Pure curiosity:
If you left reddit or another corporate platform under the banner of not being censored by their views or beliefs, what was that?
Wait. Before we open this can of worms, I’m not at all curious about an in-depth explanation of unpopular views or opinions that are generally extremist or that most reasonable people consider extreme. More of:
- I left reddit or some other because they censor…?
- The lemmy community is more for me because?
- I reasons my instance policies or moderators are better than the other platform is?
- The other platform restricted opinions or views regarding…?
If you feel like sharing, just summarize the general idea, please no indoctrination speeches.
Oh boy…
I left Reddit, deleting all of my content, because I disagreed with the elimination of third party apps and because of Reddit’s response to the community. Full stop. I wasn’t a heavy Twitter user - I tend to enjoy more drawn out discussions and topically focused communities - but I stopped using it entirely because of Elon’s moves, including his rejection of corporate censorship.
I have no problem with a service establishing a ToS that includes trust and safety policies that will remove posts and ban users over hate speech. I have no problem with forced demonetization and deplatforming of hate accounts. I would have no problem if federal and state governments enacted more anti-hate laws to bring us in line with other democracies around the world.
That’s because I do not think that permitting a group of American brown shirts to fly Nazi flags and shout racist slurs at passersby increases freedom. I think it decreases it, because it causes a large part of the population to live in fear. I think hate speech rules by private companies serve the same purpose.
Not censorship, but enshitification. Reddit has been steering in an anti-user direction for quite a while. Killing the 3rd party apps that made that site useable was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
People who whine about being booted over “personal beliefs” tend to conveniently neglect to mention what those beliefs are. If you feel strongly that pineapple should absolutely NEVER go on pizza, then I’ll disagree with you and leave it at that; if you get booted from a community over that opinion, yeah that’s fucking crazy and indicative of a community that should be abandoned anyway. If you feel strongly about things like gay people should be killed or women should have restricted rights, then I’ll disagree with you and report your ass for every comment that even hints at bigotry, cuz you’re a horrible person and are absolutely not welcome here.
The not saying why they were banned is what inspired my question.
I was afraid those people would just come here, but the moderation based on instance and community seems to be working so far. I’m curious how’s that’s going to scale.
I’m curious how’s that’s going to scale.
The conversations about Threads has me nervous about that bit. If “because it’s fucking Meta!” isn’t reason enough to defederate with them by default, we’re looking at getting hit with a tsunami of content that will be impossible to moderate. Guess we’ll see.
The profile Blocklists could start growing, that’s for sure 😀
Spez killed third party apps so he could track people and sell ads. First party apps were bad and getting worse. And the whole way it went down was just dishonest and shitty. I don’t wanna support that.
I also really enjoyed being able to see new content AND comment on it/interact with the community. That was the reason Reddit was cool to me. If I didn’t channel that energy towards something else I’d have ended up back on Reddit.
And the cherry on top, I love the idea of decentralized social networks. It’s better for the internet.
This was pretty much my experience too
Removed by mod
Yeah, same here. I find that the quality of posts, comments and culture is significantly worse here than on reddit but I don’t want to use reddit anymore because of the API stuff.
Can you give any examples? We’d definitely like to know where we can improve things for the better ❤️
I left reddit because they got rid of the app I like (reddit is fun) and I absolutely can’t stand their app or new.reddit.com. Simple as that.
I was a power user in several exclusive subreddits (exclusive to heavy reddit users, not like the Lounge) but none of it outweighed how much I hate the UI.
I certainly got downvoted for opinions sometimes but I wouldn’t call that censorship.
I wanted something Reddit-ish to fill time and entertain me. The money-grab moves Reddit was doing annoyed me. The final straw (and most important factor) was the retirement of my favorite viewer app - Apollo. Moving to Lemmy using Voyager is a no brainer compared to Reddit’s shitty user interface.
deleted by creator
Some of the subreddits I follow are related to emulation and piracy which has caused some subreddits to get banned or at least take action to limit legal threats. When the Reddit blackout happened a lot of them went down and said they were shifting here. I find they’re a little more open to discussion than other places that just copy and paste some old post or refer you to a Wiki
reddit permabanned me for mass reporting very obvious spam bots, as i was “abusing the report feature”, then ignored the appeal (which i’m sure went straight in the trash anyway). 9 year old 500k karma account, and a huge content generator for their money farm, down the drain.
i was already done with the site but mostly stuck around for some of the community content I still cared about. it was obvious they PREFER spam bots over real users, as long as they generate traffic and ad revenue. money over all, they’ve always transparently been that way. and the third party app ban was just the icing on the cake. They give no craps about any kind of censorship unless it censors the voices that might get between them and IPO money.
fuck 'em, fuck spez and his blue-eyed golden boy affluenza-afflicted pedo ass. they can have their spambots in their nice little walled garden. i’m having a lot more fun over here anyway.
edit: and in case a LW mod considers this “uncivil”, my last statement is factual, not an attack. it is an open secret that spez first modded, and then explicitly allowed the continued existence of /r/jailbait for many years (quick google); he is also so self-centered via his golden-boy affluenza complex that he thinks he will be a slave owner in the coming apocalypse.
Genuinely curious how the spam bot situation is on lemmy. Is there any personal experiences or better yet data?
My personal experience so far is that the Lemmy community is significantly more responsive in getting rid of spam bots. I’ve definitely seen a few but they disappear in less than a day, and lately the amount of spam has been extremely minimal, almost nonexistent on my instance’s all page. Compare to Reddit, where spam bots might get banned from a few subs immediately but would often take weeks to get sitebanned, if ever.
Most serious Lemmy instances require user approval to join via the short application, which means they have no bots at all. And the big key is that lemmy admins are quite active and talk amongst themselves; if an instance with open no-approval signups gets abused by bots, other admins will talk to that instance about it, and most of the time it seems to get fixed pretty quick. And if they don’t… well, you defed them until they do. It’s pretty pog.
I have seen three rather obvious spam bots so far, all of which were almost instantly downvoted into oblivion and soon thereafter removed from the site. Granted, I mainly frequent niche videogame communities so I can’t say anything about the spam/bot situation in bigger communities (like politcal stuff etc.) but for the part of the Fediverse I personally use, it is definitely an upgrade compared to the current situation of reddit.
Spittin’ truth bombs! Hear, hear!
I was hoping that lemmy had more level headed users and less tribalism. I was wrong.
Sorry that it hasn’t lived up to your expectations.
I don’t believe that the federation model “fixes” tribalism and in fact encourages it in an echo-chamber kind of fashion, by clustering like minded individuals in communities in its own servers with their own moderators.
On the other hand, in my experience this place overall feels a little more mature. Sure you have circlejerk threads and there’s a lot of controversial news that in a couple cases have evolved into online flamewars. I’ve also observed more often where two people disagreeing initially come to a mutual understanding and agreement downthread, that hardly ever happens in online forums.
Anonymity is like having a -4 and a disadvantage to saving throws to keep being level headed. It’s far too easy to forget that there’s another person on the other side of the argument.
Worldwide polarization efforts from the TPTB doesn’t help too.
I second this!
People love echo chambers and affirmations don’t they…
Reddit permanently banned me because I was mocking white supremacists on a subreddit made for mocking white supremacists. That happened because one of the Nazis I posted who has a giant swastika face tattoo noticed his picture on Reddit and said on Facebook he was complaining to the admins.
So Reddit is supportive of white supremacists so fuck Reddit.
I find this super interesting.
Firstly, I don’t support their views in your example.
I don’t like that they get to spread them. The same thing could be said about people who are anti religion against people talking about their religion. Both parties might say they don’t like the other spreading their views.
- If someone moched a cancer patient, we’d loose our minds.
- When someone mocks supremacists, we enjoy it. They don’t. The difference is our perspective.
- If the mocked or bullied cancer patient contacted mods, the offending account would get banned.
- If we mock one group and get banned and other mock another group and don’t, isn’t that being hypocritical?
Again, I have no sympathy for some hater crying about their feeling getting hurt when they post garbage, more pathetic than anything.
This person liked to post memes that said “Hitler was right” so my guilt is zero.
Yeah, no doubt. I’m picturing the same person saying hateful stuff turning around saying how unfair it is to get called out, using a super whiny voice. Irony.
If we mock one group and get banned and other mock another group and don’t, isn’t that being hypocritical?
The cancer patient didn’t chose to have cancer, and doesn’t deliberately make the lives of other people worse. The supremacist chose to BE cancer on society, actively and deliberately making the lives of a lot of people worse, and feeling entitled to do so.
If someone acts like an asshole, they shouldn’t be surprised about being treated like an asshole.
If you don’t see a difference between mocking people for their illness and mocking them for their anti-humanitarian views, I don’t know how to explain it to you.
Cancer patients don’t decide to have cancer. White supremacists decide to be pieces of shit. Not the same.
Also, cancer patients are not trying to eradicate human rights for everyone but themselves.
You’re missing the point. It’s the same thing.
Mocking either is the same.Which one you side with is your own bias. If you can’t see how they’re the same, spend some time thing about it. Put yourself in both positions. Use other less extreme examples.
I get, we all dislike the hater in the scenario. We likely don’t find the outcome of the above post fair or just.
What should have happened instead?
Probably the original poster liking Hitler posts gets banned, the poster of those comments got banned before that. No need to call someone out and mock them, thus not putting yourself against the site conduct rules. Right?
Paradox of tolerance. No, they are not the same.
Paradox of tolerance. True.
Like others, the final thing that prompted me to leave the corporate r-word site was the decision to start charging for the api that forced most of the 3rd party apps out of operation.
The inconsistent, impersonal, and at times improper censoring was already pushing me away before the api change, though. I don’t mind safe spaces and civility being a precondition to participation, but if you’re going to ban people for being uncivil or using a subset of derogatory terms, then be consistent about it.
One of the many tiresome things that happened to me is that I got a warning about being banned site-wide for using one of the banned words in a completely innocuous and generally contextually acceptable way. My comment was something like “you can use baking soda to [redacted verb which in this context is commonly used to mean slow or delay] the growth of mold.” in a post about that topic.
The warning I received was basically, “you’re on our list now, and further infractions will result in a site-wide ban” and of course my otherwise helpful and relevant comment was deleted. Also, there was no way to respond or ask for clarification that I could find, as this was an admin warning, not something from a moderator of a sub. Anyway, a warning like that was obviously obtuse and stupid, but whatever.
What made it irksome is that after that incident, any time I noticed a post, title, or comment using that same word (or some variation of it like td, f*ck td, sh*t t**d, etc) in a derogatory manner, I would report it. And invariably, the comment would not get removed and I’d get the response back “we investigated but did not find it to be in violation of our policies.”
Granted, I also took issue with the fact that the banned terms list was woefully inadequate at addressing the dozens of disparaging terms that were frequently used to target the LGBT+ community and which for some reason where considered completely acceptable by the corporate r-word site.
And no, I don’t think Lemmy is any better on the consistency / censorship front, and in fact is inherently worse in some ways as a result of the general decentralized architecture.
Sounds like you were handling some asbestos, because that is flame retardant is absolutely cancerous.
No, I came because of:
- the removal of essential moderation tools
- the insertion of ads and promoted content
- the huge data requirements of the official app
So kind of the opposite of censorship. I came because there’s too much low-quality content.
The API changes woulnd’t even have affected me directly - I don’t use any apps, never used bots, and was part of a sub that was noticable more friendly and clean than a whole lot of similar subs, no toxicity but interesting content and very active mods.
But it didn’t sit right with me how nonchalantly u/spez disregarded any and all complaints, didn’t give a shit about people who would be literally unable to use his site with the changes he wanted to implement (the majority of people in r/blind for example), openly mocked everyone that wasn’t a bootlicker and still to this day thinks that he did everything right and “crushed the protests” and all that jazz. This guy lives in his own little bubble in which he is convinced the dumpster fire he calls reddit is the best thing since sliced bread and he’s a genius without fault.
Fuck u/spez.
I deleted everything I had contributed to that site over the course of 9+ years, nuked my account and moved to LW instead. I’m still in the process of reformatting and reuploading everyting I had removed from the former site, but I feel a lot more at ease having my guides, art etc. hosted on a site that isn’t a corporate shitfest run by a delusional egomaniac with an army of astroturfing bots.
…and in retrospect, it was about high time I jumped ship, as my former main sub has gone down the drain big time since that debacle. The original creator hasn’t done anything in months, the formerly active mods obviously don’t give a shit about scammers, repost bots and trolls anymore (or they, too, have simply left) and the most upvoted posts and comments are always some cringey regurgitated meme spam and low-effort shitposts. I’m glad I am no longer part of that, albeit in a bittersweet way. It feels like seeing an Ex that you formerly adored turn a crackhead hobo after you broke up.
I dropped 95% of my activity on Reddit about when everyone else left earlier this summer.
This is not censorship but it’s similar, it’s the problems with Reddit’s automated moderation system. It’s not something unique to Reddit since lots of platforms have this issue, and it is a risk on Lemmy as well if we can’t figure out other ways to combat spam effectively once userbase grows
- On Reddit, our university sub’s moderation team had nearly all of their accounts banned (including all the alts), because we shared a mod account to do basic mod actions (before Reddit had some of that functionality built-in). The mod account wasn’t the reason, but we assume that’s what the automated system used to decide we were all one person. It took a while to resolve, and our initial attempts to point out the issue resulted in automated messages saying we were wrong and that we couldn’t appeal anymore. Eventually we posted on mod-support and the only solution was to self-dox our alts to each other in order to get some of them reverted (the ones we didn’t feel comfortable sharing we never got back). It was a mess.
I think we also need to consider the flip side of this issue. Yes, some people are banned wrongfully from these platforms. However, sometimes people are banned for sharing content that also isn’t welcome here, and over time we WILL get more users like that showing up here because Lemmy will look like the next best thing for them. I’m not sure how that will work out and maybe the Fediverse will let those users find their place away from the rest of us, but it’s important to know that not all bans from other platforms are unjustified.
