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.