I've been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasn't sure how to feel about it.
Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken "federation" system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it's never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy's official docs say you can't even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won't actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
So you can only ever have the "average joe lemmy" and "average joe reddit" with everything approved by the authorities, and then "tor copies of lemmy" and "tor copies of reddit" where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.
People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But it's the exact same thing, it's reddit.
When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldn't let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they won't let you talk at all.
Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.
It's not actually a solution to reddit. It's not designed to be different, it's designed to match the past today and then match reddit's present tomorrow, while being part of a system that's about the same in past, present, and future.
Last year, this year, and next year, you're posting somewhere it won't be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. There's no difference here.
Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.
Edit - I was banned from my instance, and before being unbanned, some of my comments seem to have been removed. I apologize if I hurt anyone's feelings, but it seems pointless to try to discuss this topic here. I'll give a few more replies, and then suggest any further responses be directed to me on nostr, where there are no bans. I've also had a good time posting on PieFed while I was banned, so I'll probably keep spending time there. If anyone's curious, I had a thread about this topic on PieFed too. Btw, instead of the misplaced focus on bots, I should have said filter spam, not people earlier in this post.
Do you even know what I'm denying at this point?
I don't care about your question (which is yet another veiled insult). The point is that a fediverse moderator/admin could not be bribed as effectively as they would be on Reddit.
What regulatory pressure here are you referring to that you assume has caused instances to shut down?
That's not what I was referring to. Some owners find the obligations associated with being an instance owner of lots of users and communities time-consuming and exhausting and eventually shut down.
So who are the "corrupt authorities" you're referring to here?
So where's your evidence then?
You claimed that federation requires "approval" of other instances. This is true, but a) so what? and b) being rejected does not mean your instance is shut down. You just don't federate with the other instance.
You need a little knowhow, but anyone can spin up their own instances.
You're a targeted individual?
Okay, but the point is that no-one is screening your little lemmy server before it goes online.
Reality, overall, yes.
I don't remember the specific thing I was replying to there, or feel like checking it, though.
I didn't ask if you cared.
I didn't ask. How is that a point here, let alone "the?" Seems like more of another random irrelevant statement than a point.
Same answers as before. Why do you keep repeating questions I've directly given you answers to already?
I didn't ask. I respond to your words more than your secret meanings.
Again, didn't ask.
That's been repeatedly specified, right where you're asking: the ones that censor political discussion.
Bad use of "so" and "then," since you keep ignoring everything I'm saying, whereas those words would imply you're saying something that flows from what you quoted.
I still understand your question, and will half-answer it if you answer any of the many questions you've ignored from me so far leading up to this.
That was answered from the beginning: "so" the freedom of starting a new instance is not a magical guarantee you can do whatever you want, contrary to what you were trying to suggest.
Are you making the pointlessly obvious statement that being rejected from federation isn't the same thing as being rejected from DNS/IP addresses, or are you making the tautologically obviously incorrect statement that being rejected from DNS/IP addresses isn't the same thing as being rejected from DNS/IP addresses?
Either way, why did you bring it up right after I didn't ask?
Nope. Anyone with a home server can spin up an instance on their server, but that's not the same as just "anyone" and it's also not an absolute sense of "their own instances"
You ask this like you don't notice yourself targeting me right now, or the overall collective response from everyone else here.
Why pretend to be so dumb? Isn't your real stupidity enough for you?
How is that a point here, let alone "the?"
So you have no evidence of any "regulatory pressure" forcing instances to shut down.
You do not need to be federated with other instances to start and maintain an instance. By "do whatever I want" I meant within the instance itself.
People targeting you (replying to you) in this thread isn't the same thing as the state or some other authority somehow targeting you. What a ludicrous claim. Are the people here somehow going to stop you from spinning up your own instance, should you choose to?
And I don't give a single solitary fuck about the majority of your questions. It's clear you barely know what you're replying to.
Incorrect.
I didn't ask. Why did you type that?
Again, I'm responding more to your words than the secret meanings.
Incorrect. The authorities are just people.
The claim you made in the sentence before this was ludicrous, but I feel like you're trying to project that on me, not openly admitting it.
How would I know? Why would you ask me that as if I'd somehow know the answer?
I didn't ask if you do.
Incorrect.
I've never seen someone with such an outrageous persecution complex. It's genuinely comical. You think you're equivalent to a dissident in Iran because you're getting blowback on a thread you made on a small forum online.
Seems like you're accusing me of having a persecution complex, which I don't. You might, though.
Not sure what you mean.
Again, not sure what you mean.
Dude, you think you're some sort of dissident because people are disagreeing with you in a forum thread.
You unironically compared yourself to political dissidents my dude. To the point where you think it would somehow impede your ability to run your own lemmy instance.
Again, not sure what you mean. Could you screenshot exactly what you're talking about? I only remember talking once in this thread about being a targeted individual who can't safely have a home server, and that didn't really have these parts you're talking about.
You think people disagreeing with you in a forum means you can't safely have a home server instance. That is utterly pathetic. And you unironically did compare your supposed victimisation here with that of political dissidents.
Me: "People targeting you (replying to you) in this thread isn’t the same thing as the state or some other authority somehow targeting you."
You: "Incorrect. The authorities are just people."
Incorrect.
It is pathetic of you to keep making shit up like that.
Again, this is a link, not a screenshot. You keep wasting time posting links I keep telling you I'm not clicking.
These are quotes prefaced with "me:" and "you:" suggesting you're just recapping part of the conversation again. Why? Would this be worth my time to read?
So how are you "targeted" in this thread, and how are you "targeted" in such a way that it makes it so you can't safely have a home server instance?
So what? Is the link a lie? The link is to your post. https://i.imgur.com/USWVK8b.png
It's the relevant component where you larped as a martyr.
I'm targeted in this thread with gaslighting, people acting like they need me to repeat stuff, etc.
And the type of targeting that makes it so I can't safely have a home server is more like how I keep facing serious accusations of crimes I haven't committed, false arrests, accusations of pedophilia, etc.
I'm not clicking links. The Lemmy instance I was using allowed images to be embedded. Find an instance like that if you want to show me something. (If you formatted this as an embed and it's just showing up as a link, let me know what I can do other than click your links)
Being relevant in your imagination doesn't really justify wasting time with it here.
You have not been accused of being a pedophile. You have been "accused" of saying that CSAM should be allowed to be hosted online (because you said it).
Replying late because of my ban
Incorrect
That's not really an "accusation" unless you think free speech is problematic or something
I thought I replied to this already from a different instance while I was banned from sh.itjust.works?
Heads up, if you reply to this I might not see it because I was banned here so it doesn't seem worth trying to have much discussion here. If you have anything to say to me, try the nostr version of this thread
Yeah, people tend to consider CSAM "problematic" and look down on the idea that it should be permitted.
And can you show me where someone accused you of being a pedophile?