FriendOfDeSoto

There are laws and case law that make criticism of Israel harder than in other places. Post WW2 pro-Nazi and antisemetic speech was basically declared hate speech. Courts have taken a narrow view of what counts as antisemetic. There are in excess of six million reasons for that hard swing in the other direction.

So I would say the long version is this: you can criticize Israel but you need to pay close attention to how you say it. Criticizing the existence of the Jewish state is possible as well but you need to weigh your words even more carefully.

Moderators on an internet forum may take an even narrower approach to avoid any sort of legal trouble. And thus continues a chilling effect.

Freedom of speech is a tricky subject. Post WW2 the US had the influence to export their constitutional values, such as a first amendment, to Japan and West Germany. In both cases they punted. It’s not without some irony when I say opinions on how to establish freedom of speech in a democratic constitution vary.

If Lemmy is garbage, then why make a new account to whine about it on Lemmy?

You need to work on your anger management too. Your tone here has me thinking you were banned for a reason. Be respectful.

Your account is five days old. So I don’t think your message here carries a lot of weight unfortunately. That post is violating the community rules as well. And the account defended itself to not be a bot when no one accused it of that. So it’s probably not a great case to use to start a warm welcome campaign.

Former redditors should be familiar with something like forum rules and how to check them.

Since I signed up to Lemmy I think I’ve spent about 30 minutes in the All feed. 5 minutes just now to remind me why I don’t go there. You are your own algorithm. If all you subscribe to are meme communities, you ought to be able to drastically reduce political content in your personal feed. All and Local are for occasional excursions only.

Are you using an app or a browser? It looks like a browser to me and maybe there is an extension messing with it? Maybe somebody is pranking you? Just a thought.

Time?

I don’t have a GitHub account. You’re gonna have you sign up for one yourself. The links to their accounts are on the website I linked to above. Just click on the avatars.

https://www.fossify.org/ only lists reddit and Telegram of all services. You may be able to get in touch with some of the contributors via GitHub. And you could see if some of them recycle their user names on Mastodon.

To be fair, if anything on the internet has too much traffic, it becomes unavailable. That strategy is at the heart of (D)DOS attacks.

Thank you. I already had sexual intercourse today. But I appreciate your concern. I’ll take your thoughts on the matter to my eLderS oF tHE fEDivErSE meeting and see what I can do for you. But temper your expectations; we were so happy to have picked you as a random victim to torment in our effort to stifle free speech, I don’t think much will change. In the meantime, give a thought to the adage that if you think you’re only surrounded by a-holes, you might be the a-hole.

A new account? Bitching about being banned? This must be credible.

If they don’t know that they’re committing a mortal sin by spamming other communities, I say let them. When they get to the pearly gate and ol’ Pete is like no guys y’all punched a ticket for downstairs, they’ll know they fucked up.

I try to add ALT to every image I post. It slows me down. Writing a good description takes time, often more time than the post alongside. I don’t think many people don’t take the time to write it because they hate visually impaired users. They are short of time more often than not wanting to be inclusive. A sort of engagement punishment filter will not fix that. And I wonder if the blind community would want to be excluded from all posts without ALT because it would also rob them of the opportunity to learn about the content from the context of the replies. Or the chance to have it described to them by somebody in their vicinity.

The problem isn’t just adding a description to a picture; it’s also the quality of that description. I fear adding a filter like that will lead to more bad ALTs (dummy texts, AI crap, copy and paste of the post, etc.).

My guess is the militant no ALT, no engagement folks are all well enough sighted. Their energy would be better used to add descriptions to the discourse rather than calling out the users who forgot or didn’t have time (and sure, it would include the small group of trolling assholes who don’t do it on purpose). Add a hashtag #ALT and a good description into the replies. Code the client to look for replies with that hashtag when ALT is missing.

So I think the reverse filter will be more beneficial. Filter all posts without ALT so people can add the missing descriptions.

Why would this decision require a public feedback sesh? Build it and they will come. Or they won’t because they read some stuff about the author.

It happens. A very highly intelligent user will occasionally post something in a lot of communities and gets a rise out of downvotes, annoyed comments, and blocks. It’s annoying but that is often the nature of the internet. Report, block, and move on.

It’s only the very highly intelligent users who do this. So it doesn’t happen a lot.

Don’t engage with anybody you don’t know well on DMs. And if some other very highly intelligent person goes to the effort of sending you abuse via DM, take pride that you really got under their skin. Ignore it if you can.

I don’t think that what you are envisioning and the fediverse are necessarily a good fit. The fediverse is potentially able to network with every other instance operating on the same protocol. With every instance you add more potential to have bad actors within reach.

a system for stricter content moderation, especially something that would automatically delete NSFW/NSFL posts,

There is no tool that can automatically remove everything. There is also the Scunthorpe problem. And there aren’t enough moderators in the world to do this job safely for children that don’t also expect remuneration for their services. And then you need to add in the cross cultural differences in what constitutes NSF anything. Maybe in a few years you can train a model to do a decent job with this.

The protocol can probably be adapted to fit most of your requirements. But the fediverse is held together by donations, sweat, and duct tape. It’s having a hard enough time attracting adults; I don’t think a kids version is in the works. Plus, there are now real legal hurdles like in Australia.

Personally, I wouldn’t want my kids to social network until they are 15-16. Before that I’d try to keep them in services and settings where I’m the moderator. And only after having not only the birds and the bees talk but also the know about grooming, no nudes, and no bullying talks you can slowly release them into the wild. And at that age they will not want to sit at the kids table any more.

You are your own algorithm. If you see a lot of propaganda or whatever, it’s because you chose that content at one point or another. And you can just as easily stop seeing it by unfollowing and blocking.

Also, evidence. I see no signs of rampant propaganda on the fediverse, not on Lemmy or on Mastodon. Now, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. But that’s where you should provide examples so I can check for myself.

You go to this website, choose the theme, then look for the floating bar at the bottom, hit the hamburger menu icon (three lines), choose log in > forgot password

The thought behind the post is worthwhile to ponder and discuss.

Personally, I don’t think it’s as dire as the text makes it seem. The speculation that a steadfast refusal of showing text only on PF might lead the AP protocol guardians to include a dummy pic in every post seems to me to be in the “possible but outlandish” category.

If the premise of AP was that every user should be able to see everything everywhere then defederating from certain instances shouldn’t be possible. But that’s a feature, not a bug.

The tree of the fediverse is big and nobody needs to saw off any branches. A picture only branch can sit next to a hypothetical text only one. I can see an argument that newbies to those particular branches could be more explicitly made aware of the filtering they will experience. While I was reading the text about the users who thought they saw everything from Mastodon on PF, my first thought was: this strains credulity. But then again, users are dumb. I hadn’t realized for a while that shared posts don’t show up in my PF feed on the app either.

I don’t think anybody could become too big for their breeches on the fediverse because the fediverse is in no position to challenge the incumbent corporate platforms. Don’t get me wrong, I love it here and on Mastodon (and on PF). But if you come from those polished centrally organized platforms and you’re not willing to invest at least a little bit of time into learning how federating works (also refer to users are dumb above), you’ll already be disappointed and put off before you realize you now need to also become your own algorithm. The threat scenario that PF could become so big that it can dictate protocol also presupposes that AP is the protocol that will endure forever. And with AT it already has a competitor waiting in the wings. As I said up top, the thought about how one dominating branch could damage the whole tree is worthwhile. But in a dramatic shift from this metaphor: we are in no position to have to cross this bridge any time soon.

Another reason why PF won’t be getting out the chainsaw is its usability. It’s only great for looking at pictures. It’s terrible for having discussions about them unless you only use the website. I’m using the Android app and it’s not great. Features came and went. The UI leaves a lot to be desired for me. It currently feels a bit abandoned because Dansup is more preoccupied with challenging TikTok. I still like PF because I go there just to look at pictures. I go to Mastodon for memes and dry remarks. And I don’t feel like I’m breaking the protocol.

This image may be a bit wonky but convenience stores don’t go out of business just because 24h supercenters exist. They both exchange ice cream for money but one of them has a bigger selection of flavors. PF is 7/11, Mastodon is Walmart.

IT’LL GO PLACES WITHOUT YOU THEN. THANKS FOR PIPING UP.