Hey fellow humans,
I just recently discovered Lemmy. I had an understanding of the general existence of the "Fediverse" for some time, but never gave it much thought. Over the past months or so I read a lot on Reddit and by shear accident discovered Lemmy during that time, as a more federated, free alternative to big-corp Reddit.
Do not get me wrong. I am not per se opposed to big corporations. I am a bit more critical with those corporations that are mainly involved with information and data processing, so basically big-tech.
Now here I am, freshly registered to a german instance and I wanted to share my first impressions of Lemmy or the "Lemmy network".
First off, Lemmy seems great. It has a nice and clean UI and its easy to understand.
But, tbh I already had a bad feeling when it came to choosing an instance to register to. Will I be basically at the mercy of whoever runs that server (with what I am allowed to say at least locally)? What happens when that person or group decides to shut down the server over night? Will my account still be valid elsewhere? How does this work?
One could argue, well what happens when Reddit turns off their website; And of course on Reddit I am also at the mercy of moderators; From a single user perspective there always seems to be the single point of failure in both alternatives. But from my experience, "money makes the world go round", meaning: If there is a legitimate business case it is more likely that such a website or instance will stay online, whereas a lonesome enthusiast will likely loose interest after a while. And then its all gone (at least for that instance)? Is Lemmy than a sub-optimal Reddit alternative?
After registration I noticed something additionally "disturbing". There seems to be a big divide in the Lemmy community, as the instances are free to block certain instances. And I read here, about how big this problem apparently is. Hence, it is not about a big blocklist for unwanted instances, it is also about general focus of conversations across instances.
In fact, this puts me again at the mercy of any instance administrator what I am allowed to see or interact with. Is that not a contradiction of a rather free and open network? It appears anti-liberal in some sense. And a liberal digital society is what we would all strive for, I guess?
Ultimately, this would mean I would have to run my own instance to avoid the risk attached to this situation. But the extreme case of that would be that we are all running our own instances. That does not make sense at all. Then everyone runs and instance and we are all more or less blocking each other.
I guess there is no clean way of doing this? And in the end platforms like Lemmy are always formed by the people who drive them. Hence, personal opinions will always play a role.
But I think a liberal real life society goes to show how things should be: There are rules, but freedom of speech is very much emphasized. For me ideal communication involves that everyone can speak their mind. But then, there are certainly somewhere limits.
I am all against safe spaces, but I am pretty much for respectfulness, indulgence, fairness and constructive dispute. I do not fear any argument that is told in the pursuit of having an honest conversation, an exchange of arguments and ideas.
I would even say, when we are hindering ourselves of having this kind of honest dispute, we are loosing our developed societies.
On the other hand (like in the real world) simply insulting people should not be tolerated.
So, I wonder, is this place actually for me, apparently as a rather liberal person?
Is Lemmy liberal enough from your perspective?
Do you have insights or answers with regards to my questions or blind spots?
Thank you in advance and see you around!