Instagram blocked searches related to a number of political hashtags, including #democrats, #democrat, #jan6th, #republicans and a number of other terms Tuesday.
I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don’t fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
I banned from the news communities so I made my own !news_summary@lemmy.dbzer0.com with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that’s chill AF allowing real discussion.
Whether you care about down votes on your own posts is irrelevant. But down votes on topics/categories absolutely steers the conversation and is precisely the concern we’re discussing here.
People love to rail against big tech companies for silencing certain groups through moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, but look the other way when we have tyranny of the majority doing the same thing through down votes and general pressure from the community to drive away dissent. It’s the same idea, just different groups of people doing the silencing.
I don’t care about down votes on my posts either, but I do care about systematic down votes on posts with ideas that are not dangerous, just unpopular. We won’t progress without challenging the status quo, yet we humans love to group ourselves into tribes and cast out anyone who doesn’t conform.
My point is that Lemmy isn’t any better than other social media, it has the same problems, just a different status quo.
What’s the alternative? U need some way to sort the marketplace of ideas and I would argue that democracy is the beat system we have.
I think this applies:
“No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” - Winston Churchill
The Fediverse isn’t a democracy though. Admins self-select, and moderators are merely those who made the community first or were selected by those who made the community (or maybe replaced by the admins). Hosting a big instance costs quite a bit of money, so it’ll naturally attract people with some kind of agenda. Those in charge will self-select their users whether intentionally or unintentionally.
The discourse on Lemmy (don’t know about the rest of the Fediverse) largely happens on a handful of instances, and I think that’s to be expected from the above. We’d probably be better off if we actually has democracy, but I think that’s the wrong metaphor to use since we’re not restricted to a geographical area like we are on real life.
I think the solution is distributed systems. Instead of a handful of people running things, everyone should take part in running things. Instead of a handful of people moderating things, everyone should be a moderator, and users should be able to select which moderators they trust and which they don’t. Internet services can do things that physical services can’t, and I think we should while explore that (and I’m doing just that on my own projects).
I really should have added a /s lol. I have experienced what ur talking about first hand but then again I don’t fucking give 2 shits if I get downvotes.
I banned from the news communities so I made my own !news_summary@lemmy.dbzer0.com with blackjack and AI summary hookers. And a moderation policy that’s chill AF allowing real discussion.
Whether you care about down votes on your own posts is irrelevant. But down votes on topics/categories absolutely steers the conversation and is precisely the concern we’re discussing here.
People love to rail against big tech companies for silencing certain groups through moderation or tweaks to the algorithm, but look the other way when we have tyranny of the majority doing the same thing through down votes and general pressure from the community to drive away dissent. It’s the same idea, just different groups of people doing the silencing.
I don’t care about down votes on my posts either, but I do care about systematic down votes on posts with ideas that are not dangerous, just unpopular. We won’t progress without challenging the status quo, yet we humans love to group ourselves into tribes and cast out anyone who doesn’t conform.
My point is that Lemmy isn’t any better than other social media, it has the same problems, just a different status quo.
I’d far prefer tyranny of the majority to being dictated to by an oligarch.
I refuse to accept the false dichotomy. I hope I’m not alone.
What’s the alternative? U need some way to sort the marketplace of ideas and I would argue that democracy is the beat system we have.
I think this applies: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” - Winston Churchill
The Fediverse isn’t a democracy though. Admins self-select, and moderators are merely those who made the community first or were selected by those who made the community (or maybe replaced by the admins). Hosting a big instance costs quite a bit of money, so it’ll naturally attract people with some kind of agenda. Those in charge will self-select their users whether intentionally or unintentionally.
The discourse on Lemmy (don’t know about the rest of the Fediverse) largely happens on a handful of instances, and I think that’s to be expected from the above. We’d probably be better off if we actually has democracy, but I think that’s the wrong metaphor to use since we’re not restricted to a geographical area like we are on real life.
I think the solution is distributed systems. Instead of a handful of people running things, everyone should take part in running things. Instead of a handful of people moderating things, everyone should be a moderator, and users should be able to select which moderators they trust and which they don’t. Internet services can do things that physical services can’t, and I think we should while explore that (and I’m doing just that on my own projects).