I’ve been talking to many people about the controversy with Reddit, why I left it and why I went onto Lemmy, Kbin and Mastadon instead. Some of my friends have commented that the control is still a problem as other platforms and it is all dependent on who owns the software, who owns the hardware, who are the admins, who are the moderators and which community or group has the most influence.

Who are these people that influence the most control on the fediverse? Are they Conservative? Are they Liberal? Are they Republican? Are they Democrat? Do they lean to the left of politics? to the right? or are they center? Are they even political? But also if they had to be would they easily or not so easily influenced?

So … for the ELI5 version of the question … Who owns the fediverse?

  • Gazing2863English
    1·
    2 years ago

    I can throw out a view examples of content that I have seen deemed as “hateful” in local subreddits that I personally don’t think fit under the purview of “hate speech”.

    • Comments removed that were speaking about drivers from a particular city being bad. The city has one of the highest insurance rates in Canada due to high collision rates. It however also has one of the highest immigrant populations of East-Indian people so I will often see any comment vaguely mentioning this cities poor driving being deemed “racist” simply because it could be a racist implication despite the bad driving comments having no race component and being backed by stats.
    • Comments that are against PRIDE movements. Now again I am not meaning blatantly homophobic comments like “Gay people suck”, I mean comments like “I don’t agree with this content being taught in schools”. In many subreddits both of these comments will get removed and result in bans. Which I’d agree is valid for the first comment, but not the latter.
    • With COVID-19 specific topics I saw some pretty heavy handed moderation as well. It’s been a bit so I don’t have any specific example, but I saw people who would be presenting simple opinions who were trying to have good faith discussions/debates have their comments removed and get banned. Again, I am not talking about the blatant “don’t get vaccines, they cause autism” clowns. During COVID I actually was working for a public health clinic and worked in vaccine clinics. So don’t get me wrong on which “side” of things I stand on, but it was always disheartening to see people who had differing opinions, or who were hesitant about things get mobbed by people, comment removed, and banned. People who could have had reasonable conversations and eventually maybe formed different science-based opinions instead get shut out and pushed off to fringe communities.

    Now don’t get me wrong, I am a moderator on some communities on reddit and I know content-moderation in general is a hard topic. Knowing someone’s intentions behind a comment can sometimes be murky and that is often part of the issue. I come from a viewpoint where I think it is important for people to see comments that they may disagree with or may even offend them. Of course there is no need for posts that just flame someone, or attack specific immutable characteristics, but I think there is harm from being too isolated from different viewpoints as well.

    • smorksMAEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      thank you for taking the time to send me those examples!

      i 100% don’t agree with your second example. from my understanding (i have a son currently in grade 3), they are teaching about acceptance and inclusiveness. and i know not all schools teach the same thing, and it could vary with different schools and at different grades, but i personally don’t see anything wrong with that. If people don’t want to join in in pride parades, then they don’t have to, plain and simple, that’s their choice. But don’t hate on the movement just because you don’t agree with it.

      for your first and third example, it’s hard to say, since like you said, intentions (and context) matter a lot. so I will always try to take all those things into consideration.