https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
Lemmy.ml, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, has consistently been accused of improper Federation practices and many instances have decided to ban one or both of the latter by default, with many individual users having already gone further to block the former as well. However, many individual users on lemmy.ml seem unaware of the accusations of the practices of their admins, and some people go so far as to see lemmy.ml as a sort of default instance on the Fediverse.
This discussion promotes wider knowledge of the situation and what might be done about it in the future, in order to e.g. not turn away new potential Federation members (Fedizens?:-) that could otherwise associate what happens on that instance as something relating to the Fediverse as a whole.
I would put it differently, I think: all ideologies can become amplified, but they do not necessarily have to be. I tend to find that people of character can discourse on anything at all, whereas people lacking character cannot discourse on much if anything without it devolving into a fight - for the latter, fighting is the point, not a(n unfortunate) by-product of the discussion topic at hand. For people whose ultimate end-goal is Truth, then what idea could possibly be a "cancer"? Though for people whose goal is rather Control, every dissenting opinion must be rooted out & destroyed. But I would say that it is not "facts" that are the deadly things, and rather "attitudes", like whether someone values Truth vs. Control. I hope that makes some semblance of sense:-P.
Also, there's a difference between labelling something and censoring it. You getting banned is an example of the latter, whereas e.g. X's adding a note that "this post may contain misinformation" would be the former. In movies, labelling porn as X or XXX or whatever, and more "adult" movies as R, "young teenager" movies as PG-13, child aka "general audience" movies as G, allows people to pick and choose what they want (though e.g. to get into a PG-13 movie, someone younger than 13 needs an adult present). But then when you have people arguing not about facts but which authoritarian viewpoint is going to be force-fed to the masses, neither labelling nor censoring is going to be possible in a manner to please both sides, b/c the truth cannot be agreed upon first, nor even THAT the truth should matter at all in the first place.
Some places, like Wikipedia put in ENORMOUS investments of effort (time, attention, real WORK) to getting something that everyone can more or less agree upon. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump says not that "he's totally innocent, framed I tell ya!" nor "he's guilty as sin and should be shot", but the bare-bones facts that:
This will not stop people from interpreting these facts however they wish, but these words do serve the purpose of being recorded in a purely factual manner for the sake of a public record.
Conversely, social media is not worth that amount of attention, so moderators resort to simply censoring it. It's the nature of the game, which we sign up for by commenting to such a place in the first place. We are entitled to nothing. Though we can comment on our POV from our experiences, and e.g. if we don't like their admin practices, we can - and should - leave lemmy.ml and move on to better places where we are more free to discuss things among people who care more about facts than authoritarian regimes propped up by censorship of dissenting opinions (and yes, contrarian facts).
But first, we need to acknowledge that it is happening, as we are doing now. And then share that knowledge with others who may be taken unawares, so that they too do not have to go through all the pain that you did, in having to find that out first-hand. :-)