this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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TeCHnology
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Can someone ELI5 what Beehaw is? Their post says that the lemmy instance is just part of a large project, but the beehaw website is the lemmy instance. So what is this project? What makes them special? Google also just shows me their lemmy instance and their subreddit.
Beehaw is trying to be a "safe place" social network. They want to be a social network, welcoming to people, but also protect their community. They want people to be nice, and won't tolerate people being intolerant (racism, homophonic, sexist, transphobic, or bigoted).
I'd argue that In a lot of these things their can be some nuance in all those terms but in Beehaw expect a more absolutionist interpretation of those terms.
I understand what they're trying to do. But to give you an idea of what the result is (in my opinion) - when I mentioned free speech there I was lectured that the term is a right wing dog whistle term. I would describe them as a intolerantly tolerant place - either you ascribe to their absolutionist views or you don't. That is just my experience though.
Beehaws influence has been disproportionate as they were one of the bigger communities during the recent Reddit influxes. They don't want to be the biggest, they want to protect and nurture their own community. I get it but I think it was inevitable that would not work with federating.
The thing about free speech is that it matters most when you don't agree with the other person.
That those kinds of situations are exactly why free speech exists: People want to articulate thoughts in front of an audience that is opposed to them. What they are saying may be bad (depending on your PoV), but the fact that they can invoke free speech to say it is important (excl. harmful stuff like hate speech ofc).
Claiming to support free speech when nothing controversial is being said is just cheap talk.
I disagree with what you say, but I'm glad you're free to say it.
it's a toxic echo chamber that claims to be a "safe space", in which you either contribute to the(ir) echo, or you get banned
For example?
I once got told that if I even tried to defend or discuss my point of view (after the first and only comment on that thread), I'll be banned. Because I said that if you randomly pick out someone from a random population, you're less likely to pick a minority, because they're a minority. And that's how statistics works.
The point was about proportional representation in media. The key word there was proportional.
If I picked all my actors by picking names out of a hat (meaning it's impossible to discriminate), there is a high chance that there won't be a lot of asians in my result. But that's not because I have anything against asians, but simply because I live in a mediterranean country, and there are far fewer asians here than you'd find in asia. So even if I ended up with 19 mediterranean people, and one asian person, that'd be a proportional representation.
But I was the aggressor for not agreeing that "biasing the results but only if you personally don't like them" is good proportional representation.
And calling me the aggressor for stating an objective, undisputable mathematical fact in a relevant discussion is exactly why it's a toxic echo chamber. The truth there is decided by majority. Not by the real world.