Hello, Im kind of new here and trying to get used to Lemmy and I was wondering about if this is true since I am considering donating on this site to support alternative projects but wanted to hear other users before doing so. That being said, what have been your experiences?
You don’t have freedom of speech on any site. Freedom of speech is freedom from the government restricting your speech, not private organizations.
That said, yes. I got banned from Reddit for merely suggesting that people who harm children should face stiffer penalties. I’ve said that many times here and even pissed off some pedophiles here, but never got banned or suspended for it. I think Lemmy takes a bit more of a hands off approach.
Consider: what I say about Reddit isn’t going to affect Reddit at all. But someone like me says bad things about Lemmy, it might have more of an effect. Smaller sites pick their battles more carefully. Bigger sites don’t care.
But even more than that, Lemmy is federated. That means your instance — lemmy.org — can ban you, and you can just join another, like db0 (what I’m on) or hexbear. We’re on different instances but we’re still able to interact.