this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Honestly, as long as they stay insulated from the rest of the fediverse, it’s not really any different than them spinning up a forum somewhere. It’s going to be a challenge for them to reach new people to warp to their worldview if they are largely kept away from everyone else.
And sure they might lurk in alt accounts to try their recruitment that way in the rest of the fediverse, but I feel like if it won’t be a default to be exposed to the rhetoric (like Reddit) all the time on most servers, since the vast majority aren’t going to want to connect to them, it will come across to potential recruits as exactly how extreme it actually is.
This is definitely a strength of federation.
Want to get rid of right wing communities and their fascist members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
Want to get rid of left wing communities and their commie members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
Want to get rid of hate communities and their toxic members? Defederate with the instances that host them.
You don't need to completely close communities, you can just let people have those discussions in their own space, as should be their right. Centralised systems don't really have this choice.
I think this too. Let them have their little corners of the internet so they stay away from the rest of us. If they want to use public spaces to talk about fucked up stuff and type up their plans like idiots, well, all the more reason to make it easier for watchdog groups to keep track of them. I think we should keep the upvote/downvote system. Maybe once a comment (or post) reaches a certain number of downvotes, it gets marked as hidden, instead of censored or deleted. That way the users can self-mod along with the mods. I don't think there's a need to tally votes outside of each individual comment/post, so we can get rid of karma which is nice
This only makes sense if you assume that new people would be funneled into extremist Lemmy instances from other Lemmy instances, but it's far more likely that new people will be pointed toward such communities through other paths, and then they won't be exposed to competing ideas.
Don't misunderstand me - I'm not saying that hate speech, racism and sexism should be ignored or allowed to exist alongside other content on Lemmy. I am saying that trying to ignore that, separate ourselves from it, and pretend like it doesn't exist and doesn't affect us, is ultimately counterproductive.
They wouldn't be exposed to competing ideas if nobody defederates. They would subscribe to their own communities, where normal people would not participate, leaving only toxic ineffectual discussion.
Defederating is not ignoring the problem. It's an active choice. It's scooping the floaters out of the pool. It's a clear message that bigotry is not tolerated. When they get bored of their hateful shit they can come and have manners and enjoy cat pictures with the rest of us.
I will decline being the counterpoint for this bullshit. It's not a normal person's responsibility to educate bigots.
One nice benefit of this method is that people who spend too much time in echo chambers eventually start sounding like raving lunatics, which hurts their credibility in the real world.