Thank you! Don’t hesitate to reach out if I am missing anything, I definitely don’t want anything illegal happening. I am looking for more mods and admin a to help out as well! Appreciate the kind words!
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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Great, wish you the best, but if anything gets illegal is federated to mine that's where I have to defederate. One admin to another wish you luck though.
Lemmy already has public ban logs which have reasons listed. I'm not sure what you're really offering here. I think you're being extremely naive and are fundamentally lacking understanding in how oppression and the "marketplace of ideas" functions.
Lemmy itself doesnt have shadowbans, all ban logs are public.
Haha careful on the “marketplacr of ideas” that moniker was claimed by Gettr. Ask me how I know.
You might have been expecting the response you got here, or you might not have. I know I learnt more about nazi/hate speech dogwhistles in my first few weeks as a Lemmy admin than I had learnt in all my life up to that point 😅.
I also know in those early days there were people worried my instance was a "free speech" instance because I wanted open conversations instead of bans. Mostly I think I didn't appreciate how big of a problem it was, and for sure I had people registered on my instance expecting it was a "free speech" instance. There are people out there looking for a place to spout their hate and many think Lemmy is the place for it because it's advertised as censorship resistant.
Please know that there is a strong belief (among both nazis and anti-nazis) that indicating a place as being able to speak your mind is a dog whistle for allowing hate speech. Over time if you find you aren't attracting the right kind of members, you may need to tweak your wording. But also please know that the idea of supporting people to be better community members instead of flat out banning people does work for many members, because many people just don't realise that what they are saying is harmful. Some people will be operating in bad faith though, and it's typically the same small number of people that keep getting banned. Because you have open registrations, these users are more likely to come to your instance.
It's also important to understand that the Fediverse is full of users that have felt unsafe on mainstream social media. Your rules against hate speech need to be strictly enforced, of you'll find yourself isolated in the Fediverse as no one will want to federate with you.
Thanks! This is by far the most constructive comment I have gotten and truly appreciate it. I’m learning and always will adjust as needed. I’m open to constructive criticism and more importantly any insight others who have done this can provide. The immediate assumptions about me and my goals were at best amusing and not at all constructive however, somewhat unsurprising to be honest.
Thank you! Pre-blocking this so I won't have any splash damage my main feed. "Open mic" translates too much on nazi or hate baiting nowadays. Open socials need moderation or become chesspools. I do not hang out with toxic people in real life, I don't understand the principle that "I have to" do it digitally. Hard pass. Good luck!
Openmic makes me think there will be audio.
There are development plans
It has been my experience that “free speech” (especially online) is code for “bigotry welcome”.
I see nothing in the description here to convince me this will be any different.
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This either already is or will become a hotbed for rightwing pieces of shit.
Yeah, it's a shame, "free-speech" gets abused by bad people and it can't be the scope for any platform. I could imagine it being used for other purposes as well. For example I always wanted to run a Piracy community that doesn't remove links or tutorials on how exactly we do it. But that probably also crosses the lines. ...Some other Robin Hood activity... I mean it could be used for good as well, depending on perspective.
So, transphobia, racism, misogyny, all acceptable as long as it's aimed broadly, and doesn't become targeted harassment of an individual?
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Caught in some loop, the content warning just keeps popping up when I click Continue. Or maybe my phone is trying to protect me.
I’ll have to take a look and see if I can figure out why that is and resolve it.
Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans. There's no recommender algorithm to make the "shadow" part. Or mod tool to edit votes. I believe you are using incorrectly the term. Please clarify. A ban is a ban. Shadowban is no ban per se, but from there on you post to /dev/null in whichever platform has support for that shit (i.e. meta)
Lemmy most definitely has shadowbans, but they are applied at the level of whole entire communities rather than end-users. I remember being on the StarTrek.Website instance when that functionality was added to the Lemmy code, and discussing with someone my finding out that ChapoTrapHouse was no longer accessible from it, despite the fact the instance remained federated. No announcement of that fact was ever made iirc, it's just that one day poof the behavior has changed, after Lemmy deployed a version that allowed for that.
Some few instances are very open about their hiding of communities - see e.g. https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/, listing in detail every one - but most are not, and the Lemmy UI has nothing at all like the list that it shows for (de)federations.
The Lemmy admins also can remove people even from the modlogs, in cases of severe abuse. Tbf it's exceedingly rare and there is little evidence of this being abused (well there was one time, but the excuse that it was due to a bug seemed believable to me and most everyone else - Lemmy.ml quite often tests new versions of the code before they get rolled out to the rest of the Threadiverse, which is quite helpful actually).
Lemmy also fails to notify someone of their having been moderated. The various communities are FULL of stories of people asking where their posts went, or why they can no longer post to a community, or stating their discovery that they have an event in the modlog. The notification of moderation activities is exceedingly poor on the Lemmy platform.
Sadly, Reddit does a much better job at notification of an event, and also provides for a modmail to communicate with the mods to discuss the situation, e.g. to ask why, rather than leaving it to the end-user to wonder if they should DM each one listed in sequence until they find one that is even active much less responsive...
Lemmy is imperfect. At least Huffman is not in charge here, but conversely the tools have aways to go before we catch up even to what Reddit offers.
Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans.
Multiple instances and even an app has built in blocks.
Instead of looking up a profile and seeing "banned" you get an error. Instead of seeing an an entry in the modlog, it's literally baked into the code.
So if I wanted to start a pro-nazi community there, you would permit that?
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Will your management of the instance be as low effort as your introductory post that you obviously didn't write yourself?
What is your definition of free speech?
Fair question, and have sat thinking about answering it changed my mind about the wording I am using.
What I actually built is due process, not a speech policy — no shadowbans, you're told which rule you broke, warnings before bans, public appeals. That came from getting shadowbanned off Reddit for advertising my own business with no notice and no recourse.
"Free speech" was the wrong description for that and I've pulled it from the description. The line I'm drawing: you can argue an unpopular position here without being removed for it, but you can't dehumanize people for who they are. Bigotry isn't dissent — it drives out the people who make a place worth being in. I personally want OpenMic to be welcoming to others, with out the disenfranchising hate, or destructive speech. It'll be there, it'll happen and I'll do my best to clean it up. I can promise one thing I learned a long time ago is we can all find something to disagree about, and we can easily come up with reasons to hate one another. Thats not very interesting and makes life not fun.
So while I appreciate your question (part of me thinks it had ulterior motives and was more of a trap, this thread is full of it) I think my use of free speech may have been misguided. I also teach my kids regularly that while you have freedom of speech, you don't have freedom of consequences because of that speech.
I am human, I am learning as I go, I am definitely not perfect. I am however willing to learn and improve.
Okay, I say that is a lot more concise definition for what you're aiming for. When a website declares to be for "free speech", it carries a certain connotation these days. Look what Twitter has become after it got bought by Elon Musk and turned into a "free speech website" for example. And good that a line has been drawn so that bigotry isn't allowed.
Thanks. I’m working on it. I don’t really have tolerance for hate and I’ll be honest I think many of the people here are just as bad ad the ones they are commenting against. I also realize we’ve all lived a different experience and I have to allow room for that, at the end of the day I have zero tolerance for hate.
All Republicans and Zionists, Nazi's cam fuckin bite the curb. Come at me imma take as many of ya out as I can
People aren't trying to trap you. What you're seeing is vulnerable people who have seen and heard all of this before trying to get your boundaries out in the open before your instance gets momentum. That way, they can decide whether to interact with your instance, block it or defederate it before being exposed to yet more hate targeting them under the veneer of "civil debate".
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