The Agora
In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.
Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.
You're not alone in your quest for knowledge and understanding. In this community, you'll find support from like-minded individuals who, like you, are eager to explore new perspectives, challenge their preconceptions, and grow intellectually.
Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world.
Community guidelines
New posts should begin with one of the following:
- [Question]
- [Discussion]
- [Poll]
Only moderators may create a [Vote] post.
Voting History & Results
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I want to see varied opinions. I do NOT want another filter bubble.
Then you're free to join EH and enjoy the freedom to look at racist, homophobic and conspiracy content, it doesn't mean that should be imposed on communities that value tolerance.
You are way too intolerant to be pushing "tolerance".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Those who are tolerant can't afford to tolerate intolerance because it leads to intolerance. Only those who argue in good faith and with rational arguments should be allowed to share their intolerant views because it means they're open to actual discussion. This is not the case with the alt-right or tankies, therefore tolerating them leads to intolerance.
Who decides whether a particular user is arguing in good or bad faith, exactly? I've seen a few comments on "tolerant" communities get deleted that I personally thought were made in good faith but brought up inconvenient points for the majority opinion. Before you ask, there is exactly zero chance I will find them for a demo.
In this case we're talking about a whole community where we've got proof that people post intolerant content with false premises. There's a whole thread with pictures of it. People who disagree with that shouldn't subscribe to an instance that allows it.
It's not an issue that can be tackled on a user by user basis... Unless you want to hire and pay for a bunch of full time mods to watch every posts on our instance? You know... What private social medias need to resort to to try and keep extremism and false information under control?
You know what they say, if you hang out with a bunch of racists then you are too.
What I am seeing is any opposition no matter how reasonable instantly gets equated to fascist/nazi/whatever and exiled. This results in the people that subscribe to these views being siloed in an echochamber themselves. I want to see good faith discussions that aren't cut short by mods or admins because they are too intolerant of what they consider to be "intolerance".
And having them in an echo chamber reduces their numbers in the long run because they have less space to post their ideas and to convince others to adhere to them.
Let's not pretend what we can see in the screenshots in the other thread is "reasonable opposition".
https://sh.itjust.works/post/216888
Good faith discussions with extremists/those who subscribe to conspiracy theories doesn't work and all experts agree with that hence why they don't debate them in the first place.
So you literally just want to control the narrative presented to naive viewers? I thought this was universally agreed upon to be bad joojoo.
Just let people select what they want to see themselves, out of the entirety of fediverse.
Of course you'll get that if you select the worst of the worst. Surely you could find innocuous conversation there as well.
I mean, way too many non-cooky "conspiracy theories" end up being the actual truth. Some select cases in point: mass NSA spying (thanks Snowden), operation northwoods (thanks JFK), tuskegee syphilis experiments.
Questioning authority and the narrative authority supports should be commonplace.
People are still free to subscribe to that instance if that's what they want to see, taking a neutral stance towards it is still encouraging it.
If you think you're better than actual scientists and experts to bring arguments to convince them then by all means, create an account over there and talk them out of their delusions. We're not a support group, we have no obligations to entertain people that want to live in a parallel reality.
If they get defederated I lose the option to subscribe to them.
I want to have 1 fediverse account, not 10s of them.
You can have one account over there then or on any other instances that is federated with them, I'm sure there are plenty of instances that are federated with everyone.
I started on this instance because the admin stance was to my liking. Unfortunately, he decided to let the mob rule. I need to start looking at VPS providers to run my own instance.
So their decision to unilaterally defederate from an instance was to your liking but now that it's up to debate you're not satisfied anymore?
How ironic.
No, I was against defederating tankies as well. In hindsight that was the warning.
If the blocklist stayed that way, so would I.
Holy fuck that's fucking golden!
From your post history!
So, are you going to admit that you didn't mind seeing the tankies go because you're right leaning and it's also why you fight against defederating EH?
Seeing as you're moderating subs for crypto and guns, everything is so freaking clear now!
Oh the hypocrisy!
I agree that I should've turned around as soon as I saw lemmygrad defederated. My bias told me "eh that's not that terrible".
But it is.
Yeah, it's not that terrible because it's the group you disagree with but we can't go and ban your buddies at the other end of the spectrum can we? 😂
Alright, I'm done with you, I pointed out your hypocrisy, you can't argue in good faith and as I mentioned before, only those who argue in good faith deserve to be heard!
Not just disagree with, they are just so irrelevant their absense is not missed.
As you noted, that ban was also done with zero discussion. As a free speech believer, I would advocate for them just the same.
What I wrote in that thread, and what you took as hypocrisy (because that's what you are looking for), is still true. Siloing is inevitable because of how idiotic human culture works, but that doesn't mean I should stay silent about it when it's brought up for discussion/vote.
Of course I am aware my efforts are in vain, duh.
You "were against it"... But there was no discussions about it anywhere as it was done at the same time the instance was created... a week before you joined?
I just read your whole conversation, and I understand what you are saying. I, myself, was once banned from a community for simply talking about the language people use for gender and sex, and what it all means. Anyone who knows me knows I'm really high on the tolerance spectrum, so being banned for that comment really threw me for a loop. That mod took zero time to try to figure out who I was and gave my words no charity at all. "He's talking about the semantics of gender vs sex. Ban!" (This was reddit, and it was one of the power mods)
It seems to me a lot of mods have a hair trigger when it comes to banning people who want to have a deeper discussion on a topic. Those who want to raise questions that might make people a little uncomfortable because they have to think. They instantly assume you're "concern trolling" or something. Nope! I'm just a philosopher. I have questions, and I have ideas, and I like to talk about our use of language. Especially when the use of language is a major point of contention between the two sides.
I just proofread this comment and realized that it would probably get me banned from certain liberal communities. I sound like a right-winger crying about free speech. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Fucking humans. We waste so much brain power trying to figure out what "side" a person is on so we know whether to hate them or not.
That being said, nothing in the screenshots is good discussion.
That's exactly what they would claim as the ban reason. I am way too familiar with this myself.