EDIT: It seems that I have may have gotten the wrong impression about the community structure here from the @TheDude comment I listed below. It looks like this should have been posted to The Agora. I appreciate everyone who took the time to respond. Now I must go find fresh air and see if I can find this grass thing that I have heard so much about.
First, let me say thank you for spending your time and money on creating and maintaining this instance.
Second, the name sh.itjust.works is great. It gives me a little half smile every time I type it.
Third, I am hoping this can be my Fediverse home base but I have a single concern.
Now on to the meat:
I have been over on lemmy.world for the last few days and really enjoying the content and experience, but as I was learning more about the Fediverse I realized they have blocked a whole slew of other instances. Most of the reason I have grown to dislike and distrust reddit over the years was because of their random subreddit bans that didn't follow their own rules and processes, so it was a pretty big turn-off for me looking at the lemmy.world Instances List.
When I heard this instance only had two blocked instances, I immediately came here to check it out. I quickly saw like-minded individuals genuinely engaging in reasonable discussion about what should and should not be defederated, so I decided to go ahead and make an account. It didn't take long though before I decided to look into why each of the instances were banned.
It seems like burggit allows simulated CP which is a pretty decent reason for blocking them in my mind. On the other hand, the only thing I could find about lemmygrad.ml was this (https://sh.itjust.works/comment/130474) post that says you blocked it because of your personal convictions.
Given that this instance is your own personal project, I certainly don't fault you for choosing what is acceptable and what is not, but I am concerned about making sh.itjust.works my home base if it is just the start. Based on the previous post it doesn't seem like something you are going to change your mind about, nor do I have an interest in trying to convince you to do so. What I would like to know is if this is going to be a regular thing.
Are you intending to block any instances with political opinions that you are staunchly against? Further, are you planning to create any sort of standard for what kind of instance you are likely or unlikely to ban in the future?
Bonus question for my curiosity: What makes lemmygrad so against your personal convictions? While I have a basic understanding of Marxism/Communism and am aware that current communist countries have a pretty questionable history of violence and suppressing personal and political freedoms, I think an objective viewer might say the same thing about the representative republic that I live in.
tl;dr: Are you going to block other instances for personal reasons? Also, are you going to create any standards to indicate which instances may be blocked in the future?
I just read a few poses on the community. Maybe this is there somewhere, but there's a shitton of what many would consider hate speech in there.
(i am not a conservative and don't support their cause, simply an independent observer)
Just one example from here https://lemmy.world/post/105545 :
How the hell is that hate speech?Conservative is not a protected group. It’s not an inherent quality of a person, like being gay or black.
It’s not hate speech to say conservatives are evil and their actions and beliefs actively harm the world. That’s just facts.
Do you have to be protected for it to be hate speech? Lmao.
and hate speech is only for people's inherent qualities?
i'd say ideology falls right next to religion in the spook system of "things ppl believe about the world and can't change on a whim because it's part of their inherent dogmatic system of understanding"
ah yes, "facts", "evil", absolute morality, moral dogma, they are "inherently evil", that's just moral absolutism and it's as dumb as religious dogmatic beliefs of "the gays are bad" or "degenerates deserve to die". You're just fighting dumb dogmas with dumb dogmas.
Do consider that they consider themselves not to be harming but protecting the world from those who they believe harm the world. Life is not black and white, "i'm right and you're wrong". There are many perspectives, and "harm" is subjective, the ideal state of how things should be is a hotly debated topic, and thinking that, because you think you're "right", your speech of hate toward a certain group of people defined by their beliefs is not "hate speech", is just, in my opinion, not a very enlightened perspective.
pinned post:
I’m sorry but we’re past the point of “let’s all talk and understand our differences”. People have had enough time to understand reality. If they are still supporting transphobic, anti-communist, racist and fascists parties, organisations and individuals, they deserve nothing but to be publicly humiliated. I mean maybe not nothing…
Thing is, you're wrong.
There is no absolute moral right or wrong. If their understanding is different from yours, they simply have a different perspective. Sure, it is not compatible with yours, and you can decide to cut yourself off from them, and wage war against them, and even insult them, threaten them with death and execute them publicly if you want. None of that means that their belief system is not a belief system, or that their religious beliefs are not religious beliefs, or that the hate speech you will wield against them is not hate speech. It just means you deem it appropriate because your belief system dictates this, just as their belief system could dictate that they will do the same with you and those you protect. The fact that people justify it in their minds, throwing random moral facts and calling them true, doesn't make hate speech not hate speech.