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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Asklemmy
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I think it's far more likely that there will be more of this. Lemmy instances already exist for various extreme political views. They might not be federated with the instance you're using, but they definitely exist.
The nature of the fediverse, with no centralized control or oversight, will produce more such communities, not less.
Honestly, as long as they stay insulated from the rest of the fediverse, it’s not really any different than them spinning up a forum somewhere. It’s going to be a challenge for them to reach new people to warp to their worldview if they are largely kept away from everyone else.
And sure they might lurk in alt accounts to try their recruitment that way in the rest of the fediverse, but I feel like if it won’t be a default to be exposed to the rhetoric (like Reddit) all the time on most servers, since the vast majority aren’t going to want to connect to them, it will come across to potential recruits as exactly how extreme it actually is.
This is definitely a strength of federation.
Want to get rid of right wing communities and their fascist members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
Want to get rid of left wing communities and their commie members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
Want to get rid of hate communities and their toxic members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
You don't need to completely close communities, you can just let people have those discussions in their own space, as should be their right. Centralised systems don't really have this choice.
I think this too. Let them have their little corners of the internet so they stay away from the rest of us. If they want to use public spaces to talk about fucked up stuff and type up their plans like idiots, well, all the more reason to make it easier for watchdog groups to keep track of them. I think we should keep the upvote/downvote system. Maybe once a comment (or post) reaches a certain number of downvotes, it gets marked as hidden, instead of censored or deleted. That way the users can self-mod along with the mods. I don't think there's a need to tally votes outside of each individual comment/post, so we can get rid of karma which is nice
This only makes sense if you assume that new people would be funneled into extremist Lemmy instances from other Lemmy instances, but it's far more likely that new people will be pointed toward such communities through other paths, and then they won't be exposed to competing ideas.
Don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying that hate speech, racism and sexism should be ignored or allowed to exist alongside other content on Lemmy. I am saying that trying to ignore that, separate ourselves from it, and pretend like it doesn't exist and doesn't affect us, is ultimately counterproductive.
They wouldn't be exposed to competing ideas if nobody defederates. They would subscribe to their own communities, where normal people would not participate, leaving only toxic ineffectual discussion.
Defederating is not ignoring the problem. It's an active choice. It's scooping the floaters out of the pool. It's a clear message that bigotry is not tolerated. When they get bored of their hateful shit they can come and have manners and enjoy cat pictures with the rest of us.
I will decline being the counterpoint for this bullshit. It's not a normal person's responsibility to educate bigots.
One nice benefit of this method is that people who spend too much time in echo chambers eventually start sounding like raving lunatics, which hurts their credibility in the real world.
Yeah but it also means they can fester and rot in their little holes. You dont have to worry about an administration that is obsessed with free speech like its a good thing letting a colony like exploding heads in if you join the correct instance
The problem with letting things fester is that they tend to grow and get worse while they're out of sight/out of mind, until they eventually burst out and spread toxicity everywhere.
One of the benefits of free speech is that the nasty stuff gets exposed. When it's exposed then you at least know where it is. The only problem is if the nasty stuff doesn't get labeled as such so it can be dealt with, and instead is treated as if it were normal and allowed to continue spreading (e.g. police turning a blind eye to far-right gun nuts intimidating voters).
Burst out where? Into another instance that can get defederated? Into a million instances? Great. Spread that userbase as thin as possible. Defederate the most annoying ones.
The nasty stuff you are talking about is straight from Fox news. That's a failure of American broadcasting standards, that you have an "entertainment" channel holding itself up as legitimate news.
If Fox was disallowed from calling itself news years ago, you would not have these problems. If Fox was put into subscriber only TV channels, you would not have this problem.
Fox was opt-out for viewers. Make it opt-in. Make hateful instances opt -in for the users.
Ultimately though we are only in control of our own spaces. If we control our spaces our lives get easier because of it. Knowing they exist and that the state and society as a whole is entirely disinterested in fixing that problem aside from half baked deprogramming ideas hasnt enhanced my life in any way. All i can do is carry protection from them, make sure my spaces treat them as an active threat and live my life.