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Comment by whermans | Hacker News Reader

So you got to share your stupid opinions and got pushback on them? Sounds like the system is working then.

Be kinder, this kind of attitude is exactly what is causing deep societal rifts.

If you want to live in a heavily-moderated place and you'll blindly accept while you are fed what the latest ever-changing Truth is (even if it contradicts what came previously, even if it contradicts logic, reason or scientific understanding), then go wild.

I don't agree with parent's takes, but calling them "stupid" is needlessly derisive.

Some people don't like this, that shouldn't be seen as a Bad Thing.

First they came for the "stupid" opinions, but I didn't care because I was sure mine weren't.

Then they came for me, and there was nobody left to defend me

They didn't come for the opinions. They were published and are (I assume) still available on whatever Mastodon instance the author used.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32216255

I believe I can afford posting a little "trope" since HN's frontpage is being flooded (spammed) by Mastodon posts

Flag them. You might be able to afford the trope comments but collectively, the forum can't otherwise it turns into just that.

If "they" try to stop him from voicing his opinions, you'd have a point. But "they" only stopped this person from imposing his opinions on people who had chosen instances whose policies involved a certain style of moderation.

The benefit of the fediverse is exactly that any moderation or blocks do not stop your speech - no matter if it's actually abhorrent or just unpopular with the wrong people - it merely lets people opt out of listening to you.

"style of moderation"? what does that mean? I don't agree with what GP said, but on what basis could you moderate his posts? Because they aren't "true"? In that case why not say that your instances bans all "untrue" things? how simple!

You can moderate on any criteria you want, actually!

https://www.reddit.com/r/CatsStandingUp only allows cats standing up, and the only text message allowed is "Cat."

You could run a purely technical community and say that anything non-programming related is offtopic and not allowed.

You could aggressively minimize drama. Controversial subjects are not allowed. Please post some pictures of your cat and talk about the weather.

Really the options are limitless.

Christ. This isn't the government censoring opinions. This is people kicking others out of their bar for not following the social rules and norms in that bar. They can go to another bar. The basis is: "we don't want that behaviour here" and that is ok when there are alternatives.

> "style of moderation"? what does that mean?

Consider HN. Try to post a thread of puns here, and you will be flagged. Do it often enough, and you will be blocked. That is a style of moderation.

Consider Reddit. Post pun threads there and you'll likely be heavily upvoted instead. That is a different style of moderation.

To take more extreme examples, there are fediverse instances that consider racism to be ok, and there are instances who don't consider it ok but won't block other instances as a matter of principle, and there are instances who will block whole instances if they don't moderate racism. Those are all styles of moderation.

You have a choice in which rules are right for you. You might want a highly curated environment (like HN), or a more freewheeling one (like Reddit), or a near total free-for-all (like 4chan). Which one you pick may determine who else are willing to talk to you, because some dislike eachother - whether justified or not - enough to not want to talk to each other. If I want an instance that blocks people who like dogs on sight, I'm free to do so, and you're free to consider it an idiotic policy and not join my instance.

Nothing stops you from having more than one account if you want a mix of environments who don't get along.

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