Ask Lemmy

Any instance that supports defederation and censorship is an instance NOT worth supporting

You're posting from lemmy.world. You're defederated from over thirty instances. So by your own logic, you shouldn't support your own instance.

Defederation is an assertion of freedom of association. For example, lemmy.world is defederated from exploding-heads. The people who run the instance do not want to be associated with the right-wingers over at exploding-heads in the sense that they refuse to even talk to them or share a social media system with them. Because they host the server, they have a right to decide what goes on their computers [1].

My instance, Lemmy.sdf.org, is federated with exploding-heads, and everyone else. So was Vlemmy when it went down with the sole exception due to the fact that the content on that instance was illegal in his jurisdiction. And sometimes in the comments, I see some right-wing asshole peddling their bullshit because I made the choice to pick an instance without safeguards.

Now frankly, my day's not going to be ruined if I get some offensive or NSFL shit pops up on my feed. That's not how I work. The only person who gets to ruin my day is me. My experience with people has led me to believe that most people aren't like that. Most people benefit from some degree of defederation.

Freedom of association allows for groups with specific intent to form. As an extreme example, I could start an instance where you are only ever allowed to say the letter e, where posting any other character results in a ban. The stated goal of my instance might be to worship the letter e [3]. By joining my instance, you indicate that you're willing to follow my rules. There's no one with a gun to your back forcing you to do anything, but the group has a right to throw you out if you're acting antagonistically.

So if you decided to start posting the letter f, you might get banned and start yelling about how your letters are "censored" on my "tyrannical" instance. And literally, I would agree that would be censorship. However, I don't always oppose censorship.

I am, and I think most people are, against censorship in governments. This type of censorship is usually implied when talking about censorship without further labels. Furthermore, for many people, government censorship is the only type that they can conceive of. People are generally against government censorship because it makes certain types of speech illegal everywhere (in their jurisdiction) and all the time. Because governments claim supreme authority to manage their citizens, including the power of life and death, their censorship is tyranny. Similarly, corporations have butted their way into almost every facet of our lives. It is a much less popular position (unfortunately), but their censorship is also tyranny. However, me telling someone to get out of my house after they shit on my floor is not tyranny.

In my view, defederation in the Fediverse is closer to "telling someone to get out of my house after they shit on my floor" than it is to government or corporate censorship. If the Fediverse centralizes to a handful of big names, then it might be closer to actual tyranny, especially if the situation is such that you can't meaningfully go anywhere else. But, even in that situation, you could host a private instance and join back into the conversation because anyone can host an instance [2].

While I do not agree with Beehaw's moderation, particularly defederating from lemmy.world, I do (well, my dead Vlemmy account did) participate in Beehaw communities. They're nice places to chat. There's a good vibe. The people there are free to go elsewhere if they feel so unfree. The admins have a right to create whatever community they please [1], and you are free to leave or avoid them if you so please.

If an instance chose to defederate and isolate itself, it deserves the very same isolation it so wanted.

Yes, it does, and that's why they did it. Beehaw does want to be isolated from toxic people. In my view, everyone deserves a space where they can feel safe. No one would laugh at you for wanting your home to feel safe. Is it really such a stretch to imagine that some people might need an online safe space? What if you live in an unsafe home?

I guess the idea is that structured communities and groups are not necessarily tyrannical because they don't inherently meet the definition of a hierarchy, which is forced upon people.

That being said, structured communities and their rules can result in tyranny, for example cults. I don't deny that. I'm an anarchist; I oppose laws and tyranny, but I don't inherently oppose guidelines.

[1] IMO there are limits to that. "Just because you can doesn't mean you should." E.g. common good trumps property rights, and I'm not really interested in simping for private property if I'm being honest. I consider social media to be a public service, so moderators really shouldn't be doing things that their community opposes. For example, if the admins of Beehaw decided to unilaterally ban the letter b from all posts or comments without getting the consent of their users, it is safe to assume that their community members would revolt. I would support such a revolt, because in that scenario, the admins of Beehaw used their power to fuck over the users, e.g. they exploited a power imbalance.

While I'm not closely following the moderation at Beehaw, my understanding is that users there generally appreciate the moderators. Of course, if the moderators were so oppressive, it is plausible that they might censor negative views. I make no factual claims about the strictness of Beehaw's moderation, only about what I have experienced. For this reason, we would really need the opinions of Beehaw users (including their exiles) to get a sense of how the moderation aligns with their community.

[2] I understand that not literally everyone can host an instance. At the very least, it requires a computer, and not everyone can afford a computer. However, the Fediverse is a huge step up in taking back the power from old social media systems like Reddit and Facebook, where if they decided to ban you, you're basically fucked.

[3] EDIT, about ten hours later, I found this really interesting comment about a Mastodon instance that only allows you to post the letter e basically as I described. I was completely unaware that this existed. Apparently, it was developed as a response to an instance that banned the letter e as a writing challenge. I meant to use the "e-only instance" example as a ludicrous edge case, but apparently it actually exists! I might go join it...