At least for me its very difficult to make the line between preventing hate speech and allowing the freedom. I’m thinking to launch a lemmy instance, but the targeted audience is very sensitive to religion topics, and i’m sure if i allow it, this could lead to hate speech at some point and may fuel violence. Also, from my prospective, i just want my audience find new good things far from porn, porn sites are a lot, and i don`t want to mix it with other topics that can very constructive.
So please tell me your opinion, if banning these 2 topics can effect the freedom of speech.
To me, what is great about federated platforms like Lemmy is that we can think and speak about these issue in a great way !
The way I see it, is that your instance is like an event you organize at your house, or a bar you own. Your place, your rules. Thoses rules depends on your culture, you intents, the people you want to welcome. Like in your house, you could ban anyone, for any reason you like. But like real social circle, if throw out people for no reason, or reasons other people don’t like, those people won’t stay, as they are free to go elsewhere.
And that is great. Because moderation is a difficult and subjective job. You can legitimately want to ban someone for something you deem innacceptable, while the person banned can legitimately think you are suppressing his freedom of speech. Because you could have different values, different cultures.
That is clearly different than the problem concerning centralized media or social network. Facebook for example created a place where everybody is and has to follow their rules. And if you disagree, you cannot leave and go to another instance. So the moderation is a huge issue. You have to protect freedom of speech there because users are stuck there. And alternative social networks like mastodon are not viable alternatives for now since the main interest people have in social network is that most people are there.
So yeah, I don’t have any problem with different choices of moderation in different instances. The only case I would see a legitimate problem would be if you create a place that is dangerous for the rest of society. Exactly like any social place. I’m for a variety of bars and clubs, with specific rules. But I will fight against the existence of a fascist bar because it’s dangerous even for people that do not chose to go there. The same way, it’s not because I promote diversity in instances policies that I think any instances with any rules should be allowed.
This final question of which social place should be allowed and which shouldn’t, that is a purely political question, and I could talk about it for hours, like many people here ! My view here in this : diversity good, fascist bad. Why no fascists allowed in my diversity ? Because they are the ones against this diversity in the first place.
Sorry for the long answer ! <3
I think “suppress the freedom of speech” is a sort of clumsily applied term here. What you’re trying to implement are effective house rules and I really don’t see anything wrong with that. Without simple rules like that, people could just hop into your space and be abusive assholes then claim “FrEe SpeEcH”. I’d say go right ahead and do what makes you feel comfortable.
Freedom of speech means that THE STATE doesn’t prosecute you for saying stuff. If you start a cat forum you can and certainly should ban people who come there to disturb people who just want to engage with the intended topics. Imagine if someone argued something like “I like dogs more” in every thread in that forum. If you ban them, you aren’t limiting their freedom of speech, you are just enforcing your rules. This is necessary for a cat forum to exist btw.
Tl;dr: you can set rules however you like.
Thank you, that sounds simple and clear.
Does not make it correct.
it does make it correct. spam is spam. anything that doesn’t belong in the topic discussion can and should be removed. it’s not a censorship of free speech. it’s a removal of spam. a distinct difference.
Since you’re the instance hoster you have the right to decide what you want your instance to be used for (and not to be used for).
The system is federated, and those who don’t agree by the rules can post on another instance if they don’t like it.
Free speech doesn’t mean that you owe anyone a platform for their speech. You can make any arbitrary rules on your instance and if somebody doesn’t like them they are free to start their own instance.
People will feel like God wants them to break that rule
You want to protect others from possible hate, dis- and misinformation as well as deescalate in the first place. I do not see that it violates freedom of speech of freedom of religion. People can freely go to other instances if they seek advise regarding those topics or research themselves on the internet.
As owner you can be held liable for actions of your users and if they deliberately spread nonsense and stuff that hurts other people feelings, while disallowing such hot topics you just want to prevent this in the first place.
Censoring would be of for example the ISP directly blocks every access to research and opinions in the first place, which gives people absolute no indicators or possibility to get aware of it. This is not the case here, because you are just another Instance provider and write clearly before someone register on your instance, in public, your rules and code of conduct down. Everyone can see it.
You also do not ban topics, you just decided for your instance that the topics are not your specialty or that you want to avoid possible conflicts because people can get emotional pretty fast.
I find that better than an Instance that is out of control, quickly bad moderated due to e.g. lack of moderators who want to handle such things and even possible infiltrated by people who seek to confuse others or start hate.
