Honest communication hasn't ever been the strong point of Reddit staff but they're really taking it to new lows lately.
It started with "those third party apps are using up all our internets" as a mask for "the API was free because your content was borderline worthless but now we can sell it to AI companies" and the smell of bullshit has only grown stronger.
While I wouldn't put bots past the reddit staff (they do so little about astro-turfing that it's hard to imagine they're opposed to it), they're not the only ones with something to lose.
Reactionaries and extremists have worked very hard to build "mask on" communities that aren't overtly far-right but are nevertheless an important stepping stone on the way there.
I'm sure they don't want to start over again on a new platform that is much more difficult to manipulate.
i have to say as well that freedom breeds freedom and better and more intelligent people as well.
I have no objection to freedom itself, I object to that freedom being used to turn vulnerable people into domestic terrorists.
The reality is that this kind of absolutism simply doesn't work. While on paper it would be wonderful if we could scrap every law to maximise personal freedom, we all know that doing so would just hand society to arseholes.
I don't think that we need witch hunts or bulllying to build safe instances, just intelligence.
While it's technically possible that it could turn into a witch hunt or bullying, it's more likely to be used as an excuse by the arseholes.
There's no shortage of people on social media claiming "the left just call everyone who disagrees with them nazis" while simultaneously spouting opinions that perfectly align with the opinions neo-nazis have held for 40 years. Only the vocabulary changes, morphing from "undesirables" to "SJWs" to "woke".
Often, it's not a honest mistake either. One of the most popular topics in far-right Discord channels is "how to redpill people", which involves strategies like obfuscating their actual opinions and playing the victim.
Now my opinion about your last point is that there's hate speech everywhere, not just from your right, your left is pretty extremist as well, and pretty full of assholes. Assholes are everywhere.
Sure, but let's not pretend they're in the same league.
Tankies can be assholes, but they're pushing communism because they believe it would be a better, fairer society for everyone, despite it usually ending in corruption, starvation and executions.
Meanwhile over on the far-right, genocide is the point. They think that society would be better for them if they could kill and enslave minorities and women. That's a level far beyond calling people names.
As always, the rule of thumb is think for yourself and don't be an asshole.
Sounds good, doesn't work. That's why COVID saw reactionaries pushing conspiracy theories that could have come straight from Elders of Zion and spitting in peoples faces.
The wider net you let them cast, the more vulnerable people they'll catch.
Sounds good to me since there are genuinely bad people on social media, often using it as a platform to groom more reactionaries and extremists.
Corporate social media has always been slow to react to these groups and they often take the stance of "as long as they don't go fully mask off" in order to preserve as many ad impressions as possible.
With the community in control, they can act much faster to limit astro-turfing and hate speech, pushing the far-right back into the obscure shitholes of the internet.
I think its a massive improvement. Reddit did next to nothing about astro-turfing and vote manipulation. Lemmy gives people the tools needed to detect inorganic content.
Don't be so pessimistic -- you can have a red neoliberal or a blue neoliberal. What more could you want?