Controversial - the place to discuss controversial topics

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Challenge others opinions and be challenged on your own.

This is not a safe space nor an echo-chamber, you come here to discuss in a civilized way, no flaming, no insults!

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Hastur

Calls for defederation - Is the idea of the open marketplace of ideas outdated? (self.controversial)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Hastur to c/controversial

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Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:

Don't like their content
Dont like their political leaning
Dont like their free speech approach
General feeling of being offended
I want a safe space!
This instance if hurting vulnerable people

I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.

Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148

Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!

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[–] saltysel 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I definitely tend to agree with you in terms of being in the middle. But the middle is such a vast, grey area that is hard to pinpoint exactly where the middle is.

Is there no way to block a particular instance for the individual (I've never tried)? I feel like if there is a way for individuals to do so, why not put it in their hands? And if not, is it possible to make it so they can? Kind of removes the need for an entire instance to make any calls in the first place.

But I'm very much new to the federation universe and incredibly dumb in terms of computer/internet workings.

[–] FlagonOfMe 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kind of removes the need for an entire instance to make any calls in the first place.

Not really. When some instance is federated, the home instance is literally hosting and serving the content from that instance: comments and posts. (Only if one or more home instance users subscribe to a community on the other instance) If the users and/or admins think the content is that bad, or the users are that bad, then why host them at all? Defedetate them and keep the content off the server entirely. Why help lies and hateful content spread, even in that minor way?

[–] saltysel 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, considering we were defederated from beehaw, and I don't find our instance particularly negative or hateful in much of the content and users I've personally seen - I think it's hard to paint a whole community with one brush stroke. Not that it's not possible or even useful to do in some cases, but it's not something that should be done willy-nilly. And I guess I like the idea of a more individualistic approach. That's just my thoughts.

But the beauty of it is there are plenty of instances to try out; the fedi-universe is certainly an interesting concept I'm starting to wrap my head around.

[–] WheeGeetheCat 0 points 1 year ago

I would really advise you to go read Frederick Brennan's thoughts and watch his interviews etc. I think he will address a lot of your questions. He is also the perfect person to make the arguments because:

he was a handicapped youth who HATED having others protect him from content, he wanted to know what people REALLY thought, would have agreed with the most extreme people here 100% in his youth
he actually undertook making the idea real, while fully wanting it to succeed
as a result, he was forced to engage with the reality of these ideas most of us just discuss
his first person experience taught him lessons about this that we can all learn from, without repeating the same mistakes