Well… I’m probably going to be leaving No Agenda Social soon. A bunch of drama went down over there because one of the admins Adam didn’t want to continue hosting a community that keeps abusing free speech, and I can’t say I blame him. He provided an example of an account on the site that was openly wishing death upon Jews, and because it’s a platform that’s about free speech, it’s not really something they’ll ban someone over, but he’s not okay with it and understandably so. I’m not okay with it either and it’s quite revealing to why people frown upon free speech platforms as a whole, because they really attract individuals who consistently abuse it to say such atrocious things like wishing death on other people simply because of where they’re from or the color of their skin. That’s never okay.
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Anyways, this entire situation has got me thinking about the Fediverse as a whole, and how it’s actually pretty difficult to find servers that are more level headed in what they allow and don’t allow. For the most part, you either have to choose between extreme censorship from the mainstream servers that only allow “protected opinions”, or the other option is going with chaotic freedom platforms where pretty well anything goes so long as it’s not illegal. I don’t want either of those extremes. The problem with the mainstream fedi platforms as well is that they also allow blatant hate speech even though they say they don’t, but so long as you’re hating against the people they allow you to hate against because it’s a protected opinion, it’s okay (ex. hating on white people, conservatives/republicans, anti-vaxxers, etc) which is so hypocritical, but hey, that’s where having protected opinions gets us; hypocrisy at it’s finest.
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Honestly, all I want is a social platform where I can share things I find that I feel are important, or sometimes share an unpopular opinion on something that some might find offensive, because let’s be honest, we’re all different and everybody gets offended over everything these days no matter what side you’re on. But I’m sick and tired of this tribalism where people have to choose between siding with these two extremes; especially in the fediverse. There needs to be more servers that are middle ground, allow for respectful free speech, allow for civilized discourse and discussion on opposing beliefs and perspectives on sensitive topics, allow people to share content that might actually be true instead of constantly being censored as misinformation because some people don’t agree with it. Like, yeah, misinformation/disinformation is actually a thing, but adults are fully capable of digging deeper into things and finding out the truth if it’s available if they aren’t lazy. We do not need to be coddled by admins for that. Take initiative and dig into things for yourself if you care about what someone has shared, but banning anything you don’t agree with or whatever corrupt platforms tell you isn’t true isn’t right. How many times have our governments and big tech been caught in lies? More times than can be counted. They are experts at being weasels and aren’t exactly in any position to be representatives of the all truth by any means lol or to be trusted at all, for that matter. But I digress.
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What we need are middle ground servers that allow for unpopular opinions, allow for sharing possible misinformation and just educate if there is proof that it isn’t true. Allow BOTH sides to mingle with each other and express opinions the others might not approve of or may even be offended by, but draw some lines that should be common sense that aren’t acceptable, such as death wishes or death threats, blatant harassment/stalking, bullying, doxing, intentionally hateful racism, etc. I think discernment in distinguishing between conversations that are intentionally malicious in nature and conversations that are critical in nature is key, and a lot of people can’t tell that difference between the two it seems. A lot of people think just because you are critical of something means you’re inherently hateful of it, and that’s not the reality. People just get so emotional over certain topics that any criticism of it is automatically deemed as hate and unacceptable. Like damn, not everyone agrees with you, chill. But this is the result of where echo chambers have gotten us, and that’s why I have stressed on more than one occasion, even within the small web, that we need to be welcoming of people who have different and even opposing ideologies. We need to start communicating with each other and get out of these echo chambers because staying confined in them is far more unhealthy and harmful in the long run than sharing a space with people who might say something that offends you every once in awhile.
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Anyways, that’s my rant for today. I am going to attempt to create my own self-hosted Misskey server, if I can figure out how to. I don’t know if what I’m looking for in the Fediverse even exists. If it does, it’s probably a diamond in the rough somewhere and I just don’t have the energy to search high and low for it amongst the hoard of extremist servers, both left and right. I’m a builder so if what I’m looking for doesn’t exist, I’ll just make it for myself. At least then, I’ll own all my own content, I can specify precisely what I want and block out all the extremists, and I don’t have to rely on anyone else to provide this social networking service for me.