this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2022
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Asklemmy

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What can I do to help Lemmy? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Owell1984@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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On what ideals were Lemmy created? I am asking it because I am considering supporting Lemmy any way I can but I won't if the ideals of it's creators are anything but upholding free speech. I want to know more about this website, can someone refer me to a book or a video which might encapsulate it?

What I mean by free speech: There is no justification to censor any views unless those views are directly demanding for physical violence against a person or community. Direct physical violence of course doesn’t include offensive speech against any religion (be it Islam, Hinduism or Christianity) or against any ideology or any "protected groups".

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[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The documentation has some ways to contribute.

The goal of Lemmy is essentially to create/develop a free software, federated forum/link aggregator. In my opinion, its best to keep the project focused on technical work as much as possible, and not make it political in any way. Of course thats not easy because all of us have certain political views. But dont mistake the rules of lemmy.ml as anything official, its just one instance of many. The purpose of Lemmy is that everyone can create instances based on their own ideals and preferences.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Imagine someone creates a group pro-LGBT people and someone creates a group which officially calls LGBT people sinners and their lifestyle a sin. Swap 'LGBT' with any protected group you can think of. Would the anti-LGBT group stay afloat or do developers of lemmy have the power to take it down?

I am in full support of people with different sexual identities but I do believe that no social media should censor any views unless they promote active violence(hate is still ok).

The problem is even reddit allowed the subreddit r/antiislam in it's early days but when the more power they gain the more comfortable they are in suppressing views which they personally think is unacceptable. I don't want lemmy to be a second reddit.

[–] Halce@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

The developers of Lemmy the software have no power to take anything down, provided you set up your own server and host the Lemmy software yourself. Any hosted server (lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml... etc, ) can decide on their own rules they wish their users to follow though.

[–] gun@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

From what I've seen the developers don't condone using the software for hateful purposes. That's why Lemmy used to have a slur filter built in to the software. That said there's nothing they can do to prevent anyone from running an instance the way they see fit, and that's a good thing, because it makes it decentralized. The code is open source under the GPL license, which means anyone could take the code and copy it to make their own version as long as that version is open source.

There are free speech Lemmy instances that exist. Most other instances block them though because most people on here don't want to see casual racism in their feed. I think most people are fine with a little moderation and don't want to give a platform to hateful communities.

I don’t want lemmy to be a second reddit.

It is impossible for this to happen because Lemmy is open source and federated, and Reddit isn't. Anyone can fork the source code and start a new instance if they are unhappy with the moderation of existing instances.

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Free speech means that the government doesn't censor you it has nothing to do with this software project

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The first amendment is a damn good document for anyone looking to create a social media which is fair, so I would expect the same freedoms here as US government allows it for it's own citizens(or atleast used to allow)

[–] nutomic@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This instance is hosted in France, not the Unoted States, so your constitution has no relevance for moderation. Maybe a different instance would be more appropriate for you.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

Its not actually my constitution but being born in a tyranny I seem to value freedom of speech more than people who have gotten used to it. I don't want to give a History lesson but French Revolution was also inspired by American war for Independence. So I would be surprised if france has Free Speech laws which are severely restrictive.

[–] throes69420@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

engage as much as you can

people will only come here if there are other people

reddit first used fake accounts in order to create an illusion of people existing on it

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

that's gonna be hard considering there aren't many people here in the first place :(

[–] triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think the Lemmy authors run both lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml, so What is lemmy.ml might be helpful to you.

Also the default Code of Conduct in the Lemmy documentation.

I can't speak for the creators, but it seems it's more important to them to have an inclusive community than to protect "free speech". Looking at the "free speech" Lemmy and Mastodon / Pleroma instances out there, I think they made the right call...

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I made my definition of free speech clear in the edit. It might sound idiotic to you but I would be against any social media which ranks being "inclusive" higher than being a bastion of free speech. The only inclusivity I want to see is the inclusivity of different views.

[–] triplenadir@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I appreciate you explaining, it doesn't sound idiotic, I think we have different ideas about what makes a positive community, and I'm not sure I fully understand what you're saying.

Would you be OK with seeing these things, which I don't think would be "calling for direct physical harm" to anyone, on a Lemmy instance?

  • Posting someone's legal name, home address, government ID number
  • Calling for a person to be hacked, harassed online or in person, or for someone to steal their bike/car/pet, or kill their pet
  • Child porn, revenge porn (nonconsensually posting private nude pictures), edited / deepfake porn
  • Copyrighted movies, music and TV
  • Classified government documents

If you're OK with these kinds of posts, then I can see what you mean about only having one rule; I feel like a site like that would be under constant legal threats, and I think it would be pretty toxic, but I'd be interested to hear how it goes.

If you wouldn't be OK with them, is that because of legal stuff, or you morally disagreeing with it?

If a site follows the law, then you've got to ban holocaust denial (Germany), "hate speech" (UK and France), blasphemy against god or the monarch (Saudi Arabia, Thailand), leaking government secrets (US, UK), piracy (basically everywhere), harassment (a bunch of places), revenge porn (US, UK), child porn (basically everywhere)... the list goes on.

And if you have a moral problem with any of the above... what would you add to your free speech policy to make those exceptions?

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

Hello, No I would not be comfortable with "Posting someone’s legal name, home address, government ID number Calling for a person to be hacked, harassed online or in person, or for someone to steal their bike/car/pet, or kill their pet Child porn, revenge porn (non-consensually posting private nude pictures), edited / deepfake porn Copyrighted movies, music and TV Classified government documents"

And I am not ok with it because yes, I think they are morally reprehensible (although leaking classified govt documents of a genocide might be the opposite) and no I wasn't talking about it at all when I talked about free speech ( The issue as you have pointed out cleverly is much more complicated than what I thought it was) What I was talking about was political speech.

And yes, I think I would be ok with holocaust denial although I think if it done for wrong reasons(knowing it happened and denying it) it would be morally reprehensible as well but in my view it doesn't warrant censoring that speech. I love you that you put hate speech in inverted commas(It depends upon who is defining it and then too varies a lot with other definitions). And yes, Blasphemy, I am pretty sure there isn't a day in my life where I haven't been guilty of that (and I proudly accept that lol). And it's not only Saudi Arabia which bans blasphemy, it's a ton of countries and it's a constantly expanding list with even "free countries" joining in on the "fun" now. revenge porn should be illegal. Child porn warrants stringent punishments.

Again I poorly described my question as you pointed it out and I appreciate you exposing me to the faults in my thinking. **But again, I can tolerate "hate speech", Holocaust denial and blasphemy. And when I was thinking of free speech I was thinking of that. I think they should not be censored as long as they do not involve direct physical threats against an individual or a group. ** I would expect a decentralized forum to be able to circumvent laws such as these which needlessly restrict political speech.

[–] sovietsnake@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It depends on what free speech mean to you, if you'd answer that maybe someone could give a better reply, since there multiple definitions depending on the person whom you ask.

[–] Owell1984@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

It depends on what free speech mean to you, if you’d answer that maybe someone could give a better reply, since there multiple definitions depending on the person whom you ask.

There is no justification to censor any views unless those views are directly propitiating physical violence against a person or community. Direct physical violence of course doesn't include offensive speech