Public Service Announcement: The Right to Free Speech means the government can’t arrest you for what you say. It doesn’t mean that anyone else has to listen to your bullshit, or host you while you share it. The 1st Amendment doesn’t shield you from criticism or consequences. If you’re yelled at, boycotted, have your show canceled, or get banned from an Internet community, your free speech rights aren’t being violated. It’s just that the people listening think you’re an asshole, And they’re showing you the door. xkcd.com/1357/
Relatedly, the people who are the most upset about censorship when no one listens to them never remember the other right that goes along with free speech: Freedom of Association. That means that you can mutually choose to listen, platform support OR NOT with whomever you wish.
People aren’t obliged to listen to it but they have no right to prevent other people from seeing or hearing it unless it’s stuffs like hate speech and racism
It isn’t about having something to say and being heard, it’s about having nothing to say and forcing people who don’t want to listen to listen. They’re just pissed off because the fediverse gives people the ability to exercise their right to freedom NOT to associate with them. Trolling isn’t fun without a captive audience to torture.
Freedom of speech almost always comes with freedom of association. The thing that many people miss is that freedom of association also allows you to choose NOT to associate with someone just as freedom of religion includes freedom FROM religion. The instances choosing to defederated from the trolls are exercising their right to be free from association with the trolls. No one is stopping the trolls from spewing their nonsense or stopping anyone who wants to listen from listening.
So, you’re saying that if I have a conversation with my friend, and I don’t let you listen in, THAT’S censorship? You have a problem with not being able to invade my privacy?
Sorry you got kicked out of whatever cool kids club it was, but you were not censored.
People are unable see content from other people that their instance has defederated with. (Yes, you can have an account on multiple instances, but that kind of defeats the point of federation.)
So, the inconvenience of having to go from one openly available source of information to ANOTHER openly available source of information, is the same as an authority figure preventing someone from speaking their own opinions?
That’s like complaining about not being able to talk to your buddy across the street because you don’t want to walk over there. God damn city put this street here and it’s standing between me and my conversation!!!
Just like “liberty”, “fascism”, “freedom”, “bigotry”, “woke”, “liberal”, “communist”, “nazi”, “supremacist”, “ethical”, “feminism”, “gender” and many others.
It’s easier to push a political agenda if you empty words of all meaning just to turn them into buzzwords that can mean whatever you want them to be in order to trigger outrage
Sorry, don’t you like it when I mention the things that you don’t agree with? Should I just have mentioned “woke” and “communist” to make you feel better?
Because this is not censorship. You’re free to browse any defederated community. You’re not censored, they’re not censored. All the content is perfectly viewable on the fediverse.
Go join another instance. You can’t enter somebody else’s house and complain about how they don’t want to invite the neighbor over as well. That’s not censorship. Go to the neighbors house if you want to hang out with them.
But you’ve been explained this multiple times, so I’ll leave it at this. Ignorance is not bliss.
A server operator who chooses to federate or not federate another server is well within their rights to do so. Their server, their rules. If you don’t like it just browse the defederated server yourself, no one is stopping you.
It’s like visiting someone’s house and complaining they don’t have organic coffee. If they don’t have organic coffee they aren’t stopping you from getting organic coffee, they just choose not to have it.
After looking through the comments here, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you just don’t understand what you’re saying, because you seem to be under the impression that “defederating” means that noone that isn’t subscribed to the defederating instance will have access to the content anymore. (e.g. Instance A cuts ties with Instance B and C so people with accounts on Instance B and C can no longer read what is published on Instance A)
This is not how it works.
You can browse all instances without even having an account on any of them so absolutely noone loses access to anything. The only thing you temporarily(!) lose is the ability to WRITE anything on the defederated instance, but you can just make an account there anytime you want.
So when Instance A cuts ties with Instance B and C, people with accounts on A can no longer WRITE anything in communities on B and C, but everyone can still READ everything, and if you happen to have an account on Instance B and want to write something on Instance A, you can just create an account there.
Spending ten seconds on creating an account is not censorship.
Yep, and Connect for Lemmy on Android has a really wonderful setting where you can browse other instances without an account and view communities that are local to it. Apps make it easier to handle accounts too now. Liftoff has been the best in that area.
Who the hell talked about nazis.I’m with censoring hate speech and i don’t believe in total free speech. Did beehaw defederated with lemmy.world becauae of nazis? Yes you don’t have to listen to anybody but you have no right to decide for other what to see. That’s why i’m against defederation and with the ability of individual users to block whatever they want
Not really. These aren’t monetized sites, but just individuals inviting guests to use their instance over self hosting their own, and there’s other instances people can move to.
Each instance is better seen as individual forums than a reddit type centralized site. Some forums allows cross account logins, and some you have to create another account. And defederation doesn’t cause that instance to cease to exist like banning a community or subreddit does.
Yes and no. The people still have the voice, you’re not preventing them from talking to other people, you’re just preventing them from accessing your instance.
Centralized websites like Facebook, Twitter, whatever. That would be censorship if they remove somebody’s voice.
Decentralized instances, are closer to private communities. They’re focused, and they create curated viewpoints.
If the federated universe gets dominated by one or two powerful instances, then yes it would be censorship, but if people are using it at a decentralized fashion: it’s just communities expressing preferences.
Censorship is not only about completely remove somebody voice. Limiting the visibility of somebody voice is also censorship. It doesn’t matter if people are centralized in few instances or not , you still are limiting opinions that re not off topic from reaching certain people.I think some stuffs should be censored like clear hate speech and racism etc.
Limiting the visibility of somebody voice is also censorship
It’s not (always). Especially if the people “limiting your voice” are the ones giving you the platform to reach other people in the first place, usually out of their own pocket or thanks to donations. In the fediverse at least you can always set up your own instance.
If there’s somebody outside my house putting up a big display about some political issue, me closing my window blinds is not censoring them. Yes their message is no longer visible to the people inside my house. But they can still talk to anybody who comes to the public space. As long as they have access to the public space I would argue it’s not censorship
Free speech and censorship only mean something when the government is involved. Free speech is freedom of consequences on speech and opinion from government retaliation. Censorship is the same, it’s a tool used by governments, for the better (like censoring Mein Kampf) or the worst (like censoring LGBT books). Other than that, Lemmy instances not being run by the government, the owner is free to not want to associate with you, if your core ideas clash. You’re free to sign-up on other instances if you don’t like the ones you’re on, or even setup your own.
I would say that for an action to be considered censorship in the strictest sense, it would need to be the suppression of information as imposed and enforced by a monopolistic authority.
If the State were to declare a book banned, that would be censorship because the State establishes itself as the single totalising authority over the people in the territory it governs. Should you contravene that ruling and possess the material in question, you’re opening yourself up to the threat of violence until you start respecting it. You’re not able to opt-out, the single authority imposes itself and its ruling on you.
Meanwhile, on federated social media there are many concurrently operating instances with different rulesets and federations. If the instance you’re part of decides to defederate with another, then you can move to another instance which continues to federate with the defederated instance in question if you’re unhappy with the decision. You’re able to opt-out of that ruling without consequence.
Plus, even if you decide not to move instance, the content hosted by the defederated instance will still be available through the instance itself.