My current view is that while I want to promote openness and free speech that can really only work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly and in an honest way.
On the internet that takes a lot of self control because the social norms of every day life don’t always apply because:
- no one knows who you are
- there is not a human being right in front of you that you might feel empathy for
- there are no consequences to anything you say
- not all posts are even by humans.
With all these taken together there is a compelling argument that speech may need to be more highly regulated on the internet than in face to face interactions. However there are people with legitimate ( beliefs and ideas honestly held that they wish to discuss ) views that I worry are going to be silenced and further marginalized.
This is bad for society because if people get dismissed or pushed aside it just breeds resentment, distrust, and more misunderstanding. I think as we start defederating and making decisions we are setting up a dangerous situation where it becomes potentially easy to defederate for the wrong reasons.
For instance “we think they are being racist” or “they are spreading misinformation” could have unintended consequences. Some religions and communities might have beliefs that appear to be pseudoscience or even discrimination. However if these are honestly held beliefs that they are willing to engage in civil discourse around I don’t think it’s right to actually block them.
This is likely just the beginning of a much larger discussion so what are your thoughts?—
Mastodon has operated this way for years and it’s worked out really well. They’re currently at 12 million or 13 million users right now. Read my comment I wrote on it here. Basically all the Nazis flee to the Nazi servers because they can’t follow or subscribe to their fellow Nazis or talk about Nazi stuff. So they leave. This makes it safer for users and easier for mods to keep their users safe.
And like… sure, there’s drama. People defederate for dumb reasons. But Mastodon accounts are portable and you can hop around from server to server easily. And 99% of the time people don’t defederate for no reason.
This is often because they are. My old fundamentalist Christian cult I grew up in was incredibly homophobic. They ‘looked’ like they had beliefs that were discriminatory because they were. You do not get a ‘be a bigot free’ card because your religion says you are one. You can change your shitty religion (conservative fundamentalist religions have done so tons of times in the past). Minorities cannot change who they are. There are tons of other religious communities that do not discriminate against minorities so that standard is not unreasonable.
Based take. Just to add to this, despite the Mormon heads of church trying to undo MANY years of super problematic viewpoints, many members still believe that Black people are cursed by God and are inherently evil for something that happened thousands of years ago. It’s extremely prevalent, especially in Utah
At the end of the day, you are what you do.