this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Relaxed section for discussion and debate that doesn't fit anywhere else. Whether it's advice, how your week is going, a link that's at the back of your mind, or something like that, it can likely go here.
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Yes. This is a different platform, I'd rather we don't just transplant all the reddit problems here.
Lemmy is inherently political. It was and is a revolt against reddit's staff, their business model and the influence of US politics, media and corporations on their platform due to their advertising model. This place wouldn't exist if there wasn't political differences.
We're not here to impress people who were banned for spreading Nazism. Go to all the reddit-clones that started in the early 2010s when reddit got called out for hosting toxic racist-or-fascist hate communities and communities sexualizing minors (e.g. /r/jailbait).
Everything is inherently political. If anyone thinks it isn't, it's just because the politics favour them.
This is true, politics is not something distinct which can be considered separate from or optionally added to society, culture or economics, although Lemmy is also explicitly political. That might be more what I intended to say.
(The real kicker is realizing that abstaining is not politically neutral.)
Yeah, I think 2020 made a lot of "neutral" people realize that not taking a stand on certain things is picking a side, so to speak, on certain issues.
Very true. A good phrase is "the personal is political". Politics refers to organization, power, and decision-making, and so much of our lives is determined by decisions outside our control.
Exactly. I'm not exactly hiding my politics.
If anything, I'm glad being open about it means that a lot of bigots aren't going to use lemmy in the first place. A natural filter to keep the transphobes and McCarthyites elsewhere.
Yes, exactly. If we can have the equivalent of Reddit without the bigots, it's a big plus. Tired as a trans woman to go on r/Gaming and see transphobic comments
It's like when Voat started. It was spawned out of Reddit's hammer coming down. Admittedly, some decent communities popped up over there, and I stuck around for a bit, but it was also the dumping ground for all the degenerate behavior Reddit was cracking down on. I ultimately ended up on Reddit again after the decent communities lost steam and the only stuff that seemed active were the things I didn't agree with or wasn't interested in, legally or otherwise.
Voat was a school project that blew up in popularity and became infamous after the Nazis decided to use it as an easy platform to fester. It was not created as a response to anything reddit may have been doing at the time. It was just another link aggregator with comments that had user overlap with reddit.
If that is all true, the logic behind advertising it on Reddit at that time, and sticking to the position of "free speech absolutism" is kinda questionable. Maybe don't plug your social media site when all the reprobates from r/C***town are looking for a new home. For your own good.
Another site was founded by a former Reddit admin over at tildes.net, but he was very explicit about what he was trying to do (2019 announcement - tldr: ban assholes, shun low-effort posts). It never had the problems Voat did.
There is a big problem with all these tech bros where they think an algorithm or a piece of software are what makes a community. They have no concept of society. No thoughts about what diasporas or social milieus they are trying to assemble. No thoughts at all about what the purpose of the thing is in the first place. They are very bad at this shit. I can't count how many times I've seen someone be like "What if we did something like Reddit, but on the blockchain?" without even asking, who is this for? What problem does it solve?
I didn't realize it had been around to that. I guess "its sudden rise in popularity" might have been a better phrasing then.
Agreed!