What is the point of the fediverse having built-in censorship to ban ideas, views, and opinions? There could be a direct connection between why Mastodon does not attract new users and the totalitarian censorship of the fediverse pushing a monolith barbarian culture.
Looking through posts on the different fediverse services, it seems anything built on ActivityPub will only turn stale in 5 years because it is designed for people who can’t function in society where random individuals can freely reject their statements, so they need the internet to hide away from life.
There’s a school of thought that if someone is transphobic or similar, that you can still talk with them, and explain why they’re wrong. They probably won’t absorb it the first time. But, if you forbid anyone in the world from ever having that conversation with them, or for that matter if you approach the conversation from the point of view that the transphobic person is being “bad” when they express sincerely to you what they believe, then all you’re doing is making it a lot more difficult for them to ever adopt any point of view other than transphobia.
There’s another school of thought that, more or less, we don’t give a shit if someone is “sincere” about transphobia, that’s messed up, and I don’t want it on my network. Particularly since giving people an “innocent” way to express it and talk about it will open the door for right-wing bad actors to “innocently” express bigotry on your network.
To me, both of these schools of thought are valid. I’m comfortable talking with people with a wide range of opinions I really don’t agree with, at least for a little while. I actually lean a little more towards the first school of thought, applied to a whole lot of ignorant stuff including transphobia. I think Lemmy is pretty unanimous on the second school of thought. That’s fine, and I guess I understand why it has to be that way on an anonymous network that’s subject to all sorts of attempted abuse. But I do think the first school of thought is valid, too, as a general rule about dealing with people.
Maybe OP thinks so too. Or maybe they’re ignorant about “transgenderism,” from Lemmy’s point of view. Or maybe it was just an academic example, a pretty accurate one IMO, about a point of view that you cannot express anywhere on Lemmy outside of a few pariah-for-good-reason instances. Or maybe they are a secret right-winger who’s cleverly smuggled “transgenderism” and “censorship” into this conversation, and the whole thing of keyboards was just a ruse to be able to start talking about it. I don’t necessarily assume that third thing, though. It sounds like everyone else here is. I thought we were talking about keyboards. OP, are you talking about keyboards, or trans issues, or what? What are some examples of stuff you would like to be able to talk about on Lemmy that you can’t?
I read your post, so don’t take my short response as me not reading through it or understanding your point.
But that user clearly passed the point where I could ever give them the benefit of the doubt. They’re using a clear right wing dogwhistle, and I don’t think they’re asking it innocently. I don’t think they used the keyboard thing as a pretext, but that the question they asked goes above the keyboard thing and reveals how they think about “being censored”.
Fair. The “Your side screams censorship” comment was something of a tactical blunder, too, if they wanted to be able to make the claim that this is all about keyboards. It does make it sound like they’re trying to back their way into making a political point primarily.
I also didn’t really read their whole post initially, I saw the basic gist and looked up the history, because I was mostly interested in the reality of how they were “censored” more than what they had to say about it. Then what I saw in the comments looked like the most knee-jerk of knee-jerks. But reading their post in detail definitely makes it sound a lot like they want to be racist but can’t. Whether that was their intent or their desire or not, I don’t know.
OP: If you pick a fight with the whole room, you’ll be in a fight with the whole room. There’s actually a significant sense in which I agree with you, probably putting me vastly in the minority on Lemmy, but you being deliberately disagreeable is going to make it harder for you to be able to succeed making your point, and also make a challenge for anyone who agrees with you to any extent.
It will also cause a bunch of conflict, though, so if that was your goal, you are succeeding.