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  • Putting this here for anyone who needs to see it:

    A community on an instance =/= the actual instance, nor is it an endorsement by the instance.

    Anyone can start any community they wish on HC, so long as they stick to the rules.

    • A community on an instance =/= the actual instance, nor is it an endorsement by the instance.

      Putting this here for anyone who needs to see it: If you are on an instance that allows Nazis and/or Nazi communities then you are on a Nazi instance.

    • Doesn’t tolerating capricious and censorious moderation violate the principles you seem to be implicitly defending? I don’t really understand this mentality of neutrality towards authoritarian behavior.

      • I don't like it, but I'm not there to moderate communities. What I care about is my instance rules being adhered to. This is why I point out that anyone is free to start their own community and moderate it as they see fit.

        There is no universal way to moderate a community, you are going to piss someone off no matter how you do it. If I got personally involved, then all communities would be my communities - that's really not good, nor feasible.

        • I can't help it, I keep getting drawn back in. I was curious about what your TOS actually are, and as it happens the content you say you are helpless to moderate actually does violate your site's terms of service. Under "Content Restrictions", it forbids "False information."

          From your number 2 community, top of the front page, not even far down:

          • "El Salvador Blocks Sen. Van Hollen’s Visit with Deported Illegal Alien" - He wasn't deported (since that's a legal process, which was not followed in this case), and also, he had legal status in the US.
          • "Young people are now overwhelmingly Republican" - The underlying survey reported that there is a selected age range (18-21) and a selected question (who you support in the 2026 congressional election) which you can select to eke out a 12-point lead for the Republican answer to the question. However, the young people who consider themselves liberal outnumber the self-identified conservatives by 16 points overall. There are other questions (Trump's favorability rating) which show an even more marked liberal shift in young people overall. The headline is only true if you adopt laughably specific or wrong definitions of all three of the phrases "young people", "overwhelmingly", and "Republican". Otherwise, it is objectively false. The self-identified party ID actually was collected (for purposes of weighting), but for some reason it is not published what the breakdown was. I'd be curious to see it.

          Again: This is why people don't like your conduct here. Having a political viewpoint is fine. I'm fine with conservative people. When someone starts objectively lying to prop up their views, people will start to view them as malicious and someone who's taking a "oh ho I can't get involved" attitude to giving them a platform as also malicious. When it's not just objectively untrue, but also engineered to produce dangerous or deadly results in the real world, that's where people will simply not want it around. Pretty firmly.

          Sorry if it seems like I'm just trying to argue with you. Again, you seem like you at least deserve the benefit of the doubt and complete explanation, since nothing you're saying seems crazy or obviously malicious, like you think this is good instance-admin philosophy. I'm taking time to present the alternative view. If you were hosting a conservative community, but also making it clear that open and deliberate propaganda was not welcome, then I think you'd be fine. But, of course, such a community would be a nightmare to try to define and police in practice, and if the effort was at all successful, then all the "conservatives" of the modern US variety wouldn't want to be there. Which is exactly the problem.

          • I am not helpless to moderate, I don't want to moderate communities. Are you suggesting that I should be an authoritarian admin? I offer an instance where people, such as yourself, can start their own communities and run them as they like.

            Both of those are links to external articles. These links are posted on content aggregator platforms for the purpose of debate. Some people will agree with them, others, like you, will argue against them. That is fine, and not a violation of any rules.

            • Both of those are links to external articles. These links are posted on content aggregator platforms for the purpose of debate. Some people will agree with them, others, like you, will argue against them. That is fine, and not a violation of any rules.

              Yeah, but you set the rules. You explained, just now, that you just don't feel like it's proper to tell people how to moderate. That's fine. I would suggest that you stop blaming "the rules" for this decision. That's why I got confused, I thought you were doing the lemmy.world thing of treating "the rules" as something you were required somehow to obey. If you just don't want to police this stuff off your instance, then fine, I get that. Just own up to it being your decision (as you've now done, so now I get it). You make the rules. You've decided how to make them.

              Are you suggesting that I should be an authoritarian admin? I offer an instance where people, such as yourself, can start their own communities and run them as they like.

              Maybe an analogy would help.

              If you go to a city, and it's a authoritarian police state, that's bad. That's lemmy.ml. The admins just tell people what viewpoints they can and can't have, ban people at the drop of a hat, it's just a stupid endeavor. Don't do that.

              If you go to a city, and it's totally lawless and the police don't do shit, that's also bad. You can get shot, there are muggings and assaults constantly, your car will get broken into. Most people on Lemmy, I think, would prefer not to go to that neighborhood. Put a pin in that.

              If you go to a city, and the police are just kind of weird, you get hassled for jaywalking or asked for ID for random reasons, but then other things clearly seem criminal and the police don't care, that's bad. That's lemmy.world. The moderation isn't exactly "authoritarian" but it isn't competent either. Major crimes get handled, it's not unsafe, but things aren't real well-organized.

              If you go to a city, and it's just normal, you can walk around and go to shops, but if you break in someone's car the police come and arrest you, that's good. IDK, maybe I am going to trigger some Lemmy people by implying that the police are ever a beneficial presence, but that's how I see it. That's how I think most good instances aspire to be. I would define that as lemm.ee, sh.itjust.works, that sort of place. You can start a conservative community, you can be a conservative person or moderator. It is fine. You have freedom. But also, part of that freedom is being protected against certain conduct. It happens that, for some reason, the people with modern-US-conservative views cannot manage over the long term to avoid doing that type of conduct, and so eventually they inevitably tend to get banned and have to find new places.

              I'm saying that your instance sounds like it's too much along the lines of the second city. It's just that no one wants to deal with that shit. Again, it has nothing to do with the viewpoint, at least on reasonable instances. It's just that after the 200th post of something that is just made-up nonsense in service of racism or the murder of democracy, or the 200th time someone attacks you for made-up reasons and then is hostile and randomly evasive about any type of fact-based discussion about it, people start to recognize the signs. The people with that behavior have outstayed their welcome. And, for whatever reason, modern US conservatives seem to self-select themselves into this weird little bubble where they just like to tell each other outlandish lies, agree with each other, misrepresent themselves to "win" discussions, and attack anyone who tries to talk with them. Actually, that all applies also to a lot of the far-left Lemmy instances also, which is why I don't fuck with them either.

              I actually don't like that conservative views get objected to constantly, and any conservative community just gets laughed at and dunked on. It's not balanced. I have some conservative views. Not many but a few. One example is that I think, in general in the modern day in the US, the police are fine. Not always (and there are other parts of the system that need a ton of work) but most of the time. I regularly get downvoted to oblivion from time to time when that comes up. That's fine, it doesn't bother me. No one that I can remember has ever censored me for it. I do actually get moderated sometimes when I am a cockhead, but as far as I can remember that's never actually overlapped with me saying any conservative view.

              The issue is not viewpoint. The issue is conduct. Posting laughably incorrect racist propaganda and promoting it, for some reason, seems to overlap with a way of interacting with other users that eventually gets people banned. For some reason. You may not intending to welcome that conduct by welcoming the laughable racist propaganda, but (a) it's weird that you want to go to bat to make a safe place for people to make communities of that stuff and then expect any other people to want to interact with that place (b) I think you should realize that it's going to come along with some conduct which you definitely don't want either.

238 comments