Yes we do. Plenty of stuff is banned by federal law.

Do you get what I mean? If you do, why are you being so overly literal here?

Snuff films, for the same reason as CP/CSAM

And action movies are not. Neither are horror or slasher movies. Neither is porn. Even though each of them might (or might not) inspire and incentivize illegal deeds.

It is not a general principle we subscribe to. It is enforced very selectively, and only in areas that we find most shocking. Which is understandable, but neither reasonable, nor consistent. I don’t know about you, but I think criminal law should be based on principles which are reasonable and consistent.

One such principle may be: “Media which may inspire illegal action, should be illegal themselves”

But that’s not consistently enforced, but selectively, limited by criteria which seem dubious at best.

This is what I mean, when I say “This argument does not hold water”

These are all banned to stop demand.

And that’s the interesting question: Why only these things, and nothing else? There is plenty of stuff out there which may inspire people toward illegal action, from real world depictions of violence, to action movies.

My greatest internet achievement: I came up with the name for that story!

Okay, not quite, I came up with calling it “The Dagobah Story”, but close enough! :D

And of course there are the trolls!

Even they are still properly trolly around here! How nostalgic! Maybe not even a bot.

The statement is disgusting and not really defensable by itself

I hate it when this happens. Why do feelings always play into this discussion? “The statement is disgusting”, is not an argument, and should never be part of any discussion.

No matter how disgusted a statement might make you feel, if it has a good argument behind it, it should be regarded as true.

I agree that the argument doesn’t quite work. And that’s that.

“child porn isn’t abuse and should be legal”

I think that this is not true. It definitely is abuse. But I also think that the argument for why it is so, is not that trivial.

I mean, can you make it? Try it out!

Let’s say someone distributes CP. How does what happens here, the sending of 0s and 1s across a wire, constitute abuse?

If you think about it like that, it doesn’t.

Of course if you take into account a broader context, then this argument does break down. For the details you would probably need complex words and terms like “retraumatization” and “inability to consent”, and “right to one’s own image”, and know a bit about what those things are, and how they work.

I wouldn’t expect every 16 year old today to be able to get all of that straight. And I would not expect any 16 year old in the early 2000s, an age long, long before metoo, and any sensitivity toward sexual trauma, to be able to get that.

Thinking that isn’t going to lead to more actual children being exploited is extremely naive.

That particular argument doesn’t hold water. We don’t generally subscribe to this kind of argument.

The general principle behind the specific argument you bring up here is this: All expression which is likely to inspire someone toward illegal action should itself be illegal.

CP is likely to inspire some people toward child abuse. Child abuse is illegal. Thus the distribution of CP should be illegal.

We don’t do this anywhere else.

Descriptions of non consesnual violence are likely to inspire some people toward non consensual violence. Non consensual violence is illegal. Thus the distribution of all descriptions of non consensual violence should be illegal.

If we take this seriously, we have to ban action movies. And I am not even getting into the whole porn debate…

No, the only valid reason for banning the distribution of child porn which I can think of, lies in the rights of the victims. The victims were abused, and their image was used without their consent. Without them even possibly being able to give consent to any of that, or the distribution that follows.

So anyone who shares child porn, is guaranteed to share a piece of media which shows someone being subjected to a crime, while they couldn’t possibly give consent for that to be recorded, or shared publicly. Making it illegal to share someone being a victim of a crime, without them being able to consent to that being shared, is a reasoning which has far fewer problems than what you propose here.

Of course! How could I miss it. The argument: “User numbers are an indicator of quality”, is not valid, unless in context of the fediverse. Because…

Wait, I don’t think me, being the dumb asshat I am, understand that: Why? Why do you think user numbers indicate that something “can’t be as bad as you make it out to be” in the fediverse, but not anywhere else?

Reddit has more users than lemmy. Can’t be that bad then!

I see! Thank you for clarifying!

So let me see if I understand you correctly. I asked what Mastodon is for. You answered that Mastodon is for having meaningful conversations with people one on one about subjects important to you.

That would mean Mastodon is not in any way comparable to twitter, or any other social media platform of the like. To me it seems that, by this description you provide, it is best compared to a chat room, where you are together with a hand full of friends you already know, and can have a conversation. Just in a timeline that is a bit slower, and a bit more permanent than a chat room, but not quite as bloated as a classical internet forum.

That means Mastodon is not “social media”. The purpose of you being there is not to easily discover new stuff which might interest you. And likewise you also can’t easily reach out to new people with stuff that interests you, and which you think might interest other people. Mastodon doesn’t want you to be able to do that easily. Because Mastodon is an internet forum with people you already know, just with an added word limit.

So it seems I have misunderstood Mastodon. It doesn’t intend to be social media. It intends to be an early 2010s internet forum with a word limit. Now that I know what it is, and that this is what it is supposed to be, it makes a lot more sense to me.

And there are small independent artists who want to display their latest artwork to an audience of followers on a social media platform, with the potential of broader reach and impact. And there are activists, who aim to raise awareness by doing the same thing.

What you seem to be saying, is that social networks like Mastodon are not for that. No artists. No activism.

So, what’s Mastodon for?

I think this opinion is a bit… strange.

So no, spending an hour putting pixels on r/place is not a great way to stick it to Reddit. Constantly talking about Reddit and basically giving it free ad-space and mind share on Lemmy also does not stick it to Reddit. The original poster is correct: best thing is a blank canvas.

This is basically a rehash of: “There is no bad publicity!”

That’s complete nonsense. An advertiser looks at a few things in a website to advertise on. Three very important factors: Traffic, because you want a sufficient number of people to potentially click your ad. Engagement, because people who participate on the website will be more likely to click your ad and then buy something. AND brand identity. That third one is the reason why advertising Disney plus on PornHub might be a bad idea, even if PornHub has great engagement and traffic.

This third factor is the problem reddit is currently facing, and has always been facing: Really big players spend millions on PR so that they are catching the current feeling of what is hip, young, and positive in their advertising and brand identity. They also want to advertise their product on websites which give people the same feeling: They want their product displayed on websites which feel young, hip, and positive. You do not want your product associated and displayed on a website whose userbase is obviously annoyed, negative, and keeps shouting “Fuck Spez”, whatever that means.

That has been a reddit problem for quite a long time: It never had a brand identity which was glitzy and positive enough to be very attractive. It isn’t young, and hip, and positive. It always had the stigma of being a “nerd cave”. Which is fine, if you have a product that you don’t mind to be associated with that, and if the userbase is happy with that. “When did the Narwahl bacon?”, was cringey as fuck, but it reflected an essentially positive attitude and feeling of a userbase which didn’t mind to be associated with the site. As an advertiser you can work with that, and cann piggyback on that.

You do not want to piggyback on “Fuck Spez”. Because you don’t want your product to be associated with an obvious feeling of negativity and frustration. You don’t want your brand to be caught in that. The best option for an advertiser when faced with a website that carries clear negative reputation and connotations, is to just not be there.

So, I think what you are saying here, is not true. It would be better for reddit, if nobody talked about reddit. A bad reputation, and a brand identity associated with “frustration” (in exchange for more clicks and engagement) is far worse than being a “mostly neutral nerd cave”, which is a bit less popular.

Elections are coming up. I remember the time around 2016. Nothing new under the sun.

I suggest you make a bot for that.

A more accurate analogy is tolerating the abusive person because you don’t want to completely lost contact with many other people you care about

Thing is: Communities also can leave. If the community cares about its mods in the same way the mods care about the community, a move toward an alterantive medium is not a problem.

Of course that’s not how it is. The communities at large to a good part don’t give a shit about the people who moderate. The relationship is often entirely one sided. A community which cares, leaves with the mods. A community which doesn’t give a fuck, stays.

Do you notice a pattern?

Every single one of those is either SF or Fantasy.

There are a lot of artsy lovers of literature out there who hate exactly those genres, and who have a burning passion to fix all the (perceived) flaws which (in their view) come baked into them.

As I see it, that’s a big part of the problem: For the last century “a writer” was always “the literary type”. There were some nerds who pretended to be writers. And those wrote pulp, SF, fantasy, and comics. Those were not real writers. You wouldn’t hire one of those, if you wanted to have a real, well crafted story. At least that has been a rather common prejudice for the last 100 years or so.

And now, all of a sudden (over the last 20 years), the most popular franchises, generating the most income, all turned into SF and Fantasy, while eating everything else in their path.

In that context, I don’t think the current situation is all that surprising. If you want to hire “a real writer”, there is a good chance that you will hit one who despises what writers were taught to despise for the last hundred years. In an unlucky twist for everyone involved, that also happens to be what they now have to write.

For me what I appreciate most about current lemmy, is the difference in approach between an “early adopter crew” and “mostly mainstream”.

What drew me to reddit about 15 years ago was the notable difference in climate between it, and a lot of other more mainstream social media platforms. That difference withered away over time, which, in hindsight, lead me to run.

That “running” happened within reddit: First I started off my interaction with reddit at the frontpage. Until the frontpage became a cesspool. Then I made my own frontpage, with subs that were funny and interested me. Until every sub that even had the potential to hit the frontpage, suffered its own slow decline toward “YouTube comment section discourse”. So the subs I frequented and participated in, became more and more niche, smaller, and more specialized.

It’s not that my interests shifted all that much, toward “a few extremely narrow and specific things”. In hindsight it seems clear that I was just running away from the “commercial giant mainstream social media thing”, that most of reddit was becoming.

Running away from reddit is only the last step in that long process :D

Yes? Have you ever tried shoving something back from being on the internet?

That happens at times on the internet. I have to agree with the general impression though: I have only been here quite shortly, but the feel seems closer to “the reddit of olden days” for the general tone and feeling. Mostly a good thing.

I don’t see the problem. I don’t have a right to my screen name. Anyone can use variations of that name to post anything they want on any platforms they want. I can’t stop them. And I should not be able to stop them.

If my precious online identity gets hit in the confusion… Well, that’s the risk I take if I have tied my online identity to nothing else but a meaningless pseudonym, easily faked, copied, and impersonated.

For me, this is just a simple demonstration that you can’t trust the name “goat”, and a picture of a goat, as a reliable identifyer. Now that I type it out, this is just stupidly obvious. Anyone who thinks that a goat picture and a nickname reliably identify someone on the internet, is just being very, very stupid in this instance.

I find it dangerous to allow someone to impersonate someone else on the fediverse (an admin too) and begin starting trouble.

I don’t find that dangerous at all. I find it very disturbing that anyone would be stupid enough to believe that the nickname “goat” and a goat picture is enough to reliably identify them as the same person.

All in all, that seems like a non problem to me. A misunderstanding among a stupid minority, easily cleared up, whenever it is desired.