this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2024
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Asklemmy

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How do you feel about the level of censorship in your current instance ? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Since Lemmy is federated, and the admins of each instance choose what’s allowed and what’s not in their own instance.

How do you feel about what’s allowed and what’s not in your current instance ?

I’ll start: I’ve read people complaining about my instance admins, but I haven’t experienced nor seen anything I specifically disagree with.

And I’ve read things they wrote that I absolutely agree with, like not federating with Meta under any circumstances.

So for now, I’m happy with it. If I get banned randomly, I don’t think I’d go to a different instance, though. I’d probably just stop visiting Lemmy altogether.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Not bad. The thing with "censorship" is that there are no real "free-speech" instances, all instances have opinions they deem intolerable and thus prune (whether selectively or overtly), and many selectively federate and defederate in a manner that makes one camp of thought more dominant, ie liberalism on Lemmy.world via defederation from Hexbear and Lemmygrad, etc.

Lemmy.ml is quicker to remove comments that break the rules than other instances, but is also more broadly federated and thus gets more points of view than, say, Lemmy.world. Lemmy.world on the other hand is more selective with what it removes, but intentionally defederates from instances with heavy concentrations of Marxists, a more subtle form of "censorship" that ultimately shapes the dominant narratives on its instance.

What this ultimately means is that the answer is to openly admit bias, which exists in everyone, and accept that as a natural consequence of the fediverse model. I wouldn't go to Lemmy.world if I wanted to know the opinion of Marxists just like I wouldn't go to Lemmygrad if I wanted to know the opinion of liberals on a subject, this recognition of bias is an intrinsic aspect of the federated model and needs to be openly recognized, otherwise sabre rattling about "censorship" between instances becomes a never-ending source of unconstructive drama.