I don’t think it is failed. It has reached self-sustaining levels for many topics. It will need further growth to make smaller, niche topics self-sustaining. Whether this growth will take place is an open question. I know my instance is growing in terms of activity, but I’m not sure how others are faring.
But as long as it isn’t shrinking, I think it’s well-positioned to absorb more growth as users discover it or become disillusioned with Reddit or other sites in the future.
Not sure which version everyone is on but the cross-posting button is broken in the latest Lemmy version. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.
When they seized power as happened in Russia, China, and many other countries, they consistently murdered or enslaved dissidents. And they defend such practices to this day. I am an outspoken dissident in my current society and surely would be in their imagined future as well.
No, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and I do not fully disagree. But I think context matters. I like tanky because it helps people understand the dangers of the ideology more than other alternatives like communist or Marxist-Leninist or whatever. Is there more danger of violence against tankies or that their ideology may grow and cause violence against others? Right now I perceive the latter to be a bigger issue, and I don’t see any real risk of harm coming to them, at least in the social circles where my words have influence.
If there was a movement that sought to do physical harm to them (outside of a defensive context) then I would weigh that appropriately in my language. The term is a tool of persuasion and I deem that persuasion more important than any risk of dehumanization, which I do oppose and recognize as harmful.
I acknowledge that tankies are humans with rights but I don’t acknowledge that those rights include not being called an accurate but slightly demeaning term that they don’t like. Particularly because their preferred terms for themselves are inaccurate.
Like I’m not going to stop calling fascists by that name even if they prefer to be called freedom-loving patriots or something. And I personally see the two ideologies as having a lot of similarities.
But the mods don’t allow that kind of discourse, that’s the whole problem.
Also, tankies are advocating for a society where I and those like me would be killed. If that’s not worthy of a derogatory term then what is?
Did you read the abstract? This doesn’t seem to be what they’re saying at all.
Regarding server ownership, yes that is a thorny problem. One could dream up some kind of communally owned server system but that might be far fetched. However, I think the issue of mod power is distinct and might be easier to address.
As for the flaws of democratic systems, yes, they are real but most of these flaws apply to more autocratic systems as well. And we see from numerous examples that more democratic systems tend to abuse their power less often and severely than autocratic ones do. It’s a higher bar to get the whole community together to ban MLK than just one racist mod. Carefully thought out governance structures can also help. You certainly don’t want 51% of the community to be able to ban 49% whenever they want to, but the ideal would be to enable easy involvement with a structure that guides users towards making the right decisions.
The structure and culture to make this work could be difficult to build, so I’m not saying it’s an easy answer but it does seem like something to consider and maybe experiment with.
I obviously didn’t explain myself clearly if that’s what you took from this. I’m saying the community should be in control of moderation, not that there should be no moderation.
I agree with the facts here but have a slightly different conclusion. This is a problem that exists on many similar platforms like Reddit, etc. If you give mods or admins unlimited power over their users, it is an almost foregone conclusion that it will be abused in some circumstances. While Lemmy.ml is perhaps the perfect storm of a bad example, I’ve seen examples of abuses of mod power from almost every community on both Lemmy and Reddit.
So how do we fix it? Migrating to different communities or instances can sometimes help, but the potential for abuse remains. Having more options for active communities and making migration easier is a step in the right direction. Despite its flaws, Lemmy is an improvement in this respect because its federated nature allows more choice in who has power over you, but the problem remains.
In my view the internet has always worked best when problems are solved democratically rather than autocratically. Content aggregators already allow for this to some extent in what content is presented, but moderation remains quite undemocratic. I think it may be that a new platform with new innovations to make moderation decisions more driven by community consensus instead of owners or founders of communities will be needed. Exactly what this will look like, I don’t know, but some brainstorming might be in order for the next evolution in social media.
Almost everyone.