I disagree that they are the modern public square, in the loosest sense, especially in cases such as Lemmy that are instanced. You aren’t blocked from the whole of Lemmy, you’re blocked from a particular instance but still able to access a lot of it. If anything, it’s closer to a publicly accessible private space: if I have a garage sale and I’m letting people look around, it’s publicly accessible but still not in the public domain. I have different opinions for nationalized sectors, i.e., if Twitter were bought by the U.S. government, but that’s more so due to a distrust of government power than a sense of free speech absolutionism. A lot of Hexbear are folks who are disproportionately harassed by people who typically abuse the more idealist leanings of free speech idealism and have suffered continuous distress from that, so I’m not particularly surprised you’re met with hostility from folks here .
It isn’t an issue for me, I just wanted to float some reasons that liberal idealism tends to meet strong resistance here. There are more pragmatic reasons for the stances taken as well, which with my current understanding, I agree with. But frankly, I’m currently too drunk and too behind on theory to be a good source to articulate it. Assuming you aren’t banned on my instance and I remember through my ADHD deluge, I might circle back on this in the future and explain further.
I disagree that they are the modern public square, in the loosest sense, especially in cases such as Lemmy that are instanced. You aren’t blocked from the whole of Lemmy, you’re blocked from a particular instance but still able to access a lot of it. If anything, it’s closer to a publicly accessible private space: if I have a garage sale and I’m letting people look around, it’s publicly accessible but still not in the public domain. I have different opinions for nationalized sectors, i.e., if Twitter were bought by the U.S. government, but that’s more so due to a distrust of government power than a sense of free speech absolutionism. A lot of Hexbear are folks who are disproportionately harassed by people who typically abuse the more idealist leanings of free speech idealism and have suffered continuous distress from that, so I’m not particularly surprised you’re met with hostility from folks here
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I’m used to it. I don’t really take any of it personally. I appreciate your conversation.
It isn’t an issue for me, I just wanted to float some reasons that liberal idealism tends to meet strong resistance here. There are more pragmatic reasons for the stances taken as well, which with my current understanding, I agree with. But frankly, I’m currently too drunk and too behind on theory to be a good source to articulate it. Assuming you aren’t banned on my instance and I remember through my ADHD deluge, I might circle back on this in the future and explain further.