Squabbles, another recent reddit alternative, seems to be taking the doomed "free speech" path

The phrase "free speech platform" sounds like a giant, enormous dog whistle. Which is a damn shame, because I used to enjoy that place, and now I'm not sure I will anymore... Don't want to jump to conclusions, but is there ANY self-described "bastion of free speech on the internet" that is not a cesspool full of awful people? Just one?

I'm a white, heterosexual cis male in my 40s not living in the US, so this does not affect me in any way, shape or form directly, but it still feels just icky, unnecessary and tone-deaf. Guess I'll post photos of my succulents and my goofy dog just on Lemmy from now on, bummer...

>people are on the proprietary and centralized platform

>the proprietary and centralized platform does a bad thing

>people are moving to another proprietary and centralized platform

>another proprietary and centralized platform does a bad thing

This seems to be the reason for the change (jayclees is the creator and admin of the site):

https://ibb.co/48hY8fm

They also removed the admins who disagreed with this decision. Jayclees and Daniel are the only "staff" left now. This is a really bad look for them.

Literally why would you go to this website over Reddit. It has all the same problems and is just more boring.

"Free speech" is just a dog whistle and gas lighting now. Unless it's fully allowing illegal content, then it's not free speech, which is obviously sane to not allow. That's why its a silly term to throw around in the first place.

I don't understand what I'm looking at here? Some reddit-ish place is declaring free-speech then they immediately backpedal and say racist stuff doesn't count, and also some admins left? So what is the material difference between a "free speech platform*" and lemmy which also doesn't allow racist stuff?

Squabblr*

They had a mid 2000s rebranding.

Voat any% speedrun WR (glitchless)

Sounds like they are going to speed run what happen with Voat.

I wonder why of all bad things they make an exception specifically for racism and not something else like pedophilia for example.

I left a month ago because it was clear they were going this way. Glad I'm here

I'm really confused by this direction? The admin seemed... nice, and all of the users were "let's all be friends and be postivive x!" type people. Not exactly the place for "free speech" dog wistle folks. He's just going to alienate his entire userbase, I don't understand the point.

I hope people know that us all having instances would always be better than anything centralized elsewhere. 1) I can delete all my posts if I want. 2) anyone can make a better app to talk to it. 3) we got so many different ways of sharing our free speech here, it's not even funny. 4) you can backup your stuff. I'm not, but you can do that if you serve your own server. 5) you can establish your own rules or land on someone else's server that you trust.

At this point you gotta be a lower form of life to conclude that going centralized is good for anyone.

And this is why federation is great.

Somewhere for the Trumpers to go when Truthsocial falls on its arse.

so basically 4chan without the racial slurs

We’re “free speech” except these first 4 categories we could name off the top of our heads. There will never be any reason to add to this list. Adding to that list wouldn’t be “free speech”!

Well, they're being true to their namesake, I'll give them that.

Ah, so basically your site wants to see transphobic, homophobic, misogynist and sexist content. I see.

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you-speed-run-the-content-moderation-learning-curve/

I joined Squabbles in June and liked it until the "free speech site" announcement.

I loved the lack of content ranking and downvoting so someone suggested Beehaw.

It seemed to me that the developer/admin jayclees was your basic tunnel visioned coder ignorant of news/current events. I got the feeling that he isn't politically invested. He just wanted to be left alone to code, so he changed his rules taking away the justification for messaging him. Posting on the site really slowed down. It looks like he lost many of his active users and kept his lurkers. I guess he figures it is worth the price of being left alone and that he will eventually get regular active posters again.

***with the exception of racist content, the use of slurs (racial or otherwise), targetted harassment, and incitement of violence, ***

Did everyone just skip right past reading this part? That's a lot of exceptions that cover a large gamut of activity that will continue to be not allowed. That's not exactly "free speech" by definition, but it also is not allowing content that most platforms also do not allow.

I am not exactly sure what I am missing?

Wat da hel is squabbles?

What exactly is wrong with free speech?