Iāve been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasnāt sure how to feel about it.
Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken āfederationā system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but itās never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmyās official docs say you canāt even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it wonāt actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
So you can only ever have the āaverage joe lemmyā and āaverage joe redditā with everything approved by the authorities, and then ātor copies of lemmyā and ātor copies of redditā where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.
People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But itās the exact same thing, itās reddit.
When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldnāt let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they wonāt let you talk at all.
Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.
Itās not actually a solution to reddit. Itās not designed to be different, itās designed to match the past today and then match redditās present tomorrow, while being part of a system thatās about the same in past, present, and future.
Last year, this year, and next year, youāre posting somewhere it wonāt be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. Thereās no difference here.
Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.
Edit - I was banned from my instance, and before being unbanned, some of my comments seem to have been removed. I apologize if I hurt anyoneās feelings, but it seems pointless to try to discuss this topic here. Iāll give a few more replies, and then suggest any further responses be directed to me on nostr, where there are no bans. Iāve also had a good time posting on PieFed while I was banned, so Iāll probably keep spending time there. If anyoneās curious, I had a thread about this topic on PieFed too. Btw, instead of the misplaced focus on bots, I should have said filter spam, not people earlier in this post.
If you mean actual CSAM, just imprison/kill the people making it until there is no more.
If you mean āCSAMā like a girl sending nudes to her boyfriend, then by āshouldā you mean ācould,ā and then why reply to someone whoās clearly more honest?
If you call killing child abusers when thereās enough food and everything āmoderationā then Iām against moderation.
If you call corporations doing dishonest advertising āmoderationā then Iām strictly absolutely against moderation.
If you call imprisoning child abusers, or killing them when thereās not enough food, āmoderationā then Iām more favorable. Thatās a weird way to use the term āmoderationā but itās fine.
And in the middle ground, if you call āmoderationā banning a guy from a Roblox discussion forum for saying his gf sent him nudes while the Roblox discussion forum is funded by Roblox and has no real direct connection to politics / is honestly trying to be a ānon-political spaceā then I donāt really care. And I think that would actually be a perfectly fitting example for the definition of the term āmoderation.ā
The majority of replies Iāve gotten have seemed extremely bad-faith, and you denying it is where your reply starts to feel extremely bad-faith too (though it was creeping up to that line from the beginning).
Planes pump pollution directly into the upper atmosphere and waste a lot of non-renewable resources. This ending makes me dislike your comment more than any other in this thread, although there are others that seem more extremely bad-faith.
Ok so youāre just absolutely unhinged, got it. How old are you? Youāre against airplanes in a very black-and-white way. Millions of people use airplanes daily, you know? I just happened to be boarding my plane back home when I saw this brainrot post. You know nothing else about me other than I was boarding a plane while typing this, so youāre way too quick to jump to conclusions about people, which isā¦ Immature. Gretaās decisions regarding travel are commendable, but not everybody is able to spend money and time opting for boats instead of airplanes.
As for the rest of your commentā¦ Who tf said anything about killing anyone??? If you cannot agree on a simple concept such as moderation in the context of an online platform, then you have no place questioning the way this or any platform works, at least not without sitting down and learning about online platforms, or basic human decency, first. Extremist & childish tales such as āwe kill all the offendersā is exactly how weāre in this mess of a worldwide situation to begin with, not to mention itās such a tangential answer to my very straightforward question of, what do you do about people posting things nobody should post, while not knowing who posted it and not being able to prevent them from doing it again, all in the name of privacy or freedom of speech. TOR is a great tool for very specific people, that happens to also facilitate lots of nasty shit online. Thereās enough nasty shit on Tor, or on unmoderated niche sites. We donāt want the bad rep from potentially allowing CSAM into a social network looking to bring in new people into it. Lack of moderation is exactly how you end up killing a platformā¦ But I donāt think you want to listen to reason on this.
Replying 2 days later due to my ban, which is also why I suggest moving this conversation to nostr if you actually want to discuss it in good faith.
And not everybody responds to me saying things that are important and correct by talking shit to me. Grow up. Donāt ask me to forgive your actual flaws when you came in attacking me for what you pretend are flaws.
Looks like that was me. Not sure why youād seem confused about it. Pretty common thing to bring up in this context.
Incorrect.
Given at this point what youāre saying sounds like denialism regarding my right to free speech, I stopped reading after this. Feel free to rephrase your comment to make me feel like reading it, or post your reply on nostr where I canāt be banned, as a basic sign of respect for my ability to reply freely.
Nah you got banned for a reason, you suck at discussing anything of value and have unhinged takes and total lack of respect for others as well. I would continue to probe your mind to try and understand how you expect to reconcile having anonymity online to post whatever the fuck you want, with killing people who post CSAM onlineā¦ Even though theyād be anonymous and free to post whatever they like because we somehow skipped content moderation and went straight for firing squadā¦ But I think the ban you earned speaks for itself.
Because thatās worked so far to stop it. That literally is policy in almost every country. Itās illegal to make or share almost everywhere.
This is outside of the remit of a hypothetical lemmy or piefed instance, because that would be private messaging.
I donāt know that he said that at all. He just asked what do you do about the fact that without moderation, people will upload child porn. Itās a matter of when and not if.
Sometimes people need to travel to other countries.
If you have a āneedā reason for traveling overseas, you should use a boat, or swim, or invent an efficient teleporter, or do any number of things a sane person would do instead of taking a commercial jet. Really though: need? Not very common.
Has banning?
If it will never work, why pretend banning usernames / IP addresses is effective?
Itās not illegal, but it can be against the ālaws of man,ā which arenāt real laws because most people agree āthe main one is that theyāre made to be brokenā
In other words: lmao you think Trump is going to prison? I hope so
I meant talking about it publicly, but OK, maybe itās a stretch to imagine the authorities cracking down on that. Not much of a stretch to me, but understandable to me how you could think so.
A better example would be a girl posting bikini pics, or something public that itās easy to imagine the authorities falsely labeling as āCSAMā as justification to filter the entire person out of political discussions (or do other fucked up shit)
If āchild pornā (not necessarily actual CSAM) then donāt do anything
If actual CSAM, imprison/kill the abusers. I thought I said that already
This is a laughable position given sometimes people need to travel pretty far.
Probably had some impact.
Even if it isnāt, that means it should never be taken down?
No, itās literally illegal to share child porn in many countries.
Yeah, lets assume weāre talking about actual child porn here - not stuff on the edge, or stuff that could be considered as child porn. Which goes beyond girls in bikinis.
So what if it actual CSAM then? Should it be taken down then?
Right, if I am an admin on an instance - Iām obviously not able to actually punish the poster who posted it. So what do I do? Do I take down the CSAM?
The context was other countries, not space.
If you need to go to space, donāt call it a country, and donāt try a plane. A spaceship is the minimum.
If you need to go to another country, and the ocean is between you and it, a boat is usually best.
Planes are a very bad choice for pretty much anything today. Jet engines are appropriate when you need to transport a donated organ for transplant as fast as possible, not when you need to take selfies in Paris or say goodbye to your dying mom you forgot to live within appropriate range of (like Killer Mike, who was too busy to make it even at the speed of plane, but thank God human greed has given us such convenient ways to pollute the air).
Uhh. What? Some?
Like, more than imprisonments and killings? Or justā¦ some?
No, it means you shouldnāt pretend āeffectiveness against abusersā is a point for your side instead of mine. Pretending victims and perpetrators donāt exist is good for the perpetrators and bad for the victims, but thatās not the entire reasoning for why free speech is good.
No, itās literally illegal for two positive magnets to attract each other in any known location (ālaws of physicsā). Itās literally illegal for a person to get away with detonating nuclear bombs without permission in many countries (a rare exception to ālaws of manā being fake). Itās figuratively illegal for two men to be attracted to each other in Saudi Arabia (banned but people still do it as they should), or for a cop to help another cop get away with raping a kid in the US and sharing video of it in the group chat (banned but people still do it even though they shouldnāt).
I donāt get what you mean. Which is it, are the girls in bikinis (posting themselves) actual āchild pornā to you, or no?
No, that is not what I said.
I said imprison or kill the people posting it, until there are none.
I mean, if youāre talking about ātaken down after spamming replies on a post I made,ā then sure. But if you mean ātaken down from the whole internet,ā then no, that actually starts to contradict what I said, which was to imprison or kill the people posting it.
If youāre me, it depends where it is. I wouldnāt be an admin on an instance that filters non-spam universally. If itās spamming the replies to an unrelated post, sure, get rid of it, like any other spam. (I also misspoke originally when I framed it as āhumans vs botsā in my main post - Iāve got to try to remember to use the word āspamā not ābotsā because we have human spammers and now chat bots that can actually answer questions usefully sometimes)
If youāre a traumatized CSAM victim, idk, maybe you want to stay in places with less freedom and be an admin of a place that removes all that stuff. That seems healthy for some people, and I donāt think thereās anything wrong with them for wanting that.
A boat takes far, far longer - so no itās not.
How do you know they were going on holiday?
But even if it was a holiday, going on a boat from UK to Brazil, for instance can take up to a month.
Sure.
Impact in reducing its spread online.
Iām in favour of censoring CSAM, and arresting child porn creators and proliferators. You are apparently only in favour of the latter.
Since when does taking it down mean you pretend it doesnāt exist?
This is semantics to the point of nonsense. It is against the law to host or share child porn almost everywhere.
Why not also take down CSAM at the same time?
How does it contradict it? Usually when a CSAM site is taken down, it is alongside an investigation into the owners of said website at the same time. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
So if I was an admin on an instance, and someone posted CSAM - I should only remove it in the context of removing spam and not because itās CSAM?
Iām not a victim of CSAM but I still donāt want to see child porn.
Wanting everyone to die makes you a piece of shit, even if you also enjoy convenience. In fact, enjoying convenience does nothing to make me value you. Pretty much everyone enjoys convenience. You have not sold me on the virtue of making the planet extinct with pollution by telling me I could cross the ocean faster in the process. You have also not sold me on forgiving the crime. You have also not sold me any plane tickets. Was there a point here?
I donāt know or care.
So donāt take a holiday from the UK to Brazil if youāre in a hurry. Not rocket science. The Yorkshire Dales are nice.
You mean some people who want it canāt find it online, and you think thatās a good thing?
Let me guess, a genie (or a regular human) told you if you can stop someone from finding something online, you make them less likely to commit abuse themselves?
Iām in favor of arresting the most severe sexual abusers, regardless of what age they target. And perhaps sexual abuse material creators/proliferators are even worse.
CSAM is sexual abuse material, with the word āchildā added, mainly to lend more weight to attempts to ban what was previously called āchild pornā which is basically any sexual imagery thatās banned for having underage subjects - not only the abusive stuff, so not only the stuff I have a problem with.
Iām not saying we need to pressure France to arrest a bunch of French film directors for scenes with naked girls as soon as Trump or his replacement finds it politically convenient to label such things as so-called āillegal content.ā
Perhaps I shouldnāt oversimplify. You do know they exist. My bad.
You probably believe things like ā3-letter agencies arenāt overrun with rapistsā and/or ātheyāre less likely to abuse if they canāt find the materialā and I was calling those kinds of views āpretending they donāt exist.ā
Maybe I shouldnāt have wasted time on the semantic point, but itās important to me.
Makes it harder to reach a future where everyoneās positions are clarified. That means abusers are protected, and victims are neglected.
Better question: why would you ever do it, unless you were somehow convinced it made people less likely to commit abuse or something?
They clearly are. Taking it down doesnāt help anyone investigate it, only hinders investigation. It makes no sense to suggest the opposite, especially if youāre aware 3-letter agencies are probably overrun with rapists.
That would be my way.
Seems hard to be the admin removing it without seeing it, bud. So should you be the one removing it, or should that be someone who openly wants to see it?
According to you almost everyone on earth is a āpiece of shitā then and that no-one is worth forgiveness for you.
Like this is a borderline misanthropic mentality.
What if they have relatively urgent business across the world?
So I guess people should just hardly leave their geographical area then.
Yes, I do. It guts the business.
You got any data for this claim? Are you alleging that we should allow historical incidents, recordings of CSAM online in the hope, the idea that it would put-off pedophiles from trying to specifically do it to new victims to get their fix?
So we all have to witness and host CSAM on our websites because of this?
Why?
Why does taking CSAM down make it harder to āreach a future where everyoneās positions are clarifiedā? What does that even mean? Why would it protect abusers?
Well separate from concerns about the account posting it, people find it utterly disgusting and inhumane and donāt want to see it on websites they visit.
You got any data that backs this claim up?
So you outright openly pro peopleās right to share child porn online.
Yes, admins would have to put up with that. But normal users of a community donāt want to see it and would expect it removed.
Incorrect, and you seem to have a habit of making up shit to say and adding āaccording to youā like Iām the one that said it.
Stop being that way, then, I guess.
As I said, that is what jet engines are appropriate for. Business which is relatively urgent in the context - so, relative to climate change. For example, transporting organs for transplant patients. Not transporting stupid people to stupid shit they have stupidly planned.
Correct, as long as people canāt figure out a way to do so without accelerating the extinction crisis. Very obvious to anyone sane.
No. āThe businessā is just people. You have to gut the people to literally gut the business. And to proverbially gut the business would be to destroy it, reduce it to almost nothing - the euphemism youāre looking for is āunder the rug,ā not āgutted.ā
Iām not even checking what claim, let alone checking for data to back it up. You have really proven youāre not worth much effort.
No, but I feel like you meant to ask if I would allege that, and you misspoke with āare you allegingā because youāre extremely bad at typing
Because of what? You being bad at typing? No, you donāt have to do that because of anything, and you being bad at typing doesnāt really make anyone do anything except struggle to read what you type
Because it was pretty eye-opening when I realized manipulation and gaslighting are the only reasons for the English language to use the word ālawā as a bridge-synonym between āobservable realities of natureā and āshit the authorities sayā
How can you pretend this is a real question? I get that youāre just asking dumb questions to gaslight me, but like, doesnāt it only take 1 brain cell to figure out that banning the stuff from DNS/IP addresses drives people to use Tor for anonymity and not be public about this stuff? Are you entering new levels of acting brain damaged, as another layer of attempting to gaslight me?
Are you asking me for dictionary help again?
Again, you have to ask why abusers are protected by concealment?
I asked why youād remove it from the internet, not why you wouldnāt go to websites with it
Another question even dumber than most of your extremely dumb questions so far.
Correct, but phrased with edgy wording I wouldnāt usually use.
Didnāt ask. The question at that part was, should it be you (or people like you) going through it to remove, or people who openly want to see it?