I'm writing this post to inform you all that I have decided to defederate from the exploding-heads[.]com instance.
After carefully reviewing the instance, reported posts, and comments from our community, content on exploding-heads is clearly mostly—if not completely—in violation of our instance rules, including content posted by the instance admin themselves (a large factor in the decision to defederate any instance).
On other fediverse platforms I run, such as Mastodon, I would typically respond by "Limiting" such instances, since the main goal is to avoid the publishing and promotion of such topics on our public ("All") timelines, rather than control what you can or cannot access. Unfortunately, Lemmy does not yet offer the fine-grained moderation controls to make this possible, so complete defederation is our only option to avoid the re-publishing of content which is consistently hateful and discriminatory.
Defederation from other Lemmy instances is not taken lightly, and in the future I will continue to review instances on a case by case basis.
"Free speech to say what" is a very demanding question to some people. The vast majority will avoid it by saying "anything I want".
Stopping and asking what you aren't allowed to say out loud, and from whom will the consequences be doled out, paints a very clear picture. It's never good shit they can't say, and it's never the govt that is punishing them. Beyond that, nothing in the Constitution says I need to listen to whatever bullshit they wanna say.
I'm not in the US. Living in Canada right now and we have hate speech laws for exactly this reason.
Ours are...not quite as robust. The social implications are there, which I think should be the greater pressure than specific govt laws. Those are short sighted and do nothing to teach aside from punish. Social ostracization and breakdowns in your life pose a much more tangible alternative. The problem now is that getting "canceled" is a badge of honor to 40% of the citizens here.
Yeah I hear you. That sentiment has been slowly seeping up north too. "Woke" or "Cancel" culture are the new calling card for racists and bigots et al. Most of these people just pining for the days where they can just be openly racists and such again.
It's crazy. I very much reside in "live and let live" country, but the second someone wears overalls, drives a Subaru, and uses pronouns, they start threatening to shut the library down because the Clinton Pedo ring has made it to Bumfuck town...
"Freedom of association" is a major part of free speech/expression... when certain types start harping about their freeze peach, what they are really saying is that they want to take away others freedom to associate... or dissociate, as it were.