Where did the exploding-heads people go?
Out of curiosity I went to exploding-heads.com and it looks like it's not working anymore. Is there a new place they hang out now? Are they undercover on the regular servers or something? It'd be a little surprising to me if they all just gave up on being active on the Fediverse.
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They went to nostr or other parts of the fediverse because the lemmyverse is toxic and they were constantly facing attacks of various types. Same thing that happened to wolfballs before it.
Some of the users might lurk on other servers, but I have my doubts. The point was to have a place they could be free to talk about things the establishment were censoring. Most of the colonizers from Reddit don't realize those servers existed long before most of what are considered the big Lemmy servers today even existed.
If the goal was just to troll redditors, there's always reddit.
This is a very subtle but very powerful way of recasting what actually happened. I've dealt with this in conversations face-to-face with conservative people who've had interactions online, so I know how unfortunately powerful it is.
I'd be very surprised if any substantial number of the users on exploding-heads got "attacked" -- as in, had child porn posted to their servers by their ideological enemies, or got doxxed, or anything like that. What they got was disagreed with, or defended against.
If you frame being disagreed with as an "attack," then it means that anything that your enemy says that makes sense is a threat. You have to double down and find a way to "strike back." Or you have to withdraw from the conversation and talk about you're "always getting attacked." If your whole mental model is that way, then anyone at all who might understand the world a little better than you is all of a sudden your enemy, and worst of all, if what they're saying makes sense, then you must withdraw from the conversation, because now you're in danger of becoming an "enemy" to your ideological friends, if you start agreeing with that person. It's like in a big fistfight if you all of a sudden switch sides and start beating up your friends. Why would you do that?
And so, your viewpoint can never change, because that's "defeat." That's the insidiousness of this whole framing.
Furthermore, if you're brigading or trolling or being offensive, and someone blocks you or defederates from you, then you're being "attacked" or "silenced" or whatever. Any offensive behavior of your own is just good clean fun, even if you're trying to ruin some feminist critic's life or posting child porn. Any action that makes it difficult to do that is just evidence that the whole system is rigged against you, and a reason to start whining about unfairness.
I have a couple of conservative views, and I actually sorta sympathize with the idea that the lemmyverse is pretty one-sided in how it views certain issues. But going beyond that to say exploding-heads was "constantly facing attacks" is only true if you torture the language in a very specific, deliberate, and insidious way.
I've deliberately made a point to express some views here that I know are extremely unpopular (very sincere views of mine, but ones that I know will cause controversy). Not once was I censored or prevented from speaking. On reddit, yes; certain subreddits "on the left" will ban you if you say certain things, although it's still way more common from the right. Here, I've been downvoted all to hell, but Lemmy's actually configured in a way where (at this scale of userbase) that doesn't really make much difference to how many people can see your stuff. Not banned or had my stuff removed for ideological reasons even a single time.
Again, it's an insidious reframing of language. Your saying "could be free to talk about things" only makes sense if that really means "could be free from anyone else's ability to disagree." They're free to talk here, today, and they always were. What they want is to be able to freely talk and no one else disagree (or to be able to freely threaten or bully anyone who disagrees.) Quite frankly, what you're saying is bullshit. I've gone to conservative forums on reddit and asked, hey, can I talk to you about this topic we're in, without me being censored? They said sure, we welcome all points of view here, we don't do censorship. Guess what happened literal minutes later?
Trump does the same. He literally had all his social media accounts in place, and a podium in the White House where he could literally stand up and say literally anything he wanted into the camera and it'd be broadcast, and he was still whining about censorship. He didn't mean anything of his was being censored. He meant he was being "censored" from everyone being forced to broadcast his stuff without being allowed to disagree.
Clearly, conservative voices are being silenced. (clip is from Death to 2020)
Yeah. If you take the statement literally, it's just kind of silly. When you realize how many people agree with what it actually means -- that refusing to rebroadcast conservative viewpoints unchallenged is "silencing" them, and we need to punish people if they're doing that -- it stops sounding funny and starts to sound alarming.
Very well said!
Beind told you're wrong and to stop spreading harmful misinformation isn't censorship.
Being disagreed with isn't being attacked.
A privately owned and operated forum banning you and deleting your posts for breaking their rules isn't "the establishment" censoring you.
Censorship is the institution, system, or practice of censoring. To censor is to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable.
The Establishment is the part of a particular group that has power or control.
If the most powerful government on earth contacts the largest and most powerful companies on earth in order to categorically suppress or delete certain viewpoints or certain speakers, then by definition that is "'the establishment' censoring you". The fact that you agree with the censorship doesn't make it not censorship, and framing it in a moralistic way doesn't make it not censorship. Being moralistic didn't make it not censorship when the right was doing it.
Exploding-heads as I understand it was facing DDOS attacks near the end (or at least they thought it was), that's one of the things that prompted the admin to shut it down, it wasn't worth the effort to try to keep the site up and running under such an onslaught.
Anyway, I don't know why I'd even try. You know what? You win. Everything is fine and censorship doesn't exist and the only truth is that which the government and major corporations tell you, and the government and major corporations are actually the anti-establishment fighting against the big bad individuals who believe things they're not supposed to.
This isn't the government or big corporations. This is Lemmy. A bunch of independently ran servers from random people, most of them doing it strictly for the fun of it.
What you are complaining about is the same as going to someone else's house, shitting directly on the kitchen counter and then complaining that you've been asked to leave and never return.
Ruud is categorically suppressing or deleting certain viewpoints or speakers? Or some other Lemmy admin is doing so? Can you give an example?
I definitely don't agree with doing this, to whatever extent it was actually happening. Are you saying it was the US government or some powerful company doing that? Can you point me (or send me in a DM or something) some of the truths that they were trying to discuss that were being censored or silenced so I can look into them for myself?
This is a perfect example of what I was talking about in my earlier comment, about framing disagreement as an "attack." No one is attacking you, and you don't need to start feeling downtrodden if it seems like what they're saying is making some sense.
Honestly, I don't have the slightest bit of any kind of personal ill will to you, and I doubt the other people here do either. I'm gonna tell you if I think you're wrong, but it's not like that's a quest to make you feel bad or look bad or anything. It's just how I see it, and I explain it in detail hoping that it might make sense to some people and they might get some value from it.
It's fairly easy to get banned on lemmygrad for having a (perceived) liberal attitude, to name the obvious example.
I argued pretty extensively with tankies on lemmygrad at one point; they were convinced I was a western liberal and told me so. I never got banned. They got sick of the conversation and the questions I was asking, and abandoned it long before I was ready to quit.
Not saying you're wrong; I could believe that lemmygrad specifically is actually intolerant of dissent, in the way sj_zero claims that all of Lemmy is. I'm just saying that my one experience with them was that they never censored me.
Yeah, I guess both can be true. Maybe you have a better approach.
Wolfballs and exploding-heads didn't show up as a response to lemmy instances, they showed up in response to big tech censorship, which we have a lot of evidence was being heavily manipulated. As I said in my initial post, wolfballs was created and shut down before most of the big lemmy instances today even started, and exploding-heads was started before most lemmy instances existed.
I'm not saying that the US government did the DDOS attacks. I doubt the US government was the cause of shutting down wolfballs or exploding-heads except insofar as the establishment powers that be took advantage of idiots being tribal to push their pet policies to the exclusion of any others (which too many people fell for and continue to fall for hook line and sinker). Another form of attack is the omnipresent risk of cancelation hanging over anyone's head who isn't in line with the current orthodoxy.
I'm not letting you guys win because I think these replies are attacks, but because lemmy has become so ideologically homogenous in part because reddit became so ideologically homogenous. What's the point? I already know what you're going to say because it's one big groupthink that at one point I was myself a part of (along with most of society), so there's no benefit to it. I'm seeking truth, and there's nothing new to be found in arguing with people after I've been saturated in their unconvincing arguments for years. So you win, yep, stupid me.
The core point that I'm making is that as far as I can tell, you can express unpopular views on Lemmy. Someone in another comment dug up your modlog to check if you've been being censored. I would argue that all your talk about censorship, when viewed in the light of the lack of any actual censorship (on Lemmy) and your silence when asked directly what views you'd like to share that you're unable to because of censorship, means that what you want to be free from is not censorship, but criticism.
On this I mostly agree with you, yes. You can still say your stuff even if everyone's yelling at you. I've done it. It's fine. Your comment just sits there with a big negative number, up for anyone to read.
Not even close. Would you like to start talking with me about how the police are generally out doing a difficult and dangerous job, and the vast majority of them don't do anything wrong and get tarred unfairly with the ACAB brush, and watch as none of our comments get removed? That's actually what I believe, and presumably you agree with me, and most Lemmy people hate it.
You actually made me look back in my comment history and laugh out loud, because I found the comment where I was strongly encouraging some ACAB people to find some unincorporated land somewhere and create a whole new town with no police presence at all, since they were saying no cops would be a huge improvement, and they could live in paradise. They hated my suggestion. No one was willing to articulate why they didn't want to do that though; they just downvoted me.
I constantly learn things from people I'm arguing with, even when their arguments in my opinion are dead wrong. In all seriousness, that's part of why I'm talking with you right now. Because maybe I am wrong, or maybe in the course of the conversation I'll learn something I didn't know before.
Again: I am literally asking. Please share your truth with me. I would like to know what you are being prevented from sharing on Lemmy. I may not agree with it, but I would like to hear.
Well, let's get the reality out of the way here first before you start acting like you are actually 'somebody' of authority or importance to even be answering to lol
Your motive in this response is obvious. Number one, you don't even have the same account/s as the guy your responding too, so, you DON'T KNOW his social media experience.
Not just in lemmy BTW, on whatever other social media he uses. So first of all you are no one. Let me remind you of that, and secondly, no one on this earth owes you an explanation.
You're a username on a screen dawg. That's all you are. Please remember that before you try to play hall monitor again.
Unless you're king of turd Island, I don't see a fucking crown on your head. Or anything else to indicate some subservient request from you.
your personal opinion DOES NOT MATTER. At all. You are a nobody on the internet. Ok.
Another important thing here really quickly, mod logs can be purged. And I get the feeling that happens A LOT.
All day long in the admin chats on matrix, they talk about almost nothing other then how to 'restrict' 'hide' 'ban' 'give false error on logins' 'see users dms and EDIT THEM' allllll day long.
You have no brain in your head to deny that. Some if not most of these Admins have serious mental problems to be that obsessed with something that should be a fucking hobby.
That's not something I need to prove. Go in the admin chat on matrix and see for yourself.
Oh wait. You'll cherry pick the information. Forgot. My bad.
Give an excuse on how they are justified and so forth. You are predictable.
Honestly people who are intelligent question s***. The fact that you've pretty much already made up your mind as to who is the bad guy and you're not asking other inquisitive questions about the situation or history or anything like that. Makes it quite obvious that you've already chosen a side based on your own f****** narrative. You don't have an open mind you don't have the ability to think for yourself. You rely on everyone else to tell you what to believe and the funny thing is is you think that you actually have independent thought when you don't. Not everything is black and white there's a gray area in between. But you can't admit that exists because that's admitting you are wrong something you will never do because you are too proud in your ignorance.
People who can think for themselves question s*** and they don't just blindly f****** agree with everyone else because they say so and because that's the right thing to do. Do me a favor and don't f****** respond to me either I don't have time for low life like you okay. It's just sometimes y'all need to be called out on your dumb f****** b******* because you think some of us are afraid to when we're not I'll tell you that's for damn sure I ain't scared of you or anyone else be on the Internet or in real life.
Yooo
My dude you need some anger management
I actually am the king of turd island. I was gonna keep it low key, but you gave it away.
And yet it's the "liberals" who are the whiny snowflakes.🙄
All this talk about being censored and you are still fucking talking. Where is the censorship?
A sarcastic straw man attack is hardly persuasive. Most of the people you're here fighting with probably agree censorship is a problem... we're talking in the fediverse, it's a self-selecting group that cares about that kind of thing.
FWIW I agree there's some toxic political extremism in the Lemmyverse from the far left. I've almost left because of it. Conflating that with government censorship seems disingenuous. Maybe I'm just not understanding your point.
LOL, DARVO much?