Ask Lemmy

Without exception, whenever someone is looking for "free speech", this applies:

https://m.xkcd.com/1357/

Maybe uncharitably, my first thought when reading a post like this is "what shitty thing do you want to say?".

But I don't know you so maybe I am being uncharitable.

But you have to realise the fediverse in general is not owned by capitalist orgs with high priced legal teams. Its mostly small teams of private individuals. If someone posts something illegal, including defamatory, in their legal jurisdiction (which is probably not the USA) then they might be on the hook for it too.

Even if you run your own instance if you're enough of a dick it'll get defederated or you'll be banned from multiple instances/communities.

Learn to play nice in other peoples yard. Its hard sometimes but just walking away and blocking is the best option. Sometimes I need to make more effort to do that too.

I view moderation as 'the rules of the house'. When you go to another person's house, you are expected to abide by their (hopefully sane and sensible) rules. If you don't, you are asked to leave. Sometimes, you are forcibly removed if things escalate. If you don't like the rules of the house, or you can't find common ground with the people there, don't go there.

You should read this on why seemingly arbitrary, but nuanced moderation is needed to have a friendly space online.

There exist instances that have more of a free-speech "focus", but despite that most instances cannot tolerate intolerance, harassment, trolling, illegal or borderline illegal stuff. There is generally more tolerance for disagreement on Lemmy than other forums, where unpopular takes are heavily downvoted instead of removed.

A common sequence of events that happens with trolls or flamebaiters:

• Troll says something unpopular, but not rule breaking (comment downvoted but not removed by mods)
• Several other people respond/rebut
• Troll continues a long back-and-forth argument that gets nowhere, or resorts to ad hominems, slurs or personal attacks (rule-breaking)
• comments get reported
• Mods remove the entire thread including the initial comment, and give out a community ban
• Troll decries censorship of the initial not rule-breaking comment, when it was the follow up that was the problem.

So yeah, it's to keep out the jerks. Behave well, think of others as you speak, then you will find yourself able to say more than in places with professed free-speech absolutism. If you don't like that, start your own instance so that no one can moderate you in your own space, and watch the jerks, trolls and spammers roll in after a while.

Your freedom stops where other peoples freedom start.

All instances, except tankie ones, have freedom of speech.

Definition varies for example between Europe and US. In Europe you have freedom FROM, in the US it’s more like freedom TO.

Freedom TO can be dangerous as some peoples think that it means they are allowed to say hateful and harmful things. Hurting others is not freedom of speech, it’s just being the shit stain on humanity toilet paper roll and you won’t have that on lemmy. Unless by creating your own no-rules instance that will get defederated by everyone.

But as long as you are not insulting and harming people, yeah you have freedom of speech everywhere, just the normal sane amount of freedom.

I haven't noticed any moderation issues on lemmy.dbzer0.com

Mind if I ask what exactly you feel like is being censored?

A completely unmoderated instance would be defederated because it would end up filled with stuff that would get you raided by police.

Can you give an example of a rule that you feel is excessively strict and maybe we can come up with an instance where the enforcement is less strict.

Freedom of speech means you can say what you want. It doesn't mean others have to listen or like it.

If you don't like moderation, it's probably best to run your own instance.

No, I doubt any instance is gonna allow to say things like the n-word or "I don't think people that are [Race/Ethnicity] should be allowed to exist".

Any instance that allows you to say that should be defederated.

Can you claify what you mean by "free speech"? Give a few example comments?

There will always be moderation. If you dont ban certain things, people will have to defederate your server or risk being raided by the police. That being said, there are some more lenient servers, but few servers are completely hands off. Your server is not what decides whether your post gets deleted or not however. That is always decided by the mod of the community you post/comment in.

Yes.

My instance supports free speech for me :D

Rn haven't really felt censored by my instance that much. I believe I do hold different opinions to the admins, but that appears to be okay

Please whistle if you find something like that and not completely dead empty. I prefer to ban people I don't like by myself according to my own ideas of what is right and what is wrong.