This seems to be becoming the hot topic, the elephant in the chatroom - the balance between censorship / freedom of speech on lemmy. There are solid arguments for both ways, and good compromises too.

IMO the FAQ makes it quite clear what the devs have built here, and why. But recent discussions, arguments, make it clear that a lot of the most vocal users object to it.

I’m very curious. Many active users feel this way? Please vote using the up arrows in the comments.

    • abbenm@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 years ago

      I worry that the phrase “censorship” gets used as a thought-stopping cliche, especially given it’s repetition here.

      You could ask the same question but with different words, e.g. “harassment, racism, and incitement to violence should be welcomed here.” And then ask people to vote up if they agree.

      And you could post the polling options as different variants of that question: “There’s a right amount of harassment.” “There’s too much harassment” “there’s too little harassment.”

      I mean… you could do it that way. And it would be equally as neutral as the questions you did ask. If you find that framing objectionable because only uses language that focuses on one side of an issue, well… yeah.

      • roastpotatothief@lemmy.mlOP
        1·
        2 years ago

        I’m not sure they’re really the same question. Be careful of making a false equivalence.

        Your questions are very loaded. Most people would answer “there shouldn’t be ANY racism at all!”

        In that case, if the questions are really equivalent, everyone’s answer to the original question should be “there shouldn’t be any censorship at all” or maybe “there should be complete censorship for everyone”.

        But I don’t think that’s the right conclusion. Therefore the questions are not equivalent. This is too simplistic.

        Because you’re taking a very technical rhetorical stance, I’ll try to answer the same way.

        Racism is a damaging thing. There’s no good side to it.

        Censorship is also a damaging thing. But it can sometimes be a necessary evil to prevent worse evils. There is a sweet spot where it prevents more damage than it causes.

        Racism is a natural feature that arises in groups of people, but censorship is a political measure. So if there is a damaging amount of racism in lemmy, censorship can be used to reduce it. While there is no underlying racism problem, then censorship causes its harm while producing no benefit.

        These things are hard to measure, so censorship is normally a matter of very careful consideration.