Hello, Im kind of new here and trying to get used to Lemmy and I was wondering about if this is true since I am considering donating on this site to support alternative projects but wanted to hear other users before doing so. That being said, what have been your experiences?
freedom of speech means the government can’t arrest you for speaking up. Neither lemmy nor reddit are the government, so freedom of speech does not apply.
I’d actually consider Lemmy’s freedom of speech to be very similar to the US. Nobody on the network can limit your speech in your own instance but nobody has to platform your terrible speech and everyone is free to ignore your speech and exclude you to just participating on your own instance.
It’s a lot more free than reddit, but the userbase of lemmy is a lot more extremist and tends to harass/insult you more. The issue is they can’t get you banned sitewide like they could on reddit for saying something that upsets them. on reddit i got a sitewide ban for having and outdoor cat. it was absurd, but the idiot mob mentality on reddit has that power. on lemmy they don’t, at worst you would just get banned from one instance.
Absolutely.
It’s not even a debate.
My 13 year old Reddit account was perma-banned without warning for saying “PUNCH A NAZI”. Let’s test that out here.
PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI
And that was just my first of probably 30-40 Reddit accounts before I finally said fuck it and came here. I’m not some asshole purposefully posting asshole shit I know I’m going to get banned for. Reddit is just that pathetic.
It’s just that I have zero patience for dipshits posting misinformation (as should we all) and I’m not afraid to let them know it. Lemmy gives me that liberty. Thanks Lemmy!!!
Ive made many comments that go against the general view of the user base. It gets downvoted but never deleted or banned. So I would say its pro free speech.
Well lemmy hasn’t banned me for pointing out that a prisoner who is still alive hasn’t finished serving their life sentence
Best to donate to another project besides lemmy.
The main dev for lemmy is kind of a shitty person who is not shy about their shitty beleifs.
He supports authoritarians and dictatorships and bans anyone who doesn’t excuses the human rights abuses of dictatorships.
There is three questions to consider.
One is the site itself. Reddit inc has their own policies that apply site-wide no matter what. Lemmy has no central organization like that, although each individual server operator has their own acceptable use policy for what they allow on their server. This means it is both more free and more confusing- if you want to post potentially objectionable content like porn, there are plenty of servers that allow it or you can always run your own, but you have to make sure you are on one.
Next is individual group moderation. Both Reddit and Lemmy have this, community level moderators that apply whatever standards particular community requires. There is much less of the ‘power mod on a power trip’ situation than on Reddit currently, at least in my experience. I think some of that is because the overall traffic level is less, so it will be interesting to see what happens as Lemmy grows.
Finally there is culture and self-moderation. You see this on mass market platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where someone will say like they were roped at a party and want to buy a pewpew to unalive themself or some other such bullshit. Unfortunately that brain rot is spreading into Reddit, even though it is not at all required. Fortunately Lemmy seems pretty free of that so far.
corn, seggs, etc too. so absurd that stuff. esp because so much tiktok content is just lead-ins to porn/onlyfan accounts.
That’s a good point actually. An extra level of ridiculousness and hypocrisy to this trend of self censorship.
You know what worries me though? It was about 2008ish when I first heard someone say “lol” verbally as a response to a witty comment, and it was a really weird moment for me. She didn’t laugh, she smiled and said “lol”, because she was so used to speaking online. Now it’s pretty normal to hear that. I even do it without realising it.
What worries me is that these awful censorship words will creep into spoken English and people will start saying then out loud. I think I will unalive a little inside when that happens.I have already heard things like “unalive” defended as youth slang rather than Orwellian doublespeak.
Yup all those too.
I wish Reddit would put up a banner like ‘you are on the grown up internet now, please act like it’.
There is nothing inherently built into Lemmy that protects freedom of speech over Reddit other that being able to host your own instance.
I agree, but I do think that’s the most important thing.
I don’t think it is. Unless you are the host of a major instance, most of your interactions are going to be on other instances; these instances can do whatever mod actions they want against you.
If there are people interact on your instance, then you have the ability to restrict their speech.
It has just as much freedom as any other platform. It all depends on who the admins and moderators are. We do have better tools of keeping those in check, with the modlog being publicly available tho.
The modlog can be scrubbed, though. Afaik, if a mod bans someone and removes the user’s content at once, the modlog only logs the ban but all the comments are removed without a trace.
Yes. Reddit is now beholden to corporate interest, and posts comments that go against those interest get deleted and users get banned. Once you’re banned, there’s no creating a new account because they IP block. Fuck reddit, long live lemmy.
It depends on which instance are you using.
Technically, yeah. Some instances are run by tin-pot dictators with delusions of godhood, but if you get banned from one of those just switch to another one.
The communities tend to be bubblier, though, since they’re small. So if your opinions don’t match you’ll get shouted down harder.
The hive is a lot more arrogant here.
the superiority complex here is very high. apparently everyone is a genius because they use Linux.
And because they’re Communarchyalists. Don’t forget that.
Please stay on reddit. You’re a perfect fit there, here we’re all horrible baby eating communists so you wouldn’t like it.
There is one nice feature that pushes back against hive-mindedness here that Reddit lacks, at least; you can see your upvote and downvote totals rather than just the single aggregate total. Reddit used to be like that years ago but they got rid of it.
That means that if you say something that gets a ton of both downvotes and upvotes you can at least know that there were a significant number of people who liked it it. Over on Reddit saying anything that netted negative karma felt like screaming into the void.
Oh, and the small population means that downvoted comments are still likely easy to see. That helps too.
Still, the Fediverse does feel more strongly bubbled than Reddit does, from my subjective and anecdotal position.
deleted by creator
Yeah. Basically, I go to Reddit for independent information. I come here to essentially get yelled for having a nuanced take.
A nuanced take on Reddit is pretty much a guarantee of downvotes and arguments against things your weren’t saying
That’s not been my experience. Perhaps it’s the subs I tend to post in? Either way- a nuanced take is FAR less likely to be accepted here.
which bubble am I in now?
10 hours ago over in [email protected] you saw a picture that you rather liked but that was getting a lot of downvotes and you didn’t know why. You were told by @[email protected] that “lemmy doesn’t like AI”
Also 10 hours ago over in [email protected] you said “I know its an unpopular opinion, but I don’t agree with punching Nazis. It makes them look like a victim, and violence never works.” You got a bunch of downvotes for that yourself.
Just a couple of examples of situations where an opinion that was against the consensus view of the community got “punished.”
Lemmy.world, so the largest general ‘bubble’ so to speak. You’re on the generalist, relatively moderate instance.
I feel like when people describe anything as moderate on the fediverse, they’re really taking about the middle ground between centrism and true communism. And somehow that’s still icky for some people’s tastes. Lol
I would never in a million years describe myself as moderate and I find myself agreeing with the great majority of opinions I come across. That’s how the general vibe of the entire instance feels, and it’s still not leftist enough for some folks, somehow.
Yes, moderate here is a relative term in the context of the wider fediverse.
Yeah, I’m not commenting on whether it’s a relative term, but where that line falls. It’s already quite left, and somehow people are still clutching their pearls.
the point of being a extremist is nothing is good enough for you. it’s a quest for ever more extreme views to feel superior/purer than the unwashed non-ideological masses.
the ‘drug’ of extremism is that it makes feel people feel ‘special’. ONLY they know the TRUTH.
Okay “centrist”.
I’ll go be extreme in my belief that people should be able to live without being harassed and murdered for who they were born.
lbgt+ extremists are 100% for harassment, murder, and assault when it’s someone they disgaree with. lots of them don’t think heterosexuality should exist, and many of them are anti-bi, anti-trans hate groups who have these weird ‘queer is supreme’ mindsets and feel they have the right to tell everyone else how to live.
charlie kirk murder is one of them. very popular view here on lemmy that his death was 100% justified because of what he said, while harming nobody.
Hell yeah.
Now, will people disagree with you in very emotional ways, downvote without giving any explanation, etc etc.? Sure! But you won’t get banned for opposing Western imperialism, for instance. I mean, I talk about God and give people shit for being vacuous, hedonistic and self-centered (because that’s at the core of many sociocultural issues) and I haven’t been banned, at most I get boo’d. 😅
opposing Western imperialism
I get the sentiment, but this usually boils down to blaming everyone on the Western hemisphere for what the US is doing.
I really wish these attitudes would take into account the other dozen countries like my own that largely keep to themselves.
So yeah, boo!
dozen countries like my own
I’m gonna guess… Portugal! I can’t think of anything they’ve done -recently- that’s overtly imperialistic? Ireland?
You’d best not be British, German, French, Italian, Romanian, Czech, Hungarian, Austrian, Polish or Israeli, though.Lol I wasn’t expecting people to guess. But it’s just little old Mexico.
It’s a free universe!
What makes Lemmy different from Reddit is that if some moderator or admin is limiting your freedom of speech, you can run your own instance with your own rules and communities and still be on Lemmy. Reddit can ban you from Reddit, but Lemmy is like a collection of “reddits” that integrate and there is no central authority. To answer your question, as a user you have more freedom to find an instance with rules that align with your values and wishes, and you always have the option to create your own instance, and no one can stop you. If you say things that other people don’t want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn’t limit your freedom of speech.
thank you so much
Some instances are really not about freedom but when I had problems I just moved and here is fine! I like it more
yeah .world so far seems to have the most chill userbase.
I would add to this that there is significant controversy around the ideological alignment of the lemmy developers, and most people would find the political leanings of the instances they’re associated with to be… unpalatable.
I’ll leave you to undertake that journey of discovery for yourself, suffice to say that freedom of speech is particularly limited on those instances.
Other software operates in the fediverse and is interoperable with lemmy. For example, myself and the commenter you replied to are registered with piefed servers, while this post is on a lemmy server.
If you say things that other people don’t want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn’t limit your freedom of speech.
So it is like Trump’s own ‘social’ media: I make my own and there I can say all kinds of bull that nobody wants to hear 🤣
In a way, yes, but his site isn’t federated with other sites. Truth social is a modified Mastodon instance.
TS being a Mastodon fork is so disgusting.
