No Stupid Questions

In my experience comparing to the alien site, the average Lemmy server is more tolerant of hot takes and conservatism in terms of getting banned or comments removed, however that does not prevent those takes from being heavily downvoted. That may be "ganging up" but it's not censorship (not that this is the argument you made, but it's a common conservative refrain I hear)

When it comes to certain topics that will get you banned or your comments removed, that will depend on the community or instance. You must follow the rules of your home instance and the one you post to, whatever "debate club" talking point you have doesn't matter here. Some rules are implied or based on local law. Examples:

• Hate speech is regulated by Canadian law on Lemmy.ca, so anything I write that clearly appears afoul of that can be removed
• Lemmy.blahaj.zone is explicitly an LGBTQ+ safe space, so there's no room for debates related to genders and pronouns on those communities, regardless of what you think is normal in your culture.
• Feddit.org is beholden to German law so criticism of Israel (being conflated with antisemitism) is a touchy subject.
• Beehaw.org tolerates a variety of viewpoints, but if you act like a jerk or a troll about them, you will be quickly banned. "Bee nice" is vague on purpose to capture nuance rather than provide prescriptive rules and they have high standards.
• Lemmy.ml mods are less tolerant of Russia and China critical views, especially re: Ukraine.

The fediverse, as a whole, has a very loose set of shared values, but the idea is that if you can't have the discussion that you want, you go elsewhere to a place that you think you will. You have the freedom to move instances, each instance and its users have the freedom whether to accept you or not. Each instance has its own sort of culture, and if you think a ban from an instance was unreasonable, bring your receipts including account handles and modlogs to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com to get community feedback.

all for things which, when you think about it, are technically valid debate club material.

This isn't debate club. Hope that clears it up for you.

No.

The norm is to think in terms of federated instances and their users.

If a user consistently breaks the rules of a community, they get banned from the community. If a user consistently breaks the rules of an instance, they get banned from the instance.

If an instance consistently breaks the rules of another instance, they get defederated.

Simple structure, generally effective.

Geography never needs to come into the discussion. People are people everywhere, both the good and the bad.

No one’s going to stop your type from making accounts in conservative forums like Fox news, OANN, Reddit, Truth Social, etc. if you want their opinions. Are your kind somehow unable or unwilling to put the effort in to do that? Is it too difficult to have a fediverse tab open alongside your conservative friends’ forums?

What does your kind do when the forums you stray into decline to agree with you? Sarcastically suggest that they adopt your “reasonable” and “enlightened” thinking while casually jumping to the farthest extreme suggestions you types can? I rarely see liberal points of view being accepted as uncomfortable truths in conservative media, what makes you people think those opposing your guys’ mentality would act any differently in that regard?

As many conservatives would tell you if you’re a liberal, “If your kind don’t like how we do things around here, feel free to leave and don’t come back!”