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The stress of trying to not piss everyone off but still letting your inner bootlicker out
(quokk.au)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2024
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I see these kinds of things as similar to the "Paradox of Tolerance."
If your position is that you will tolerate everything all the time, you will be destroyed by the first thing that you allow into your space that does not tolerate you. Tolerating intolerance inevitably leads to the destruction of tolerant society.
If you instead view tolerance as a social contract, an agreement between us, any intolerance becomes a breach of that contract. Meaning that tolerance, should not, and cannot be extended to the intolerant.
With regard to off-color (or sometimes even violent) memes it's the same type of thing. I've certainly seen violent memes directed at violent groups, groups that advocate for the destruction of whole classes of people, either directly or indirectly.
You could have an academic discussion about what constitutes violence. Though insisting upon civility always upholds the status quo, and if the status quo of death and destruction through capital acquisition and paperwork results in as much death and destruction as more direct alternatives, is the social contract any less broken?
Now, to the point of rules enforcement etc. on individual instances. I can't defend nebulous examples of people being upset about one thing or another and claiming "anarchy" other than to point out that most people educated in the western world don't have a good understanding of what anarchy means other than the pop culture definition intentionally cultivated to denigrate moderately successful anti-oligarchic movements in the 19th century.
But in practice what is to be done about those kinds of things? Lemmy is a federation of fiefdoms, the admins being absolute monarchs of their instances should they so choose. If you don't want to see something, you don't have to interact with them. There are user, community, and instance level tools to clean things up for yourself individually, or there's the nuclear option of de-federation entirely for an instance that you don't want your instance to interact with. If you don't want to, or don't have the ability to construct and curate your own instance you are at the whim of whoever runs your fiefdom.
It is the same as browsing r/All 10 years ago. You will see everything, even stuff you don't want to see, unless you just stick to your subs or local instance only.
I wouldn't have recommended reddit to everyone I knew 10 years ago, just like I don't recommend Lemmy to everyone I know now, only those who understand all the asterisks that come along with it.
EXACTLY! So if e.g. the rules of [email protected] include "5. No Enciting Harassment", then that's their decision whether to remove something or not? Someone could make a new community like [email protected], and then they could say whatever they wanted?
Instead, they complain here, and I stated how I stand with those who choose to serve the community by making instances (admins) and communities (mods) work, rather than those who would tear it all down simply to watch it burn or in a highly short-sighted attempt to get their way and "win", at whatever cost.
Contracts are only meaningful to those who read them, understand, or in general care i.e. act in good faith.
So if someone wants to make memes glorifying violence - then do it? But that's not what we're discussing here: the topic as I understand it is why people are okay to "merely" complain about why others won't simply do as they say, even when the former don't bother to expend any effort on their own behalf, i.e. to make a new community that will allow such content.
I don't know if Lemmy will survive in anything close to resembling its current form. Many seem entirely okay with that, but I'm just saying that it is what it is. Lemmy.ml for instance has lost many of its subscribers, and they have migrated over to other instances. Now with non-extremists being turned away by the "leaky" nature of the communities here, which have rules but they are not enforced, it will harden further.
Our userbase is already shrinking. Last year I had 1 account, today I have 3 different ones that I actively maintain, so as of now I count for 3x active users, or 4 total. But I am only 1. Thus, I don't believe the stats showing our monthly active users remaining static - if people leaving Lemmy.World and making alts as they move to other instances are likewise either in transition during the time period of the measurement or possibly check back with their old account (to receive notifications on older content, and messages, etc.) then they too will be counted multiple times. How to reconcile the growing number of total accounts with mostly static number of "active" ones, except that our total actual non-bot user numbers are shrinking.
Again, some large fraction of the userbase here seems to think that's okay. But some of us had hopes that this could be a Reddit replacement. For those of us in the latter camp, we feel disappointed now to find our hopes dashed, as mainstream normal people simply are not coming here - nor are we even comfortable inviting them in the first place.