this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2021
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[–] bilb@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago)

I agree with this, and I think hand-wringing about shitty people using software and the possible ensuing moral panic in media is pointless. You can make it a bit more situationally inconvenient like you do with the hard-coded slur filter, but ultimately It's not something you can prevent when you're creating free communication tools.

  • Provide a free tool to enable decentralized communication.
  • Prevent adoption of your tool by people whose ideologies you consider dangerous.

As a software engineer, those two goals are fundamentally at odds- you cannot accomplish one without compromising the other. Therefore I think the onus is on a community of admins and users to moderate, make careful federation choices, and to promote Lemmy and the fediverse to their own circles. You can't short circuit the hard work of community growth and management with software design alone.