I am thinking about creating an outpost in Lemmy for Reddit’s r/moderatepolitics subreddit. Briefly, the goal of the subreddit is to bring together a variety of viewpoints with rules that are mostly limited to not attacking other users and some operational rules (e.g. no editorialized headlines). These loose rules have allowed us to bring together voices from across the political spectrum for discussions that usually get stuck in echo chambers.
When I was looking through the Code of Conduct for the lemmy.ml instance, I noticed that it bans “oppressive” speech. That raised an immediate red flag for me. That term is so vague and broad as to leave an immense amount of discretionary power to an admin making a moderation decision. I know several of the admins on this instance are very left wing. Nothing wrong with that, but many on the left hold a rather expansive view of what oppressive speech is that includes even moderate or center-right discourse, never mind further right.
Is there any room to build this type of community on lemmy.ml? Or will we be forced to choose between our own instance or living with the threat of intervention that labels some elements of community discourse as oppressive?
The stance we’ve taken on what we’ve called “oppressive speech” is anything that can or has been used to oppress other groups shouldn’t be allowed.
It’s much better to take away the voices of hateful people, than it is to let lemmy become a cesspool. We’d much rather have a community that upholds the mental well being of oppressed peoples, than one that tolerates hatespeech because someone not within the oppressed group doesn’t think the term is that bad.
So, no slurs, no offensive language, and absolutely no hatespeech.
If you don’t think this is how we should run the site, then lemmy might not be for you. Because the admins aren’t gonna budge on this.
There are differing and legitimate ways to look at it. And I understand your perspective. But saying “if you think this then lemmy isn’t right for you” - that is really toxic.
“You don’t agree with me, so go home back to where you belong”
This is exactly the kind of site we are trying to avoid lemmy becoming.
No, not allowing people to be racists, or sexist, etc is what Lemmy has always been about. Which is why I say, if you don’t agree with our decision to limit hatespeech, then Lemmy was never meant for you.
People who come in and say “well, people should be able to say these hateful words” set up the exact culture that turned every other site into cesspools. There’s no need to “see both sides”, as all that does is give the Rightwing a voice where they don’t deserve it. Lemmy isn’t a site for the Rightwing, plain and simple.