I often see people here saying that we should allow them [discriminatory people] in […]
Oh no. I also see people suggest we need to attract users and generate content for Lemmy by any means. In my opinion, there is a good possibility we, as an ‘Reddit alternative’ not only accept people wo look for an alternative, but also the people who got banned there for good reasons, because they’re a-holes. But if that is the way it plays out, we’re going to be the more toxic little sibling of Reddit. I think argumentative people and things like re-post bots will kill engagement, if that’s your way of handling things. It’s a noble thing to want Lemmy to grow. But many people just don’t thing it through, properly.
I get the appeal of a true free speech platform. But I learned about the necessity of moderation during the Covid-times while I was building a small PeerTube instance. After YouTube got a hold of the misinformation, PeerTube got flooded by their fake-news documentaries and the content creators got banned on the large platforms and went to PeerTube, uploading their daily lectures about “the truth”. And the annoying people do yell the loudest. It drowns the regular stuff and it’s a sure way of not attracting normal people ever again.
I can co-exist with all sorts of different people. But my approach of dealing with them on a federated platform would be: I want the biggots confined to their own space and blocked by default. And make it really uncomfortable for them on the rest of the instances/platform.
[…] so she’s assumed to be primitive and dumb in comparison
Yeah, that’s classic prejudice and generally just being an a-hole to an individual you know little about.
internalised prejudice […] broken Italian mixed with broken Brazilian
I’m from Germany. It used to be a thing on the internet to make fun of people from Austria. Not because they speak differently, but because they were a minority on the internet. I don’t think people do that any more. It’s mainly a thing of the past and people learned to be better than that. Idk often there is a dynamic that people want to see someone below them. Especially if you’re not at the top yourself, you ‘need’ someone in the hierarcy below you to re-affirm yourself. I think that’s the main reason why things like that happen. It’s not really hatred or anything against those people. But bad nonetheless. (And some people just don’t know any better or don’t think in the first place. We should strive for that.)
Hunsrik […] Nazi country
Yeah, that’s stupid. Hunsrik isn’t spoken in Germany. And 200 years ago when this seperated, Nazis weren’t a thing.
online services not allowing you to access the service in your native language
Sometimes I get that. English it the lingua franca and people tell other people to speak the language that everyone there can understand. It’s the same thing like when you’re having dinner in a group, 3 people speak a different language. If they start talking amonst themselves in their native language, it kills the conversation and doesn’t allow for participation for the rest of the group. It’s the right thing to agree on a commonly spoken language then. But I also get the other side. If you’re on vacation for weeks and only spoke english to people, it’s kinda nice to meet the only other person speaking your language for once and you start chatting…
On the internet there are also technical reasons on top. To be able to moderate things, you need to be able to understand what is said. If you don’t have moderators for a language, you sadly have to ban that language. Or be happy to have an unmoderated corner on your instance. I don’t see a good way of handling this. (Except for growing a community in that language to a healthy size and have those moderators in place.)
But part of platforms like this is to provide a comfy corner for every niche interest. Providing for niche languages should be a part of that and we have the tools to do so.
it’s the exact same deal elsewhere
I don’t have too much insight about how it feels to be on that side. I live in a part of Germany with a bit of a dialect. Nagging people about how they speak is a thing. But I really appreciate that we have dialects and not every person I meet is exactly the same. I think most of the people I’ve talked to feel the same. And I myself feel attached to my region, maybe more so than to the nation as a whole. …I’d have to think about that, you can’t really compare the two things.
Then there are things like the “Low German” language. And I agree, regional languages and proper dialects are on the decline everywhere. But there is a consensus in society that we need to keep those alive. Many people do. And we even have (very little) regional TV program and some podcasts in low german.
But I have to make a distinction to dialects when talking about written language. You can’t really write in dialect. Just speak. And hence things don’t translate into the online-world.
[the Fediverse] create instances that tie languages with countries
100% agree. The Internet excels at connecting people all around the globe. It would be a shame if we couldn’t broaden our horizon past re-creating the same borders we know from our real-world nations.
To summarize things: Thanks for your perspective. I agree. Judging by my own surroundings, I think most people embrace linguistic diversity. It’s always more difficult to be part of a minority. But lots of people have made up their mind and are aware of that fact. There are people who don’t know any better and there is a certain amount of idiots around. I think the first group of people isn’t really a problem and we should push against discriminatory behaviour and small-mindedness. Platforms like Lemmy are good at connecting people and designed so they can cater for niche groups. We should use that to our advantage.