Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
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claims he isn’t far right
Right-wing extremists do this to make it seem like their position is widely held and "normal." The worst extreme right-wing party we have here in Finland (Valta kuuluu kansalle or "Power Belongs to the People", aka Valta kuuluu Kremlille or "Power Belongs to the Kremlin") claims to be center right. The head of the party is a pro-Russia flat earther who doesn't believe in climate change, and the party is staunchly anti-immigration
Performative Overton acrobatics.
What's funny is there is nothing stopping them from making their own instance. I think the hesitation stems from them coming to grips with reality that few people really want to engage with their messaging when they step out of their bubble.
Because they can't make people who don't agree with them miserable if they're all relegated to their own bubbles.
Not speaking for anyone but me, but sometimes when people say they something is too political it really means too much "extreme" political views. Personally I don't want to interact with extreme auth-left or auth-right content. I think politely discussing why access to housing should be guaranteed by government, or arguing for lower corporate taxes or whatever, isn't what bothers most people.
Fortunately Fedi allows instances who are fine with it host those users, and I don't have to see it. And Lemmy -the project- isn't political, it's just software for which I'm grateful to the devs.
Yes exactly, I call myself very left but the minute I tried /kbin a thread about china from lemmy.ml showed up and there full of Tianomon Square deniers I tried to engage but just after half an hour I was almost done with the whole reddit alternative and was on my way to delete my account.
People are put off of extremist places and don't want to join them, think they are lost already to the extremists. Both online and in real life.
This is difficult to hear but may be good feedback to share with kbin.social's admins and kbin's devs in the kbinMeta magazine. I don't want to see lemmy.ml defederated at this point, but it's a risky one to have on the front page. It's kind of nuanced:
Lemmy's devs have been running a successful campaign to recruit Redditors to use their app, and many Redditors have chosen lemmy.ml (the instance run by its developers) by default. A few of us have been trying to sound a warning about this, but it's muted amid the outrage at Reddit.
Lemmy's developers are often described as "tankies" but the word seems to be acting as a euphemism, as though it's just an eccentric subculture. The fact is Lemmy's devs are stooges for the CCP. They actively welcome its propaganda on their instance, and they've compiled apologetics for the CCP's human rights abuses including the Uyghur genocide.
At the same time, lemmy.ml is the primary instance for Lemmy, and an important support resource for instances that run on it. On top of that it's now home to a lot of Redditors trying to build their own communities there. For those reasons I don't think it should be defederated, but I think kbin.social might need a way to prevent the instance – or at least some specific communities – from reaching the front page.
For myself, I've blocked its china and technology communities, as well as a few specific users that I've seen post propaganda pieces there. I'm satisfied with that solution to address my own use, but your own experience makes me realize it still reflects on kbin.social to have that stuff reach our front page.
noob question, but where is the block UI
How can someone honestly claim to be “in the middle” when one side openly embraces Nazis, sexism, and other forms of bigotry? What’s the middle ground there?
There’s a difference between needing a safe space and not wanting to hang out with the KKK.
They only want to murder half of all trans people, not all?
I guess the other option is only half-murder all the trans people, but yeah; these compromise-always people need to take a second and actually THINK about what they're asking us to compromise on. They sound incredibly foolish and disconnected.
They know what they're asking for. They're aiming for plausible deniability.
I think Lemmy is too political, but still joined a long time ago. Things can improve with time. We're seeing this happen now.
Yes. This is a different platform, I'd rather we don't just transplant all the reddit problems here.
Lemmy is inherently political. It was and is a revolt against reddit's staff, their business model and the influence of US politics, media and corporations on their platform due to their advertising model. This place wouldn't exist if there wasn't political differences.
We're not here to impress people who were banned for spreading Nazism. Go to all the reddit-clones that started in the early 2010s when reddit got called out for hosting toxic racist-or-fascist hate communities and communities sexualizing minors (e.g. /r/jailbait).
Everything is inherently political. If anyone thinks it isn't, it's just because the politics favour them.
Very true. A good phrase is "the personal is political". Politics refers to organization, power, and decision-making, and so much of our lives is determined by decisions outside our control.
This is true, politics is not something distinct which can be considered separate from or optionally added to society, culture or economics, although Lemmy is also explicitly political. That might be more what I intended to say.
(The real kicker is realizing that abstaining is not politically neutral.)
Yeah, I think 2020 made a lot of "neutral" people realize that not taking a stand on certain things is picking a side, so to speak, on certain issues.
Exactly. I'm not exactly hiding my politics.
If anything, I'm glad being open about it means that a lot of bigots aren't going to use lemmy in the first place. A natural filter to keep the transphobes and McCarthyites elsewhere.
they’re too stupid to figure out lemmy
Please let's not introduce elitism into Lemmy. I just got here and stumbled upon this post. The social network you use does not make you superior. As much as I agree with anti-racist censorship, there is no need to speak as if Lemmy users are superior beings. It was annoying when Redditors did it back in the day and it will continue to be now.
What does political even mean here? I guess the usual "Don't be racist, don't be homophobic, don't be transphobic etc." I really don't see much real political topics in my frontpage (local and all).
Historically, Lemmy has been very political (Marxist, pro-Russia/war, etc). But as of a few days ago the userbase is now mostly reddit users, so it feels quite different now. This is especially true if your instance admins choose who to federate with.
Oh no... Well I really really hope that this is in the past with the new users. Nothing but unpleasant experiences with Tankies.
I suspect most of them sit on lemmygrad. This is the beauty of instances and federation - nuance! Some users might be assholes on some instance communities, but if they're not maintained in a way people are happy with, they can splinter off and make a better place. For instance, Beehaw can maintain a gaming community which is set up to be safe and avoid bullshit gamergate stuff, and they can call it "Gaming" because it's not the only instance that can host one of those.
The issue with default subs and subs with obvious names on Reddit is that they build a certain personality and approach, foster certain views or don't moderate well, and then new people come in and amplify that because that's how they've seen the interaction working before. In that case, the best you can do is make a secondary one that has more strict rules - /r/truegaming, /r/games etc etc - which are difficult to grow because they're unlinked. Being on beehaw means it's part of the beehaw umbrella, so has to abide by the rules of the instance. Kind of a neat system.
As this is a post on Beehaw, I'm going to abide by the rule and omit any unsavory words I was originally going to include 🙂
Whether intentional or not, the slur filter was one of the most genius things the Lemmy developers have ever done. No one was under any false pretenses that it was the absolute best way of moderating a space. In fact, everyone knew from the get-go that it had its fair share of problems! But it did one thing splendidly: it acted as a barrier against people obsessed with free speech who claim a slur filter is a tool used by some nebulous participants in the current culture war. I'll refer to this comment made by user uabstraction on Hacker News 2 years ago.
Even to this day you see those people using the slur filter as a talking point against the devs, the software, the wider community, etc. even though it hasn't been hard-coded or required for over a year at this point!
Meanwhile, as they continue to avoid Lemmy and prophesize its downfall, the people actually participating on Lemmy are growing a community and just generally vibing! No one is fainting at the thought that they can't say a slur.