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The main thing that made Lemmy succeed was structural: no matter how bad an admin team is, you can limit their impact on your experience, by picking another instance.
The main focus of the text is something else though. It’s what I call “the problem of the witches”.
Child-eating witches are bad, but so is witch hunting. People are bound to be falsely labelled as witches and create social paranoia, and somewhere down the road what should be considered witch behaviour will include silly things with barely anything to do with witchcraft - such as planting wheat:
- if you’re planting wheat you’ll harvest it.
- if you harvest wheat you get straw.
- if you get straw you can make a straw broom.
- if you make a straw broom you can fly on the sky
- conclusion: planting wheat is witchcraft activity.
However, once you say “we don’t burn witches here”, you aren’t just protecting the people falsely mislabelled as witches (a moral thing to do). You’re also protecting the actual witches - that’s immoral, and more importantly it’s bound to attract the witches, and make people who don’t want witches to go away.
In other words, no matter how much freedom of speech is important, once you advertise a site based on its freedom of speech you’ll get a handful of free speech idealists, and lots of people who want to use that freedom of speech to say things that shouldn’t be said for a good reason.
That harmed a lot of Reddit alternatives. Specially as Reddit was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons (getting rid of witches not due to moral reasons, or thinking about its userbase, but because the witches were bad rep). So you got a bunch of free witches eager to settle in whatever new platform you created.
Well said, then at some point your platform gets labelled “the witch platform” and non-witches will leave.
It happens before the label. When you start seeing a witch flying on your sky every night, you’re already leaving.
There is another solution. Make it so witches cannot cause harm, everyone gives a little bit to make everything work for everyone.
We already give things away: money with taxes, certain liberties, information, hours of our lives; how many of those are done with complete intentionality? i.e. could we choose to do something else? I’d rather do something I choose or want to do even if its harmful or less pleasant because it’s something I am privy to instead of not.
A gun would help stop those witches from flying in the sky.
I may be taking this analogy the wrong way.
Okay, the gun thing made me laugh.
But perhaps you aren’t taking the analogy the wrong way?
A gun is usage of force. And the paradox of tolerance does prescribe the usage of force against “the intolerant”, in a few situations. Not everything is solved by, for example, letting fascists to hang with their friends in McDonald’s. (Except Mussolini. Upside down.)
This really sounds like a reformulation (with more accessible language and preferable IMO) of Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance. I have it below for your convenience:
Less well known is the paradox of tolerance:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. (in note 4 to Chapter 7, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1)
Yup - it is, partially, Popper’s paradox of tolerance.
However there’s a second risk that I mentioned there, that Popper doesn’t talk about: that the mechanisms and procedures used to get rid of the intolerant might be abused and misused, to hunt the others.
I call this “witch hunting”, after the mediaeval practice - because the ones being thrown into the fire were rarely actual witches, they were mostly common people. You see this all the time in social media; specially in environments that value “trust” (i.e. gullibleness) and orthodoxy over rationality. Such as Twitter (cue to “the main character of the day”), Reddit (pitchfork emporium), and even here in Lemmy.
[from your other comment] There is another solution. Make it so witches cannot cause harm, everyone gives a little bit to make everything work for everyone.
It is trickier than it looks like. We might simplify them as “witches”, but we’re dealing with multiple groups. Some partially overlap (e.g. incels/misogynists vs. homophobic people), but some have almost nothing to do with each other, besides “they cause someone else harm”. So it’s actually a lot of work to prevent them from causing harm, to the point that it’s inviable.
I think this makes way more sense than the OP. The OP seems like a leftist, so that’s probably why they reached that conclusion.
But I agree, the real solution wasn’t that a certain kind of witch was banned, it was that the various forms of witches could be quarantined. The Lemmy devs had no control over other instances using the platform to host stuff they disagree with (e.g. exploding heads was/is a thing), they did have control over what content was allowed on their hosted instance, which was by default the most popular.
The thing that saved Lemmy, imo, wasn’t being leftist, but providing a separate space for the most extreme leftists (lemmygrad) and keeping the main instance pretty tame. The leftists could talk about leftist stuff in their instance, the right wing could talk about right wing stuff on their instance, and the main instance had the more moderate people. Sure, some crazy stuff appeared on the main page from time to time, but it was easy to write off as “that weird instance” instead of something that represents the platform as a whole.
Other projects didn’t have that separation, so the early content was dominated by extreme views from whichever group felt motivated to join, and frequently that was far-right nonsense. With Lemmy, actual communists were quarantined by the nature of federation, and many instances blocked their instance, so there were a lot of places that didn’t have that content that attracted moderates.
I’m actually working on my own Reddit alternative, and I’m trying to be extra careful in how I approach moderation so I don’t repeat the same mistakes as other alternatives (happy to discuss if interested). Lemmy has done a great job, whether intentional or unintentional, and there are some great lessons to be learned.
For the sake of honesty, I need to mention that I’m myself leftist. Communist, in fact. (I even had a Lemmygrad account, and I deleted it for reasons unrelated to political disagreements.) I’m just not willing to play along witch hunting, nor the sort of false dichotomy that has been so common nowadays, regardless of political views.
And funnily enough, I said the above partially because of Marxism - the ideology (superstructure) is in large part a result of the base, and in this case the base is the platform structure. A unified platform structure will eventually lead to an unified ideology; while the ActivityPub leads to a loosely connected network, not just of instances but of ideologies too.
The other reason why I said the above was Ruqqus. I was there, and I saw exactly what happened: the platform started rather friendly and wide, then the alt right started seizing control, and everyone else got exiled to Discord - including the developers+admins. It’s basically what I described above: they said “we don’t burn witches here”, and suddenly all VOATfugees shitted the place.
I’m actually working on my own Reddit alternative […]
I hope that your platform succeeds. Seriously. Another nail on Reddit’s coffin doesn’t hurt.
Just for curiosity, do you plan using the ActivityPub protocol, or something similar?
do you plan on using the ActivityPub protocol
Maybe later, but federation isn’t an initial goal.
I want a completely distributed system like BitTorrent or IPFS, so all data is stored on user devices instead of centralized servers (might have some servers to help with availability). I want moderation to be distributed as well, but I’m trying to figure out a way that can promote diversity instead of just falling into the hands of whatever group comes first (i.e. if with a voting model), or fracturing into lots of smaller groups (i.e. web of trust).
I feel moderation needs to be good from the start, so I’m holding off on integrating with other services until I figure that out.
A unified platform structure will eventually lead to an unified ideology
Perhaps. Communities help, but the real issue is quality (or at least diversity) of moderation (I.e. the admins of instances until FT mods are chosen). Reddit worked well because it had pretty good moderation where it counted.
Distributed system? Madman! You’re going a step further! Mad respect for that, seriously. Now I want to see your project to get successful.
Regarding moderation, did you see this text? I feel like it’s perhaps worth a try; I don’t expect it to devolve into web of trust-like “feuds” as there’ll be always people working as links between multiple groups, but it also prevents the “first come, first served” issue that you mentioned.
Great article! I was thinking along these lines, so I’m glad to see a formalized version of it.
What if participants could automatically block the malicious peer, if they discover that the peer has been blocked by someone the participant trusts?
That’s essentially what I’m after. Here’s the basic mechanism I’ve been considering:
- Users report posts, which builds trust with other users that reported that post
- Users vote on posts, which builds trust with other users that voted the same way
- Posts are removed for a given user if enough trusted people from #1 reported it
- Ranking of posts is based largely on #2, as well as suggestions for new communities
- Users can review a moderation log periodically (like Steam’s recommendation queue) to refine their moderation experience (e.g. agree or disagree with reports), and they can disable moderation entirely
And since content needs to be stored on peoples’ machines, users would be less likely to host posts they disagree with, so hopefully very unpopular posts disappear (e.g. CSAM).
So I’m glad this is formalized, I can probably learn quite a bit from it.
This is also more or less the case across the fediverse.
In the case of lemmy though, I think there are also other more subtle value at play, like for instance the devs disinterest in running a flag ship instance and motivation in creating a platform to ensure communities not welcome elsewhere can make their own home (which arguably balanced well with the disinterest in fascy free speech rubbish).
A major difference is how they interact with feedback - the main reason I never did my own mastodon instance is the developers attitude. “We’re not interested in helping you because you didn’t set it up exactly as in the guide” was (and maybe still is) all over the mastodon bug tracker.
That was the first thing I looked for when lemmy became popular - and found they were taking deployment issues to even the most absurd system seriously.
Additionally they treat suggestions seriously - even if they personally think it is stupid - and even implement some of that. Pretty much no chance of anything of that happening with mastodon.
Yea nice. Not to take away from the lemmy devs and your praise … but mastodon certainly seems problematic in this regard. While gargron has done a lot in building that platform, and kinda deserves, I suppose, to “own” the platform, it certainly seems (from what I’ve gathered) a lot of people’s work in building up the software and its userbase has been easily ignored or dismissed by gargron, and of course, as you say, he’s really not that interested in what others want or need from the platform.
Dessalines o7
People at Fediverse care too much about the devs. 95% libs on Mastodon, 85% Reps on Soapbox/Pleroma, 70% commies on Lemmy, etc. Never gave a shit about it since nearly all federate with each other.
I mean they were also the admins of the biggest instance for a while
oh is that not the case anymore? is that because world is the biggest instance now? might be preferable if most don’t appreciate their politics. Also like, I wouldn’t want server downtime or anything to effect the devwork of lemmy…
Well that explains a lot of the generally left / communist propaganda de we on lemmy. Here’s the thing, I’ve got nothing against communists in fact I have a few friends who are die hard communists and that’s a perfectly fine, reasonable and interesting way of thinking.
With that said I do have a problem with the gender/identity bullshit people - those who end up yelling to politicians about children not getting free gender conversion therapy and whatnot - because unfortunately they get mixed with communist groups/parties that don’t particularly share their views but agree to “bite the bullet” just for the numbers. Numbers are all fun but this will eventually backfire once those same communist groups became associated with those people and lose all their credibility.
I’ve even got a black friend!
😂 😂 😂 😂
So I actually want to engage with you. If some stuff ends up being like “collapsed” or “hidden by default” because some just had a one-off bad experience with users from a particular community, do you think you’d agree that it is an OK compromise or is that relenting too much for freedom of expression?
Yeah, thanks. /s For turning Lemmy into a left wing echo chamber. Because we all know how good echo chambers (right or left) are. 🤦♂️
My favorite line from this is, “There were no vaunted ideals of free speech…”. Because they said the quiet part loud. That was nice of them.
The existence of lemmy.world which you’re part of, proves that lemmy tolerates right-wing instances if you ask me.
Make use of the decentralized nature of lemmy, the devs won’t knock at your door for creating or posting on right-wing instances.
Maybe it’s more that the majority of the fediverse doesn’t tolerate far right bullshit and open racism, unlike the other reddit alternatives.
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Looks to me like people downvote you because all your comments are said in either a condescending or dismissive manner.
Edit: also that you are a free market boot licker which generally doesn’t sit well with groups of pirates, commies, and open-source users.
Lol. Your posts are all antagonistic, smug and self important. No wonder you are a disaster.
Great thing about free speech. They can talk and so can you. You can ask them why believe in that stuff and maybe stop them from believing in it. But what’s hard. So just ban them.
Where bigots are welcome, no one else truly is.
If you want a place where bigots are welcome, you have plenty. 4chan, reddit, facebook, youtube comments, exploding-heads, xhitter, etc.
Not everywhere has to be a playground for bigots. There are too many already.
Free speech except the speech that espouses taking away free speech.
Lemmy.world is a right wing instance? Is that what you are saying?
I guess the closing footnote of the blog post summarizes it well:
from the point of view of many leftists, they’re not very far left, and liberals are, in fact, right wing
Trying to place people as left/right in an international forum like this is a complete waste of time. I’m writing from a Polish instance, where communist symbols are banned and the political left/right dimension looks completely different from my Scandinavian home country. In my traditionally left-leaning home country I’m a leftist. By the minds of many Americans I’m a stupid centrist because I’m not ideologically pure enough - Social Democracy is just capitalism with a human face etc. And don’t get me started on the Russians and the Chinese.
For some people, if you reject Leninism you’re right wing.
For some people, if you reject Leninism you’re right wing.
It goes deeper: sometimes being Leninist is not enough.
I used to be part of a socialist party, split into many “tendencies” (sub-parties? Dunno how to translate it). The way that we often referred to the largest tendency? “The right-wing of the party”.
Only the purest are good enough for the People’s Front of Judea.
In a few cases it is a matter of purity = orthodoxy, indeed. In some it’s simply stupidity: failure to realise that those things rely on a point of reference. And in some it was simply “it’s understood in the context anyway, so… meh”.
Still kind of amusing for outsiders.
the devs won’t knock at your door for creating or posting on right-wing instances.
True. But they can also lock it. I see federation has a double edged sword.
Lemmyworld is far more populated than Lemmy.ml, LW would be the one locking them out
Strong agree.
A while ago lemmyworld temporarily defederated from my old instance, and the feeds + activity dried up pretty quickly.
They refederated after a few of us hopped on to the matrix to try and find out the reason behind it, but it showed how much mass Lemmyworld has. Even if the communities are distributed across many instances, most of the users are visiting from Lemmyworld.
Things may be a little different now though as users have started to spread out a bit, and of course we have instances like Beehaw and Hexbear that aren’t federated with lemmyworld, but are running just fine.
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Would you say like in the case of your comment, where the ratio skews heavily towards negative, something like having the thread collapsed by default or like hiding the score would be a better way to facilitate productive discussion? I think it works as a temporary middle ground (say the first 24H a post is up and folk’s aren’t completely decided, it gives controversial ideas a fightin’ chance)
I’ll admit lemmy is left wing, especially compared to sites like reddit, bluesky, voat, or any one of those fascist twitter clones like parler. But unlike the fascist twitter clones, I’d say many of the more popular instances here aren’t echo chambers, just spaces with larger overton windows.
there were no vaunted ideals of free speech
So? Even as someone who loves free speech (i am literally an anarchist), I recognize that speech has consequences, and sometimes those consequences are getting banned or defederated. This article talks about how not being a free speech absolutist makes a site more appealing by removing fascists, and lemmy’s issue with tankies by being more open to them. The second issue sorted itself out using federation and defederation.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing if people don’t want to see hate speech and wanf moderation. That was the feature that got me to join lemmy at first, beehaw was my first instance and was certainly the least toxic place I have found online.
Echo chambers aren’t as prevalent or as problematic as you think. The biggest echo chamber is actually most likely your own neighborhood. The internet, even small communities, is where you’re most likely exposed to diverse viewpoints. Shit, just yesterday I saw someone saying they were hurt by how we talked about Slavs. Where the heck am I gonna see that in Maryland?
That may be so, but in the other scenario, lemmy wouldn’t exist and we’d all be miserablely sitting in reddit still
Free speech is a good thing. Absolute free speech is the excuse shit people use to air their shitty opinions.
