I’ve never once heard “bro” used in a genuinely positive way. Not once.

At best it’s fake-jovial. At worst it’s a way to diminish, antagonize, or mask hostility.

Case in point: this very thread. People kept saying “bro” not out of warmth, but because they thought it would piss me off. That’s not camaraderie—that’s toxicity.

And no, “bro” is not the same as “mate.” “Mate” might be regional slang. “Bro” is gendered. Which means it’s exclusionary by default. It assumes something about the person you’re talking to that may not be true. That’s not inclusion. That’s presumption.

So unless someone is your literal brother, why keep it around? If a word carries a whole lot of negatives and almost no positives, why pretend it’s harmless? Better yet—why does your urge to use a toxic word override my goal of building an inclusive community? Would you defend other toxic words the same way—words with even sharper malice baked in?

And if you would, then maybe the problem isn’t me banning “bro.” Maybe the problem is what you’re really defending.

You’re framing visibility as if it’s accountability.

But mods aren’t accountable to users—they’re accountable to admins. If a mod aligns with an admin, users can scream all they want, nothing changes. If a mod sides with the community but not the admin, the admin overrules both. That’s hierarchy, full stop.

Let’s be real. The whole conceit of YPTB is a farce. You’re not “holding mods accountable.” You’re doing populism dressed up as anarchism, aligning with admin tastes when it suits.

Out of all the possible people in the community, it just so happens that the true authorities—the ones setting the norms and nurturing the culture—are the same ones holding the keys to the entire server. And those are the very people wielding YPTB as a cudgel in the name of “accountability.” That’s not accountability. That’s a closed loop.

If lemmy.dbzer0.com were serious about anarchism, the admins would say: “No mods, no users, no hierarchy—everyone go operate their own nodes.” But they don’t. Instead, this community exists under the admin’s keys, which feeds an illusion.

And that “visibility” you’re pointing to? It’s not accountability—it’s branding. Admin branding. It only exists because lemmy.dbzer0.com allows it to exist, and only as long as the server remains federated. Flip that switch and your visibility, your supposed accountability, evaporates overnight.

Got it. So it’s less confusing to users who don’t know what an FE or BE are, but it’s more confusing for new admins who do.

“Instead of running Soapbox on Soapbox, I’ll run Fedibird on Soapbox. Scratch that. I’ll run vanilla Pleroma with Soapbox instead of Soapbox.”

Fair enough—I probably came in sharper than I needed to. I get that you’re not denying the power imbalance, just framing it differently.

We’re closer in view than it might have sounded. My aim wasn’t to dunk on you, just to stress that these structures aren’t neutral. If we’re both pointing in the same direction, then good—that’s where the real work begins.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how Soapbox FE and Soapbox BE differ? I’m out of the loop on that one.

Space isn’t “just a space.” Space is what makes words accessible. A post that nobody can reach might as well not exist. Infrastructure isn’t neutral—it’s the condition that makes communication possible in the first place.

And admins don’t just have the power to end a space. They have the power to prevent speech from ever happening. They can de-platform, silence, or exclude before words are written. That’s not trivial. That’s systemic control over what gets created, not just what gets erased.

And sometimes communities really are families—both literal and ad hoc. People pour years of energy, conversation, and memory into them. When they get obliterated, it’s not “just a space” disappearing—it’s a shared history wiped out because one person with keys decided it was over.

What makes your comment even more striking is that it contradicts your earlier points. First you downplayed hierarchy by saying admins are just neutral facilitators, now you admit they hold systemic power but dismiss it as “no big deal.” Which one is it?

That’s the imbalance I’m pointing at. If we want real commons, that has to change. Otherwise we’re all just tenants, and the landlord can decide at any moment to bulldoze the building. Dismissing that as unimportant is exactly how these power structures stay invisible.

I’m not arguing for extremes at all.

On one side you’ve got pure authoritarianism—admins as unchecked rulers. On the other side you’ve got utopian anarchy—peers moderating themselves with no hierarchy. I’m not in either camp.

What I’m pointing out is the middle: these platforms are hierarchical by design. That means admins do hold systemic power, but it also means admins have responsibility for how that power is exercised. My stance is simply to acknowledge that reality instead of pretending hierarchy doesn’t exist.

Selective federation is part of that. It’s not about isolation or domination—it’s about setting clear boundaries for what I’m willing to host and connect with, while still participating in the broader network. Users still have choices. They can join another server or start their own. That’s federation working as intended.

So this isn’t an extreme position. It’s the pragmatic one: take responsibility for the space you run, be upfront about the structure, and don’t pretend current software is something it isn’t.

Just want to point out that I use Mangane, which is a for of Soapbox, on my Akkoma server—and it absolutely connects to Lemmy.

From what I understand, Soapbox is just a front-end. The backend is Pleroma/Akkoma.

And by the way, one of the great aspects of the *oma services is that the frontends can be swapped out.

The feast metaphor doesn’t hold. If I pay for a banquet hall, the guests can mingle—but they don’t control the locks on the doors, the electricity, or whether the venue even stays open tomorrow. If I decide to shut the place down, the party ends whether they like it or not. That’s not neutral infrastructure. That’s systemic power.

I’m not saying the admin “owns” people’s words. Users own what they write. But whether that writing continues to exist, whether it stays visible, whether it can even be reached—those are all contingent on the admin. Content lives inside infrastructure, and whoever holds the keys controls the environment where it persists.

And people absolutely are confused about this. Look at lemm.ee: did the community want to vanish overnight? No—but the admin pulled the plug, and everything disappeared. The same happens on Reddit when admins close subreddits, or on Discord when a server gets nuked. People routinely find themselves blindsided because they mistake participation for ownership.

That’s the point I’m pressing: software that demands admins and mods creates hierarchy, no matter what ideals we wrap around it. If we want a true commons, the architecture has to change—there can’t be “users,” only peers, each running their own node. Until then, pretending otherwise is just comforting metaphor.

I get what you’re saying, and I even sympathize with it. I would love a true public square owned by the commons—something where people’s conversations aren’t at the mercy of whoever happens to run the machine.

But that’s not how Lemmy, Mastodon, Misskey, or any of the current platforms work. These systems are hierarchical by design. They require admins, they require mods, and everyone else becomes “users.” That’s not a public square, that’s tenancy.

Even donations don’t change that. If the admin holds the keys, they hold the power. Look at lemm.ee—did the community there want to be wiped out overnight? Of course not. But the admin pulled the plug, and that was the end of it. That’s the architecture working as designed.

If we really want a public square, then we have to stop talking about “users.” There should only be peers. And that means each person owning their own node, not donating their content to someone else’s server and hoping they’ll be benevolent forever.

That’s the uncomfortable truth: until the design itself changes, we don’t have commons. We have hierarchies dressed up in populist rhetoric, and every user is just one admin’s decision away from disappearing.