this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Controversial - the place to discuss controversial topics

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Controversial - the community to discuss controversial topics.

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!

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, "trust me bro" is not a valid argument.

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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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[–] WheeGeetheCat 15 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Yes, my stance is far from 'ban everything I dont like'. But you need to understand that 'ban nothing at all' (which is what free speech absolutists argue for) is on the other extreme of the moderation spectrum. I like to think I fall somewhere in the middle.

it's hardly a binary choice between the 2 so I was thrown when you instantly assumed that.

There's plenty of evidence that 8chan leads to mass shootings as many of the shooters leave vast manifestos on the site itself referencing beliefs they learned on the site. It has nothing to do with video games. If you want to claim that 'words and beliefs never lead to actions' that's fine but I think that's obviously false. In fact I'd say all actions are the result of our beliefs.

its fine for us to disagree here.

[–] saltysel 4 points 1 year ago (3 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.

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