Controversial - the place to discuss controversial topics

If the instances that want to be a safe space defederate from instances espousing an ideology they can't stand, I don't see the problem. If an LGBTQIA+ instance and a Salafi Muslim instance defederate each other, most of their members are going to be happier even though it might be hard on gay Salafis.

"This generalist instance I am on shouldn't tolerate Salafis and I demand we defederate the Salafi instance tomorrow" sounds the same in outline, but feels very different. It's closer to an attempt to push your enemies out of the public square than an attempt to prevent harassment of your private meeting.

I think probably the problem is that people think they can just attach a label to someone and that's actually an argument. "They're Nazis!" No they aren't. I mean, maybe somewhere there are some nazis, but just cause you call someone a thing does not make them that thing. After all, are all trans people groomers just because a lot of people are calling them groomers? (The answer is no)

The most controversial instance on lemmy right now was here long before most of the instances that are complaining about it. They do have critical things to say about a lot of things that are considered sancrosanct. But there is an underlying appreciation of freedom underneath it All. A Nazi website wouldn't have an entire community associated with crony capitalism, corrupt politicians, racism (just using that word implies it's a bad thing).

This doesn't end in the end of the marketplace of ideas. The decentralized nature of the Fediverse means you can have an unlimited diversity of ideas because there's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from just spinning up their own instance. Over on Mastodon et al, there are instances that are basically 4chan with usernames, and there are other instances that are locked down to only people with their exact ideological standpoint on anything. Then there are lots of instances that don't act like either of those, but are happy to participate with both. In this sense, it really is a marketplace.

Reddit was one of the groups to come across, but they won't be the last. I expect we're going to see some very spicy instances in the next couple months. There will definitely be more defederation, but there will also be more federation. On a monolithic website such as reddit, you can't really have both these groups of people in the same space, but you can here. Admins on different instances can each pick the level of spice they're okay with for their communities, and users can pick the instances that fit with their level and flavor of spice.

There's a reason why Lemmy world ended up becoming the number one instance despite other instances being bigger to start with. I don't really expect and the spicier instances that show up to put a ding in that. If you go to a restaurant with different flavors of hot wings, the ghost pepper suicide wings sell for some people but they don't sell a lot compared to their other flavors.

I wonder if this could be an opportunity for the Lemmy to address the social media bubble in a way that other advertising and profit driven social media platforms had not. Groups like Qanan presumably got stronger and more radical by being in an echo chamber full of their own ideas. There has to be a way to tackle this problem, not just for this platform but for society in general. Perhaps there's a compromise or new solutions we can work out other than the dichotomy of ban or don't ban.

I'd like to imagine that some people on the verge of becoming radicalized into a cult-like group could be redeemed by a socratic conversation with someone who offers differing opinions while validating them. I think many of these people have personal issues and insecrutities going on, then turn to a hateful community merely because they finally feel they belong.

People don't always engage in good faith. Such people are not bringing ideas to the marketplace, they are trying to manipulate people.

In order to really engage with each other, we have to have some common ground on which we can work from. If that base ground is not established, there is no discussion to be had. If I'm trying to talk about how to make grocery stores more efficient, but you're talking about how to get to Jupiter, we can't have a conversation that has any point.

A similar thing can happen at the instance scale.

Defederating for the reasons you said are, by themselves, poor reasons I agree. But sometimes I think they are trying to say they aren't engaging in good faith, or that enough of the basic point of that instance is at odds with the basic point of this instance that defederating makes sense.

the whole idea of fediverse is that everyone should spin up their own instance. thus moderation becomes a matter of personal preference, as it should be. something radical needs to be done to combat the siloization of online discourse which leads to a brittle and false world view