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?
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.
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.
How about hate free ™ free speech
Or “I can’t believe its not bigotry”
Oh God I Wish it Were Bigotry!, now available in an App Store near you.
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.
A forum? (Online this means a specific type of website architecture though, so idk.)
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.
I’m surprised it took Jayclees this long to remove his mask.
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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”…
Who owns Discuit?
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Is anyone out there thinking that surely this guy, who’s financial incentives are identical to Spez & co, will somehow manage to make something better?
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
It’s even easier on kbin since it shares pretty much the same general layout as Reddit.
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.
People can’t seem to compute the fact that each Fediverse site is basically like email in reddit/twitter form.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
Way too much drama on there. It’s like every week you have to catch up on what happened.
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.
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
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
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Not only is the Fediverse puzzling, but it also struggles to clarify its essence; the majority lack an understanding of its functioning
“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.
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”
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.
And Canada fucking sucks.
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:
- if you forbid it, you’re lowering a bit the freedom of speech of those who’d otherwise voice it. It’s only a bit because they’re still allowed to voice non-hateful discourses there.
- if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave.
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.
if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave
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:
- It avoids the special pleading claim that “hate speech isn’t speech”, while still allowing you to ban it under certain circumstances.
- There’s less room to misuse the ban against hate speech towards legitimate/non-hateful discourses. Specially when you get environments infested with witch hunters, that sometimes are as bad as the witches that they claim to hunt.
- It gives you grounds to get rid of specially stupid, noisy, obnoxious or obtuse users, regardless of what they say, provided that their presence shuts other users up.
- It’s flexible enough to address even a 4chan-like “mods? what mods?” approach or a Beehaw-like “be nice or get out” one, because it forces you to take the userbase into account.
- You don’t need to deal with blackbox concepts like “feelings” and “intentions” and the likes.
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 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.
This is where I don’t agree. Hate speech doesn’t make anyone leave.
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:
- to tie the huge recent growth of Mastodon, or its strong queer presence, with a Twitter exodus that boils down to “Musk will let hate speech grow rampant here”; or
- to look at old news, where celebs encourage people to fuck off platforms that allow hate speech; or even
- to read news about LGBTQ+ users leaving social media due to something adjacent and often overlapping with hate speech, namely harassment.
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?
what the fuck is squabbler?
Another shitty centralized proprietary social media clone. They already knew they failed so they’re doing this to get that right wing grift.
The reddit/twitter clone formerly known as Squabbles.io
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.
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.
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.
Sites that are centralized and therefore have the same potential problems as reddit.
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.
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?
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”.
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.
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.
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How can I be any clearer? There is one thing. ONE THING. Human Rights. That’s the line I’m not crossing. Other subjects, fine, let’s discuss. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I’m not lumping anyone under that umbrella. They lump themselves under it. If you’re somehow the unicorn of a Trump Republican LGBT supporter in the current year, you’re probably confused as fuck, but I’ll engage with you.
It’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?
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There’s 8 billion of us now, we can afford to lose the trash.
Sounds like you and nazis have more in common than you think.
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Your viewpoint is beyond disturbing. The idea of exterminating any group of people based on some arbitrary criteria is horrible. You’re talking about human lives, real people with stories, families, and potential. Advocating for their ‘termination’ like they’re just a problem to be erased? It’s chilling. This is not just about right or wrong viewpoints; it’s about basic human decency. Such a twisted mindset has caused untold misery in the past. Your belief genuinely terrifies me.
Also, ALL convicted criminals? From shoplifting to murder? Where do you draw the line, o’ holy judge, jury, and executioner? Hopefully you’ve never trolled someone before or we’ll have to send you to the gas chambers. Redemption is not allowed in this utopia.
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Dude needs to watch Death Note and see what happens when one person takes vigantism this far.
Uhh… dude, chill. Calling to exterminate an entire group of people, even if they’re horrible, hateful people, still makes you no better than they are. You can take away their platforms, prevent them from spreading their vitriol, but extermination is a step too far. They’re still people.
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
TwitterOpen 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.
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.
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Sorry, I should have said “you”
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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.
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.
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”.
What does “hates lgbt” mean in this case?
EDIT: just show me the hatefull comments. I’m out of the loop
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.
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.
Here I go deleting an account, sigh, I liked the platform there
Didn’t they realise that Gab, Voat and Poal already exist?
