Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:

  • Don’t like their content
  • Dont like their political leaning
  • Dont like their free speech approach
  • General feeling of being offended
  • I want a safe space!
  • This instance if hurting vulnerable people

I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.

Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148

Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!

  • Barbarian
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    1 year ago

    Is defederation and the call for authorities (admins) the right way to deal with this? Or should the recipient decide what the filters should be? Like in the email approach, the recipient decides if he wants to receive an email and even then it might get filtered out and land in spam.

    There’s a key difference with email: that’s opt-in communication. Generally speaking (outside of botspam which does get blacklisted) you have to sign up for a newsletter or ask someone to email you. It’s opt-in, not opt-out. Lemmy/Kbin are by definition opt-out: a new user, browsing All, will see everything they haven’t blocked.

    An admin, attempting to make the kind of user that they want to see on their instance feel welcome, does have a duty to curate it. If the first post they see on their New feed is a screed calling for the death of all LGBTQ+ people (for example), do you think a brand new user will calmly block the community and move on, or decide that this instance isn’t the one for them? And a user that agrees with that hateful message, they have now gotten the message that this instance is friendly to their worldview.

    Curation determines userbase which determines content. I know which side of the coin I fall on there.

    • HasturOPM
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      1 year ago

      There’s a key difference with email: that’s opt-in communication. Generally speaking (outside of botspam which does get blacklisted) you have to sign up for a newsletter or ask someone to email you. It’s opt-in, not opt-out. Lemmy/Kbin are by definition opt-out: a new user, browsing All, will see everything they haven’t blocked.

      Good point!

      If the first post they see on their New feed is a screed calling for the death of all LGBTQ+ people (for example), do you think a brand new user will calmly block the instance and move on, or decide that this instance isn’t the one for them? And a user that agrees with that hateful message, they have now gotten the message that this instance is friendly to their worldview.

      And here I disagree with you. The world is a horrible, dangerous, wonderful, exciting , murderous, funny, sad, depressing, manic place. Hiding that some people hate gays will not change the fact that some people hate gays. It will also not make these people disappear. Isn’t it better to know reality and accept it as it is, deal with it as it comes?

      • Barbarian
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        1 year ago

        I think that this has been a surprisingly productive debate. I may not agree with you on this, but I do understand where you’re coming from and can respect it. I think I’ll answer this and leave it at that:

        Isn’t it better to know reality and accept it as it is, deal with it as it comes?

        I don’t need to read hateful things to know that hateful people exist. I’ve had plenty of people say far worse to my face IRL. I don’t come to Lemmy and didn’t go to Reddit to get into shouting matches with people who think me or my friends are less-than. My goal here is not changing the world, it’s entertainment and discussion. Neither am I seeking some safe space with a strict blocklist and careful vetting of each user. All I want is a medium place where I can have good conversations without someone questioning my right to exist.

        • HasturOPM
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          1 year ago

          I think that this has been a surprisingly productive debate.

          Thank you and likewise.

          I don’t need to read hateful things to know that hateful people exist. I’ve had plenty of people say far worse to my face IRL. I don’t come to Lemmy and didn’t go to Reddit to get into shouting matches with people who think me or my friends are less-than. My goal here is not changing the world, it’s entertainment and discussion. Neither am I seeking some safe space with a strict blocklist and careful vetting of each user. All I want is a medium place where I can have good conversations without someone questioning my right to exist.

          Questioning your right to exist sound quite stupid, you obviously exist (Let’s not go full Descartes now) and that settles any discussion in my POV.

          As you just said: I can see where you come from and I can respect that, however I don’t fully agree with it.

          Nonetheless it has been a great pleasure to disagree with you and learn about your POV, thanks for stepping up to the task and giving me food for thought.

          • Oni_eyes
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            1 year ago

            It’s not questioning their existence, it’s questioning their right to do so in the way they choose.

            Thus the “to” in right to exist. It’s a different argument entirely and you’re casually merging it the same way you did the vaccines are gene therapy nonsense.

            • HasturOPM
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              1 year ago

              Thus the “to” in right to exist. It’s a different argument entirely and you’re casually merging it the same way you did the vaccines are gene therapy nonsense

              Where was I wrong with my, simplified, explanation? Because you’re just shouting “Fake News!” without providing any argument.

              • Oni_eyes
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                1 year ago

                I provided my argument. There is a difference between “someone exists” and “allowing someone to exist as they are”. By conflating the two you ignore all the people that are determined to prevent the second from happening while allowing for the first within a set limit. Usually those limits may be sound (no pedophiles, no murderers, etc), but a significant (alt right/religious/conservative) group are pushing that a subset of people aren’t allowed the second because it goes against their morals for whatever reason. Accepting that there are hateful communities in the lemmyverse and allowing them access under terms (no brigading, no hatespeech on other instances) is the first option while defederating from hateful communities is the second option, if you needed an example of the difference.

                The only difference between lemmyverse and the real world in this case is that defederating doesn’t remove anyone’s right to exist as they are in their own space, whereas many of these hateful groups want to eliminate the right for people to exist as they are anywhere.

                • HasturOPM
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                  1 year ago

                  I provided my argument. There is a difference between “someone exists” and “allowing someone to exist as they are”.

                  That’s a non-argument. Just because someone says: “Being gay is a sin” this doesn’t deny any gay person the right to be gay or the right to exist. Unless you go to Iran or Dubai and try be be openly gay there, there you can for sure experiments how denial of existence looks like in reality.

                  I also asked you to disprove my simplify explanations of why an argument could me made about mRNA COVID vaccines being genetic treatments. You haven’t said a word about that apart from: This is wrong. Well prove me wrong, please. Where did I fail?

                  The only difference between lemmyverse and the real world in this case is that defederating doesn’t remove anyone’s right to exist as they are in their own space, whereas many of these hateful groups want to eliminate the right for people to exist as they are anywhere.

                  That’s a bold claim, do you have bold evidence to substantiate that?

                  • Oni_eyes
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                    1 year ago

                    “These vaccines do not enter the nucleus of the cell where our DNA (genetic material) is located, so it cannot change or influence our genes.”

                    From the cdc website.

                    All the mRNA vaccine does is feed a blueprint in to the cells protein synthesizer (not modify the genes or add new genes, or interact with them in any way). This new protein is similar to the protein on the surface of the targeted virus and triggers an immune response that will then give the immune system a memory for the targeted virus. It’s like feeding a template into a 3d printer. The new template doesn’t change or alter the printer in any way.