If all the content on those instances was ai generated then your hot take could be taken seriously. We all know it’s not.
Comment on Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content
Sanyanov@lemmy.world 6 months agoI’ll just give an example.
Recently, when discussing defederated instances, I’ve seen an interesting picture: people cheered defederating instances of Nazis and…pedophiles.
An average person would see no issue here. Right, one more terrible group banned! Take those perverts down! But there’s a catch that I discovered quite a while ago, and it’s a rabbit hole like no other.
- First, pedophile is not a child molester. We equate the two wrongly all the time, and those words became synonymous.
- Second, pedophilia is an immutable trait; unlike with Nazis, no one can decide to stop being one.
- Third, many of the pedophile instances, including those massively banned, actually feature anti-contact pedophiles, i.e. those specifically dedicated to never ever touch a child in any inappropriate way. And early research suggests it actually helps them. We brought up some reads and scientific articles on the matter throughout discussion. Conclusion: there are uncertainties, but it seems to work in protecting kids and reducing suicide rates.
And when you see something like that, you clearly understand that there’s a lot of things in the world people still heavily misunderstand, while feeling certain about the position they didn’t have 5 minutes to research on, and that people are already on the slippery slope, banning groups they didn’t have time and effort to comprehend. And there’s a lot more of that than just pedophiles, this is just a very bright example that will probably make most of those reading this uncomfortable and will illustrate the concept best.
user91@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sanyanov@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m talking specifically about instances with strong rules, either prohibiting any child imagery or only allowing drawings. Both types are heavily defederated from, and barely anyone makes a difference between that and literal child porn instances (which should be not just defederated, but legally banned and admins brought to justice)
sc_griffith@awful.systems 6 months ago
sorry what exactly about banning nazis causes one to ban non-offender pedophile support groups. like what is the actual causal link you’re suggesting? if you just mean “I noticed random people endorse this thing I have no opinion on, and also this similar sounding thing I think is bad,” that’s not super compelling
Sanyanov@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I’m saying that banning Nazis comes from public opinion and perception (which is correct to my knowledge), and that banning pedophiles comes from public opinion of just the same people (which is wrong as far as I know). Both groups (third is instances full of bots and spam) are heavily banned on the Fediverse, so it’s not “some people’s opinion” but rather, essentially, a policy for majority of instances.
This is to the point that the organized banning of groups that shouldn’t be banned and hate towards groups that shouldn’t be hated didn’t stop, and without venues for free speech, we may never know that and keep hating and banning those we need to support to make this world a better place.
sc_griffith@awful.systems 6 months ago
by causal link, I mean how does banning nazis cause support groups for non-offending pedophiles to get banned. like how does that actually happen
Sanyanov@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I see.
It’s not banning nazis causing banning non-offending pedophiles, it’s banning people considered dangerous causing both. Fedi is just one example where banning Nazis is not full stop. Other groups are banned too, sometimes without much consideration.
This goes as part of my argument on why we need spaces with completely free speech. We cannot expect instance admins or even platform owners to be completely objective in their estimations of right and wrong, and we can’t trust them to be unaffected by societal stereotypes.
Moreover, even in such an ideal scenario where they are fully objective, their userbase might think differently, forcing admins to take measures against all marginalized groups.
At that point, it seems to me like the only way out of this conundrum is having some platforms allowing everything - platforms, from which positive, but initially rejected ideas can spread.