What is the point of these forums if you’re banned for using it?
From the modlog: admin Banned @Julianus reason: 3 week timeout for more constant bickering expires: in 21d
There are admins with clear political bias and they are using their powers to suppress opinions they don’t like. This isn’t a ban for violating rules… but simply replying to their posts. What gives?
The admins are allowed to moderate however they like with the rules they see appropriate. If you disagree with their decisions, you shouldn’t expect to be welcomed on lemmy.ml and should instead look for another lemmy instance that better aligns with your ideas.
That seems to defeat the purpose. I came here for civil discussion of differing opinions. If I wanted an echo chamber, I’d go back to reddit.
There are other instances that may be more tolerant of other views if you consider that this instance is not tolerant enough. It should be noted that lemmy.ml is described in the sidebar as “a community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts”, so I think it should have been pretty clear that there was going to be a bias.
Bias of opinions, ok. But bias extending to censoring other opinions isn’t cool. If a mod doesn’t like my opinions, he’s free to block me from his view, just like anyone else. But banning me from participating for speaking my mind within the rules of community isn’t leftist, it’s fascist.
I’m just warning you guys. You’re making neat little tech demo that’s heading right to a dead end, if you allow banning people for speaking withing the posted rules.
you can’t really disallow that though, instances should be free to moderate however they wish. there will always be moderation like this in some instances, so just avoid those instances. the only thing that bothers me is lemmy.ml bears the name of the platform, yet says it’s not a default instance, which is misleading but oh well, not a big deal.
I mean, so does lemmy.pt and lemmy.cat, but you are right, people see it as the first instance recommended on join-lemmy with the most users and that is has lemmy as its name and think it’s in some way the official instance.
What makes the “rules of the community” relevant here? Would you have no problem if the rules specifically disallowed your opinions?
Rules are guidelines and should always be loose, left up to human judgement and enforcement. If everything must be outlined with a specific rule, then you’re just inviting constant rules lawyering for the rest of time instead of effectively taking care of people who make your community worse.
I suggest reading On a technicality.
I find that conversation flourishes when you limit it to a certain degree. In spaces which are completely open and have a massive range of opinion, what you’ll find is mostly yelling at each other over broad talking points that everyone is already familiar with. After a while, nothing of interest comes out of the far left clashing with the far right all the time. But when you limit it, time can be spent doing other things than yelling at the dickhead on the other side who you have little to no overlap with and see as a dire enemy. You can talk about nuances in principles, differences in organizing, etc. It makes for richer, more interesting conversation.
On a hunch… Reddit is far more tolerant of right leaning views than this instance of Lemmy. If I recall correctly, the creators have explicitly said they’d rather have strict moderation than a wide userbase. It’s supposed to be part of the appeal.