this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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Yes and no. The people still have the voice, you're not preventing them from talking to other people, you're just preventing them from accessing your instance.
Centralized websites like Facebook, Twitter, whatever. That would be censorship if they remove somebody's voice.
Decentralized instances, are closer to private communities. They're focused, and they create curated viewpoints.
If the federated universe gets dominated by one or two powerful instances, then yes it would be censorship, but if people are using it at a decentralized fashion: it's just communities expressing preferences.
Censorship is not only about completely remove somebody voice. Limiting the visibility of somebody voice is also censorship. It doesn't matter if people are centralized in few instances or not , you still are limiting opinions that re not off topic from reaching certain people.I think some stuffs should be censored like clear hate speech and racism etc.
It's not (always). Especially if the people "limiting your voice" are the ones giving you the platform to reach other people in the first place, usually out of their own pocket or thanks to donations. In the fediverse at least you can always set up your own instance.
If there's somebody outside my house putting up a big display about some political issue, me closing my window blinds is not censoring them. Yes their message is no longer visible to the people inside my house. But they can still talk to anybody who comes to the public space. As long as they have access to the public space I would argue it's not censorship
Free speech and censorship only mean something when the government is involved. Free speech is freedom of consequences on speech and opinion from government retaliation. Censorship is the same, it's a tool used by governments, for the better (like censoring Mein Kampf) or the worst (like censoring LGBT books). Other than that, Lemmy instances not being run by the government, the owner is free to not want to associate with you, if your core ideas clash. You're free to sign-up on other instances if you don't like the ones you're on, or even setup your own.
but you want to make sure all your dog whistles and doubletalk are still welcomed.
You're stupid, go home kid