this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2023
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Lemmy
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I'm with you - I was on Voat back when it was still Whoaverse. I bailed pretty early once I saw the direction it was heading in.
That said - the nice thing about the Fediverse is that there are multiple communities, with different moderation styles. Lemmy has a sizable communist community, for example, but you don't have to associate with them. In fact, some of the larger Lemmy instances (like Beehaw) don't even federate with them; you have to go out of your way to subscribe to them if your home instance is Beehaw.
So if what you're saying comes to pass, and the Alt-Right comes to Lemmy (I don't think they will, but let's imagine) - you can easily pack up shop and migrate to another Lemmy instance that has a better moderation style, or one that won't federate with those instances. It's just like Mastodon in that respect.
We've had histories of right-wing trolls trying to set up shop here. They last about 5 minutes.
Ironically (ironically only in the sense that Lemmygrad are leftist authoritarians I believe) Lemmy kind of embraces the philosophical underpinnings of leftist anarchist thought. I'm not well-read or anything but that's just my impression.
Voluntary decentralized communities who can voluntarily associate with each other? People act like dicks? There's no way to enforce authority beyond exile. Exile instead of capital punishment is hard to do in real life because land is a thing that exists... but in the digital world of federated communities, it's literally the only thing to do! And if you don't like a certain instance you can just leave and find one that suits you better or create your own. Freedom of movement with stability dictated by the social contract and exile of those who are not adhering to the social contract.
Honestly it really does seem pretty in line with general anarchist thought to me. And I think it will really help create a better internet in this age of media consolidation, profit-seeling, and extremism. I'm just reminded of the people begging for certain reddit subs to get banned and it not happening because the traffic was too lucrative. Now people can just exile each other in a decentralized way, no begging the admins required. I mean yeah on a smaller scale sure... But now the power to enforce the social contract is in the hands of way more people instead of just a few people per million users. Quarantining extremists will help stop the rage machine from spreading hate. I think it's truly it's hilarious that authoritarians over on Lemmygrad got defederated and thwarted by anarchist methods. In real life... Well, that's what the tanks were for.