It is useful to have lots of stupid laws. It makes people feel powerless and frustrated. It means the police can always find excuses to persecute you.

The technicalities of the individual laws are not important. It’s the psychological effect of the whole body of laws on a people.

sounds important. sad the link doesn’t work for me.

Very interesting. It shows that Lemmy was always a political project. It was always meant to advocate certain politics and discourage others.

IMO this is not what new users expect. So we keep seeing these posts of people realising, and being shocked, and sometimes rage-quitting.

Only a certain portion of people will stay with Lemmy after that realisation, and the others will flee. Is that what you want? (again just IMO)

If not, is there a way to make this political vision more evident, to try to stop this effect?

TBH I’m against the politics of Lemmy. But (IMO again) despite that it’s still a valuable project, and maybe a historically important one.

That’s the defence of the “slur filter” that everyone can agree on. It’s harmless because it does almost nothing. It has no real benefit or cost.

The people who say it deters fascists - it just doesn’t hold water.#

I’m always the first to start these threads.

But it’s good to remember, we chose Lemmy over sites like notabug because it works better. Some good decisions by the devs created a good website, enabling good discussions, which you just don’t see elsewhere.

Some things like the “slur filter” seem sketchy, but you have to give the devs the benefit of the doubt. They clearly know a couple of things about forum design.

At the same time, it’s important to talk about this stuff. Better ideas usually come from debate.