Hello everyone,
Following the recent discussions on [email protected] and [email protected] , it seems that people realize that Lemmy.world is subject to European laws, and not the US ones.
This is another event where US citizens seem to be looking for an instance that would adhere to their “legal culture”, the previous one being the US elections, where the topic was discussed everywhere, before getting channeled into [email protected]
I don’t know anything about Dutch or Finnish laws, but I’ve seen many recent articles about people arrested in Germany for their social media posts that were considered hateful or violent (which is frankly a culture shock to me as an American), so I can see why some of the posts on Lemmy in the past week would be concerning.
https://lemmy.world/comment/13870047
So, the question is: could Discuss.online become that instance? And host US-focused communities like “AskUSA”, “USPolitics”, “USFinance”, this kind of things?
I am mostly asking because there’s no secret that the DO admins aren’t the biggest Lemmy fans, so would you guys be okay if your instance would get promoted, potentially causing an influx of users and communities, some requiring moderation?
Thank you for your comment!
To be honest, the situation now feels like most of people on Lemmy are on LW, most of the communities are on LW, and that would probably stay this way if there is no incentive for people to look for other places.
Your other comment touched upon the legal aspect, so I’m not going to talk about that here. There was another example of “US matters taking over the whole place” with the US elections. Some communities like [email protected] would have a majority of threads about that topic, overwhelming the community, especially members who were not US citizens.
[email protected] took another approach: they forbid US politics questions. People then asked for a place to go, and it became [email protected]
The whole thread is here: https://feddit.org/post/4482552
We are now seeing a similar situation with the recent LW decision. People are looking for other instances and communities that would follow the legal framework they are used to, and that’s why I mentioned that DO could become that US specific instance.
They kind of do, or at least they differentiate on one aspect. All the German and French communities are hosted on feddit.org and jlai.lu. When people wanted to consolidate the electric vehicle communities, they chose slrpnk.net (https://feddit.org/post/4569227). Beehaw is known for their very strict moderation policies. Lemm.ee is known to be the “non defederating instance which is not LW nor lemmy.ml or hexbear”
If a generic instance does not have a differentiator, there’s almost no incentive for anyone to use it compared to let’s say LW, SJW and Lemm.ee
I don’t think every instance has to have a “theme” that it remains exclusive to - although I agree with lazyguru that the existing theme already here is to have fun discussing things:-P - but isn’t it enough that DO is welcoming to hosting communities that could meet the needs of the Fediverse as a whole?
Perhaps in addition to [email protected] we’ll add [email protected] or [email protected] (although I think the former already covers that role?) or [email protected] (there is already a [email protected] I see). It doesn’t need to be exclusive, just welcoming, which it already is:-).
Especially since the role for the significantly more controversial [email protected] is already covered.
Moving forward, either in this or another post, I would love to hear your thoughts as to what else would make the Fediverse more welcoming to people wanting to migrate here from Reddit? There’s only so much distancing we can do from the tankie instances, apparently, but other than that I think Lemmy is off to a great start?
This one is probably going to look for another location if they can’t discuss jury nullification of future crimes with the new LW ToS
Things like AskUSA or USAFinances could go pretty much anywhere. And even USpolitics does not have to be so problematic. But it sounds like you want a space more for international people to talk about international matters, not only in relation to the USA, though perhaps sparked by events happening in the USA, at least for today but for tomorrow perhaps it will happen elsewhere.
People discussing things in good faith can do so easily and anywhere, I generally find, but the problem with social media is that people who refuse to restrict themselves to good faith discussions will join as well. So basically you may be wanting 4chan, except without the toxicity - but that’s not how that works, it would take enormous efforts to build something like that, which could be done but would be supremely difficult especially with the tools offered by Lemmy?