What is the point of the fediverse having built-in censorship to ban ideas, views, and opinions? There could be a direct connection between why Mastodon does not attract new users and the totalitarian censorship of the fediverse pushing a monolith barbarian culture.
Looking through posts on the different fediverse services, it seems anything built on ActivityPub will only turn stale in 5 years because it is designed for people who can’t function in society where random individuals can freely reject their statements, so they need the internet to hide away from life.
You don’t “all the fucking time” have to start a hugely intense argument when you see an opinion you disagree with. The mods don’t have to remove it. It can just be an opinion you disagree with. Or, even better, you and the person can sometimes be able to have a conversation about it. That kind of thing can be really valuable if you both approach it the right way. One or the other of you might be wrong, or you might see different aspects of a wider whole that’s more complex than one person’s preexisting models were accounting for. It’s how people get to understand the world. No one person already has all the answers.
That precise “arguing all the fucking time, any time I leave lemmy.ml” behavior being the majority culture on lemmy.ml has kicked most of their communities having a kind of “don’t go there” reputation, at least from the POV of most of Lemmy. That’s what I’m even talking about.
Lemmy is really good software, honestly, and it’s something the world needs more of, and regarded well and working well. Lemmy.ml “should” be a flagship instance. I think, much more so than the politics (which are far from unpopular, at least on the left/techie internet), the insularity and yelling / “I’m right you’re wrong” type of culture on lemmy.ml does a lot of reputational damage.
I guess I should just let you beat up on a strawman and ignore it?
But I don’t! I really enjoy posting on lemmygrad and hexbear too. It’s just whenever I have to interact with reddit.world and other such liberal instances it turns into arguments because we disagree so fundamentally on issues that I am passionate about.
I’m not too stupid to understand the complexity of the wider world. I’m not so arrogant to think people shouldn’t be allowed to disagree with me. Again, what are you even talking about? I’m happy that you libs have your own instances! That’s why I’m on lemmy.ml and not one of the instances that .world defederated from - I want to talk to y’all sometimes, even if we disagree on so many things.
So maybe stop beating up on this strawman?
When someone seemed specifically interested in the conversation, I posted on Hexbear some specific things that I thought Biden did a good job on, with citations, and they threatened to stab me with an icepick and then instance-banned me. I actually abandoned the effort to do any kind of “debate,” seeing it wasn’t going anywhere, and only later realized that I was banned.
Fair enough. I’m mostly just going by what you said, that you prefer lemmy.ml because you don’t want to be in arguments all the time. The way I interpreted that was that any time you see a viewpoint that isn’t the lemmy.ml viewpoint, you get in an argument, and it’s exhausting, which I can understand.
Lemmy.ml thinks some things that, to me, are objectively wrong. “Tienanmen Square wasn’t a massacre, that’s just Western propaganda,” being a good example. That’s fine if we think differently about that, but if you think people should be allowed to say that to you, and you say something back to them, as long as you and they are both consenting to the conversation, you’re at odds with the lemmy.ml moderation and administration team.
Actually, OP’s conversation is also a perfect example of what I’m even talking about. People are genuinely asking what’s going on with a particular keyboard app. I had never heard of FUTO before this. I was curious. My model is, I’m allowed to read what people think about it and make up my own mind. The mod’s model is that his viewpoint is correct, and he’s allowed to remove “misinformation” that conflicts with his model, and it isn’t relevant what people think who are not him. Even though, in my view, some of his view is objectively wrong (“futo does not create open source” - https://immich.app/blog/2024/immich-core-team-goes-fulltime/).
That’s part of what I mean about the wider picture. I’m not saying the mod is “wrong” in their view of FUTO. I’m just saying that, certainly, the counterpoint that FUTO funds important FOSS and that’s an important thing for the conversation, isn’t “wrong” either. You can’t have someone going HAM about only their view, and no other, being allowed. It’s just silly. You have people really wanting to educate themselves, and the mod saying “no no no stop educating I already gave you the answer stop reading and talking to each other.” It just bugs me. That’s not my culture and my expectation of a social network.
I’m not saying you, or either of them, is “stupid,” like anyone who doesn’t grasp everything in the world is some kind of moron who needs to be educated. I’m just saying the world is a big and complex place. As soon as you start shutting down anything that doesn’t match “the model,” you’re shutting down some true stuff. In almost all cases. Not everything that doesn’t match lemmy.ml is “libs” that can just be glibly discarded.