this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Defederation is becoming the Lemmy meme.
I think being on lemmy does not in any way oblige a user to listen to everyone all the time. A lot of people will just come here for a good time. And for the freedom of speech activists: freedom of speech also involves other peoples freedom not to want to listen.
Moreover, I think most people who want to defederate with certain instances don’t necessarily have a problem with different world views, but have a problem with the tone being set by a small percentage of the users of said instances. Unfortunately, only a small percentage is needed to create a general vibe.
I hope it will be possible for individual users to block entire instances very soon, this way this whole debate will become obsolete. Personally, I can’t wait for it (the debate to become obsolete, not blocking instances necessarily)
Also freedom of speech is between your government and you. Your government can't censor speech, private companies, individuals, organizations, ect, can censor your speech or censor themselves from hearing it. All rights are only between an individual and their government.
The private property rights that give private companies the ability to censor your speech are created and inforced by the government in the first place, so functionally it's not different. A handful of massive companies who functionally own the government getting to police what is acceptable speech is not functionally different from the government doing it directly.
Oh absolutely, taken in a greater context which I totally neglected to say that's absolutely true.
I really can't fathom why people cry about "freedom of speech" when something privately owned decides not to include what they consider fucking shit. Freedom of speech is the fact the government cannot stop you from saying what you want. NOTHING ELSE. People paying to run their own instances do not owe you anything
Different rights have different scopes. Some rights, like the right to live, are between everyone. Some others, like the right to receive a purchased product, are only between buyer and seller. Freedom of speech "just happens" to be between individual and government, in countries where it's even a right.
The blocking instances thing won't necessarily solve this problem.
You might be able to block posts from an instance but not comments or votes.
Blocking votes is not a concern, but it’s the comment toxicity that is (in my opinion) making this place lose something very special.
IDK, I think brigading / vote manipulation has more of an impact than most realise.