On a very related note, I wish that the moderation culture on Lemmy tended a lot more to something like Something Awful. They’ve had a thriving culture for several internet generations now, and I think a lot of it is because of two things:
It costs money to be able to participate. Not a lot (a one-time $10 fee), but enough to combat the “army of anonymous accounts” problem and the “okay ban me lol I’ll be back on another account” problem.
The moderators have an extremely strict code with some very interesting features: Among them, as I understand it, is that if you are strawmanning someone else’s argument or arguing with them while refusing to engage with what they’re saying, out you go. That is radically different from Lemmy’s moderation style, where any kind of bad-faith bullshit goes, but if you get mad and call someone a dick because they’re doing that, out you go.
I think there is probably a big space to be filled, to combat what you are talking about, by good moderation of the space. The press used to do that, by at least nominally making an effort that the lazy and laughable claims wouldn’t get published and periodicals that published them would start to get laughed out of the room, but it’s not really that way anymore, and it’s formed a breeding ground for all sorts of toxic propaganda. I just think there’s a lot of room to deal with that at the platform and reputational level, instead of the “what is allowed vs not allowed to express” type of level.
That’s sort of what I was meaning about limiting speech based on the structure, instead of based on the content. But it starts to fall into a gray area where it’s a lot more hard to make determinations. I do agree with you though.
Beehaw has a complicated signup process (it at least used to require you to write an essay), which makes accounts more valuable without having to charge money. They ended up defederating from a lot of other instances, though, as obviously, letting anyone bypass the registration requirements by just using another instance would undermine them.
All completely correct.
On a very related note, I wish that the moderation culture on Lemmy tended a lot more to something like Something Awful. They’ve had a thriving culture for several internet generations now, and I think a lot of it is because of two things:
I think there is probably a big space to be filled, to combat what you are talking about, by good moderation of the space. The press used to do that, by at least nominally making an effort that the lazy and laughable claims wouldn’t get published and periodicals that published them would start to get laughed out of the room, but it’s not really that way anymore, and it’s formed a breeding ground for all sorts of toxic propaganda. I just think there’s a lot of room to deal with that at the platform and reputational level, instead of the “what is allowed vs not allowed to express” type of level.
That’s sort of what I was meaning about limiting speech based on the structure, instead of based on the content. But it starts to fall into a gray area where it’s a lot more hard to make determinations. I do agree with you though.
Beehaw has a complicated signup process (it at least used to require you to write an essay), which makes accounts more valuable without having to charge money. They ended up defederating from a lot of other instances, though, as obviously, letting anyone bypass the registration requirements by just using another instance would undermine them.