Hi, Lemmy! So I made two mistakes. But I’d like to inform Lemmy, that there is a free speech version of the Lemmy code being used to throw racial slurs around. That instance is called goatpen.co I advise you not to go there, as you will come across racial slurs on the front page.
So my first mistake was asking what people on discussions.app like to use for different social networks. One instance, as mentioned above was goatpen.co. My curiousity got the better of me, and I went to check it out. That was my second mistake. That place is a cesspool.
That’s all I wanted to say. Someone or some company is using lemmy’s code to host a lemmy-clone and make it a cesspool.
Lemmy is open source, meaning that anyone can use it for whatever purpose they like. Realistically there is nothing we can do against that. The sooner we accept this reality, the better.
In my opinion, the main goal of Lemmy as a project is to challenge proprietary social media like Reddit. That wont be achievable if we try to exclude anyone from using Lemmy. Of course that doesnt mean that we have to agree with their opinions, and block tools exist exactly for this reason.
Also, I think if these extremists leave Reddit, that could eventually lead to their deradicalization. Reddit has no real incentive to deradicalize them, because more users and more activity means more ad money for them. But fediverse instances are usually run by volunteers in their free time, who have less incentive to permit such toxicity.
Realistically there is nothing we can do against that
except there are things you could do, if you were using an ethical open source license you’d be able to shut down goatpen.co without trouble
I have an issue with the ethical open source license, this is irrespective of my stance on free software, which is being ethical is ambiguous, it depends on the reader or interpreter as to what ethical is.
For example I would consider being anti racist ethical but someone else could interpret being anti racist as racist ( or however they victimize themselves )
That ambiguity, that my stupid ass could come up with off the cuff, is why its a bad license to use.
How could anti-racism be racist? Sure you can have resentment and preconceived ideas about a person based on their skin color, but racism is far more than this. First because there’s cultural racism, too. Second, because racism is a structural oppression which distirbutes power and resources unequally: there is not a single place on Earth to my knowledge where white people are victims of structural racism.
