Yes, I was never attempting to steelman OP's argument. I was pointing out the flaws of the argument as it is given.

Steelmanning is a tool that is helpful in many situations, but that does not mean it is useful in every situation. Perhaps there is an ideal version of OP's argument, a steelman, that I would agree with. But the actual argument that OP laid out is not ideal, it is hypocritical, and I am pointing that out.

A student who gets a poor grade on a paper does not get to go to the professor and ask them to "steelman" their argument for a better grade. The paper is judged as it is written.

The other day a guy posted a question about what AI is people using the most and it was downvoted to hell and piled on on the comments. Just because he asked a question. I get AI hate but people are shit

usually whenever someone complains about this sort of thing, it's because they got told off for espousing fascist bullshit, so please, elaborate for us.

How dare you persecute me for encouraging the persecution of immigrants!!!!

This whole DB0 vs. feddit.org situation is a joke. They’re using their "Anarchist Code of Conduct" to justify the exact kind of tribalist garbage it was supposed to stop.

The Code says you can’t disrespect or exclude people just for being part of some "unfavorable group." That got binned fast. Like you say, they're not even showcasing Feddit hosting Zionism, they're showcasing them removing hate-speech which aligns with their own damn Code of Conduct. The hypocrisy couldn't be more palpable.

That "democratic vote" is a joke too. The admins didn’t present a fair debate, they framed it as "Do you stand with the oppressed or with the fascists?" They loaded the language with terms like "Zionist bar problem" and "genocide apologia" to make sure the answer was obvious. That’s not democracy. That’s manipulation. That's blatant fucking propaganda.

It’s like they think anarchism means "do what we say or you’re the real fascists." Actually that's exactly what they think.

Apparently we believe in freedom of speech—so long as the speech is something we agree with....

Freedom of speech isn't freedom from response. Some people have shitty opinions, and are too fragile to accept that people don't like them or their opinions.

And some people get upset when other people don't like AI and don't want it to do everything for them.

The issue though, now, is it goes even further.

We now live in an time when the very idea of of our assumptions and opinions being challenged is considered assault or violence, and thus justifies the use of force to prevent that from happening. They think any acknowledgement of the humanity or legitimacy of their opponent is also something that should be met with violence.

I hear 20 somethings now talk like my boomer parents... in that anytime their views are challenged or questioned they resort to violence and threats. I've also had those threats directed at me in the past few years in a way I haven't encountered for most of my adult life until recently.

Most clients will hide down voted posts or comments if they reach certain number, CMIIW. I don't really care about the down vote counts but when people just blindly down vote without any reason, I can assume people that downvoted me here are not really that open to discussions and only want to hear what they wanted to hear and shows a lack of understanding.

It's acceptable and understandable for me since this is Fediverse where most people are left-leaning and I was a heavy leftist until I deep dived economics and how the left economic system is unrealistic in my personal view.

I don't agree with the comment pile on, but downvoting content you don't think fits in a community is exactly what that's supposed to be used for.

Discussion about anything spiritual. Mention the word and people automatically assume that you're an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian ready to host a sermon about how much God hates homosexuals.

No, you were just pointing out the flaws in your strawman interpretation of their argument.

Steelmanning doesn't mean making their argument better for them or "giving them the benefit of the doubt." It means making sure you've actually understood their point correctly before you start explaining why you disagree. If you can't steelman your opponent's view, then by definition you can't argue against it either - because you haven't grasped what claim you're even trying to counter in the first place.

Oh no.... People disagree with my opinion. I'm being oppressed.

I mean.. it's fine to have a community for that. But don't expect the rest of the site to not disagree with you.

But go start a community for that. Ban people who come into your community and are jerks.

far right: we’re gonna exterminate entire social groups because they’re impure

far left: we’re gonna get everyone’s basic needs met, and do everything possible (including violence) to stop the far right from exterminating anyone.

You: I literally cannot tell you two apart

Incredible, thank you for sharing.

Discrediting what someone says by questioning their underlying motives instead of engaging with the actual content is called ad hominem. Along with strawmanning, it's probably the number-one logical fallacy poisoning online discourse - and likely a major reason this whole discussion even started in the first place.

Freedom of speech doesn't mean a guaranteed audience or platform.

You can write whatever you want. No one is required to read it. No one is required to host it. If they do read it, they can say whatever they want about it.

This is the fediverse. You can host your own instance and say whatever you want. No one else is required to federate with you.

If you post something and people say it's garbage, that's not your freedom of speech being quashed. You spoke. Now they are using their freedom of speech in response.

It is fine to do both. If you have a point to make that hasn't been made about a subject, you are allowed to make it.

But people should know that commenting on something should add something to the conversation, otherwise you should indeed just use your up votes. Like how supreme court uses concurrences. "I agree, but for different reasons."

Disagreement is perfectly fine as long as it's civil and actually about what's being said. That's not what's happening here - you instantly get accused of having malicious secret motives, as is demonstrated below. It's just a way to shut down discussion instead of actually engaging with it.

being the "errrrrrm, ackshually, you just committed a logical fallacy 🤓" dweeb in response to someone else being questioned whether they're a fascist sympathizer, when that doesn't actually invalidate what I said at all, when I wasn't even talking to you -- that's an extraordinary kind of self-own, you do know that, right?

I'm gonna engage with fascists and fascist sympathizers on the same level that they engage in good-faith debate in -- that is to say, on whatever level I want to at any given moment in time. If they aren't one, let them explain what innocent ideas they've expressed that are so poorly received, that have lead them to believe Lemmy is "lacking tolerance and acceptance" -- we've got entire instances dedicated to porn, anarchists, AI lovers, tankies, trans people, furries, the French -- I'm very eager to hear what could possibly be Too Spicy For Lemmy that is not something along the lines of "I want to gas undesirables" or trending towards that direction.

It’s people not being educated anymore to tolerate divergence of opinions and, a lot more worryingly imho, not being able, because of that lack of proper education, to listen to nuanced thoughts and ideas and to be able to understand that we can disagree without having to hate on one another.

What's most worrying to me is that people don't even know why they AGREE with the opinions they agree with. For example, most people would agree that bigotry is bad (which it is), but they don't know how to argue about it.

They’ve got the moral instinct, sure, but zero intellectual grounding. And that’s a problem. Because when people don’t understand why something is wrong, they're just one propaganda push away from accepting a new definition of "bigotry" that serves whoever’s in power.

We’re seeing it happen in real time. People repeat opinions like they’re reciting scripture - no thought, no critique, just blind agreement. And now, even asking people to think critically about why bigotry is wrong is seen as suspect. It's an immediate failure of purity testing. You're not supposed to arrive to the conclusion that bigotry is bad by thinking for yourself, you are just supposed to keep repeating the correct slogans. That’s not just lazy, it’s anti-intellectualism, the exact kind of mental rot that populism and fascism thrive on. That's exactly the kind of bullshit that got USA in the state it is right now.

I have literally been called a fascist for telling people to think for themselves.

Well said. It is so frustrating when people don't understand that people disagreeing with them does not mean their freedom of speech is being violated.

Even the banning example, which is commonly pointed to as violating freedom of speech, is typically (not saying it is always) used when the user is breaking civility rules or rules established by the community which the user assented to by participating in the community discourse.

No, you don't understand. When they do it it's good, when you do it, it's bad!

It's definitely intolerant of any OS that is non-linux

Thanks for proving my point I guess.

Yep. the motto here for most 'free thinkers' is 'agree with me or you are a bad person'. They don't really want to discuss things, they just want to browbeat/bully other people into agreement. They refuse to acknowledge things are complex and that their are various legitimate viewpoints... there can only be their pure and true version of whatever ideology they believe in and anyone who questions their interpretation it is a 'false' believer.

It's idealism and egotism running into each other. So they just feel like going around labeling everything bigotry makes them some paragon of morality and truth and justice. Meanwhile they have no understanding of their own bigotry.

When people try to bully you into silence and complicity, it is very much being violated.

The vast majority of my replies on lemmy here are rarely more than name-calling and threats.

On the contrary, I believe everyone here holds a special place in their heart for TempleOS, even if it's not a practical choice. Also most everyone here has mad respect for anyone rocking some other niche nerd shit like FreeBSD or ReactOS etc. (I do, anyways)

Mostly it's just that Windows has sucked for at least a decade and macOS is just starting on its suck arc.

Vegans who treat it like a religion are difficult to be around. Vegans who treat it like a personal choice, are not.

That's true of any life choice though. People get offended when other people don't make the same choices or have the same beliefs, because they feel in attacks of invalidates them as a person.

I mean, I don't cheat in relationships and I am monogamous. But for many people that's a controversial statement that I have had a ton of pushback on because it makes them feel attacked if they are cheaters or polyamorous. Usually informing me how 'ignorant' I am, or how 'judgemental' I am... for simple express my own rules for myself.

Yeah. The anti-theism thing here is wild.

I usually just assume they are into healing crystals or yoga, but that's my own bias.

People here love ot hate on bigotry, but are totally blind to their perpetuation of it themselves. Because when they massively overgeneralize anyone who is remotely religions or spiritual based on a tiny extremist minority... it's good! It's fighting injustice and bigotry! But if other people do it, it's bad and evil, and wrong!

Now this is some S-tier trolling, the kind of thing that could've incited a weeks-long flame war back in the Usenet days. The key here is the lack of any specifics, so each reader can interpret the issue differently by filling in the details from their own experiences. And it's framed so that either I agree that Lemmy users have bad attitudes, or I disagree and prove it. *chef's kiss*

Hehe, the funny thing is that on me, your assumption would actually more correct than the fundie Christian assumption.

Very specific yoga philosophy, and "healing" crystals in the sense that I'm fine with people saying that looking at pretty rocks makes them feel better. Wouldn't generalize that into a cancer cure though.

I've seen the opposite. I've enjoyed conversation's here and people generally have good facts to back up their point. There's a few assholes but way less than reddit. I'm worried it will get worse though.

I didn't realize that about clients. (apparently since I last checked some instances have an algorithm as well). That makes downvotes from just annoying and demotivating to active censorship. There is a large number of people who will downvote anything they disagree with, and if clients or instances use that as a signal it really is harming discussions.

I agree Windows sucks, just pointing out an intolerance! I think no matter what social we go on it will eventually become an echo chamber and people will be intolerant as their hatred grows.

Another example is AI. Lemmy is intolerant of AI outside of AI specific communities, but go to LinkedIn and you have people circlejerking over how great their vibe coding is.

Back when Reddit made it's API change and I moved to Lemmy, it felt like people were still getting a feeling of things, there would be more discussion on subjects. As time is going on I'm seeing discussion around subject diminish. I guess it could have been because there was less posts? Or could it be as time has gone on people have become less tolerant of things Lemmy generally doesn't like?

Personally, I think the scoring system itself is fine. It only becomes an issue when the ecosystem turns into an echo chamber where people blindly downvote opposing arguments without providing a reason.

You really have bought into the echo chamber if you believe that.

There are bad people on both the right and left wing. However the majority on either side are not bad. Most (on both sides) have not thought deeply about the effects of if their ideas really were done in the real world. (A few have and have decided the downsides are worth accepting, but if you are not aware of the downsides and intentionally accepting of those as the least bad compromise you are part of the problem) We can disagree on which downsides are not bad enough to ignore - but everything has downsides.

I have questions about you being conservative. You seem too rational.

Vegans who treat it like a religion are difficult to be around. Vegans who treat it like a personal choice, are not.

a lot of ppl think that when i say "i'm vegan", i'm saying "u should be too". i've never told anyone they should be vegan.

lack of any specifics

Bringing up specific examples would be counterproductive - the whole thread would just turn into a debate about those examples instead of staying on the actual point. The discussion isn't about what the disagreement is over; it's about what that disagreement looks like.

Maybe, but I've met plenty of vegans who scream in your face about it. And they give a bad name to everyone else, like any extremists do.

I also am biased because I dated a vegan woman for a year who constantly whined about it, and would eat meat, and then cry about what a bad awful vegan she was and if only I was vegan too I could show her the 'way'. It was utterly bizarre.

So frankly, I kind of don't want to deal with vegans in my life ever again given those experiences. Just like I don't interact with people who have MBAs.

Sure, but you said intolerance for any non-Linux OS, and that's just simply not true as there are several non-Linux OS's we love. If you were to say Lemmy is intolerant specifically of Windows, that would be more accurate, but I'm also aware of at least one subset of die-hard Windows aficionados on Lemmy who vehemently hate Linux. Definitely a minority, but they're there.

Also, the db0 instance is pro-AI as I recall, so anyone who's keen on that sort of thing is (to my knowledge) welcome there.

To your point, in the UK and Australia you can now literally get jail time for saying some pro-Palestinian slogans. So certainly there has a cultural and sometimes legal shift towards not tolerating opposing viewpoints and it is not healthy. That said this behaviour is not limited the right. The left is not very tolerant of opposing viewpoints either

Yes, I agree, since the actual point is to generate lots of heated discussion without any resolution. Without any specifics, all that's left is vibes, and vibes are the best way to rile people up.

Yes. If your point is that you want to have an opinion and not be teased or disagreed with, that is not a thing you can have. At least, I can't imagine how that'd work.

get accused of having malicious secret motives

Pattern matching does that. And it's unfortunate. But so many people in that community do have those motives. And as a member of that community, it'd be great if you could help shout them down (and if you already do, thanks!)

why do you assume they want to engage with it?

they are shutting it down because they want to shut it down. they want to ridicule and belittle and harass.

Yeah, it's a product of identity politics. One of the premises of identity politics is that speech in and of itself, is harmful and evil, and that we must use force, including the power of the state, to stop harmful speech.

So now we have this world where we are making laws and punishing people based on subjective perceptions of 'harm'.

Yeah fair enough, you're right, I should have been specific in saying Windows and MacOS.

I believe the point still remains that intolerances exist on Lemmy.

There's a world of difference between disagreeing with someone and mocking them. Especially if the mockery is based on a complete misrepresentation of what is being said.