Just started Lemmying today. Have lots of questions. Someone mentioned mod logs, so I went down a rabbit hole reading mod logs. The only reason I left reddit was because many mods are dicks. But reading the logs, it seems mods ban people and censor like crazy here too. Isn’t Lemmy supposed to be more free and open? How is this different from Reddit? I honestly don’t understand.
If you don’t find instances or communities that have a level of moderation you appreciate, you could still start your own imstance with your own/no rules and federate with the Lemmy universe.
However, if ‘your’ rules are too controversial, you might not find other people willing to engage with your communities and other instances might even decide to block your server.
I feel that people and discussions on Lemmy are less toxic compared to Reddit. With less toxic I mean less insults, less provocations, less trolling etc. and more (from my perspective) valuable and deeper discussions instead. And a generally more supportive and open-minded attitude.
Main reason is probably that a large part of Lemmy users is quite homogeneous: left leaning, IT focused, rather young people etc. You always have to bear in mind that opinions here are not necessarily representative for the society as a whole.
Regarding trolling: I personally rarely appreciate trolls and I’m happy that mods are setting certain boundaries in the communities I engage with.
It would have been more balanced but all the right leaning people ended up on those torn-down and neutered fedivervse bastardizations (Gab, Truth etc) that don’t even bother to federate. And even if they did, I doubt that many lemmy instance operators would have the integrity to not childishly “fediblock” them.
Has nothing to do with having integrity. We don’t need the ‘balance’ of nazi racists, we’re good.
As always, it is quite an experience to drop into the different self-organized bubbles for a quick peek.