Hey all — just launched openmic.social, a general-purpose Lemmy instance with a specific mission: free speech + transparent, restorative moderation.
The pitch is simple — anyone can grab the mic — and the thing that makes us different is what happens when you cross a line:
- No shadowbans, ever. If your post is removed or your account is actioned, you’re told — what happened, which rule, and how to fix it.
- We help before we punish. A heads-up and a path back come before a ban. Bans are the last resort, not the first reflex.
- Moderation in the open. Every call is appealable, publicly, in our
!metacommunity. - Hard lines only: nothing illegal, no targeted harassment, no doxxing, no spam. That’s what keeps the mic open for everyone.
We’re brand new, which means early adopters shape the culture. Come introduce yourself, bring a community that needs a home, or start one — I’ll help you set it up and mod it.
This post about a new Lemmy instance is on topic for this community. You can all have your own feelings about this instance and what it’s trying to do, but a single post here announcing it isn’t spam.
Please stop reporting this post and OP’s comments.
So, transphobia, racism, misogyny, all acceptable as long as it’s aimed broadly, and doesn’t become targeted harassment of an individual?
On the reverse of that, if you want to promote the opposite you are more than welcome to, free speech is a two way street. I don’t really tolerate hate though. Maybe I’ll update our description.
free speech is a two way street
it really isn’t
It is tho, a homophobe can say what they want and I can call them a bigoted piece of shit. That’s a 2 way street. Now if they could say what they wanted and I couldn’t say what I wanted, that’s a one way street.
So I can call a bigoted homophobe a bigoted homophobe, and they can say what ever unintelligent crap they want.
Consequences of actions is more of a one way street, something bigoted assholes can’t mentally understand.
“two-way street” implies an equal exchange, not just equal opportunity to speak, and only someone who’s never been on the receiving end of one would ever make the mistake of thinking there’s anything equal about it.
in fact, the only ones I’ve ever heard make that argument are bigots themselves, trying to excuse or defend their bigotry while shifting blame to their victims for “not standing up for themselves” or some other victim-blaming bullshit.
DARVO (an acronym for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender”) is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers, narcissists, or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.[1] Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
That’s not good enough. You’re saying they have the right to attack people, but at least the targeted people can defend themselves. Those are not comparable
deleted by creator
Curious what your goal is?
Removed by mod
So if I wanted to start a pro-nazi community there, you would permit that?
Removed by mod
It has been my experience that “free speech” (especially online) is code for “bigotry welcome”.
I see nothing in the description here to convince me this will be any different.
No definitely not trying to allow bigotry. You are definitely entitled to feel that way though.
Removed by mod
Seeing all your low effort shit posts makes me believe you’re a joy in real life
Removed by mod
But it doesn’t appear that you’re specifically disallowing it either
You are definitely entitled to feel that way though.
My concern is that this is what you will also say to the bigots when they arrive
When you sit down at a table and nine Nazis sit down at that table with you, there are now 10 Nazis sitting at that table.
Then it’s not “free speech and anything legal is cool”
Like, it’s not a bad thing to ban bigotry, that’s a good thing…
Which is why when you said it was “free speech”…
Everyone called you out for, either:
-
Lying
-
Allowing bigotry
There’s only those two options buddy…
-
Do you allow Nazi like ideologies like Zionism?
Removed by mod
No we are not. I don’t support ethnic cleansing and I, do not believe in any race being superior to another unlike Zionism
Removed by mod
There is no good Zionists
Removed by mod
It sad that people do not understand that Zionism is a supremacist genocidal ideology
Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
The property owners will come over to our side. According to my conception, the majority of the local population will have to be transferred elsewhere.
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
Removed by mod
Illegal where? Criticism of Israel is illegal in Germany, for example.
Quit your bullshit.
Fuck Israel. Israel is a fascist state that commits a suicide in Gaza. I am a German in Germany and I just critiziced Israel. I even used bad language. That is not illegal so don’t spread lies if you don’t know shit about the laws a country has.
Removed by mod
Regarding your "example’: That’s new to me, being a German. in this broad way the statement is wrong, i suppose. ChatGPT confirmed this. there is no law denying the right of Israel to exist. It is only true that German politics has ever since Second World War felt a historical responsibility to support Israel against antisemitism.
How do they square that with freedom of speech or like, defenses of fact?
Like how defense of fact is a valid defense against libel laws since the speech at issue was based on known facts or “truth”
There are laws and case law that make criticism of Israel harder than in other places. Post WW2 pro-Nazi and antisemetic speech was basically declared hate speech. Courts have taken a narrow view of what counts as antisemetic. There are in excess of six million reasons for that hard swing in the other direction.
So I would say the long version is this: you can criticize Israel but you need to pay close attention to how you say it. Criticizing the existence of the Jewish state is possible as well but you need to weigh your words even more carefully.
Moderators on an internet forum may take an even narrower approach to avoid any sort of legal trouble. And thus continues a chilling effect.
Freedom of speech is a tricky subject. Post WW2 the US had the influence to export their constitutional values, such as a first amendment, to Japan and West Germany. In both cases they punted. It’s not without some irony when I say opinions on how to establish freedom of speech in a democratic constitution vary.
It is illegal in Australia as well, where anti-israel/anti-zionism/anti-genocide has been remarketed as anti-semitism.
Potential 2 year prison sentence for saying ‘from the river to the sea’ in one of the Australian states.
Great, wish you the best, but if anything gets illegal is federated to mine that’s where I have to defederate. One admin to another wish you luck though.
Thank you.
Will your management of the instance be as low effort as your introductory post that you obviously didn’t write yourself?
Thank you! Don’t hesitate to reach out if I am missing anything, I definitely don’t want anything illegal happening. I am looking for more mods and admin a to help out as well! Appreciate the kind words!
Fair questions — you deserve a direct answer: No. A pro-Nazi community wouldn’t be allowed here, and neither is racism, transphobia, or misogyny — “aimed broadly” or not. I in no way support hate.
“Free speech” here means something specific: we don’t shadowban, we tell you exactly which rule you broke and give you a path to fix it, and we won’t remove you for an unpopular opinion or a hard argument made in good faith. It does not mean a license to dehumanize people for who they are. Bigotry isn’t brave dissent — it’s harassment with a wider target, and it drives out the very people who make a place worth being in.
If drawing that line costs us the crowd who think “free speech” means “slurs welcome” — good. They were never the point. The mic’s open to everyone; it’s not a megaphone for hate. Be a good human. It isn’t hard. You can debate your point with out dehumanizing others, when you can’t, you’ve already lost the argument.
You can debate your point with out dehumanizing others, when you can’t, you’ve already lost the argument.
No. You can’t. And giving a “open mic“ to the Nick Fuenteses and Stephen Millers, and Charlie Kirks of the world who will put on a suit and a tie and try to “debate” you while dehumanizing others with nice sounding words gives them a platform to spread their hate while framing it as a “civilized debate“ rather than the coded bigotry that it is, while you cast aside any responsibility for letting them do it, tossing your hands up and claiming “free speech”.
It’s plainly and obviously bullshit. It’s like inviting a vampire into the house and then being surprised when everyone turns up dead.
If you say so…
I’m clearly not the only one here who feels this way, and I’m sure that none of us are surprised that, right from the start, you’re deflecting any responsibility for what you’ve created.
“Free speech” here means something specific: we don’t shadowban
Shadowbanning has nothing to do with speech. I’d recommend you reconsider your verbiage.
we won’t remove you for an unpopular opinion
Most instances already don’t do that. Which leads me to believe you have unpopular (hateful) opinions and want to create a community where those opinions are welcomed.
Be a good human. It isn’t hard.
No, and yet many people fail to. And these are the types who will be attracted to your community.
Caught in some loop, the content warning just keeps popping up when I click Continue. Or maybe my phone is trying to protect me.
I’ll have to take a look and see if I can figure out why that is and resolve it.
Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans. There’s no recommender algorithm to make the “shadow” part. Or mod tool to edit votes. I believe you are using incorrectly the term. Please clarify. A ban is a ban. Shadowban is no ban per se, but from there on you post to /dev/null in whichever platform has support for that shit (i.e. meta)
Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans.
Multiple instances and even an app has built in blocks.
Instead of looking up a profile and seeing “banned” you get an error. Instead of seeing an an entry in the modlog, it’s literally baked into the code.
Lemmy most definitely has shadowbans, but they are applied at the level of whole entire communities rather than end-users. I remember being on the StarTrek.Website instance when that functionality was added to the Lemmy code, and discussing with someone my finding out that ChapoTrapHouse was no longer accessible from it, despite the fact the instance remained federated. No announcement of that fact was ever made iirc, it’s just that one day poof the behavior has changed, after Lemmy deployed a version that allowed for that.
Some few instances are very open about their hiding of communities - see e.g. https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/, listing in detail every one - but most are not, and the Lemmy UI has nothing at all like the list that it shows for (de)federations.
The Lemmy admins also can remove people even from the modlogs, in cases of severe abuse. Tbf it’s exceedingly rare and there is little evidence of this being abused (well there was one time, but the excuse that it was due to a bug seemed believable to me and most everyone else - Lemmy.ml quite often tests new versions of the code before they get rolled out to the rest of the Threadiverse, which is quite helpful actually).
Lemmy also fails to notify someone of their having been moderated. The various communities are FULL of stories of people asking where their posts went, or why they can no longer post to a community, or stating their discovery that they have an event in the modlog. The notification of moderation activities is exceedingly poor on the Lemmy platform.
Sadly, Reddit does a much better job at notification of an event, and also provides for a modmail to communicate with the mods to discuss the situation, e.g. to ask why, rather than leaving it to the end-user to wonder if they should DM each one listed in sequence until they find one that is even active much less responsive…
Lemmy is imperfect. At least Huffman is not in charge here, but conversely the tools have aways to go before we catch up even to what Reddit offers.
I also took these comments to heart and made some updates to our sidebar. I appreciate anyone who wants to participate in good faith, I started this because Reddit shadow banned me simply for trying to advertise my business. They didn’t even give me an opportunity to make things right, and it was a honest mistake. I think thats a really crappy thing to do to people. I don’t want to participate in that.
deleted by creator
What makes this content any better? What value have you added here?
deleted by creator
Nobody us forcing you to comment or participate. I’m going to ask you to time it down and be civil or you will become my first moderation!
Lemmy itself doesnt have shadowbans, all ban logs are public.
