To make it better, right? Right?
this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2025
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I made some comments on YouTube over the last week about LAPD and Israel, and all of them have been deleted without notice. Not even a warning of "hey you aren't allowed to talk about that" or "you violated a mysterious rule sometime"
You don't get notified if the channel owner deletes your comment.
Considering the channel owner is heavily left leaning, I don't think it was them but they may be getting extra cautious about what speech they allow, given the current regime.
I think people speaking on these subjects should genuinely come together to host their content on a Peertube instance and broadcast it to their Youtube audience, because this is a pretty strong use case. To be able to speak freely about these matters and inform people is pretty serious.
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No, you can peddle hate speech, if you also make videos on why taxes should be eliminated, and how worker's movements and unions are "negatively affecting the right to work" (according to a former Google employee I knew).
I don’t see the issue. This is how it was in the early days and things were infinitely better. I’m convinced that the overly paternalistic moderation that overtook online platforms what was gave power to the alt right in the first place.
All online spaces could do with less moderation.
You're either very young, or very dumb. It is known that every low-moderation platform quickly devolves into nazism and/or child porn.
That’s no moderation, which isn’t the same as low moderation. Meaning there’s a few red lines that will get you banned.
If people wanna say faggot, they shouldn’t be banned for life from a site. If they want to talk about how Biden is a transdimensional vampire that eats virgins, let them do so fuck it.
A simple vote and downvote system solves many of the issues with over moderation because it’s how it works in the real world. You can say any dumb shit you want at any moment and people will react positively or negatively. It’s simple and elegant and doesn’t push people into forming their own sites and communities where their dumb ass ideas won’t get challenged at all which leads to them reaching the mainstream as it is happening now.
Why don't you run an experiment? Start a Lemmy instance with those ideals!
Most of lemmy is like that already.
It's not. Go on, really run that experiment, then you'll know for sure.
"Your claim is only valid if you first run this elaborate, long-term experiment that I came up with."
The world isn’t binary. When someone says less moderation, they don’t mean no moderation. Framing it as all-or-nothing just misrepresents their view to make it easier for you to argue against. CSAM is illegal, so it’s always going to be against the rules - that’s not up to Google and is therefore a moot point.
As for other content you ideologically oppose, that’s your issue. As long as it’s not advocating violence or breaking the law, I don’t see why they’d be obligated to remove it. You’re free to think they should - but it’s their platform, not yours. If they want to allow that kind of content, they’re allowed to. If you don't like it, don't go there.
No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying your claim is nonsense and if you want a proof, you can run an experiment. Do it or don't do it, your choice. Just don't expect people who have an experience in running an instance to agree with you.
You can also look into the long, long list of defunct instances because they got defederated by basically everyone because noone wanted to deal with their shit. Hexbear and lemmygrad don't care if they're defederated because they're platforms to themselves, the instances I'm talking about were basically 4chan, kiwifarms, whatever, chuds getting banned on ordinary instances setting up their own and trying again. When that didn't work the instances collapsed as harassing others was their only purpose.
Nobody is asking for an unmoderated space.
Those instances weren't breaking laws. At least not American ones. It is not illegal to be an incivil assclown, but you are going to get thrown out of the bar.
It’s not a place for incivility that I’m making, either. I just struggle to believe you genuinely don’t understand what people mean when they ask for less moderation or censorship.
I know what they mean when clutching their frozen peaches. It also never works out as they imagine because paradox of tolerance.
This person is just looking for an excuse to continuing censoring those he disagrees with.
He likes the abuse of power because it suits his agendas.
He doesn't know he's causing more harm than good, though. And I don't expect him to learn.
Hello, I was in the "good old days" of the internet. It wasn't the "right-libertarian utopia" that right wingers like to paint it was. Sure people believed in "free speech absolutism", usually until someone whose first "forum" was 4chan, who demanded the same kind of "freedom of speech" they had over there. Also those 4chan bastards were extremely hypocritical with their own "free speech absolutism", as the moment they got doxxed instead of someone they disagreed with, they either backpedalled, just cried like a bitch online, or rarely literally went that they only meant the free speech for themselves. People who actually lived in those days on the interne,t and weren't just heard about it some zoomer internet historian or someone whose first "forum" was an anonymous image board know that 4chan marked the end of the old internet, and marked the beginning of the centralization era (4chan sucked up some traffic from fan forums, similarly to what Facebook did later).
What actually is happening is that if you also peddle the right kind of economic policies for Google, you get whitelisted for hatespeech, meaning moderators are only allowed to act on your hatespeech after consultation with the higher ups. Talk about uBlockOrigin? Banned! Talk about how fascists are cruel in the comment section? Your comment is insta-deleted without explanation by the YouTube automod system. Demonize trans people? Wanna call "bad" black people n****rs? Want to talk about how all women are whores and deserve all their rights being taken away? Make sure you also bitch about taxes, how artists and other workers are "entitled", and write odes about how we need to "move fast and break things, ask for forgiveness later". Google will be happy to play "heel" for your "face" in case of "censorship", so you can have the facade of a freedom warrior.
This is revisionism of the highest degree. Everyone knows Google et al were very heavy handed at dealing with any dissent with the liberal agenda, for the lack of a better term. Facebook fired Luckey Palmer because he supported Trump! That’s how far the tech industry went to protect left wing views and for the best part of the last decade.
And no one is being allowed to say any of those words on any major social media. Hell my comment up there that says faggot would have gotten me suspended in all the major social media. So stay grounded and stop making shit up.
More and more often I see mainstream social media platforms letting people say slurs. A few days ago I literally say the F-slur on YouTube, while you cannot say "porn".
Old internet weren't 4chans, kiwifarms-style doxxing forums! Just because some YouTube pseudohistorian said the old internet literally were composed of unmoderated image boards and forums, that doesn't make that true.
No they weren’t but they sure as fuck weren’t banning people for slurs either except the few really socially unacceptable ones. It was a good balance.
Also who’s the YouTube historian you cite? Because I was there too and I know exactly how it was. Lemmy has the right amount of moderation imo most of it enforced by users themselves as it should be.
Also I’d like to add, since you keep bringing it up, that 4chan often had more stringent moderation than other websites because on-topic discussions were strictly enforced. Outside of the adult boards (I forget their name, blue boards was it?) stuff like gore, porn etc was not allowed at all.
Fuck your paternalistic bullshit is all I have to say. Let people say whatever they want, let society decide what is acceptable or not. Not fucking corporations.
That's like bottom of the barrel kind of moderation. Even Kiwifarms has that much of a moderation even if they let people doxx others, but only if they're the wrong kind of people.
Here's the problem with the whole "free speech absolutism" experience: People don't want to be told that they're wrong, not just when Trump supporters are doing that. You know why Trump is popular? Because people want to be told they're not racist if they have double standards towards "less trustworthy races". Because people want to be told it's okay if they drive their big trucks even to the toilet. Because people want to be told that their home remedies are much better, than vaccines. And people will go as far with this that they'll go after people who don't, often by doxxing or sending threats.
Oh for fucks sake, you keep using the same trite examples of shithole websites instead of looking at the place you’re at. I already told you, lemmy has a pretty good balance and this is where it should be as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t know what people want to be told, but I can tell you the double standards very much apply to both sides of the aisle. Like this very conversation is proof of that because the modern day American “leftist”simply defines itself in opposition to MAGA.
But even then I don’t even know why you bring that up because I’m not making an argument in favor of a side. You seem to imply that I do simply because the view I’m advocating for is often shared by the right, and because so much of the left is defined by being in opposition to MAGA then I must be defending MAGA or Trump; I guess the logic is that surely someone who disagrees with them will take every opposing viewpoint at any moment.
The fact is that heavy centralized moderation simply lends itself so that corporations can enforce whatever are the views of the current government. Which is fine they are in their right to do so, it is a private network after all. But I’m not gonna defend it no matter if it’s left leaning or right leaning because it just doesn’t seat right with me being dictated by a corporation what is correct enough for me to hear and see, and I will always move to the platform that has the least amount of paternalistic attitudes towards its users. Thats it, that’s the bottom line.
If you prefer heavy moderation and an enforced point of view of the world then that’s fine, there are plenty of social media networks with that approach. Just look at hexbear or r/conservative. No one is taking away your right to be dictated to.
https://lemmy.world/post/31470537
Well, well, well, it seems like "letting people decide what's okay and what is not" favors hatespeech every time...
This “study” is biased by design. But also even if it weren’t , one study does not prove anything. You’d need a lot more evidence than that.
Yep. I'm old enough to remember when online censorship was taboo. It's pathetic how far we have fallen. Now the normies demand it.
Its mind boggling that these are the same people who will claim the corporations are oppressing them but in the same breath they ask for seconds. The political tribalism is so great right now that people don’t even realize how contradictory their narratives and views are I guess.
I agree.
Scumbags want censorship to only be used against those they disagree with.
I agree. There just seem to be a fairly widespread pro-censorship sentiment among Lemmy users, usually driven by the desire to block speech that could be harmful to marginalized groups - but in practice, it often extends to broadly silencing all ideas they disagree with. The strawman here tends to be that anyone who wants more free speech just wants to shout slurs and spread (in their view) objectively harmful ideas.