this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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How Lemmy's Communist Devs Saved It (coship.bloggi.co)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by morrowind@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy@lemmy.ml
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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

The main thing that made Lemmy succeed was structural: no matter how bad an admin team is, you can limit their impact on your experience, by picking another instance.

The main focus of the text is something else though. It's what I call "the problem of the witches".

Child-eating witches are bad, but so is witch hunting. People are bound to be falsely labelled as witches and create social paranoia, and somewhere down the road what should be considered witch behaviour will include silly things with barely anything to do with witchcraft - such as planting wheat:

  • if you're planting wheat you'll harvest it.
  • if you harvest wheat you get straw.
  • if you get straw you can make a straw broom.
  • if you make a straw broom you can fly on the sky
  • conclusion: planting wheat is witchcraft activity.

However, once you say "we don't burn witches here", you aren't just protecting the people falsely mislabelled as witches (a moral thing to do). You're also protecting the actual witches - that's immoral, and more importantly it's bound to attract the witches, and make people who don't want witches to go away.

In other words, no matter how much freedom of speech is important, once you advertise a site based on its freedom of speech you'll get a handful of free speech idealists, and lots of people who want to use that freedom of speech to say things that shouldn't be said for a good reason.

That harmed a lot of Reddit alternatives. Specially as Reddit was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons (getting rid of witches not due to moral reasons, or thinking about its userbase, but because the witches were bad rep). So you got a bunch of free witches eager to settle in whatever new platform you created.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Well said, then at some point your platform gets labelled "the witch platform" and non-witches will leave.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It happens before the label. When you start seeing a witch flying on your sky every night, you're already leaving.

[–] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

There is another solution. Make it so witches cannot cause harm, everyone gives a little bit to make everything work for everyone.

We already give things away: money with taxes, certain liberties, information, hours of our lives; how many of those are done with complete intentionality? i.e. could we choose to do something else? I'd rather do something I choose or want to do even if its harmful or less pleasant because it's something I am privy to instead of not.

[–] andrew@radiation.party 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

A gun would help stop those witches from flying in the sky.

I may be taking this analogy the wrong way.

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

Okay, the gun thing made me laugh.

But perhaps you aren't taking the analogy the wrong way?

A gun is usage of force. And the paradox of tolerance does prescribe the usage of force against "the intolerant", in a few situations. Not everything is solved by, for example, letting fascists to hang with their friends in McDonald's. (Except Mussolini. Upside down.)

[–] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This really sounds like a reformulation (with more accessible language and preferable IMO) of Popper's Paradox of Tolerance. I have it below for your convenience:

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. (in note 4 to Chapter 7, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 1)

[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 3 points 9 months ago

Yup - it is, partially, Popper's paradox of tolerance.

However there's a second risk that I mentioned there, that Popper doesn't talk about: that the mechanisms and procedures used to get rid of the intolerant might be abused and misused, to hunt the others.

I call this "witch hunting", after the mediaeval practice - because the ones being thrown into the fire were rarely actual witches, they were mostly common people. You see this all the time in social media; specially in environments that value "trust" (i.e. gullibleness) and orthodoxy over rationality. Such as Twitter (cue to "the main character of the day"), Reddit (pitchfork emporium), and even here in Lemmy.

[from your other comment] There is another solution. Make it so witches cannot cause harm, everyone gives a little bit to make everything work for everyone.

It is trickier than it looks like. We might simplify them as "witches", but we're dealing with multiple groups. Some partially overlap (e.g. incels/misogynists vs. homophobic people), but some have almost nothing to do with each other, besides "they cause someone else harm". So it's actually a lot of work to prevent them from causing harm, to the point that it's inviable.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Considering the article used "tankie" unironically and referred to a far right instance owner as being "pretty chill" I think it's safe to guess the political leanings of the author.

[–] Floon@lemmy.ml 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Whatever the authors leanings are, they make a good point. Lemmy has followed Karl Popper's maxim "Tolerant societies must be intolerant of intolerance." It's just that simple.

[–] CrypticCoffee@lemmy.ml 4 points 10 months ago

I mean moderation doesn't neccesarily support that. You can be tolerant but remove stuff that is far in the fringes. Lemmy has quite a mix. World hates left wing, ml is left wing. Ee is pretty open.

[–] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 9 months ago

Being intolerant does not necessarily mean complete exclusion. Like one-way federation is still allowed right? So if some folks wanna comment they can still get the same content, the folks who don't won't. I think that's a decent middle ground for the meantime.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If anything it makes their point even stronger if their ideology is screaming at them not to put communists above fascists in any circumstance.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

if their ideology is screaming at them not to put communists above fascists in any circumstance

I really have no idea where you got such an impression

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Years of personal experience. Yes, I'm doing the intellectual equivalent of "Source: I made it up" deal with it.

[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 16 points 10 months ago

Dessalines o7

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is also more or less the case across the fediverse.

In the case of lemmy though, I think there are also other more subtle value at play, like for instance the devs disinterest in running a flag ship instance and motivation in creating a platform to ensure communities not welcome elsewhere can make their own home (which arguably balanced well with the disinterest in fascy free speech rubbish).

[–] aard@kyu.de 18 points 10 months ago (1 children)

A major difference is how they interact with feedback - the main reason I never did my own mastodon instance is the developers attitude. "We're not interested in helping you because you didn't set it up exactly as in the guide" was (and maybe still is) all over the mastodon bug tracker.

That was the first thing I looked for when lemmy became popular - and found they were taking deployment issues to even the most absurd system seriously.

Additionally they treat suggestions seriously - even if they personally think it is stupid - and even implement some of that. Pretty much no chance of anything of that happening with mastodon.

[–] maegul@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 months ago

Yea nice. Not to take away from the lemmy devs and your praise ... but mastodon certainly seems problematic in this regard. While gargron has done a lot in building that platform, and kinda deserves, I suppose, to "own" the platform, it certainly seems (from what I've gathered) a lot of people's work in building up the software and its userbase has been easily ignored or dismissed by gargron, and of course, as you say, he's really not that interested in what others want or need from the platform.

[–] Bear_with_a_hammer@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

People at Fediverse care too much about the devs. 95% libs on Mastodon, 85% Reps on Soapbox/Pleroma, 70% commies on Lemmy, etc. Never gave a shit about it since nearly all federate with each other.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean they were also the admins of the biggest instance for a while

[–] JohnDoe@lemmy.myserv.one 1 points 9 months ago

oh is that not the case anymore? is that because world is the biggest instance now? might be preferable if most don't appreciate their politics. Also like, I wouldn't want server downtime or anything to effect the devwork of lemmy...