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How good is Lemmy dealing with censorship and why does the sign-up process on lemmy.ml involve having to copy a sentence from "The Principles of Communism"? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey everyone, I'm new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn't publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here (on the official site it says "Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.").

The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the "lemmy.ml" server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers".

So I thought I try that one when it's from Lemmy's own developers. When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called "The Principles of Communism" which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I've never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it's part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.

This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, you're discussing communism specifically. I have no beef with communism or any other political ideology. Except perhaps capitalism, I might have beef with that. Digressions aside, the ask could be for quoting an article about Spongebob Squarepants and I would have the same grievance. Can we discuss the action itself, without going into a discussion about communism?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

If you don't like SpongeBob, pick a different instance, that's federation.

To me this is like having a problem with the flags someone else has in their yard. Not your yard, not your flags. You're free to not like their flags, but if your grievance is with the action of them peacefully demonstrating free speech, that's a you problem.

Sure, maybe that guy also happens to work at the flag factory down the street. Probably explains why he has so many flags. Doesn't mean he's going to make you put the same flags he likes in your yard.

Edit: for the record, I'm not downvoting you, I think you've been very reasonable in this discussion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I appreciate you addressing the downvoting; I had noticed the trend and it's very easy to jump to the "I'm under a personal attack" conclusion.

While I believe 107% that each instance owner can do what they want; if this given instance is the first instance to which most people will be introduced, being the closest thing to an "official" instance, should they have a duty, or at the very least, an interest, in maximizing the inclusitivity of their community?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

if this given instance is the first instance to which most people will be introduced, being the closest thing to an “official” instance, should they have a duty, or at the very least, an interest, in maximizing the inclusitivity of their community?

I think this goes back to what teawrecks said earlier:

it’s not a for-profit business

It's a private club with a trivial admission process. It's not just that they don't care about maximizing inclusivity, growth, and total users, it's that they don't want any of that. They want like-minded people and they're happy to keep out or ban people that don't fit that mold.

It feels like you're saying they should want something else, but I don't see it as obvious why they would, and I don't think you've explained your reasoning why they would.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

You know, I never really stopped to consider the reasons for wanting unrestricted growth - after all, unrestricted growth is ultimately unsustainable. I guess I took for granted a cultural bias of my own that I really need to evaluate and see if it's something worth keeping internalized or to expunge it from myself. Guess I'm taking shrooms and doing some soul searching this weekend!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

I would say it's one of the first, but not THE first. Lemmy.world is definitely the most popular instance (to a problematic degree).

But I don't think expressing one's love of Spongebob inherently "excludes" anyone from using Lemmy. I don't think the Lemmy devs have any duty to anyone but themselves. And any interest they have in user adoption is for their own reasons.

Nothing would stop someone from forking Lemmy and making an alternative with different ideologies. I assume the license would ask them to use a different name to not cause confusion, and I would hope that they don't break ActivityPub or federation compatibility with existing Lemmy instances. But at that point, what's the difference between a fork for ideological reasons....and just spinning up your own instance?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Ensure you aren't a bot I guess, and if somebody programs the paste text they can switch the text to copy from?