Hey all — just launched openmic.social, a general-purpose Lemmy instance with a specific mission: open discourse + transparent, restorative moderation.
The pitch is simple — anyone can grab the mic — and the thing that makes us different is what happens when you cross a line:
- No shadowbans, ever. If your post is removed or your account is actioned, you’re told — what happened, which rule, and how to fix it.
- We help before we punish. A heads-up and a path back come before a ban. Bans are the last resort, not the first reflex.
- Moderation in the open. Every call is appealable, publicly, in our
!metacommunity. - Hard lines only: nothing illegal, no targeted harassment, no doxxing, no spam. That’s what keeps the mic open for everyone.
We’re brand new, which means early adopters shape the culture. Come introduce yourself, bring a community that needs a home, or start one — I’ll help you set it up and mod it.
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.
No definitely not trying to allow bigotry. You are definitely entitled to feel that way though.
But it doesn’t appear that you’re specifically disallowing it either
You are definitely entitled to feel that way though.
My concern is that this is what you will also say to the bigots when they arrive
When you sit down at a table and nine Nazis sit down at that table with you, there are now 10 Nazis sitting at that table.
Then it’s not “free speech and anything legal is cool”
Like, it’s not a bad thing to ban bigotry, that’s a good thing…
Which is why when you said it was “free speech”…
Everyone called you out for, either:
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Lying
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Allowing bigotry
There’s only those two options buddy…
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Seeing all your low effort shit posts makes me believe you’re a joy in real life
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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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On the reverse of that, if you want to promote the opposite you are more than welcome to, free speech is a two way street. I don’t really tolerate hate though. Maybe I’ll update our description.
That’s not good enough. You’re saying they have the right to attack people, but at least the targeted people can defend themselves. Those are not comparable
free speech is a two way street
it really isn’t
It is tho, a homophobe can say what they want and I can call them a bigoted piece of shit. That’s a 2 way street. Now if they could say what they wanted and I couldn’t say what I wanted, that’s a one way street.
So I can call a bigoted homophobe a bigoted homophobe, and they can say what ever unintelligent crap they want.
Consequences of actions is more of a one way street, something bigoted assholes can’t mentally understand.
“two-way street” implies an equal exchange, not just equal opportunity to speak, and only someone who’s never been on the receiving end of one would ever make the mistake of thinking there’s anything equal about it.
in fact, the only ones I’ve ever heard make that argument are bigots themselves, trying to excuse or defend their bigotry while shifting blame to their victims for “not standing up for themselves” or some other victim-blaming bullshit.
DARVO (an acronym for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender”) is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers, narcissists, or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior.[1] Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers.
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.
So if I wanted to start a pro-nazi community there, you would permit that?
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This either already is or will become a hotbed for rightwing pieces of shit.
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.
Openmic makes me think there will be audio.
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!
Do you allow Nazi like ideologies like Zionism?
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No we are not. I don’t support ethnic cleansing and I, do not believe in any race being superior to another unlike Zionism
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There is no good Zionists
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It sad that people do not understand that Zionism is a supremacist genocidal ideology
Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
The property owners will come over to our side. According to my conception, the majority of the local population will have to be transferred elsewhere.
We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895
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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.
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”.
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.
Also, in full transparency. You won’t find me in debates or discourse about much of the “hot topics” or the “footgun topics” Politics, Religion, etc. They frankly rarely produce any meaningful output or outcome and often devolve into circular arguments and hate on both sides of an issue. I personally am far more interested in technical discussions, engineering discussions, and business discussions.
Will your management of the instance be as low effort as your introductory post that you obviously didn’t write yourself?
Illegal where? Criticism of Israel is illegal in Germany, for example.
Regarding your "example’: That’s new to me, being a German. in this broad way the statement is wrong, i suppose. ChatGPT confirmed this. there is no law denying the right of Israel to exist. It is only true that German politics has ever since Second World War felt a historical responsibility to support Israel against antisemitism.
It is illegal in Australia as well, where anti-israel/anti-zionism/anti-genocide has been remarketed as anti-semitism.
Potential 2 year prison sentence for saying ‘from the river to the sea’ in one of the Australian states.
How do they square that with freedom of speech or like, defenses of fact?
Like how defense of fact is a valid defense against libel laws since the speech at issue was based on known facts or “truth”
There are laws and case law that make criticism of Israel harder than in other places. Post WW2 pro-Nazi and antisemetic speech was basically declared hate speech. Courts have taken a narrow view of what counts as antisemetic. There are in excess of six million reasons for that hard swing in the other direction.
So I would say the long version is this: you can criticize Israel but you need to pay close attention to how you say it. Criticizing the existence of the Jewish state is possible as well but you need to weigh your words even more carefully.
Moderators on an internet forum may take an even narrower approach to avoid any sort of legal trouble. And thus continues a chilling effect.
Freedom of speech is a tricky subject. Post WW2 the US had the influence to export their constitutional values, such as a first amendment, to Japan and West Germany. In both cases they punted. It’s not without some irony when I say opinions on how to establish freedom of speech in a democratic constitution vary.
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Quit your bullshit.
Fuck Israel. Israel is a fascist state that commits a suicide in Gaza. I am a German in Germany and I just critiziced Israel. I even used bad language. That is not illegal so don’t spread lies if you don’t know shit about the laws a country has.
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.
I also took these comments to heart and made some updates to our sidebar. I appreciate anyone who wants to participate in good faith, I started this because Reddit shadow banned me simply for trying to advertise my business. They didn’t even give me an opportunity to make things right, and it was a honest mistake. I think thats a really crappy thing to do to people. I don’t want to participate in that.
