I’ve been trying Lemmy for a little while and wasn’t sure how to feel about it.
Today, I wanted to start blocking the most high-censorship instances until I could find a fully zero-censorship instance and simply block all the ones with censorship. Filter bots, not people.
When I looked into it further, I found out there are no zero-censorship instances, because Lemmy relies on a broken “federation” system where each instance is supposed to be able to fetch posts from other instances, but it’s never been finished to reach a fully working state. Lemmy’s official docs say you can’t even do federation over Tor at all. This means it uses DNS, so it won’t actually allow Lemmy instances to fetch posts from each other freely, it just gets blocked instantly and easily, every time the authorities feel like blocking anything.
So you can only ever have the “average joe lemmy” and “average joe reddit” with everything approved by the authorities, and then “tor copies of lemmy” and “tor copies of reddit” where you have free speech but you can only reach other nerds.
People seem to think Lemmy is different because this weird censorship fetish is extremely popular and most of you are happy to see bans happen to certain people, not just bots, so a small Lemmy that censors certain people feels fundamentally different from a big reddit that censors more people. But it’s the exact same thing, it’s reddit.
When reddit was smaller, you could say basically anything you wanted there, they just wouldn’t let it reach the main audience. Then it got too big, and any tiny part of the audience you could reach would be too big, so they won’t let you talk at all.
Lemmy is now the small part of reddit where you can say whatever you want, separated from the main audience, until too much growth happens and you have to move again.
It’s not actually a solution to reddit. It’s not designed to be different, it’s designed to match the past today and then match reddit’s present tomorrow, while being part of a system that’s about the same in past, present, and future.
Last year, this year, and next year, you’re posting somewhere it won’t be seen by many people, and the system that charges people for ambulance rides is getting another year of ambulance ride revenue, facing no organized resistance. There’s no difference here.
Lemmy urgently needs federation between onion service instances and DNS addresses in order to actually do what most users seem to wish it would do: allow discussion outside what the corporate authorities allow, while outgrowing reddit & helping undo the damage social media has done to human communication.

How do you know that this isn’t a decision of the Fediverse, and not from downward pressure?
Does not compute. If you want an uncensored feed, then that’s what you’ll get. You’ll get nazis in your feed all the time.
That’s a duty you can do for yourself even on mainstream sites like Twitter.
I’m asking for a time where a lemmy instance was pressued by a regulatory body to censor content.
Why do you assume that the only reason an instance would have rules against things other than spamming does so because of fear of state retalitation?
Have you considered that the owners and admins of the instances chose the rules because they want them and don’t believe in a free-for-all uncensored instance?
I don’t get what you’re trying to ask, but whatever it is, I get the feeling you ignored me saying “perhaps unintentionally.”
Didn’t ask.
Not so far.
It’s extremely weird that in this part you seem to have “everyone being uncensored” confused with “the Nazis censoring everyone else”
Get that looked at bro
Yeah, but I have more than 2 minutes in a day, so what do I do when Elon Musk has gotten as much of my attention as he deserves?
OK. I’m not helping find one you can still look at. I’m probably not helping find one at all. Try Google or something.
I don’t. Why do you pretend I assume that, while ignoring my questions? Just a weak attempt at gaslighting, right?
No, that would be a waste of time to consider since Lemmy advertises itself as “self-hostable” and there are people into so-called “self hosting” who are also into free speech.
What uncensored feeds are you looking at currently to know this?
What? I am saying that in a completely uncensored feed, whatever the site is, you’ll end up with nazis populating it. People don’t want to interact and associate with nazis. I said nothing about that particular group censoring anything.
You could just use Twitter generally and interact in an almost no-moderating environment. Or go to 4chan. Or many other sites that I’m sure exist.
So no evidence. Got it. You are just making things up.
Everything I do apparently is gaslighting, according to you.
So why do you think lemmy.world has rules beyond just blocking spam?
Yeah, I’m talking about specific instances. The lemmy.world owners and admins. The sh.itjust.work owners and admins. They make their own decisions for their own instance. They don’t control other instances that are made that yes, are self-hostable.
Good for them. What’s your point?
I don’t get what you’re trying to ask. Again, I have not gotten any uncensored feeds just by wanting them so far. Freedom isn’t free.
It’s extremely weird that your explanation of what no censorship would supposedly be like, is exactly how Nazis censoring everyone else would actually be.
Nazis typically explain what no censorship would supposedly be like, by describing how it would actually be if they could censor everyone else - instead of actually explaining what no censorship would be like.
Why did you put this after a quote section of yet another question you ignored, while basically repeating the point I was addressing with that question? Just another attempt at gaslighting, right?
Incorrect. Did you try looking it up?
That’s not what I said, but it sounds like it might be a confession, falsely attributed to me.
Because it’s run by glowies, duh.
Why did you waste my time with such a dumb question right after quoting more of my questions you refuse to answer?
Not sure what you mean but sounds irrelevant
Internet stuff isn’t literally self-hostable. “Self hosting” is basically just a euphemism for using your own server, not literal.
The point was what I said it was: that therefore, what you suggested considering would be a waste of time to consider.
Why did you need that repeated? Seems like more trolling and gaslighting
So you don’t know what they’ll actually look like - but we can make a good guess by looking at Twitter and 4chan.
No? I said they’d be there to take advantage of it and just spam up the feed.
Other repulsive people would be there too, of course.
“Any disagreement or question I don’t like is gaslighting”
You made the claims. You back it up. Not moving on this.
So every single community that has rules beyond “don’t spam” are run by glowies? Without exception?
They aren’t told to. They aren’t pressured into. They have specific ideals for their instance that they wish to happen via the rules of their instance.
Okay. So? I’m not interested in the semantics. The Lemmy software is accessible for anyone to spin up and use as they like.
Incorrect. Twitter is gone and was censored. X, the replacement, is censored. 4chan is censored.
Incorrect. You suggested they would be the ones censoring everyone else, not the ones having a bunch of removed spam posts.
Again, you might want to get that looked at by a professional.
Duh. This must go hard af when you have 62 IQ
Incorrect. Look up what gaslighting is.
Why?
Didn’t ask.
You said “so” here like what you’re asking if this is a rephrasing of what I said.
No, and it’s a completely bad faith attempt to rephrase me.
Every single community that has rules beyond “don’t spam” is run by people who agree with glowies on having more rules than “don’t spam,” and what I said was that lemmy.world, a particular instance (not every instance), is run by people who are glowies.
This shouldn’t need to be clarified, but you keep making me clarify already-clear shit because you’re discussing this in bad faith.
Didn’t ask, why waste time with this?
Into what? Probably incorrect, but finish your point
Didn’t ask, why waste time with this?
Didn’t ask, why waste time with this?
But less censored than most places, and they’re a shithole.
No, I did not. That’s not what I meant. You’re just wrong.
So now into personal insults, are we?
Have you heard of the burden of proof?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
Okay, that’s not what you seemed to say initially. But so how is lemmy.world specifically “run by glowies”?
“My own poor ability to explain what I mean shouldn’t be clarified. People should just know my clearly bizarre mindset”.
They aren’t pressured into having rules that they hacvve chosen to have.
That’s what Lemmy means when they talk about self-hosting.
You seem to be operating under basic definitions of words that no-one else does.
Incorrect. Twitter, X, and 4chan so far have all been more censored than most places have been throughout human history, contributing to their shithole statuses.
Yes you did.
Didn’t ask. Not my problem. Get it looked at by a professional.
Nope.
I don’t know, are we? I definitely am.
Yes, I mentioned it earlier in this thread. The person it should be on in this context is you, since you’re the one making the outlandish claims and offering nothing to back them up.
Incorrect. You understood me fine, you’re just pretending otherwise as a form of gaslighting.
My understanding is they mainly use keyboard, mouse, and touchscreen for inputs, while using screens to see what they’re doing.
Why did you just make me explain that? Dumb as fuck.
Stop putting your own statements in quote marks, it’s weird. And maybe you should stop wasting my time if you can’t handle clarifying your own statements.
Incorrect, as I assumed.
What I asked was why waste my time with it when I didn’t ask. This doesn’t seem like a reason.
Incorrect. Maybe what you mean to say is I’m one of the few people who still tend to use “literal” and “literally” correctly.
You think they’d somehow be better if they weren’t censored? Both Twitter and 4chan have less rules than Reddit or Lemmy.
No, I did not.
You made an accusation, I reject it.
So should I report you? That’s usually against instance rules.
What claims have I made? Be specific.
No, you specifically said: “Because they’re glowies”. No nuance.
What is your definition of “glowie” here? My understanding is that it’s supposedly an undercover government agent. Got any evidence for this for lemmy.world mods?
I’ll do whatever I like. And I wasn’t clarifying my statements, more noting your complaining about being asked to clarify.
No reason to believe they are “pressured”. You’ve never backed this up.
You don’t really use any words correctly. They’re all a bit off.