Comment on Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ?
OpenStars@discuss.online 4 weeks agoAlthough if other people either get banned as a result of saying something about China or Russia etc., or they choose for themselves to defederate somehow, then over time that is an increasing number of people across the Fediverse who cannot enjoy that artwork.
It’s like… what if the Library of Alexandria had made some copies and sent it out to remote places, before being (accidentally?) burned down by Julius Caesar during his civil war?
If that artwork is important to be seen by people everywhere, then why allow it to be held hostage by an admin team that could at any moment add still more things to the unnamed list of topics that are forbidden to be discussed on that instance? China, Russia, Uyghurs, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, Taiwan, and… what else will it be tomorrow?
You might even say something that gets taken out of context and be banned from the entire instance yourself. “Killing Uyghurs is not the best work I have seen” - no no, I meant that killing them isn’t happening at all, I was referring to the title of the painting!?
Well, it’s something to consider. I hope I am not coming across here as being too extreme, just trying to offer some thoughts along the lines that you mentioned that you have already started, in case it would be appreciated.:-)
quinacridone@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Not at all, you’ve basically summed up how I feel, plus added something I hadn’t considered which is what would happen if I was banned from .ml for a post or comment. I’ve got a few days holiday to have a think about it all and also ask the community… I don’t want to make top down ‘executive decisions’ without consultation
Cheers 👍
OpenStars@discuss.online 4 weeks ago
Indeed it is good to think ahead, rather than make rash decisions:-).
I mentioned elsewhere, to the developers of PieFed that I will switch to, that Dessalines is still an ally in the flight against for-profit corporate control over everything, e.g. Reddit, Facebook, Threads, X, etc. But while I have ENORMOUS respect for having offered the Lemmy codebase, the way he runs his personal instance… it’s not all good, nor all bad, but definitely does have more worrisome elements than most Lemmy or Mastodon instances.
The lack of transparency in governance in particular, as well as how heavy-handed it is, and again the fact that the unwritten rules are so hard to guess at, and could change at any time. It leaves people feeling insecure in the situation, which seems to make it unreliable, unless you constantly dance to his tune, which he never states quite what that is. And even if you never so much as mention e.g. Ukraine or Uyghurs or Gaza, the fact that someone else in your community could, and therefore mandatorily become booted from the community (along with the entire instance), is not ideal. The rules merely state that Lemmy.ml is “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers.” - but there’s far more (politics) going on besides that.
At least Reddit was more honest about Huffman’s opinion - “you are landed gentry and I will harvest your data and no longer allow third-party apps unless they pay my exorbitant fee”. Okay… good to know I guess.
Anyway, if I helped any then I am glad ☺️.