Instagram blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and a number of other terms Tuesday.
Really? Try making a post supporting conservatism or attacking socialism and see how that goes for you. Most likely it’ll get down voted to oblivion, and in many communities mods will remove it. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s a high quality post either with tons of scholarly sources and whatnot.
The Fediverse is tolerant of leftists and progressives, and a bit less tolerant of libertarians. If there’s any hint of conservatism or centrism, the veneer of tolerance disappears.
I don’t know the solution here, but I think allowing users to choose their moderation is a piece of it.
I’m not talking about intolerant speech, like disparaging marginalized groups or something, I’m talking about even mundane policy. Try agreeing with Trump on something and you’ll get the same tired “Nazi bar” reaction.
For example, try agreeing with the pardon of Ross Ulbricht, who was given a life sentence with no possibility of parole for hosting a website that facilitated relatively safe drug trade. He was a first time offender, there’s no evidence that he actually sold anything illegal or did anything violent, and he acted on the philosophical idea that consenting, peaceful adults should be able to trade things freely (i.e. he wasn’t in a cartel or anything). But because he was pardoned by Trump, people jump to the conclusion that it must somehow be bad. If Biden (or Harris) did the exact same, it would get positive responses and people would likely assume it was somehow good. This has absolutely nothing to do with either side here, and if anything, it leans liberal/progressive, but because a conservative did it, it’s automatically bad (he only did it because he made a deal with libertarians to try to get their vote).
It’s the same kind of tribalist nonsense we see on the right.
And to be clear, this isn’t a “both sides, lol” argument, it’s commentary about tribalism in general. If something sounds sufficiently different from what we’re comfortable with, we reject it without further consideration. This is more extreme on the more popular instances (e.g. Lemmy world), which seem to be a lightning rod for this type of behavior, and my best argument is that people comfortable with group think flock to larger instances, whereas people interested in combating it flock to smaller instances.
They can start their own instance. Away from ours. No need to tolerate intolerance. We don’t need that shit here. Just because its open does not mean we want right wingers to wipe their shit on the walls. They can start their own instance in the fediverse and wipe shit on the walls there in their own little community. 🤷
I’m not talking about right wingers, I’m talking about anything that seems different from the majority opinion on a given community. It could have absolutely nothing to do with marginalized groups, if it challenges the leftist/progressive agenda in any way, it gets downvoted or moderated away.
Examples:
Trump pardon of Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road guy) - this was a libertarian agenda item, and completely goes against the conservative “War on Drugs,” yet so many push back on it; if Biden did the same, people would likely approve of it (“that poor kid was treated unjustly”)
try discussing any form of government waste (there’s plenty, not $2T like Musk claims, but probably a few billion)
TikTok - people claimed it was anti-China fear mongering when Trump initially suggested we ban it, then supported the ban when Biden admin supported it, and now are against softening the ban now that Trump is in power (that’s some serious political whiplash)
This isn’t tolerance vs intolerance, it’s tribalism, and the Fediverse just has different sets of tribes vs mainstream social media.
I’ve been there and it’s way worse. In fact, I almost left Lemmy entirely when it seemed Lemmy.ml was going to remain the dominant instance, but the still bad but much less bad Lemmy.world seems to have taken over.
I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don’t fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
I banned from the news communities so I made my own [email protected] with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that’s chill AF allowing real discussion.
Whether you care about down votes on your own posts is irrelevant. But down votes on topics/categories absolutely steers the conversation and is precisely the concern we’re discussing here.
People love to rail against big tech companies for silencing certain groups through moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, but look the other way when we have tyranny of the majority doing the same thing through down votes and general pressure from the community to drive away dissent. It’s the same idea, just different groups of people doing the silencing.
I don’t care about down votes on my posts either, but I do care about systematic down votes on posts with ideas that are not dangerous, just unpopular. We won’t progress without challenging the status quo, yet we humans love to group ourselves into tribes and cast out anyone who doesn’t conform.
My point is that Lemmy isn’t any better than other social media, it has the same problems, just a different status quo.
Really? Try making a post supporting conservatism or attacking socialism and see how that goes for you. Most likely it’ll get down voted to oblivion, and in many communities mods will remove it. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s a high quality post either with tons of scholarly sources and whatnot.
The Fediverse is tolerant of leftists and progressives, and a bit less tolerant of libertarians. If there’s any hint of conservatism or centrism, the veneer of tolerance disappears.
I don’t know the solution here, but I think allowing users to choose their moderation is a piece of it.
It’s the paradox of intolerance.
Conservatives are generally intolerant nowadays, towards marginalized people.
It’s ok to be intolerant of intolerance.
I’m not talking about intolerant speech, like disparaging marginalized groups or something, I’m talking about even mundane policy. Try agreeing with Trump on something and you’ll get the same tired “Nazi bar” reaction.
For example, try agreeing with the pardon of Ross Ulbricht, who was given a life sentence with no possibility of parole for hosting a website that facilitated relatively safe drug trade. He was a first time offender, there’s no evidence that he actually sold anything illegal or did anything violent, and he acted on the philosophical idea that consenting, peaceful adults should be able to trade things freely (i.e. he wasn’t in a cartel or anything). But because he was pardoned by Trump, people jump to the conclusion that it must somehow be bad. If Biden (or Harris) did the exact same, it would get positive responses and people would likely assume it was somehow good. This has absolutely nothing to do with either side here, and if anything, it leans liberal/progressive, but because a conservative did it, it’s automatically bad (he only did it because he made a deal with libertarians to try to get their vote).
It’s the same kind of tribalist nonsense we see on the right.
And to be clear, this isn’t a “both sides, lol” argument, it’s commentary about tribalism in general. If something sounds sufficiently different from what we’re comfortable with, we reject it without further consideration. This is more extreme on the more popular instances (e.g. Lemmy world), which seem to be a lightning rod for this type of behavior, and my best argument is that people comfortable with group think flock to larger instances, whereas people interested in combating it flock to smaller instances.
They can start their own instance. Away from ours. No need to tolerate intolerance. We don’t need that shit here. Just because its open does not mean we want right wingers to wipe their shit on the walls. They can start their own instance in the fediverse and wipe shit on the walls there in their own little community. 🤷
I’m not talking about right wingers, I’m talking about anything that seems different from the majority opinion on a given community. It could have absolutely nothing to do with marginalized groups, if it challenges the leftist/progressive agenda in any way, it gets downvoted or moderated away.
Examples:
This isn’t tolerance vs intolerance, it’s tribalism, and the Fediverse just has different sets of tribes vs mainstream social media.
You could always go over to the tanke side of Lemmy
I’ve been there and it’s way worse. In fact, I almost left Lemmy entirely when it seemed Lemmy.ml was going to remain the dominant instance, but the still bad but much less bad Lemmy.world seems to have taken over.
I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don’t fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
I banned from the news communities so I made my own [email protected] with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that’s chill AF allowing real discussion.
Whether you care about down votes on your own posts is irrelevant. But down votes on topics/categories absolutely steers the conversation and is precisely the concern we’re discussing here.
People love to rail against big tech companies for silencing certain groups through moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, but look the other way when we have tyranny of the majority doing the same thing through down votes and general pressure from the community to drive away dissent. It’s the same idea, just different groups of people doing the silencing.
I don’t care about down votes on my posts either, but I do care about systematic down votes on posts with ideas that are not dangerous, just unpopular. We won’t progress without challenging the status quo, yet we humans love to group ourselves into tribes and cast out anyone who doesn’t conform.
My point is that Lemmy isn’t any better than other social media, it has the same problems, just a different status quo.