Hacker News Reader

Comment by laserdancepony | Hacker News Reader

Mastodons main federation is one of the most strict leftist communities there is. They don't even fire warning shots, they unlink your entire server for one message overtreading their "inclusive" guidelines.

They're even stricter than Reddit, and that sets a point.

View on HN

I really don't think you can say Reddit is a strict leftist community with a straight face. There are plenty of places on Reddit where hard right and alt right views are openly welcome and encouraged.

The “moderate politics” community has has to stop debating certain contentious topics because the Reddit rules don’t allow one side, held by the majority of Americans, to express their view.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1107484965/transgender-athlet...

There's a big difference between calling Reddit as a whole a strict leftist place, and a sub community of the site banning discourse on an incredibly divisive topic that attracts pure vitriol from both sides of the spectrum every time it comes up.

If you want to discuss the topic of transgender athletes there's plenty of places on Reddit for you to do so.

The topic is not too dissimilar to discussing crypto here on HN, it's definitely possible to do so but the topic so frequently erupts into name calling it forces heavy handed moderation that pleases nobody.

Please share an example of reddit doing what it did to that trump group a few years ago to a similarly moderate to medium leftist subreddit. That is kind of the defining moment for me that makes the whole place a leftie fart smelling commune (although it does have a bunch of decent technical communities still)

"moderate"

They banned /r/ChapoTrapHouse but by your framing I know you'd consider this not valid.

"that trump group" wasn't a group of people sharing moderate to medium rightist political discourse, it was a place that was banned for inciting violence, targeting harassment, doxxing, brigading the site, and vitriolic hate speech. If thats your idea of "moderate", then I'm not sure what you'd consider hard right.

Nevertheless, at exactly the same time as the_donald was banned, ChapoTrapHouse which was a left wing subreddit was banned for exactly the same reason.

> that makes the whole place a leftie fart smelling commune

Comments like this are why people don't take your arguments seriously. If you want to have an honest discussion about these topics, don't take it down to ad hominem attacks and cheap slurs.

I think it's understood that the poster is referring to the main subs, and that's a fair assessment of them. You're right that not every sub is authleft, but the mods of the largest subs certainly fit that profile completely.

Elaborate? What "inclusive" policies do you think are overbearing? Mastodon.social is plenty accommodating to your average "set no CWs, give unsolicited advice, be a bit mean to trans people" person. Other places are not. Joining any random server will not work as much as joining a random IRC network will not.

It's a federation. This is exactly the point.

If someone wants to setup a mammoth federation (because mammoths are less hairy than leftists or something - I dunno) they are free to do so. They can use the same software, they can set their own policies on if they want to federate with Anime/Trans/Communist/Nazi/Antifa servers however they want.

And AFAIK no Mastadon server have removed the ability to link to competitors.

More often than not, the large right wing instances strip out all the Mastodon branding and turn off federation. See Gab and Truth Social.

Which is completely within their right to do so. If people don't like those sites lack of federation they should complain about those ones!

I'm pretty sure most people I know are happy they don't federate.

But also, Truth Social violated Mastodon's license. Gab eventually shared their code, but their CTO took the chance to call me a slur on his public feed for asking.

https://www.thebulwark.com/truth-social-violated-mastodons-t...

Yes, I agree with their approach. I don't want Nazi-adjacent people in my field and I don't think they deserve a platform.

But it is important to point out this is exactly how federation is supposed to work and people who support freedom of speech should support that.

"I support free speech, but not speech I don't like."

Is that supposed to be a quote by me? Because I never said that.

It doesn't even make sense in this context, unless you are implying people shouldn't be free to read what they want (since federation is mostly about the reading).

And even if it wasn't, then yes I do believe that freedom of choice is more important than freedom of speech.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com