I was glancing through the mod log and saw these two entries. Conspiracy theory communities were both removed for violating rule #3.
What are these rules? If I look in the side bar, rule #3 on both lemmy.ml and sh.itjust.works to me looks like no porn. So why were conspiracy theory communities not allowed? That seems like kind of a community that shouldn't be an issue on Lemmy... are conspiracy theory subs really something that won't be allowed here? Honestly that's kind of disturbing to see already...
It's not the rules on those servers, but the rules on the server you belong to, i.e lemmy.world. Looking at their main site, their rule 3 is as follows:
Wow. Honestly this makes me seriously contemplate my move to Lemmy. I thought lemmy.world was at least a free speech endorsing server. So now we have the two biggest Lemmy instances out there that are clearly against free speech. Lemmy.ml is moderated by pro CCP mods that remove anything anti-china, and lemmy.world can't even tolerate a sub about conspiracy theories (which we should all know have a tendency of coming true the past few years) and is therefore already starting with stifling free speech.
Yeah, go start your own instance... Not everyone wants to run their own instance just to be able to browse communities on other instances that your current instance doesn't agree with.
Yeah... This is really putting a sour taste in my mouth about Lemmy already.
The “start your own instance” is twofold. You can indeed move away if you don’t like the rules one instance imposes. But at the same time, being an admin, you get the freedom not to associate with stuff you find problematic. You can’t expect an instance owner to pay for server space to host others’ whims.
From a more personal point of view, I’m really happy that I don’t have to engage with QAnon BS while browsing. It works well for the users too.
You do realize that conspiracy is far more than qanon stuff, right? It was an interesting sub to read from time to time on Reddit.
And yeah, I get "just run your own instance", but not everyone wants to deal with their own instance just to be able to freely browse communities without random censorship. I was hoping Lemmy wouldn't be that way. Don't know what it is about some people being so unable to tolerate opposing views from their own...
Go look in those communities. There's MAYBE one post I can see you could consider "QAnon" type stuff. The rest are just general conspiracy related posts.
Well, yeah, but is that really how instances are going to handle moderation? A single post they don't like in a community on another instance and they just block that entire community from their instance? Seems pretty heavy handed.
Not sure how on mobile, but on the computer you would have to visit a different instance in order to view one of those communities, and of course if you want to actually participate in it, you would have to create a second Lemmy login on that new instance.
but is that really how instances are going to handle moderation?
You mean, is "is that how someone who is paying to do this out of their own pocket and spending their own time" going to handle moderation? And to answer the correctly phrased question, yes. I would want nothing to do with some subs. Were it drawings of child porn (so technically legal I think) how many images would be too many?
Took a visit regardless, that sub seems wretched. Most have been deleted by their own mods, what's left is "is the WHO the terrorist arm of the UN" which frankly, is dumb and dangerous enough that yeah, I'd count it.
But at the end of the day, the same flexibility afforded to the volunteer running the instance is afforded to you! You can go, join an instance that supports your values. But you don't get to demand that we all have our instance tainted by it. Should that balance switch and the moderation gets too heavy, we too can leave.
Is it possible that the posts made on that specific community were specific to Qanon? As in, a conspiracy theory community wouldn’t be blocked just for being a conspiracy theory community. But if the community was flooded with Qanon specific posts, they might remove it because that’s specifically against rule #3.
I’m in no way arguing for or against this, but wondering if that’s closer to the logic they followed. I would love a good old fashioned conspiracy community, but they do have a tendency to pull in a lot of crazies. Do we know what the posts are like?
There's maybe one or two posts of a political nature in there, but the vast majority of the posts have nothing to do w/ any of that type stuff and are just general conspiracy-related posts. So it seems pretty heavy-handed for lemmy.world to simply completely block both communities, IMO.
This isn't a community where I feel it's appropriate to get into those kind of topics. You're welcome to PM me if you're actually curious what I'm talking about.
But regardless, I was hoping Lemmy would be a good space for free thought. But it's quickly turning out not to be that way.