Fediverse

Damn, that new post is a brave move. I'm not surprised by the mini-essays you're receiving from a few people.

It's an interesting dilemma that I think explains a major difference in libertarian socialism and US libertarianism ('right libertarians') behaviors (warning: over-simplification!): extreme personal freedom can come at a cost to everyone's collective freedom if the person/people want to oppress others. It's hard to resolve that without compromising liberty, especially with more abstract things like speech which obviously have power but aren't really comparable with physical violence, and especially in a culture like USA's that ostensibly values individualism and freedom as core virtues. That's the reason I'm surprised that post has a positive vote count.

Like I said in the post before, we're in an unfortunate situation where most of the people who seek free speech are seeking it because they're banned from other places, rather than by virtue of valuing freedom for all. Of course I don't need to explain the massive banning of speech on commercial platforms like Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/YouTube that need to keep a good reputation in order to maximize profit (and are ultimately beholden to US government interests that aren't really open to change). But then you have alt-platforms, like Gab, Parlor, (most/all of) Mastodon, lemmy.ml and similar who allow some alternative and even radical ideas but are definitely not free speech either, even the ones that use it as a marketing point.

So, unless someone values free speech without a personal stake (such as being constantly banned), they're going to be the people those places reject, which in my experience on loosely-moderated forums is uncivil nazis, open pedophiles and 'schizophrenics' (non-technical term used for any obsessive people who spam forums with their obsession to the point were they disrupt conversation and aren't welcome, usually with a rambling style seen in the writings of people with schizophrenia). Basically, the people who are anti-social to the point of mass rejection even among radical groups.

Which is unfortunate because by being one of the few places to allow neutral free speech, it's guaranteed that place will mostly be used by the people who most of society don't want to hear. It would be pretty nice to have some popular melting pots where everyone can be truly sincere and honest and civilly approach sensitive topics, but it's pretty hard to get that when most people are comfortable where they are and don't want to regularly see people arguing views they consider abhorrent and shocking.

And, on a second note, thank you for upstreaming code improvement! Having done that in other projects, I realize it's an extra effort that often seems thankless, but it does feel good to see those changes improving more than just one site.