I’m not a big fan of moderation being at the whims of whoever has an agenda.

Are there lemmy instances that take moderation seriously and don’t just ban/censor people they disagree with? So far it looks like the mods in lemmy.world instances are very flippant with their moderation and I’m curious if anyone has filled the void yet for a better instance.

Edit: Thanks for everyone who tried to give a legitimate response. No thanks to those who just wanted to spout their talking points or debate the merits of freedom of speech; that was never the point of this thread.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    92·
    5 hours ago

    You should read this on why seemingly arbitrary, but nuanced moderation is needed to have a friendly space online.

    There exist instances that have more of a free-speech “focus”, but despite that most instances cannot tolerate intolerance, harassment, trolling, illegal or borderline illegal stuff. There is generally more tolerance for disagreement on Lemmy than other forums, where unpopular takes are heavily downvoted instead of removed.

    A common sequence of events that happens with trolls or flamebaiters:

    • Troll says something unpopular, but not rule breaking (comment downvoted but not removed by mods)
    • Several other people respond/rebut
    • Troll continues a long back-and-forth argument that gets nowhere, or resorts to ad hominems, slurs or personal attacks (rule-breaking)
    • comments get reported
    • Mods remove the entire thread including the initial comment, and give out a community ban
    • Troll decries censorship of the initial not rule-breaking comment, when it was the follow up that was the problem.

    So yeah, it’s to keep out the jerks. Behave well, think of others as you speak, then you will find yourself able to say more than in places with professed free-speech absolutism. If you don’t like that, start your own instance so that no one can moderate you in your own space, and watch the jerks, trolls and spammers roll in after a while.