As I am sure is the case for many of you, the recent Reddit drama inspired me to take a serious look at federated software, including Lemmy. I’ve got my own opinions about the decline of Reddit and I’m curious what you all think about it and where the Fediverse is going.
In its early life Reddit seemed like it was worth engaging with. There were decent conversations to be had and free speech was still a value that was held generally. Today that couldn’t be further from the truth, at least not in the mainstream subreddits. Some niche subreddits are OK.
I attribute the decline of Reddit to the default subs being overrun by a gaggle of know-it-all 14 year-old-kids. I’ve got a teenager of my own these days so I see what her and her friends are up to. They’re generally not very smart, hard to coach, are little assholes, and see things in black and white. Shoot – I was that way when I was a teenager.
Unfortunately, the toxic beliefs1 of some of these 14-year-olds has been reinforced in recent years through the public school system and higher education. This, too, I have witnessed through my own teenager. These toxic beliefs don’t seem to be going anywhere as Gen Z grows up. Some Millenials are bought in, too.2
So how does this all affect the Fediverse? Well, last night when I was checking out Lemmy instances I noticed a distinct lack of support for free speech. The sidebar on lemmy.ml for instance lists its first rule as:
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
Okay, that’s all fine and good. But doesn’t that go without saying in 2023? And isn’t that covered by the second rule?
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
Racism, sexism, etc. are important enough to call out specifically but doxxing and death threats aren’t?
I’ve started to read these sorts of statements as a “progressive” dogwhistle. If you don’t subscribe to the ideology, you’re unwelcome. Being disrespectful tends to go unnoticed when it’s targeting the right people.
So I look at a community like ours here at Burggit. I’m happy there’s a bastion for free speech. But I can’t help but wonder if the Fediverse will be fractured. I suspect there will be a contingent of leftist Lemmy and Mastodon instances that will block instances that support free speech. On some level it seems like this may already be happening. This federated stuff isn’t even that big yet and Mastodon has quite a lengthy list of blocked servers already.
Is there anything we can do about that? Is there anything we should do? Do we even care? Is my assessment completely wrong?
1 I’m referring to beliefs like: offensive speech isn’t worth protecting, we should shame people for offenses committed long ago, and that challenging deeply-held personal beliefs is unacceptable (but only certain ones!), and that the government should decide what “truth” is. (e.g. the early COVID-related news about masks not being effective and ivermectin being “horse de-wormer”, regardless of ivermectin’s ability to effectively treat COVID).
2 I actually have a theory that these toxic beliefs have been intentionally stoked by the ultra-rich in order to shut down the momentum of Occupy Wall Street. But that is a different post for a different time.
We went into this fully knowing that we will be blocked. If it happens, it happens. Hopefully our rules for how we should conduct ourselves when talking on other instances can mitigate this some. But we’ll see.
We’ve been getting countless signups because we’re blocked on beehaw and a few other instances that are deemed “safe.” Whatever that means…
People are clearly wanting to come here because we have stuff that other instances don’t. The ability to say stuff civilly without being immediately banned by internet hall monitors.
You can’t create your own communities on beehaw. The admins can only do that. Probably because that whole “safety” thing because words on a screen might make people feel unsafe…
NSFW is another thing. Most communities do not want to host it. Whether it be because they’re scared that they’ll get blacklisted by payment processors for having the gall to want to get off to some risque content, or just plain not having the stomach to moderate content that can be downright disgusting.
I feel like this is turning into somewhat of a rant. My point is that if we get defederated by most instances, we’ll be fine. Because clearly this is the instance to be at. We’ve been getting upwards of 50ish signups a day to the point that we are now selecting for quality application reasons, and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down anytime soon.
Glad to hear that there are quite a few people out there who are techy enough to register at a Lemmy instance and also care about free speech. That gives me hope.
I forgot to add there are other free speech instances that I’ve seen on Pleroma that are considering setting up shop here, so we’ll have those to federate with if they decide to do it.
Hi, I’m brand new to the community here and to the Fediverse in general, but I just have to say that finding this instance feels like opening a blocked window to allow light and fresh air to burst into a room I have been trapped in for years where the light was ever so slowly blocked out, and the air ever so slowly became fetid and stale.
Digg’s decline was a rapid, immediate, extinction-level event. The hard R on the other hand has been slowly and gradually squeezing the life out of the community. It has been an insidious process, so slow as go almost unnoticed. Until I found a little corner of the internet filled with curious and mature minds capable of understanding that other people can and should have different opinions, desires, and interests, I had honestly lost track of how stale and restricted the hard R had become.
I truly look forward to seeing this community thrive. Thank you @Burger and @keenhome for actually respecting the members of your community to function as mature adults.
I’m so glad you like our little space here on the internet, and I hope you continue to enjoy it as it grows and to be an active part of that growth. Burger and I felt very similarly to you, these big centralized tech platforms try to slowly make changes, first targeting the most minor and absolutely most undesirables. However,; as the metaphorical pot starts to boil, more and more content starts to get thrown out, content that is not so undesirable. Until you get to a point where, much like you said, all the light has been blocked out of the metaphorical window, or all the water in the metaphorical pot has evaporated.
So, yeah. Thank you again for being here on Burggit, we hope you enjoy the ride!
I agree that a lot of instances are virtue signalling and pandering to a very vocal minority. Will that fragment the fediverse? Maybe. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so, certain people are just not able to engage in constructive or entertaining interactions (Twitter is a prime example) and centralised platforms all suffer from what Cory Doctorow calls enshittyfication. So let the Fediverse fragment a bit, there will be fringes but the instances in the middle will make sure there’s at least some connection and exchange. I don’t see this as a risk.
The good thing is the censorship/cancellation resistance of the Fediverse: Just move to another instance or selfhost.
The part that worries be about a fragmenting fediverse is that communities that are neither safe spaces nor controversial (like linux related subs, other technical subs, or hobby related subs in general) will get caught in the middle. For instance, a lot of FOSS related subs have moved to lemmy.ml and beehaw.org (probably simply due to them being the first or most popular instances). Those communities don’t particularly threaten the safe space values, but people who wish for more free speech but are in the hobby will end up separated by no fault of their own by admin drama. What do you think the solution to this will end up being?
On places like Mastodon/Pleroma/Akkoma there’s enough instance diversity to where you can be apart of one side of the schism and still enjoy those widely enjoy interacting with others who have those same hobbies/communities. I believe Lemmy will reach this at one point. There are also bound to be “middle ground” instances popping up, who aren’t “free speech” enough to be “problematic” but still federate with instances that promote free speech/expression. These middle ground instances, I imagine, will be the place that the wider spread hobbies will gravitate to. This is all speculation on my part though.
