Yeah. So, I misunderstood a little bit.

I have friends IRL who are hard-core into the MAGA propaganda, to the point that they talk to each other online and offline about gearing up for war if the Democrats keep it up. I want to know more about that because it’s relevant and dangerous. It seems important to have a good awareness of what’s up with it in detail. And, in all sincerity, talking with those friends did make me sympathize with them for how the modern online world wants to make them pariahs. I had absolutely no sympathy at the beginning, but at a certain point I “got it” and understood how it feels on their end. I see them more as victims of an incredibly powerful propaganda system than anything else, and I don’t think being antagonistic to them “back,” even though yes they are being hateful, is in any way productive. And yes, that includes interfering with their freedom to be able to say what it is that they sincerely think (“free speech”), in some cases.

I was hearing Art Bell and Adbusters and “Off the Hook” (if anyone knows that show) before some of these people were born, so I can have a good amount of sympathy for someone who wants to be anti-establishment, and genuinely feel like I can rock with them depending on where they’re coming from, even if politically I think they’re dead wrong. We can talk about it. Free speech, right?

So, I was curious about this. I did go to the exploding-heads replacement and look at it. Honestly? The issue isn’t anything political; the issue is that they just want to be assholes. A good example is the guy who told me “You are a nobody” “You have no brain in your head” “s***” “f******” “dumb f****** b*******” and so on. It’s just vitriol without much of any kind of political subject matter. I can understand why they got defederated so unanimously. No one even pretended to take me up on my offer, hey send me your censored truth over a DM and let’s talk. There’s no politics beyond a vague “fuck Biden” vibe, just shared bitterness that drove everyone else away from even wanting to talk to them. IDK, I’m not into that. I hope they get out of whatever mental trouble leads them to act that way, but it’s not my problem and not something I’m interested in.

TL;DR they’re not political, they’re just dicks.

It was, approximately, 4chan reincarnated as a Lemmy instance. They were defederated from more or less everyone more or less instantly.

Yooo

My dude you need some anger management

I actually am the king of turd island. I was gonna keep it low key, but you gave it away.

I argued pretty extensively with tankies on lemmygrad at one point; they were convinced I was a western liberal and told me so. I never got banned. They got sick of the conversation and the questions I was asking, and abandoned it long before I was ready to quit.

Not saying you’re wrong; I could believe that lemmygrad specifically is actually intolerant of dissent, in the way sj_zero claims that all of Lemmy is. I’m just saying that my one experience with them was that they never censored me.

Haha sure, DM me.

Haha excellent. I was completely sincere when I was telling that other guy that Lemmy feels like a monoculture now, and I liked the “tankie vs leftie vs nerd” generation of it way better. When I first came on and it was ideologically diverse I was like “holy shit, score, I’m staying here forever.” Like I say, it felt like the old internet.

The core point that I’m making is that as far as I can tell, you can express unpopular views on Lemmy. Someone in another comment dug up your modlog to check if you’ve been being censored. I would argue that all your talk about censorship, when viewed in the light of the lack of any actual censorship (on Lemmy) and your silence when asked directly what views you’d like to share that you’re unable to because of censorship, means that what you want to be free from is not censorship, but criticism.

lemmy has become so ideologically homogenous in part because reddit became so ideologically homogenous. What’s the point?

On this I mostly agree with you, yes. You can still say your stuff even if everyone’s yelling at you. I’ve done it. It’s fine. Your comment just sits there with a big negative number, up for anyone to read.

I already know what you’re going to say

Not even close. Would you like to start talking with me about how the police are generally out doing a difficult and dangerous job, and the vast majority of them don’t do anything wrong and get tarred unfairly with the ACAB brush, and watch as none of our comments get removed? That’s actually what I believe, and presumably you agree with me, and most Lemmy people hate it.

You actually made me look back in my comment history and laugh out loud, because I found the comment where I was strongly encouraging some ACAB people to find some unincorporated land somewhere and create a whole new town with no police presence at all, since they were saying no cops would be a huge improvement, and they could live in paradise. They hated my suggestion. No one was willing to articulate why they didn’t want to do that though; they just downvoted me.

I’m seeking truth, and there’s nothing new to be found in arguing with people after I’ve been saturated in their unconvincing arguments for years. So you win, yep, stupid me.

I constantly learn things from people I’m arguing with, even when their arguments in my opinion are dead wrong. In all seriousness, that’s part of why I’m talking with you right now. Because maybe I am wrong, or maybe in the course of the conversation I’ll learn something I didn’t know before.

Again: I am literally asking. Please share your truth with me. I would like to know what you are being prevented from sharing on Lemmy. I may not agree with it, but I would like to hear.

I’ve argued with both tankies and MAGA people, and the tankies were way more abrasive. Like bad-faith to a degree that’s genuinely hard to believe. I still loved them.

Eh. Honestly, I think what you’re saying, and the points the article is making, are pretty valid. That’s still gonna be way, way overshadowed by the absolutely ridiculous example they chose to use to make their point. Like “Since you’re writing code that’s ridiculous to such a degree that it wouldn’t even occur to most people that the way you’re doing it would even work, you better turn optimizations on, so the compiler can fix your code back to normalcy behind the scenes for you.”

I miss the tankies. I assume they’re still around somewhere, but now they’re all drowned out by the “look what I found on Twitter” bros. I didn’t agree with them, but for a while, Lemmy felt like the old internet.

If the most powerful government on earth contacts the largest and most powerful companies on earth in order to categorically suppress or delete certain viewpoints or certain speakers, then by definition that is “‘the establishment’ censoring you”. The fact that you agree with the censorship doesn’t make it not censorship, and framing it in a moralistic way doesn’t make it not censorship. Being moralistic didn’t make it not censorship when the right was doing it.

Ruud is categorically suppressing or deleting certain viewpoints or speakers? Or some other Lemmy admin is doing so? Can you give an example?

Exploding-heads as I understand it was facing DDOS attacks near the end (or at least they thought it was), that’s one of the things that prompted the admin to shut it down, it wasn’t worth the effort to try to keep the site up and running under such an onslaught.

I definitely don’t agree with doing this, to whatever extent it was actually happening. Are you saying it was the US government or some powerful company doing that? Can you point me (or send me in a DM or something) some of the truths that they were trying to discuss that were being censored or silenced so I can look into them for myself?

Anyway, I don’t know why I’d even try. You know what? You win. Everything is fine

This is a perfect example of what I was talking about in my earlier comment, about framing disagreement as an “attack.” No one is attacking you, and you don’t need to start feeling downtrodden if it seems like what they’re saying is making some sense.

Honestly, I don’t have the slightest bit of any kind of personal ill will to you, and I doubt the other people here do either. I’m gonna tell you if I think you’re wrong, but it’s not like that’s a quest to make you feel bad or look bad or anything. It’s just how I see it, and I explain it in detail hoping that it might make sense to some people and they might get some value from it.

Yeah. If you take the statement literally, it’s just kind of silly. When you realize how many people agree with what it actually means – that refusing to rebroadcast conservative viewpoints unchallenged is “silencing” them, and we need to punish people if they’re doing that – it stops sounding funny and starts to sound alarming.

the lemmyverse is toxic and they were constantly facing attacks of various types

This is a very subtle but very powerful way of recasting what actually happened. I’ve dealt with this in conversations face-to-face with conservative people who’ve had interactions online, so I know how unfortunately powerful it is.

I’d be very surprised if any substantial number of the users on exploding-heads got “attacked” – as in, had child porn posted to their servers by their ideological enemies, or got doxxed, or anything like that. What they got was disagreed with, or defended against.

If you frame being disagreed with as an “attack,” then it means that anything that your enemy says that makes sense is a threat. You have to double down and find a way to “strike back.” Or you have to withdraw from the conversation and talk about you’re “always getting attacked.” If your whole mental model is that way, then anyone at all who might understand the world a little better than you is all of a sudden your enemy, and worst of all, if what they’re saying makes sense, then you must withdraw from the conversation, because now you’re in danger of becoming an “enemy” to your ideological friends, if you start agreeing with that person. It’s like in a big fistfight if you all of a sudden switch sides and start beating up your friends. Why would you do that?

And so, your viewpoint can never change, because that’s “defeat.” That’s the insidiousness of this whole framing.

Furthermore, if you’re brigading or trolling or being offensive, and someone blocks you or defederates from you, then you’re being “attacked” or “silenced” or whatever. Any offensive behavior of your own is just good clean fun, even if you’re trying to ruin some feminist critic’s life or posting child porn. Any action that makes it difficult to do that is just evidence that the whole system is rigged against you, and a reason to start whining about unfairness.

I have a couple of conservative views, and I actually sorta sympathize with the idea that the lemmyverse is pretty one-sided in how it views certain issues. But going beyond that to say exploding-heads was “constantly facing attacks” is only true if you torture the language in a very specific, deliberate, and insidious way.

The point was to have a place they could be free to talk about things the establishment were censoring.

I’ve deliberately made a point to express some views here that I know are extremely unpopular (very sincere views of mine, but ones that I know will cause controversy). Not once was I censored or prevented from speaking. On reddit, yes; certain subreddits “on the left” will ban you if you say certain things, although it’s still way more common from the right. Here, I’ve been downvoted all to hell, but Lemmy’s actually configured in a way where (at this scale of userbase) that doesn’t really make much difference to how many people can see your stuff. Not banned or had my stuff removed for ideological reasons even a single time.

Again, it’s an insidious reframing of language. Your saying “could be free to talk about things” only makes sense if that really means “could be free from anyone else’s ability to disagree.” They’re free to talk here, today, and they always were. What they want is to be able to freely talk and no one else disagree (or to be able to freely threaten or bully anyone who disagrees.) Quite frankly, what you’re saying is bullshit. I’ve gone to conservative forums on reddit and asked, hey, can I talk to you about this topic we’re in, without me being censored? They said sure, we welcome all points of view here, we don’t do censorship. Guess what happened literal minutes later?

Trump does the same. He literally had all his social media accounts in place, and a podium in the White House where he could literally stand up and say literally anything he wanted into the camera and it’d be broadcast, and he was still whining about censorship. He didn’t mean anything of his was being censored. He meant he was being “censored” from everyone being forced to broadcast his stuff without being allowed to disagree.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think it’s a bridge – I think this is just what happens when someone on Mastodon tags a Lemmy community. ActivityPub has wonderful results in terms of making a decentralized web possible, but honestly it seems to me like it’s not real well designed.

They don’t want their own instance, they want to troll everyone else.

I think there is a strong analogy to be made vis-à-vis spending your energy on regulating other people’s sex lives or abortion rights or ability to come into the country or not, versus just living your own life and making it rewarding.

I think it’s even more severe than that. I think in the American version, each of them places their own individual selves on top of their own little hierarchy (whether white or not or whatever), and everyone else is in the “no rights” group. That’s why they booed Trump when he talked about the vaccine instead of suddenly falling into line 1984-style behind the new idea. That’s why they were genuinely confused by the capitol police fighting back against them – you hear over and over again in videos people saying things like “We’re on your side” to the cops, like they genuinely expected the cops in the capitol building to suddenly turn around and become part of the mob that was in their mind “the good guys.”

IDK, maybe it was always that way. But I feel like with classical fascism there was some kind of genuine awareness of the reality of what they were asking for. Say whatever you want about Hitler; he was in the infantry, he saw quite a lot of combat, he wasn’t scared of physical confrontation. Trump talks a big game but he mostly pussies out if it comes to any kind of real confrontation, and his followers are inspired likewise. Look at the tiny size of the post-January-6th rallies in support of Trump; his movement is still dangerous because a lot of them have appetite for doing anonymous violent things, but for the most part they don’t seem like they’re down for street fighting or going to prison or things that might come right back at them.

This is clearly concerning as hell. It’s extremely dangerous. But that said, I think it’s hilarious how this same grouping that wants violence to be okay in their politics still gets extremely bent out of shape when any violence happens towards them.

“HANG MIKE PENCE (if he doesn’t do exactly what we want under threat of violence)!”

(Ashli Babbit)

“HOW DARE THEY! THEY HAVE BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS!”

Like, my guy, if Biden had some agents show up at your door and point guns at you and asked “Oh okay, so we can kill politically inconvenient people if we feel like now?” you’d feel a completely different way.

Depending on the nature of the changes, it might be more advantageous to tell them that it’s easier (i.e. cheaper) to contribute changes upstream, rather than maintaining them separately forever. Also, the good will and reputation boost involved can be significant.

Don’t say it if it isn’t true or anything, but in a lot of cases it’s true.

I think mostly they prefer for people to just fix their delivery to comply with the license, as opposed to causing antagonism towards the community by going straight to a lawsuit. But yes, there are definitely teeth to it if some company for whatever reason doesn’t want to fix their infringement.

Yeah, 100%. At this point the resources invested in MacOS / iOS have probably exceeded even the decades of work they were able to leverage by starting with FreeBSD / NeXT / Mach / whatever else.

(Edit: Actually, not 100% true. Macs are still very BSD-like under the hood; I actually really like development on Macs because I can basically treat them as BSD systems with unusual package management and a fancy GUI. For that reason they’re far preferable for me over Windows or pre-OSX Macs. But yes, your point is well taken that iOS development at this point has far eclipsed anything they started out from in terms of LOC and time spent.)