sudoreboot

In the context of recent comments^[1]^^[2]^ made by the admin, I feel the need to bring up some thoughts I have on the relationships between free speech, moderation, impartiality and social issues.

For a start, I need to point out that science -- the study and exploration of the unknown -- is wrought with politics and social biases. Science could not be conducted without the exchange and preservation of information. Consider the endpoints and media of these exchanges of information. Humans preserve knowledge by storing it within their minds and/or inscribing it onto external media, and then communicating to others how and where to extract this information through social interactions.

Humans are biased and prone to irrationality. We know this. We know that biases dictate the rules and dynamics of social interaction, and that irrationality feeds into the formation of biases and vice versa. There is no such thing as an objective mind or impartial act; at best it is ignorance that counteracts one's biases, and this is how we try to conduct science. But we can not get any science done by only ever making blind choices in the interest of impartiality and fairness. We have to use moral judgement and intuition in order to make choices. What to research; how to interpret partial data; what conclusions to draw based on limited knowledge; how to even draw conclusions; what questions to ask; what answers to expect; what methods to use; whose interest to serve while prioritising.

The notion that you can just "be rational" and "stick to the science" is misguided. It prevents us from identifying our blindspots and biases. Recognising and acknowledging our limitations in perspective and understanding is vital to our efforts to deepen and widen our understanding of -- and existence within -- the natural world.

Let's consider what this means for members of a community such as this instance. When you are exposed to information -- whether misleading, false, essential or true -- what dictates your response to it is primarily a non-conscious process involving emotions, cognitive/physical state, innate primal instincts, etc. Your ability to reason only ever presents itself after your brain has interpreted the input signals and triggered an autonomic response. For many people, the non-conscious process can in some cases negatively affect their mental or even physical state in a very real and serious way (due to implications, extrapolations or associations of certain types of information - could be tragedy/gore/harassment or more complex triggers), often preventing them from dealing with it in a healthy and constructive manner. It's more nuanced than simply having or not having a (C-)PTSD diagnosis, and it is no one else's business to judge whether a person's inner experience is valid or that they should "suck it up" and "learn to deal with it". Unless one is an anti-social prick who thinks "survival of the fittest" makes for an excellent slogan and moral basis for a healthy society, of course.

Let's now consider how this relates to moderators of a community. If someone is responding negatively to some piece of information, one would do well to reflect upon why that may be, and what, if anything, can be reasonably done to prevent that. It is the task a moderator should be concerned with, so that they can form a basis for judgement. Sometimes a person can't be helped; sometimes it isn't in a group's interest to even attempt to fix a person's personal issues. But it is worth considering the implications when making a choice in who to accommodate. The choice may be passive or active. The former could be letting each person moderate their own experience; the latter could be defederating from instances that only contribute negatively to your community.

So, who should we accommodate? The anti-social extremist lashing out, ranting about conspiracies at anyone who will listen? Do you listen in the hope that it makes them (and.. you?) better people or do you shut the door to spare the rest of the room?

What about the trans person ranting about frequent harassment? Do you listen and consider their situation or do you let them figure it out on their own?

What about the autistic science nerd that gets upset over systematic disinformation and pseudoscientific posts populating their feed (and, by induction, everyone else's)? Do you crack down on those posters or let the nerds fight their own battle in the free marketplace of ideas (I mean, they're the rational ones with science on their side so they would surely win - sorry, had to sneak in a bit of diatribe)?

What purpose does unconditional (barring illegal conduct and spam) federation serve this instance? Who in this place appreciates the content and values sported by the people over at exploding-heads (for reasons other than absolute principles of freedom)? Forget breaking rules or laws; what potential value does a hypothetical Nazi or religious extremist group bring to this place? In whose interest is this instance acting when making (in)decisions about what other platforms are free to interact with (or at) us?

How do we expect this place to evolve over time as people who appreciate the moderation style here trickle in and remain active while people who are uncomfortable with it slowly evaporate?

Not meant as an authoritative or absolute assessment, but this viewpoint may help you come to terms with the "fragmented" nature of the fediverse and understand why it's the reason we are here (or at least why you would want to be). Lemmy and the fediverse is not "the ultimate aggregation platform" or the new old reddit in any singular or unified sense.

Digression: The fediverse, generally speaking, is an infrastructure; a network of communities across various social platforms, including link-aggregators, microblogging sites, video-streaming, forums, media-sharing, and website comment sections all over the internet. Lemmy is an animal sharing an ecosystem (the fediverse) with other animals (such as mastodon), but it isn't the fediverse, and not all animals think alike -- each platform has its own notion of what it means to interact and how you should interact -- but different species are still able to interact to various degrees.

In a similar vein, Lemmy instances are autonomous communities with their own values, purposes, interests, and, more concretely, moderation policies. An instance may choose to defederate with another instance for the same reason a "normal" website may not want to give space to content from just any other website. I like to think of federation in terms of "freedom from [lock-in/harassment/toxicity/ads/sensory assault/information attacks/tired debates/sea-lioning/etc]" while retaining the ability to continue interacting consensually with others on the network (as opposed to "if you don't like it on [centralised platform] you can leave", which usually means "you're free to leave this city and go build your own village in the Andean mountains").

Each instance separately may fill the role of link aggregator - but for members of that community (accounts on that instance) first and foremost, with that community’s values and moderation policies reflected in the perceived quality of content. The ability for an instance to federate with other instances with compatible policies is the benefit here, not an imperative or some duty an instance has towards le fediverse collective. Thus, it may actually help if you view an instance as the community, with its “communities” as its topics, or subforums if you will.

We need to remember that these sites are inherently social: the fediverse is not meant as a resilient information exchange protocol, but as a means for social groups to organise organically rather than be funnelled into the same environmentally controlled silo before inevitably being processed and sold. Part of that process (the former, not the latter) involves disagreement, defederation, migration, formation of new instances serving new niches, causes or ideals, and occasionally bad enough groups will get ostracised because they're intolerable (regardless of whether they think they're playing by the rules or not, because -- unlike on corporate social media -- on the fediverse you're allowed to simply not tolerate intolerable people).

This isn't to invalidate frustrations that arise from, for example, large instances defederating from yours when you haven't done anything wrong; there is the separate problem of a lack of portable identities, which would fix a number of inconveniences if it was a thing (to mention a few: deciding on where to sign up or settle down; migrating when a server goes down/to shit; having more than one interest/association but being forced to choose one community; even just following links to other instances). Luckily, there are reasons to think it can be done - it just hasn't been done yet.

Another popular frustration is that you often want to subscribe to a common topic but some of these are hosted by different instances, and this becomes a bit messy and unmanageable without any clear benefit, especially when the instances are not diverse enough to provide any unique flavour to the content posted. This is another fixable issue, and I suspect we'll see it implemented relatively soon.

I don't know if this is helpful for you but thanks for listening to my TED-talk.

Edit: compile error, expected ')', found EOF. Edit 2: added more paragraphs and some fluff because this became my activity today.