Controversial - the place to discuss controversial topics

Isn’t the immediate call for censorship/defederation as soon as some views are challenged a bit too entitled?

To some extent, YES, but I think it’s a bit more nuanced and comes down to where you draw that line. Everyone is going to draw it in a different place.

I moderated an academic listserv with membership in 5 digits back before the html protocol even existed. That was huge for the time. And, as you would think, in academia at the time the idea of cronterversy, free speech, and engaging in items you disagreed with was pretty comprehensive. Even so, we still had to moderate, primarily for spam and obvious trolling as well as the occasional personal attacks.

I was an active participant in Usenet in the 90’s. Usenet was federated servers hosting posts and comments from participants on that entire federation. I know a server admin could control what Usenet groups they carried. I have no idea what other levels of moderation were available. Discussions were definitely more freewheeling and challenging than you see today, but they also had a higher content level and a greater respect for intellectual argument, even in trolling. Again, I suspect that was because the bulk of the participants were coming from higher ed institutions.

I was active in Internet forums when SCO sued IBM. There were active attacks on communities and successful attempts to splinter communities based in part on what side of the very question you are asking participants came down on. Again, though, there was a strong respect for intellectual engagement. And, I came down strongly with the same opinion you are expressing back then.

I think that strong respect for engagement exists here in the fediverse, particularly when compared to something like FaceBook or Reddit. As the fediverse grows, I think that will go away.

I don’t have much respect for low content trolling, for active attacks via brigading, for manipulation. I think the ability to upvote is important, but I also think the ability for bot accounts to manipulate that is a very difficult thing to combat, particularly in something as young as Lemmy that is experiencing exponential growth.

I also have a much better awareness of how subtle that manipulation can be in influencing individuals and society, including my own views.

I no longer have the absolutist attitude I once had. I agree with your own concerns about echo chambers, because that leads to its own manipulation of views and the splintering of society. However, I’m also more willing to support the idea of not providing a platform for some of the more odious content than my older self would have supported.

I’m probably in a position to piss off nearly everyone. I disagree with your view that there should be almost no lines drawn, but I disagree with the majority that the lines should be drawn where they want it to be.