Squabblr now officially a "free speech" cesspool, admins removed or forced out by owner
squabblr.co
So I mean, most of us knew this beforehand and being on the fediverse we probably do not really care, but what was always on the horizon has no happened, the owner of Squabblr finally had enough having to be a decent person and has decided that his site is now "free speech purism", so he gets to continue to insult LGBTQ people like he always does.
Seems from the comments that some other admins disagreed with the decision (so there were some decent people on that site!) and either left or were removed.
Not entirely surprising the whole thing, granted.
(edit)
Also, apologies as this isn't truly reddit news but Squabblr was one of the sites frequently brought up in /r/redditalternatives so I figured this might still be relevant?
A ton of people flocked there because they think the Fediverse is too confusing, so now they're going to Discuit.
I have accounts on both out of curiosity, but I had a feeling something weird was going to go down on Squabblr. I just got a weird vibe from that place at first. I am not sure about Discuit yet, but it's yet another centralized service people are using because the fediverse is "too confusing"...
Yeah I've literally made accounts in squabbles and lemmy at the same time. At first squabbles was great, but somehow there's something there that I couldn't describe. I continued to go to lemmy but I've stopped going to squabbles for weeks now. And suddenly this!
Sometimes our instinct is spot on and we got to listen to it more often.
The commitment to tweet-like self posts is what made me leave. I don’t like posting an image or article without being able to provide a title.
Way too much drama on there. It's like every week you have to catch up on what happened.
I honestly prefer fediverse remain as that complex open source alt, because it's one of the few filters we have for users here.
I honestly don't believe rapid growth is healthy for any platform, and we've even seen it here with how comments and memes are getting increasingly vitriolic and offensive. Fuck, antivax memes are starting to appear on lemmy.ml's meme community.
I'm starting to think Beehaw had the right idea with vetting users, because there people here who think Lemmy should be another 4chan.
I disagree. There are lots of good people out there who are not technical.
ok but then theh might lose their cool kids club and we wouldn't want to not feel special and smart for... making an account on a website
How is make an account on an instance, got to all, subscribe to interesting places, hard? It’s almost the exact same formula as Reddit
When the majority of the world has been using centralised platforms that don't have the complexities federated platforms do, it's understandable that there will be people that get confused over why there are several "Lemmy" servers, or why they can't sign into a Lemmy server when they signed up on another, or why when they try to find a Lemmy community on their server they can't see it, but they can in Google.
Somehow email providers have avoided this problem, I think because they are pre-installed on devices as the "Email" app.
Sometimes it's all about laziness, some people are just too lazy to put more effort to learn new things. I felt it too, I wanted the familiar, but the death of 3rd party apps finally pushed me to learn hot to lemmy. And I'm glad that I did.
It's not laziness per se. It about the barrier for entry being too high. If they wanted to enter (as you did) they would find a way (as you have). However most people have other higher priorities and don't really know if they want to enter so they do nothing. If the entry barrier is lowered (maybe by adding helpful pic/vid explaining how it works/where to go, a platform walk-through, people/celebs/influencers talking about their experiences, simple sign up requirements, easy searching, etc.) many more people would easily come in as it's wouldn't be as confusing to join.
You maybe correct. But I think that barrier you are saying is both am advantage and a disadvantage. For the long term it is a disadvantage since it prevents our site from growing. But in the short term it is an advantage in a sense that it helps our currently small insular group form our own identity and prevent our bidding lemmy culture from being drowned out.
In short it keeps the "normies" numbers to an acceptable level.
We need more topical instances. Nobody found PHPBB's confusing. Let people sign up for an account on the blindness instance, and the cooking instance, and the gaming instance. Eventually they'll discover that they can use one account for everything, and it's just easier to do it that way. But in the meantime they're not confused. We're probably going to market rblind.com that way; a spot for blind folks to network. Eventually they'll discover the federated communities on there own, without us pushing it on them.
Those boards didn't share any information though. People had different usernames often. The fact that all of this federates makes it more confusing. I've already clicked a link, gotten redirected to an instance I don't have an account but looks visually the same and am confused why I got logged out. Luckily I have a password manager that doesn't autofill or that kind of system is going to be a treasure trove of phishing.
Except going to "all" only provides content from other instances that people on your instance are subscribed to. That is not well understood nor well explained. Whereas "all" on reddit is actually "all."
As a counterpoint, "all" on reddit isnt "all" of reddit. Its an algorithmic concoction of things that you, or people like you, have spent large sums of time engaged with. Its designed only to keep you on the site, by any means possible.
It seems direct, but it's actually secretly limiting. The fediverse seems limiting, but you can actually access "all" here.
It doesn’t really matter if it’s from other instances though, you can still see and look at it so who cares where it sits
No, it does matter. You can't see it in all unless others in your instance are subscribed and it's copied the server. You don't see everything from other instances by default. Although there are tools to aid this issue, it's not "easy" to discover smaller communities by browsing all.
It's much better now, but at the first I gave up because I couldn't figure out how to even sign up due to the rather poor web design. And I'm a programmer.
People can’t seem to compute the fact that each Fediverse site is basically like email in reddit/twitter form.
It's identical to Reddit. I don't get it either. Federation is completely optional but people act like it's forced upon them.
Federation being optional is the entire problem. It's a pain in the ass to have to use multiple accounts because petty shitlord admins defederate everyone they don't like.
But needing multiple accounts is already the norm.
Lemmy is clearly modeled after Reddit, which had 1 account.
The first step is choose a server. On reddit you sign up for reddit, on Twitter you sign up for twitter, but on Lemmy you sign up for an instance that functions as a copy of the site that talks to other copies. And the choice of instance does matter because the admins run that instance. Already, the vast majority of normies are out.
It's even easier on kbin since it shares pretty much the same general layout as Reddit.
Not only is the Fediverse puzzling, but it also struggles to clarify its essence; the majority lack an understanding of its functioning
My only complaint about it right now is that most instances only know about communities that are hosted there or that their users deliberately subscribe to. Which works fine for huge instances like lemmy.world, but small instances that aren't running federation helper bots just don't have much of an All feed, and initiating federation requests to remote communities you heard of through a directory or elsewhere is a confusing process.
"The fediverse" is puzzling, but Lemmy is simple. I find it weird people get so off put by sites just because they allow Federation. Like- are those same users going to quit Threads when it enables Activitypub? Just seems like a really weird place to draw the line.
With name like "Squabbles", I knew it was only a matter of time, lol.
Who owns Discuit?
previnder is the owner. I don't know enough about the platform yet, but it's yet another centralized network.
I went there because it was simpler and more like reddit. Once this shit started to brew a few weeks ago I noped right out of there. Lemmy ftw
The people who think making an account on Lemmy.world is "too confusing" but think making an account on Reddit or one of these other random sites is somehow simpler really surprise me.
I get that federation is a new weird concept but it's not like anyone needs to know what it is to sign up somewhere and start posting.
I'm sure it doesn't help that people are complaining that lemmy.world is a huge instance. That only adds to the confusion.
Proponents of Lemmy: "Just join the instance that has the content you like!"
Also proponents of Lemmy: "OMG WHY IS THERE ONE HUGE INSTANCE"
Funny, during the boycott of Reddit when squabbles was growing, I signed up and created two new communities - one for earbuds and one for vaporents (dry herbal vaporizing).
My earbuds community was quicky approved, but the vaporents group took almost a week before it was approved. It's almost like the site's owner (since back then he had no mods or admin team) was hesitant when it came to something possibly clandestine in nature. I guess drugs aren't cool, but hate speech is?
Sucks. We had lots of fun there when it first started. But I've deleted my account now. It's hilarious to watch Jake try and make an empire. What a loser.
He clearly cares more about his idea of what the site should be than he cares about what the people on the site want.
Wtf is a squabblr
Used to be "Squabbles". It, Lemmy, and Discuit were three of the major Reddit alternatives thrown around during the Reddit protests.
I've legit never heard of Squabblr or this... Discuit? What even are these?
Reddit alternatives that didn’t pick up a lot of steam yet. We’ll see if they end up winning out over the fediverse or reddit itself, looks like squabblr won’t if it’s already gone the truth social route
Squabblr was called squabbles until a very recent rebrand. You may've known it under its old name instead.
That was this stupid Reddit + Twitter mix, right? Never understood why some people were hyping that platform up so much.
It's pretty alright. The dev is pretty fast, churned out a majority of the site between a month before reddit killed 3rd party apps and today. Decently responsive to requests and stuff too. But the site just didn't grow, and the head dev was never okay with giving up sole leadership.
Because they're confused by the idea that some communities might not be hosted on the server they are logged into. lol
It felt like early reddit while it lasted. Lots of positivity and you started to recognize the usernames. On reddit I was a lurker, but I posted quite a bit on Squabbles. I'm already nostalgic about it lol
Every platform is nice when it's small and not trying to monetize. The main benefit to decentralization is that anyone can spin up a new small instance, and block any other they feel has gone bad.
Well its nice to be able to have access to the platform from different instance. But its still annoying to have to resign up if the admins piss you off. They need to develop a way to switch instances but keep your profile/history. I had to get off Beehive when they defederated from lemmy.ml and I'd rather keep everything with me.
Hot damn. I was reading the name and thought first its about squabbles, which I considered to be checking alongside lemmy how it develops.
So I was briefly shocked about this development, then I realised this says squabblr and not squabbles. And then I read your post.
Rollercoaster.
Nope.
On Reddit, just before most of us left, there were a ton of people going "omg lemmy and kbin are too confusing but I like squabbles!"
I signed up and checked in on it here and there, and then this happened. I am also on Discuit, but I've been spending most of my time on Lemmy.
I got a weird vibe from Squabbles/Squabblr and this basically confirmed it.
Same. I signed up to Squabbles but any time I visited, which wasn't often, people seemed to be in the middle of a fight or dealing with the aftermath of trolls. They changed their name and URL and I stayed and at first it seemed fine, but the last time I checked the dev announced it was now suddenly a "free speech platform"; protections for LGBTQ+ people were removed from the TOS; and that all content created by users now belonged to the site to do with as it wished. So I deleted my comments (not many made so that was easy) and account and created one at Discuit. So I give Discuit a few months before that implodes, lol.
I am very grateful for kbin and Lemmy.
Yeah I've posted a few memes and replied on Squabblr, but I've been way more active on Lemmy. I also have a Discuit account (I created it before Squabblr imploded out of curiosity), but I don't really have high hopes for that either.
If it wasn't for Calipso, I wouldn't have been into Squabblr at all. I think the site is ugly, and with all of the app devs bailing, Squabblr is done for.
Sites that are centralized and therefore have the same potential problems as reddit.
It's already falling apart and I haven't even heard of it. Sounds about right when it comes to chats and social networks these days.
This is why non-federated services are crap.
Exactly! The great thing about Lemmy is that if your instance’s admins start doing stupid stuff you can just go to another instance.
Have they learned nothing from the failure of Voat?
Nah, in the minds of right-wingers that just means they were unfairly censored by the woke trans left jewish globalist elite.
Isn't Voat that superhero company in the show The Boys ?
That's Vought. Voat is a reddit clone that eventually got overrun by the worst people and shut down.
lol ok, I questioned reality for a moment there
Have we?
“Let’s copy Twitter and Parler, those are soo successful!”
Man it's wild how much Twitter just went down in flames. The way you said that really just made me think, a year ago it was a wildly successful social media site with (if I got the dates right) a looming acquisition by a guy who'd shown some mild signals he was an egomaniac alt-right freak. Now it's basically a smoldering pile of wreckage.
The sole motive behind transforming a three-month-old online forum into a "Limited Liability Company", which they did, appears to stem from either intentions of selling it or the reception of funding, consequently relinquishing your authority over it.
It's starting to worry me that "free speech" has become something to be feared and avoided. Avoiding confrontation to your beliefs just makes you and your beliefs weaker.
Of course, but it's important to keep in mind that so-called "free speech absolutists" don't actually want free speech. They want freedom of consequences for their very specific, narrow, non-free speech. They would love to censor the living shit out of everybody else.
So there's a difference between free speech, and, well, "free speech".
Yup, that's been my experience of listening to them as well.
It's so enticing to people that are unfamiliar with the narrative that free speech absolution is the ideal and that these guys are standing up for it. When you pay attention they bend their own rules for themselves all the time.
The biggest problem with this "us vs. them" mentality everyone seems so eager to jump towards, is that since both sides must always be opposed, you're now on the side that is against free speech. That's going to do nothing but strengthen their side and weaken yours. Open your heart to other humans, especially the ones you don't like. Try to understand them and realize you can hold your beliefs without silencing theirs. How will anyone change if nobody talks to each other? Words are what make us human, they have the power to change everything. It's how we've survived as long as we have. One "hello" from a fellow human can save a suicidal persons life. The only way you can change the world is if you speak your heart and listen to others.
I know there is a lot of hate and nonsense out there but you're grouping it all together under one image and painting everyone who doesn't think like you as the enemy. It's not helpful. Yes, they do it too, but that's not an excuse. Be better.
They are using their speech to foment stochastic terrorism against people like me. So no, they can't "hold their beliefs" whilst I act as if they're just words. They want me erased, and I'm not going to find a corner to die in just to uphold an ideal of speech purity that never existed in the first place.
Yeah, you totally miss what is going on here. You are not going to find a person in this thread that isn't open to talking to people who have different beliefs than them, and engaging in sane rational discussions. That is not what this is about. The alt-right is co-opting the term "free speech" to be able to say any bigoted and hateful thing they want without having to face any repercussions for doing so. On top of that, they are also CENSORING the fuck out of any opinions they do not like. Argue with them, and get banned. It is happening everywhere right wingers are yelling "free speech". Look at everyone Musk has blocked on
TwitterIt's one thing to speak from your heart and foster dialog so that different people can share their different POV. However, I'm someone who is on these forums to spend a little time learning about new ideas and issues without it becoming a heated, involved debate. These "free speech platforms" seem to inevitably devolve into arguments. I'm not LGBTQ+ but a lot of arguments and tense, heated conversations seem to be centered around that lately, with reaching a middle ground impossible. (especially since on side wants the other to not exist or have any rights at all). (ETA: To be clear, a lot of free speech proponents just want to be able to say racial or otherwise bigoted slurs without any repercussions. ) I don't want to hear other people arguing on my limited online time.. I just want a pleasant, educational, respectful experience, which is what I get on kbin, Lemmy, and Tildes. I know that some people love debating and winning arguments but I am not here to change minds or win on the Internet. If someone loves debating and dominating a conversation, more power to them, but I seek out chill, mellow online spaces. Real life is stressful enough. Can you understand why I might want to avoid an advertised free speech space?
We aren't talking about disagreeing between tax rates, or whether or not to privatize social security. We're talking about whether or not a particular group of people should exist, whether people should have rights, be able to vote, go to school, etc. This isn't one of those times where we sit in a circle and has things out. We aren't grouping different things together. It's just the one thing. Human Rights. And we aren't going to give an inch on it. It's absolutely a hill worth dying on.
And how do you expect to change anyone's mind if you don't talk to each other? How are you supposed to empathize, be empathized with, challenge views, and have your views challenged? Nothing changes and society is weakened by burying your head in the sand.
Again, this isn’t any other thing in existence other than human rights. If you want to have a conversation about how Cilantro doesn’t taste like shit, we can have a discussion about it. It tastes like soap, but I’m willing to hear you out on why I should make my food taste like soap. If you say a human being doesn’t deserve the right to be themselves I’m ending the conservation.
The term is being abused as a dog whistle for freedom to pass prejudice and discrimination. Being apposed to a "free speech" platform risks you as being against said free speech. It's falling under the paradox of tolerance concept.
"Free speech" has become an anti-feature now due to the prevalence of people who use it to justify enabling bigotry. It's sad.
Your comment history is a cesspool. Yikes.
Exactly, and that's why this topic is important to me. I don't wanna be silenced for wrongthink.
Yeah, thanks for proving my point.
I completely agree. I am a stressed sideliner politically, and I like to hear differing opinions, but I'm so tired of the term "free speech" being associated with alt-right dog whistle rhetoric.
What ideas have you heard from the Right in the last decade? Seriously, what have they come up with that wasn't misleading at best and a total grift at worse? I made the move politically left over the last 15 years and don't feel I really changed all that much.
Did you ever notice that the Democrats pushing for the strictest covid restrictions were vacationing in Republican-led areas like Florida and Texas so they would be able to party without masking or social distancing?
Humans are social beings. You can't keep people locked down forever. Republicans were the only ones who even pretended to care about the side effects of forcing people to lock down. Sure, there were business motivations too, but society can't function if everybody is forced to stay at home. Mental health, divorce, domestic violence, and alcoholism were terrible during the covid restrictions in states that had them, and only Republicans even pretended to care about anything other than case numbers.
Other than that, energy independence is a big one. If you shut down fossil fuel production here, we just end up buying them from other countries. Especially since Democrat governors like Pritzker in Illinois are fighting against nuclear energy, which means more coal and natural gas power plants. Wind and solar will only get us so far. Nuclear is our best bet to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.
I'm also against government overreach and believe the Bill of Rights is important.
That's not an idea, that's finding an excuse to be contrarian. They were 100% being disingenuous throughout.
Nuclear is not only supported in the latest DNC Platform it's supported under Biden's IRA bill.
“We have to invest enormously today to increase our reliance on cleaner and more renewable sources. And that includes nuclear,” Amos Hochstein, special coordinator for international energy affairs for President Biden, told Yahoo Finance. “We haven't built a nuclear power plant in the United States in decades. We have a fleet that needs more support in order to be able to stay up. Look at what happened in Germany by taking offline nuclear. They’re now burning coal ... that's something we shouldn't be doing here.” https://news.yahoo.com/nuclear-energy-could-make-a-comeback-under-democrats-new-bill-181427778.html
That's great, but Pritzker literally just vetoed the return of nuclear in Illinois.
I don’t live there, so there’s nothing I can do about it. Write your representatives if you do.
Liberals are terrified of conversations. They updated the TOS and explicitly banned any kind of hate or discrimination but allowing people to have disagreements and conversations now makes you a bigot. 🤷
I mean, I get it, a lot of "free speech" platforms ARE a dogwhistle to all kinds of hateful shit but it doesn't have to be that way.
It also came out on mod discord that jayclees hates lgbt people and thought they were scaring off conservatives. Luckily he won't have that problem anymore as the dog wasn't in the right frequency so everyone heard it loud and clear.
What does "hates lgbt" mean in this case?
EDIT: just show me the hatefull comments. I'm out of the loop
Would you care to share what was said?
Not that you're wrong but far too many people equate "things I don't like" with "homophobic".
Since "free speech" is a dogwhistle, what should a hypothetical place actually interested in free speech as more than just a bigotry shield call what they're trying to do? Some place interested in allowing discussion of objectionable topics without bigotry?
Yes, whatever, those don't exist anywhere, you don't need to respond with that tidbit. Humor the hypothetical here.
Call it "Open Discussion". Make it clear that the purpose of the site is to allow for discussion from all walks of life and perspectives, but that it has to be actual civil discussion. Outright hatred and bigotry, as well as arguing in bad faith, aren't helpful or productive in an open discussion, and as such would be shunned and banned. This way, you can still have opinions that aren't "mainstream", but you won't be removed as long as you're civil and respectful about it. Doing this will attract people who are really interested in hearing other perspectives and sharing their own, instead of alt-right shitheads looking for another place to infest.
I mean, you sort of identified the problem, but still missed it. It isn't "mainstream" because we're taking about marginalized minority groups. It can only be seen as leaning mainstream because LGBTQ+ have a lot of allies that don't fall under that identity, but it still falls short of actually being mainstream and short of a supporting majority.
Think about the numbers this way; you have LGBTQ+ (or some other minority group), allies, "don't cares," "don't want to knows," and bigots. We think we know the bigots, those are the haters. What is surprising to most is that the "don't want to knows" are the biggest faction of bigots, although it is an indirect association.
A common transition for the "don't want to knows" is saying, "I'm tired of hearing from those Zorb snowflakes only, the other side should be heard as well -- free speech. We should have an open discussion."
This suggestion, while it sounds positive, enables those who want to troll and slander, and they get to do so behind anonymity and with the support of others. For the bigot which openly expresses a hatred for Zorbs and Narfs, they just been given an umbrella of protection under "free speech" to say hurtful things. -- Oh, blatant hate speech itself is still considered a violation of TOS? -- Good luck trying to moderate an influx of alt accounts which just stoke up the problem by saying, "The Zorbs and Narfs are taking over." "It might be an unpopular opinion, but non-Zorbs and Narfs need a voice too." "What Zorbs and Narfs practice is against the teachings of The Great Plunis." "Plunis said that the Zorbs and Narfs are immoral." "Zorbs and Narfs are stripping away our Constitutional rights." "Even taking about Zorbs and Narfs in our schools might trick our kids into supporting or even becoming Narfs themselves. Think of the kids."
Now telling a bigot that they can't offend others isn't hurting them. Giving them a platform where they can be safe to constantly etch away at human decency of marginalized groups is a platform too high, especially when it provides an opportunity to express their vile dislike of a group of people that are somehow different than them with a different perspective of the world.
So how about those Zorbs? From their perspective, anyone might be threatening to them and might want to cause them harm. How can a Narf recognize that someone else is a Zorb, a Narf, an ally, a "don't care," a "don't want to know," or an outright bigot? As a group of people already in a minority, they need safe spaces to find others they can identify with or who support them, so that they can openly discuss the social challenges they face daily. It isn't a debate, these are challenges and problems they gave daily. If a social forum which seemed to offer that sort of protected space suddenly changes their TOS in support of "free speech," and the maintainer of the site declares that they want to encourage discussion and multi-sided debate, that safe space has just been ransacked. Whereas the community they had joined was reserved for peers and allies, that may no longer be the case and those bigots can still be threatening even if they don't come out and directly say "I hate you."
There aren't two sides to an "I am a Zorb," and "I can't stand Zorbs" debate. It isn't the same as one side saying "I like tomatoes," and another side saying "tomatoes are disgusting," it is more like the debate about being Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life... It isn't as though the Pro-Choice folks are Anti-Life, but the Pro-Life folks are very much Anti-Choice. The sides of the debate can't even agree about what they are against.
So, as an ally, and someone who really liked squabbles.io a month ago, because it felt like a positive community, I'm disgusted with the changes made this past week. As far as I'm concerned, squabbles.io should have replaced their logo as they did, but they should have replaced Bort with a giant red tomato, to really emphasize how vile and disgusting the site has become.
This is Dr. King's White Moderate all over again.
It's hard to find a name because nowadays people often use terms like 'bigotry', 'hate speech' and 'bad faith' to refer to anything they don't like so they can shut down discussions.
Frankly I'm just wondering how we let "free speech" become a dogwhistle. Is water in a bottle a dogwhistle because trump drank one one time on video (with two hands, remember that scandal?) Is coffee a dogwhistle because racist people also drink coffee? Not everything is a "dogwhistle" nor should it be considered as such simply because the words "free speech platform" are used instead of "non-censorious communication service." Tipper Gore and her Moral Majority have been fighting free speech since Jello Biafra used an H. R. Geiger painting on a record insert she bought her kid, I've been complaining about censorship since she got "Parental Advisory" slapped on CDs limiting my ability to sneak music past my overbearing mother as a child (mostly seditious music, anto-religious music, or music by POC, mind you, which is racism), I've been bitching about radio beeps and edits since I can remember, free speech has always been a highly regarded value of mine and I'm not going to let those people steal it or their enemies bully me out of supporting it.
It's because shit-heads love to hide behind objectively good ideals. They want to deflect criticism of what they're saying or doing into criticism of the ideal. "Oh, you hate free speech!?"
It's coded language in the right context -- "free speech platform" with a wink and a nod.
See also: "Patriot", "protecting children", "thugs", etc.
One can "not hate free speech" while also "hating what you are saying." These are two separate things, it's like saying "I like soda, but I don't like pepsi." There are other sodas, and there are other "things to say" besides racism. In this instance, tell the hypothetical person you're talking to who said "oh you hate free speech," "No, I'm all for free speech, and I'm also for freedom of association. I don't like what you speak about, so I choose not to associate with you."
Sure, in this context maybe it is a wink and a nod, but saying "free speech is a dogwhistle" and insinuating every free speech activist since Jello "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" Biafra is actually a secret right winger is patently ridiculous and it is a trend I've been noticing recently, and I will exercise my right to free speech to criticize the practice as you are free to ironically exercise your right to free speech by asserting that free speech is actually a dogwhistle.
To your see alsos:
"Patriot" and "Thug" I'll give you, but "Protecting children" isn't a "dogwhistle," it is a manipulation tactic and it is used by all sides everywhere. Every time I hear it for any reason I am immediately suspicious of one's motives. It is unsurprisingly effective on parents too, but since I'm not one and don't want kids I have a pretty good immunity to it.
It's not complicated. Today if someone uses the term "Free Speech" the vast vast majority of the time they are talking about being able to say shitty things without consequences. The remainder are mostly people who misconstrue Free Speech as something that applies to non-governmental entities and finally actual real cases that get settled in court.
A forum? (Online this means a specific type of website architecture though, so idk.)
You don't need to label it. The vast majority of the internet will allow anyone acting in good faith to discuss their ideas. Every single time someone complains about being muted/silences/shadow-banned etc you can bet they subscribe to right-wing ideology using dog whistles or other hateful rhetoric. I was never banned anywhere for being Pro-Hillary instead of Pro-Bernie. I was downvoted sure, but that's everyone elses prerogative. I wasn't silences because some of my posts were hidden due to it. It's asinine to claim that, and that's what these people are whining about.
what the fuck is squabbler?
The reddit/twitter clone formerly known as Squabbles.io
Another shitty centralized proprietary social media clone. They already knew they failed so they're doing this to get that right wing grift.
Here I go deleting an account, sigh, I liked the platform there
I may not be onto anything here, this may just be a coincidence. However, the timing of these two events are suspicious.
1: Squabbles.io rebrands to squabblr.co. The .io domain explicitly forbids anything that may be considered illegal by any country. The site could be shut down if this is violated. You know what would be considered hate speech by some countries, such as Canada? Discrimination of someone based on their gender identity, ie trans people.
2: Squabblr rebrands to a “free speech” website and removes all explicit mention of LGBT+ being protected under their ToS. Within microseconds (slight exaggeration, but within less than 24 hours) people are chiming in with the “trans women are not women” statements.
Was that planned, or just extremely unfortunate timing?
You're not kidding about the anti trans openness there now. A poster was ranting about liberal safe spaces, when called anti trans this was his DEFENSE.
"I am not saying that people with dicks who claim thay are women should be exterminated..."
that was his defense. That should tell you everything about who squabblr is for now.
The sole dev of Squabblr (Jayclees) really needs to hire someone to do the community management/PR side of things. He is great at programming but he keeps making snap top-down decisions that go against what the userbase wants. And his use of language (i.e., "free speech platform") sounds like a fkn dog whistle.
All these big names on Squabblr going to Discuit like the devs can't do the exact same thing over there. I'm tired of migrating platforms. If Lemmy doesn't work out, then I'm going to just go touch grass for fun.
It sounds like a dog whistle because it is a dog whistle.
If lemmy doesn't work out I'll go try and chat randoms on tinder
Reminds me of the scene in Casino when three jackpots go off in 20 mins: "if you didn't know you were being scammed you're too fuckin' dumb to keep this job, if you did know, you were in on it. Either way, YOU'RE OUT! Get out. Go on, let's go."
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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
IMO if sites want to take a "free speech" approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don't have free speech, we have what's known as "freedom of expression". Essentially, we can say whatever unless it's hate speech or bigoted.
Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it's essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.
A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.
Using hate speech as an example:
So by banning hate speech you're actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.
The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like "that fucking user" doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).
I feel like this covers what you've linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it's a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.
Also, it's important to take into account that there's a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.
I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn't lesser just because someone doesn't feel like speaking
The problem with this reasoning is that it could be used to justify banning any speech (not just hate speech) and still claim "we're banning it but ackshyually we aren't reducing your free speech. You're still able to say it, it's just that you don't like the consequences of saying it here." Because even people under the worst dictatorships out there are still able to voice censored discourses.
Instead of looking at the ability of the individuals, IMO it's better to look at the effects in the social environment. Hate speech targetted at a group effectively makes them leave and/or stop speaking. As a result, the discourses that they were voicing get silenced with them, and the social acceptability to voice those discourses goes down. The environment in question becomes less free as a result.
This might sound like abstract "WORDS WORDS WORDS", but IMO it has a bunch of desirable consequences:
This is where I don't agree. Hate speech doesn't make anyone leave. It has no power nor authority over people to make them do anything. No matter how much someone spams "kill all niggers", it doesn't actually do anything. If someone leaves, it's entirely because they aren't personally interested in being there. This is in contrast to censorship from the platform, where there is the ability to unilaterally force a user to not participate via bans or removals.
It's the same idea as how free speech applies to the government not censoring the town square. Someone leaving because they don't enjoy what people say is not an infringement on anyone's speech, but the government arresting people based on what they say is.
Just not censoring people offers nearly all the benefits you claim your perspective offers.you don't have to worry about misuse of censorship because it isn't used at all, and it is entirely devoid of "feeling" and "intent", and the other things like ability to an undesirable speech isn't particularly relevant when discussing a free speech platform.
You're moving the goalposts from "it doesn't hamper your ability" to "people don't leave", Reddit style. And you still placed the goalposts where you won't score.
If you want to know how stupid your claim (that boils down to "I dun unrurrstand! Speach don't do nothing!") sounds like, you don't need even:
No, you don't need those things. A tiny bit of reasoning should be enough to show that, if you shit constantly on the groups that a person belongs to, the person will eventually leave or shut up.
Speech has power over people, regardless of authority, no matter how much you pretend that it doesn't - it makes people do things, it makes people not do things. This is fucking obvious for anyone with a functional brain dammit.
If you want to continue this conversation, then show a bit more depth of thought than you're doing currently. Otherwise, I won't waste my time further, OK?
And Canada fucking sucks.
Better than America.
I mean I don't care for most of the "free speech" sites because I don't care for the content that's posted to them. In addition of never heard of Squabblr. But lets not be hypocrites here, the normal line is: "It's a private company." This also applies for companies you don't like. Not just when a major platform bans people you disagree with in the name of reducing "toxicity" (a completely nebulous term that could be used to describe anything you don't like.) They can do whatever they want. If you don't like it, don't use the site. Simple as.
If you fall into the right or left sides camp this will be an unpopular statement… I can’t understand why this has become such a hard thing to grasp
I used the site for a bit. It had some serious potential as a reddit alternative, and was poised perfectly to reap the benefits of a mass exodus. Of course, I used it when it was called Squabbles less than a week ago, before the cringy name change to drop a vowel to be more like the websites from the early 2010's. I think the biggest hurdle for them was that they were a .io domain and couldn't host pornographic material, so the porn subreddits couldn't use the platform even if they wanted to. I think they recently switched to .co, so that might change, who knows.
I'm not sure I agree with the owner's top-down approach to website design and management. I had no idea about his anti-LGBTQ opinions until now, but that's one more reason to not to continue using it, aside from the fact that growth is basically reversing and very little OC is being posted.
When I hear "free speech purism", I immediately think that either the person/people who want that don't know the dark forces they are inviting, or worse, they do know and they want it to happen. Neither of those are a good look. Some speech absolutely should be banned from these websites for obvious reasons. People who conflate freedom of speech for consequence-free speech are idiots who deserve to be banned from everything everywhere.
Didn't they realise that Gab, Voat and Poal already exist?
I'm surprised it took Jayclees this long to remove his mask.
So everyone is now against Free Speech I see, what a shame.
"Free Speech" is a dog whistle for far-right hate speech, when they spew hatred against minorities they try and call it free speech to make it sound acceptable.
And those same individuals will ban you or harass you if you call out their shitty behavior and vitriol. The far-right has no interest in real free speech, and want to censor any opposing worldview.
Absolutely, they're not free speech at all. They're huge hypocrites who just want to censor according to their view. They're just using free speech as an excuse, if they had it their way they'd criminalize any form of dissent against them.
Not like the left is any better