iloveDigitOct 25

Lemmy is designed to fail the same way as reddit when reaching the same size

https://sh.itjust.works/post/48560072

Lemmy is designed to fail the same way as reddit when reaching the same size - sh.itjust.works

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 it was smaller, and on track to do the same things while growing bigger. 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, which feels like a whole different thing to many people in this brief period of time. 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. 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.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

So you want to censor 99% of speech, leaving only people who agree with you on only hearing speech from people that post in your mkni community? I feel like that’s counter-productive.

Sometimes people say Lemmy.ml is “high censorship,” but I’ve never been censored here. People sort themselves into instances that generally align with what they want to post and comment, it isn’t that there are censorship regimes going on.

As for Lemmy “failing,” it already does what it needs to do, it provides a good platform. Reddit went downhill because of the profit motive, Lemmy doesn’t have that.

Show threadKoboldCoterie

Sometimes people say Lemmy.ml is “high censorship,” but I’ve never been censored here.

Oct 25 at 12:07pmWeb
Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

It’s almost like that was the beginning of a bigger point:

Sometimes people say Lemmy.ml is “high censorship,” but I’ve never been censored here. People sort themselves into instances that generally align with what they want to post and comment, it isn’t that there are censorship regimes going on.

What I say isn’t censored, so OP’s idea that people are controlling their speech on instances that take a more active stance to moderation and therefore aren’t worthy of federation is built on a false premise.

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

People are controlling my speech on instances that take a more active stance to moderation, and therefore aren’t worthy of federation.

That isn’t very well-written wording, but I can’t spot the lie.

What false premise do you think it’s based on? Apparently, that you’re censored - but I didn’t say you’re censored, if you’re fine with ambulance rides charging money, so where’s that false premise actually appear in my train of thought or connect to the statement you’re trying to connect it to? I said censorship exists, and I implied it applies to people who want ambulance rides to be free - I didn’t say anything about you personally.

If you think ambulance rides should cost money, that’s a false premise, but it doesn’t change anything I said - the idea that it does would be a second false premise.

Is it that you think ambulance rides shouldn’t cost money, but political discussion doesn’t impact policy? Because it does, so that would still be you with the false premise.

Is that you’re aware of both why ambulance rides should be free and how political discourse impacts that, but you’re not understanding how you need a majority to win elections? Because you do, so that would still be you with the false premise.

Do you understand all that, but think Tor users are a majority? Because they’re not, so that would still be you with the false premise.

I can’t see how you get from me saying “there is censorship” to “Cowbee isn’t censored and there is no censorship” without using a false premise. Meanwhile “there is censorship” remains a true premise.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

Your point was about people censoring their own speech, ie Pawb.social posters can’t say certain things, Lemmy.ml users can’t say certain things, etc. That may be true, but Lemmy is federated and accounts are free, I use Lemmy.ml because I won’t be censored for being a communist and they presumably use Pawb.social because they have interest in doing so.

You don’t gave to comment on other instances, you can spin your own, but defederating from others makes no sense. You can let others visit and just not remove their comments. By blocking, say, Hexbear, like you already do with a sh.itjust.works account, you are limiting the number of communists you interact with already.

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

You’re ignoring so many of my words. Is that in good faith? Are you in a big hurry but still considering this important enough to try to engage in a rushed way? Or are you just willingly refusing to understand something simple?

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

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

Instances don’t censor based on size, but based on stances. slrpnk.net is biased against Marxism-Leninism, but is a very small instance. Growth won’t increase censorship, because we aren’t appealing to advertisers. It’s a false premise.

Secondly, I’m not a free-speech absolutist. Misinformation and bigotry should be removed, especially in the modern age where massive propaganda networks push narratives.

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Instances are and will continue to be censored based on size, just like subreddits.

This is incredibly obvious, enough to prevent any major effort towards even trying to make mainstream zero-censorship instances so far.

I don’t get how you don’t get this.

You start a zero-censorship instance on DNS, it gets blocked immediately.

You start it on Tor, docs say it can’t federate with other instances.

When current levels of censorship get too many users, they can be blocked too, like how they’re currently blocked from reddit, keeping the spread of ideas controlled by the authorities, the same way it was on reddit.

What fundamental change do you see here that justifies saying the opposite?

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
The reason size had an impact on Reddit, advertisers, does not exist on Lemmy nor is there a single large umbrella.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

That makes no sense. If having advertisers is what caused reddit to be censored, then how did the smaller less censored reddit have advertisers the whole time? You’re letting the authorities distract you from their actual systems and methods of control with nonsense explanations like “advertisers”

Ignoring all that - assuming you’re from an alternate timeline where reddit only got advertisers right before going to shit - how does it negate the fact that Lemmy docs say Tor doesn’t work, thus requiring DNS / IP addresses, which factually simply are controlled by corporate authorities?

How does any of it negate the fact that, like last year, ambulance riders simply are being charged money while you post where not many people see it?

How does any of it negate the fact that, like last year, we simply don’t think we’re just one day away from changing it via organized resistance?

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

They had cheaper advertisers. Once Reddit reached scale, it needed to take a more active stance.

Why would size have anything to do with anything otherwise?

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

I edited my comment, not trying to make you look like you ignored the parts I added, I’m just very bad at realizing a post isn’t done before prematurely posting.

How would any of it change the reality where once you posted for few people on reddit splintered from the rest of reddit and the rest of the internet, then it was more people and they got splintered between reddit and Lemmy, then as Lemmy grows they split between different parts of Lemmy, while debt collectors keep going after people for ambulance rides?

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
I don’t see it as connected, nor do I see how size on Lemmy correlates to strength of moderation. As for ambulance rides and the predatory healthcare system, we need to abolish capitalism and move onto socialism.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Is capitalism being abolished tomorrow, or are you posting somewhere a small percentage of Americans will see it?

How does this address what I just said?

the reality where once you posted for few people on reddit splintered from the rest of reddit and the rest of the internet, then it was more people and they got splintered between reddit and Lemmy, then as Lemmy grows they split between different parts of Lemmy, while debt collectors keep going after people for ambulance rides

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
I don’t see what you’re getting at, here. Are you implying that once Lemmy overtakes Reddit, it will be censored by the government if TOR isn’t implemented? First, it’s not known if Lemmy would overtake Reddit, secondly TOR isn’t implemented yet, but it’s also not a problem yet. All of this just means socialism is necessary, rather than trying to worry about a problem that just doesn’t exist yet.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Are you implying that once Lemmy overtakes Reddit, it will be censored by the government if TOR isn’t implemented?

Lemmy is censored by the authorities today.

Governments would probably not censor Lemmy. Censorship seems more like the type of thing you get when you give authority to criminals who don’t believe in governance. For example, a lot of the people with the authority to censor the internet are Republicans and Democrats, who identify with parties of war crimes and slavery and stuff, not governance.

First, it’s not known if Lemmy would overtake Reddit

Then what’s the point?

Only memes, and only the low-stakes memes, at that?

Some of us miss the days when we could all talk on the internet, only bots were banned, and it felt like Republicans and Democrats were losing authority, and soon we could have a real government or something.

Some of us don’t like how it’s been decades and the human population has revealed itself to be too evil and stupid to get it done by now, spending all this time ruining the technology instead of using it.

secondly TOR isn’t implemented yet, but it’s also not a problem yet.

It is. It currently stops any zero-censorship instances from federating with any others, which helps keep things in the same position they were in a few years ago, when all of us were probably on reddit. We have roughly the same percentages of people in the same groups going through the same increasing levels of splintering, isolation, growing mental illness, etc.

You can find a group of commies sharing an evolving set of commie ideas together, and a group of Nazis sharing an evolving set of Nazi ideas together, and the authorities keep finding new ways to make sure nobody goes anywhere too interesting or listens to anyone too smart. We do not suddenly have ambulance rides for free due to everyone’s TV screens suddenly showing them Noam Chomsky every day

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

Lemmy is not “censored by the authorities today.” Secondly, Lemmy already does what it needs to do, present an alternative to Reddit that is FOSS for those who want it. The goal isn’t to compete with Reddit, but largely to create a space where communists can’t be censored, and for now Lemmy does its job well.

Ambulance rides for free in the US Empire requires socialism, at this point. Rather than complain about Lemmy, join an org and try to do that.

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

For the millionth time, Lemmy is censored by the authorities today.

Docs say Tor federation isn’t allowed. This means the authorities can just defederate any instance from every other instance by blocking the domain name or IP address. This explains why there are no zero-censorship instances.

There is no org to join that would have a better use of my time than using my technical and political knowledge to explain what I’m explaining, though you people making me repeat the explanations like this do impact the efficiency of the whole process.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

Lemmy isn’t censored by the authorities today. You gave an example of how they could be, but not how they are.

Secondly, no, absolutely join an org. That’s far more useful than what you’re doing right now.

Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

I didn’t mean to give any specific examples, future or present. If you cannot see examples today, showing them to you does nothing, you’re fundamentally misunderstanding something and need to be shown how to see the examples, not simply told what they are.

If you know what “censored by the authorities” means - simple words, middle-school-level at the worst - you can see the examples for yourself. We’re both adults.

I get that the censorship fetish can make you enjoy it when you see a human banned, but you have to learn to use words correctly and tell the truth. Just because you enjoy it doesn’t mean the person isn’t censored. Just because you are one of the people giving the authorities their authority, doesn’t mean it’s not authority and they’re not authorities.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
Are you referring to moderators and admins as “the authorities?” I already acknowledged that moderation exists, but the idea of the government censoring Lemmy is baseless.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Are you referring to moderators and admins as “the authorities?”

Are you asking if moderators and admins are all of the authorities, or some of the authorities?

I’d just answer the question, but you don’t seem to be discussing this in good faith, and I feel like you might ignore part of my answer to focus on a “yes” or “no” part that lets you reframe it as "all of these people are mods+admins / “none of these people are mods+admins”

I already acknowledged that moderation exists, but the idea of the government censoring Lemmy is baseless.

As I’ve said elsewhere in this thread, I agree it’s baseless to say a government would censor Lemmy. Censorship of political discussion seems like it could only happen when you give authority to criminals who don’t believe in governance. Having a real government should actually prevent it, if we had one.

However, I am repeatedly pointing out that the authorities we do have do censor Lemmy, which is true.

Show thread∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/it/its/its/itself, she/her/her/hers/herself, fae/faer/faer/faers/faerself, love/love/loves/loves/loveself, des/pair, null/void, none/use name]Oct 25

Docs say Tor federation isn’t allowed

It says it isn’t “supported”. You are free to change the code to add socks5/tor support or make some bodge where it connects over tor and have your tor only network. Just don’t complain when nobody can connect to you.

Running a Tor Hidden Service

Show threadKoboldCoterieOct 25

What I say isn’t censored

What you say aligns with what’s considered acceptable viewpoints on that instance. Take those views to another instance that aligns with different views and you’ll be censored, just like someone expressing dissenting views on lemmy.ml will be. I’m not sure I understand what point you’re trying to make here.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25

What you just said is my point, minus the part where I said users sort themselves into instances already so that they don’t get censored from what they want to say. OP’s claiming that people control their speech on their own instances, therefore justifying OP defederating from this “controlled speech,” but my speech and presumably your speech isn’t controlled on our respective instances because they presumably align roughly with what we already want to say.

I’m well aware that Lemmy.ml removes comments and posts bashing communism, or that have bigotry in them, etc. Lemmy.world removes comments critical of the DNC, and has some Zionist mods. Users naturally sort themselves into whichever one won’t censor what they want to say to begin with, we aren’t all forced under one banner like Reddit, because of federation.

Make sense?

Show threadKoboldCoterieOct 25

Maybe my lack of understanding stems from a misunderstanding of OP’s post… which to be fair, I found fairly difficult to parse, and based on their responses to your and other posters’ replies, I strongly suspect that’s a ‘them’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem, as it seems everyone else is having an equally hard time understanding what they’re actually trying to say.

I just want to be clear that it is a lack of understanding and not an attempt to be antagonistic. I have no inherent problem with you; we have strongly differing views on a number of important topics, but we seem to be able to co-exist on Lemmy (and even post in the same communities) just fine, which… seems to be a counter-point to OP’s post? But maybe I’m just still misinterpreting what that point actually is.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
That’s fair! Yea, from how I have interacted with OP, it seems they want Lemmy to overtake Reddit in numbers, have no moderation outside of CSAM or something, and have TOR integration so governments can’t censor it, and that they believe this is the key to achieving socialism (I think?). I think this person just has very specific desires and sees it as a problem for everyone that they aren’t met.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

You can call wanting to avoid planetary extinction a “very specific desire” but it’s very weird to pretend it being unmet wouldn’t be a problem for everyone.

Are you one of those science denialists who pretends climate change isn’t manmade, or will be solved by corporations before the 100 more years it would supposedly take to become a problem, or something?

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
Non-sequitor.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25
Nope. The person I was replying to mentioned a “very specific desire” of mine. They were trying to pretend politics is no big deal, like people who think climate change is a future problem that will “just get fixed.”
Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
No, that’s not what happened.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25
It is. Do you have anything else or just completely unexplained denialism?
Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
It isn’t, and I’ve already explained why.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25
It is, and could you screenshot that explanation and reply with it here because I don’t remember it
Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 26
Nope.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 26

OK, anyone else who saw it, please show it to me if it’s real.

Pretty sure it’s just another lie

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 26
Nope.
Show threadSkavauOct 25
No, the OP thinks that even CSAM should not be moderated. Click here.
Lemmy is designed to fail the same way as reddit when reaching the same size - Lemmy

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.

Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
What the fuck
Show threadSkavauOct 25
Yeah, I had a feeling. And had to take the long road to get there.
Show threadCowbee [he/they]Oct 25
Incredible.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25
My train of thought today started from people on lemmy.world talking about defederating lemmy.ml for being “tankies” which lead to me blocking lemmy.world - then I ended up here because the Lemmy community here seems to be the main one anywhere for discussing Lemmy
Show threadKoboldCoterieOct 25
If you want an instance that doesn’t defederate from any other instance, you’re going to be left with very few options, and those are going to be the ones hosting some incredibly, incredibly questionable content.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

There are 2 options:

  • Don’t defederate from any other instance, but keep a list of censored instances and an easy way for users to block that full list

  • Just make the list of defederated instances the list of censored instances

Anything else is useless

Anything designed by people who think “questionable” is a bad trait and “censored” is a good trait, is useless for others

Show threadKoboldCoterieOct 25
Sounds like the solution is for you to just start your own instance, create your own ‘free speech zone’ communities, and engage in a ‘censorship-free’ policy there. Personally, I prefer to stay as far away from instances hosting, for example, CSAM and unbridled hate-speech as I can, and the current federation system handles that quite well.
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Again, can’t.

That’s the whole point of my original post. Don’t know how many times I have to repeat it. Lemmy uses DNS / IP addresses, stops Tor from being used, can’t have free speech instances under this configuration. Might need new code, not just new instance

Show threadSkavauOct 25
Do you consider taking down CSAM as censorship?
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25

Why are you asking me if I recognize a valid dictionary definition I’ve said nothing to indicate I wouldn’t recognize?

Bad faith, that’s why.

Show threadSkavauOct 25
Let me rephrase. Do you think sites should be forced to take down CSAM?
Show threadiloveDigitOct 25
Reply next with the right answer to my above question, and I’ll reply to that with the right answer to yours.
Show threadvolkrisOct 25

@iloveDigit @Skavau

FWIW I've never been able to figure Lemmy out, How it works, how to engage with it, etc. And so I have no idea why this thread is showing up in my home feed.

Lemmy is weird.