascist material and dangerous misinformation being posted there, and their users were often trolls or sealions that would mess with users on other instances.
That is why many instances defederated from Hexbear and Lemmygrad, including my own instance, despite being leftist itself.
Yes, that’s right.
Yes. I would be able to see your replies, but I wouldn’t be able to see the other comments from the defederated instance, nor would they be able to see mine.
That’s up to you. You’re welcome to use a ‘free speech’ instance, but if lemmy.today does erode into an outpost, a hub for said reactionaries to organised and harangue the fediverse down the line due to low local moderation, then lemmy.today itself would become at risk of being defederated by the wider fediverse.
What do you mean “organize and harangue” the fediverse? Is disagreeing with you that? Taking an issue with your political picks and their stances and platform? Who put you in charge? I didn’t vote for you.
Using low populated instances, or poorly moderated instances as springboards by which to troll, spread misinformation and post in bad faith.
No.
I didn’t say, in this context, that I would be the arbiter. Just that if an instance was used that way by bad agents consistently, and it was noticed, it could find itself at risk of being defederated.
Beyond that, there’s little support on larger instances like .world, sh.itjust.works etc of re-federating with lemmygrad, hexbear, maga.place etc.
I see lemmygrad and hexbear, and they are insufferable, but I can avoid posts on their instance.
When I first got on here I didn’t know any of that and responded on some hexbear post and they piled on me, I defended myself thinking they were super politically correct until someone noticed and explained to me they were communists from other countries. Probably 100 replies from them.
All just to make cheap political points, west bad. No you can’t fix anything in the west stop right there west always bad, eastern dictatorship good apparently. That was my affront too, I said they were trying to turn the US into an eastern style government where everyone has to pretend to believe their leaders. While here in the west we’ve long been able to disagree with our leaders. They piled on, and I thought they were mad because of political correctness gone awry.
I should add I think they followed me onto other threads and trolled me too for a couple of weeks, I actually caught a couple and called them out on it.
Other attempts to make common cause all ended in failure as well as a whole although I’ve spoken to a few reasonable people you will always get some that jump down your throat about something. They also seem to need permission to believe in something. Pathetic.
So I see where one would want to ban them, I think other measures could be better, like hiding their posts under a banner, nsfw style perhaps. It could come auto censored and you have to click on it, it could give you the options to set up how to block what. There could be ways to mute them or groups, idk the mechanics.
But if drastic action is taken, it should be under a clear set of rules, and I think those rules in an ideal instance could reach a jury trial of users, where someones argues the best arguments either side and a decision is made. I think that should also be available to other moderation actions like permanently banning users. Half the people on lemmy here were targeted on reddit with dishonest moderation in the first place, and everyone on there has seen moderators abusing their power, had false allegations lobbed at them, been accused of motivations they don’t have.
Clear and honest rules would prevent abuses and misunderstandings, and prevent manipulators, many of which are organized for ill purposes, from running malign agendas with armies of mechanized troll divisions and influence agents, some of which are paid for by our own governments and have hooks into social media companies to pretend not to see them and cave to their bad faith moderations asks, whether by mass flagging through those agents, or homeland security that sent lists of users to ban.
They don’t ban or violoate users for what they are getting banned for either, they find an unrelated subject, and pretend it’s against the rules, often with no plausibility. Because we have no protections, no honest system of appeal, they don’t have to show plausible reasons to violate accounts in the US. Jury Trials would fix that and instill trust, something soon to be in shorter supply, everything is going to go to shit(tier places.)
But, notably here, not necessarily their users. Hence the blocklist implemented by most instances.
But you’re welcome to go on using lemmy.today which does federate with them. What’s the problem?