Hello, Im kind of new here and trying to get used to Lemmy and I was wondering about if this is true since I am considering donating on this site to support alternative projects but wanted to hear other users before doing so. That being said, what have been your experiences?
What makes Lemmy different from Reddit is that if some moderator or admin is limiting your freedom of speech, you can run your own instance with your own rules and communities and still be on Lemmy. Reddit can ban you from Reddit, but Lemmy is like a collection of “reddits” that integrate and there is no central authority. To answer your question, as a user you have more freedom to find an instance with rules that align with your values and wishes, and you always have the option to create your own instance, and no one can stop you. If you say things that other people don’t want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn’t limit your freedom of speech.
thank you so much
I would add to this that there is significant controversy around the ideological alignment of the lemmy developers, and most people would find the political leanings of the instances they’re associated with to be… unpalatable.
I’ll leave you to undertake that journey of discovery for yourself, suffice to say that freedom of speech is particularly limited on those instances.
Other software operates in the fediverse and is interoperable with lemmy. For example, myself and the commenter you replied to are registered with piefed servers, while this post is on a lemmy server.
Some instances are really not about freedom but when I had problems I just moved and here is fine! I like it more
If you say things that other people don’t want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn’t limit your freedom of speech.
So it is like Trump’s own ‘social’ media: I make my own and there I can say all kinds of bull that nobody wants to hear 🤣
In a way, yes, but his site isn’t federated with other sites. Truth social is a modified Mastodon instance.
TS being a Mastodon fork is so disgusting.
Technically, yeah. Some instances are run by tin-pot dictators with delusions of godhood, but if you get banned from one of those just switch to another one.
The communities tend to be bubblier, though, since they’re small. So if your opinions don’t match you’ll get shouted down harder.
The hive is a lot more arrogant here.
There is one nice feature that pushes back against hive-mindedness here that Reddit lacks, at least; you can see your upvote and downvote totals rather than just the single aggregate total. Reddit used to be like that years ago but they got rid of it.
That means that if you say something that gets a ton of both downvotes and upvotes you can at least know that there were a significant number of people who liked it it. Over on Reddit saying anything that netted negative karma felt like screaming into the void.
Oh, and the small population means that downvoted comments are still likely easy to see. That helps too.
Still, the Fediverse does feel more strongly bubbled than Reddit does, from my subjective and anecdotal position.
Yeah. Basically, I go to Reddit for independent information. I come here to essentially get yelled for having a nuanced take.
A nuanced take on Reddit is pretty much a guarantee of downvotes and arguments against things your weren’t saying
That’s not been my experience. Perhaps it’s the subs I tend to post in? Either way- a nuanced take is FAR less likely to be accepted here.
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the superiority complex here is very high. apparently everyone is a genius because they use Linux.
And because they’re Communarchyalists. Don’t forget that.
which bubble am I in now?
10 hours ago over in lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world you saw a picture that you rather liked but that was getting a lot of downvotes and you didn’t know why. You were told by @breadleyloafsyou@lemmy.zip that “lemmy doesn’t like AI”
Also 10 hours ago over in nostupidquestions@lemmy.world you said “I know its an unpopular opinion, but I don’t agree with punching Nazis. It makes them look like a victim, and violence never works.” You got a bunch of downvotes for that yourself.
Just a couple of examples of situations where an opinion that was against the consensus view of the community got “punished.”
Lemmy.world, so the largest general ‘bubble’ so to speak. You’re on the generalist, relatively moderate instance.
I feel like when people describe anything as moderate on the fediverse, they’re really taking about the middle ground between centrism and true communism. And somehow that’s still icky for some people’s tastes. Lol
I would never in a million years describe myself as moderate and I find myself agreeing with the great majority of opinions I come across. That’s how the general vibe of the entire instance feels, and it’s still not leftist enough for some folks, somehow.
Yes, moderate here is a relative term in the context of the wider fediverse.
Yeah, I’m not commenting on whether it’s a relative term, but where that line falls. It’s already quite left, and somehow people are still clutching their pearls.
the point of being a extremist is nothing is good enough for you. it’s a quest for ever more extreme views to feel superior/purer than the unwashed non-ideological masses.
the ‘drug’ of extremism is that it makes feel people feel ‘special’. ONLY they know the TRUTH.
It depends what you mean. Individual instances have their own approach to moderation, which influences what you will see and have access to. Some are more hands off than others. But if your “free speech” is really just looking for a free pass to hate on folk, then you won’t have much luck with lemmy. There are instances that allow that, but most other instances block them.
I mean if mods ban people for not agreeing with them basically.
Stay free of .ml, they’re the worst of the bunch when it comes to this.
Depends on the substance of the disagreement imo
Entirely depends on the disagreement. There are instances and communities where bigotry is tolerated. I do not frequent them. I would very much like the mods of the communities I use to continue banning people that disagree with them about things like basic human rights and hate. People are free to share their opinions on basically anything most places on the fediverse. Just don’t be a dick, you should be fine. If the “freedom of speech” you’re looking for is the freedom to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, or generally hateful, you’ll probably be disappointed.
Again, it depends on what you mean. You’re not really saying what these things are that you expect to disagree on, and that’s the important bit.
There are plenty of examples on the ye power trippin bastards community. It’s a classic tale as old as the days of IRC and ancient Greek forums. Moderation can easily be abused if unchecked.
Good thing about activitypub is the power of mods and admins is always checked by the ability of others to enter the scene and create competitor communities and servers.
Yeah, however they protect shitfucks like UniversalMonk and all of his sock puppets. That community is run by wannabe anarchists that give it out but ban and block when they can’t take it.
It has just as much freedom as any other platform. It all depends on who the admins and moderators are. We do have better tools of keeping those in check, with the modlog being publicly available tho.
The modlog can be scrubbed, though. Afaik, if a mod bans someone and removes the user’s content at once, the modlog only logs the ban but all the comments are removed without a trace.
You don’t have freedom of speech on any site. Freedom of speech is freedom from the government restricting your speech, not private organizations.
That said, yes. I got banned from Reddit for merely suggesting that people who harm children should face stiffer penalties. I’ve said that many times here and even pissed off some pedophiles here, but never got banned or suspended for it. I think Lemmy takes a bit more of a hands off approach.
Consider: what I say about Reddit isn’t going to affect Reddit at all. But someone like me says bad things about Lemmy, it might have more of an effect. Smaller sites pick their battles more carefully. Bigger sites don’t care.
But even more than that, Lemmy is federated. That means your instance — lemmy.org — can ban you, and you can just join another, like db0 (what I’m on) or hexbear. We’re on different instances but we’re still able to interact.
short answer: yes
medium answer: depends on what instance you’re on
Moderation exists but it is built by the community at large, not corporate overlords. That may mean that harmful speech is removed more aggressively than on corporate sites. On most corporate media sites, bigotry or trolling has to be extremely overt before it is removed. On the other hand, the nature of Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is that it’s a fairly low cost of entry, so there are many different people running many different instances, each with their own governance.
Try it out for a week or two, and if you find it worthwhile enough that you check it daily, I think it’s very nice donate to the person/people running your instance. It helps with the cost of running it.
There are no ads, no corporate content, no manipulative algorithm.
We are not perfect, but we’re a lot better than most of what’s out there. We’re a little bit weird, and most of our jokes are about Star Trek or canned produce (for reasons no one understands), but it’s a pretty cool place.
There are no ads, no corporate content
I wish that were true, but if you haven’t seen any, thank your moderators.
And if you have seen any, you can block them and they actually go away.
Instead of a placebo “stop seeing this ad” button.
Well hey, that’s why I report any I see to the moderators :D
(And unlike corporate platforms they’ll actually parse it lol)
Absolutely! It’s not that corpos don’t try. It’s just not endorsed or supported by the community and is usually removed swiftly.
or canned produce (for reasons no one understands)
I think the beans speak for themselves, as does the corn. Does it need any more explaining?
It depends on which instance are you using.
Hell yeah.
Now, will people disagree with you in very emotional ways, downvote without giving any explanation, etc etc.? Sure! But you won’t get banned for opposing Western imperialism, for instance. I mean, I talk about God and give people shit for being vacuous, hedonistic and self-centered (because that’s at the core of many sociocultural issues) and I haven’t been banned, at most I get boo’d. 😅
opposing Western imperialism
I get the sentiment, but this usually boils down to blaming everyone on the Western hemisphere for what the US is doing.
I really wish these attitudes would take into account the other dozen countries like my own that largely keep to themselves.
So yeah, boo!
It’s a free universe!
lemmy isnt really an organization. its a platform that is then utilized by hundreds of different operators/groups implementing their own rules against much of the same content. there are many of these platforms that all offer differing capabilities and features while sharing a lot of the same content. this network is what we refer to as the fediverse.
the reddit-like side is the threadiverse and is mimicked by platforms like lemmy.
then there is the twitter-like (microblog) side i call the twitterverse and is mimicked by platforms like mastodon.
then you have platforms that can access both sides of the fediverse like piefed and mbin.
as for censorship…
its the beauty of this network’ if one of those servers goes apeshit people can literally just move their ‘subreddit’ to a different server and tell the og one to fuck right off. this has happened a few times in different ways. users created new subs on other servers and effectively ignored the original, with no one having to make new accounts. it proves the idea… no one person or company can control the content of the fediverse.
In some ways yes, and in others no. On Reddit, shitheels like UniversalMonk and all of his sock puppets, along with Dragonfuck would have been banned a long time ago.
It does, outside of truly bad stuff or straight-up spam and such, you can just about say whatever here where Reddit will ding you if you sneeze wrong, seemingly, especially nowadays after they tightened up censorship over there.
Also, unlike Reddit, if you don’t like a given Lemmy instance, you can either move to another or even host your own, where with Reddit, it’s either their way or the highway as it’s a centralized, closed platform.
There is nothing inherently built into Lemmy that protects freedom of speech over Reddit other that being able to host your own instance.
I agree, but I do think that’s the most important thing.
I don’t think it is. Unless you are the host of a major instance, most of your interactions are going to be on other instances; these instances can do whatever mod actions they want against you.
If there are people interact on your instance, then you have the ability to restrict their speech.
Freedom of speech. Yeah, sorta.
Freedom from consequences of your speech. Nope.
The consequences are getting downvoted and ending up in ridiculous arguments sometimes, it barely counts, lol. Bans are very rare from what I’ve seen, but then again they’re rarely necessary.
There is three questions to consider.
One is the site itself. Reddit inc has their own policies that apply site-wide no matter what. Lemmy has no central organization like that, although each individual server operator has their own acceptable use policy for what they allow on their server. This means it is both more free and more confusing- if you want to post potentially objectionable content like porn, there are plenty of servers that allow it or you can always run your own, but you have to make sure you are on one.
Next is individual group moderation. Both Reddit and Lemmy have this, community level moderators that apply whatever standards particular community requires. There is much less of the ‘power mod on a power trip’ situation than on Reddit currently, at least in my experience. I think some of that is because the overall traffic level is less, so it will be interesting to see what happens as Lemmy grows.
Finally there is culture and self-moderation. You see this on mass market platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where someone will say like they were roped at a party and want to buy a pewpew to unalive themself or some other such bullshit. Unfortunately that brain rot is spreading into Reddit, even though it is not at all required. Fortunately Lemmy seems pretty free of that so far.
