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How the Liberal Left created the Conservative Right and extremism in the fediverse:
As someone who cares greatly about equality, and recognizes minorities and underprivileged groups deal with some unique and difficult struggles I realize the title to this post would seem a bit inflammatory. But that is not my intention, my intention is to address a very real problem.
As anyone on the fediverse knows there are generally two major groups of instances. Those that wont ban anything of any kind, no rules it's the wild west (red instances). Then there are those that ban anyone who shares any opinion that disagrees with their politics, even if you criticise both the left and the right in the same breath you will likely quickly find the instance or yourself banned.
However the unfortunate consequence of this pattern of behavior is to promote ever increasing support for red instances and to drive grey instances (instances that take a middle ground) into being red instances. Should be obvious why...
You basically have a spectrum of behavior with red on one side and blue on the other. With everyone crammed into the 0.1% of either end of this spectrum that means most new instances will start off, most likely, somewhere in the grey area, even if their just marginally shy of being red or blue in its full extreme.
The experience for an admin of such an instance is to quickly be overwhelmed with people from blue instances blocking and banning for things like criticising a democratic politician or something rather minor. By the end of the first few months a blue/left leaning instance will quickly find itself on dozens of suspend or ban instances as a result and find they only have a voice among the 99% red instances and the 1% grey instances out there.
Since this means they naturally wont have a voice among blue instances, and most people are on social media because they want to be social, this means their only incentive is to appeal to red instances (since that's where all their boosts and likes come from). Along with building animosity for how blue instances treat them and with the acceptance of red instances you will find all the incentive for the instances to move to be an extremist red instance with extremist no-rule policies quickly develop.
As such we see exactly what we are seeing now on the fediverse, an ever increasing number of red instances very quickly overwhelming and overtaking the blue instances.
Of course this is made worse by the fact that those ont he blue instances can only see other blue instances. so they will be under the mistaken impression that the red instances don't exist and that the blue instances are thriving and growing and dominating over the red instances. This ignorance just ensures the red instances grow unchecked and unchallenged.
As someone who's personal policy is anti-extremism, and with this pattern being one that generates extremism it is very VERY concerning to me.
The liberal left didn't "create" pro-free-speech instances. The Fediverse is a concept not left-friendly to begin with. It:
(1) benefits people who get kicked out of mainstream left-wing corporate networks, who are almost exclusively center-right or far-right, and:
(2) the Left likes to censor and shut down things that upset them, rather than ignore them like the Right does.
You can't shut down everyone. It was only a matter of time before the center-right and far-right took over the Fediverse.
The Left would better on a network of private message boards which require approval to sign up, not on the Fediverse playing catch up.
I'm not trying to say the Left doesn't have a right to be here, but the system is rigged against them.
@redneonglow I never claimed they created pro-free speach. I claim they pushed everyone who wasnt extremist left to the extreme right. Huge difference in statements.
There used to be a few isolated instances that were free speech. Some were fulled with disgusting material, others were actually more respectable, and there was a complete spectrum.
The left ensure everyone in the middle slowly gets pushed farther and farther to the right as they all collect there.
I agree the concept of the fediverse is not left-friendly to begin with. It has only because left or right oriented through culture not technology alone.
But yea I do agree the fediverse is probably not well suited for people who are pro-censorship in the extreme.
