The problem with these "free speech" instances is that they'll get defederated really quickly if they aren't already defederated. You can start your own instance, but don't be suprised when many instances starts to defederate your instance when the bigotry starts spilling over to the fediverse.
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I’m confused. If you run your own instance, allowing no new accounts, can’t you federate with whomever you want, without anything spilling over to other instances? Maybe I don’t understand how federation works if that’s the case…
I mean, just by replying here content from my single user instance (this comment, specifically) is "spilling over" to all the instances who can see this post.
Yup, I totally get that if you decide to post crap on somebody else's instance, you are "spilling over" and might get defederated.
But I was pondering a different question in my initial message: If I decide to create my own instance, onto which I allow no-one else to create an account, and I'm nice individual with no desire for racism, genderism or any other tendency for -isms, how does my federating with racism-instance.social, on my local instance, spill over to other instances that I also federate with?
This is less of an issue (if any) in Lemmy, but at least in Mastodonland, the fact that you can boost/retweet stuff to other people does mean that a defederated instance can see your content boosted through a "neutral" instance. There were several instances like "dot technology" who went beyond defederating not only the crap instances, but instances that refused to defederate from said crap instances to lessen this problem over there, but with Lemmy not having boosting this isn't really a problem over here.
Yes you can. You can have a instance completely cut off from the fediverse if thats what you want, but you'd be missing out on most of the content. I don't know of any such instances that actually have any activity.
My (not popular at all) instance has a philosophy that boils down to one thing: don't ruin this for anyone else. Based on that it has several rules, including some that may end up in conflict with each other and some that are very subjective. Ultimately I run this server for me, and want a neutral as reasonably possible view into the fediverse.
I don't plan on posting things that would piss anyone off enough to defederate (though everyone has different standards, so who knows on that one), and generally expect the same from other users-- especially if that user from my instance is interacting with a community or user from somewhere else. Interacting outside of the tiny confines of my instance means my users are representing my instance, I think it is completely fair to say "Don't go to someone else's house and piss in their cornflakes while telling them my address".
On my instance itself I want communities that are welcoming to others, and hosting communities that make people want to ban my instance at first glance or on principle alone is antithetical to my core philosophy.