this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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Thank you for the very thoughtful reply.
The brigading is a huge problem and discourages people from joining lemmy, we need highly opinionated moderated communities to create "safe spaces" for niche communities and viewpoints. The inclusion of "user participation requirements", like account age, interaction with a community, karma scores in community - are necessary to help lemmy grow.
From a long term stability of society perspective, absolute free speech is the only path forward. Yes, people we hate will have voices, and people who are criminal will have voices, but that is the price of giving everyone a voice. We only have to look at the diversity of "governments" globally to realize having a community focused, respectful, government is a temporary thing. Governments change with time, with those enforcing the rules. Just as a thought experiment imagine you lived your entire life in every country, and imagine you wanted to advocate for 1. human rights, 2. a political opposition party. In many countries, that is aggressively stamped out, "don't rock the boat". In many global communities' doing 1 and 2 are great ways to embarrasses powerful people and have a short life.
I know many people will think, "yes, but... what about thing I don't like X"... If we create the digital tooling to ban X, whatever X is, then those in power will use that tooling to target everything else. Tools in the toolbox get used. Its a difficult stance to be a free speech absolutist, its unpopular, but I think its necessary. I'm not saying communities have to suffer outsider speech intruding on their spaces, but that platforms cannot be opinioned as a whole.
You bright up very thoughtful points and I agree censorship is necessary to grow communities, but censorship should never get larger then the community level. Platform level censorship is bad for society in the long term.
Okay; you're making a distinction between "moderation" and "censorship" that I don't understand. Does it go back to your litmus of an "important public space?"
Moderation: not deplatforming, but putting rails on a specific discussion
Censorship: deplatforming, total limits on a topic in all places.
I.E. anyway can send mail in the post office. A news letter editor moderates the received letters for inclusion in their publication.
So in a Lemmy context, it's not censorship to have rules on a instances, but it would be censorship to deny people the ability to run a instance. Lemmy is very censorship resistant.
Are you suggesting that there are no topics, no content, that should be censored? I'm not trying to walk you into Godwin's law; I just don't see how you address issues like CP, snuff porn, or hate/incentivizing speech. I personally would rather err on the conservative side of the Paradox of Tolerance, than allow intolerence to take hold and take over. With total and complete freedom of expression, how do you prevent the emergence of populist oppressive movements like the Khmer Rouge, or the Nazi party? Or do you think the Paradox of Tolerance is flawed?
First, let me take the opposite position, with restricted and curated freedom, how do you prevent people from being oppressed?
The speech itself should not be censored, that includes the objectionable things you mentioned. If a country, or a government wish to make some speech illegal, that it should be up to the courts to remove somebody's speech, through a due process and public discourse.
I take a different position on the paradox of tolerance, the issue is sitting idly by, while groups are being excluded. Open debate, and rational thinking, are required by all countries in the world, and all the citizens of the world, to prevent terrible abuses from happening again. My takeaway, is everyone should fight tooth and nail, to prevent any group from being excluded - including groups we don't like.
I've seen the paradox of intolerance used as rhetorical ammunition to silence opponents online, and that just turns into another form of tyrrany of the current ingroup.
To prevent another opressive government from taking hold (like your examples), we have to trust in people's engagement and wisdom, and the open healthy debate of ideas. We can, of course, help people, through economic stability, critical thinking education, etc...
If we say some thoughts are tok dangerous to be spoken, for fear people are too easily lead astray.. then we are trusting that those who choose which voices are worth hearing will always be benelovent dictators.. the one lession I take away from history is that power rarely stays in the hands of the benelovent. Open communication, organization, and free thought is the most effective way to protect a population.
TLDR: thought crime and wrong think shouldn't ever exist, legally at least.