Technically, yeah. Some instances are run by tin-pot dictators with delusions of godhood, but if you get banned from one of those just switch to another one.

The communities tend to be bubblier, though, since they're small. So if your opinions don't match you'll get shouted down harder.

What makes Lemmy different from Reddit is that if some moderator or admin is limiting your freedom of speech, you can run your own instance with your own rules and communities and still be on Lemmy. Reddit can ban you from Reddit, but Lemmy is like a collection of "reddits" that integrate and there is no central authority. To answer your question, as a user you have more freedom to find an instance with rules that align with your values and wishes, and you always have the option to create your own instance, and no one can stop you. If you say things that other people don't want to hear, they might block you, but that doesn't limit your freedom of speech.

Absolutely.

It's not even a debate.

My 13 year old Reddit account was perma-banned without warning for saying "PUNCH A NAZI". Let's test that out here.

PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI PUNCH A NAZI

And that was just my first of probably 30-40 Reddit accounts before I finally said fuck it and came here. I'm not some asshole purposefully posting asshole shit I know I'm going to get banned for. Reddit is just that pathetic.

It's just that I have zero patience for dipshits posting misinformation (as should we all) and I'm not afraid to let them know it. Lemmy gives me that liberty. Thanks Lemmy!!!

short answer: yes

medium answer: depends on what instance you're on

It depends what you mean. Individual instances have their own approach to moderation, which influences what you will see and have access to. Some are more hands off than others. But if your "free speech" is really just looking for a free pass to hate on folk, then you won't have much luck with lemmy. There are instances that allow that, but most other instances block them.

Moderation exists but it is built by the community at large, not corporate overlords. That may mean that harmful speech is removed more aggressively than on corporate sites. On most corporate media sites, bigotry or trolling has to be extremely overt before it is removed. On the other hand, the nature of Lemmy (and the fediverse in general) is that it's a fairly low cost of entry, so there are many different people running many different instances, each with their own governance.

Try it out for a week or two, and if you find it worthwhile enough that you check it daily, I think it's very nice donate to the person/people running your instance. It helps with the cost of running it.

There are no ads, no corporate content, no manipulative algorithm.

We are not perfect, but we're a lot better than most of what's out there. We're a little bit weird, and most of our jokes are about Star Trek or canned produce (for reasons no one understands), but it's a pretty cool place.

Ive made many comments that go against the general view of the user base. It gets downvoted but never deleted or banned. So I would say its pro free speech.

I was using Lemmy And am now on piefed and I can say that Lemmy feels more free from reddit. I find my stuff getting removed less and if it did, the mods would have actual reasons for it rather than reddit mods which removed stuff because they felt like it. There's still the mob mentality with down votes and people still mass down vote things they don't like though

Hell yeah.

Now, will people disagree with you in very emotional ways, downvote without giving any explanation, etc etc.? Sure! But you won't get banned for opposing Western imperialism, for instance. I mean, I talk about God and give people shit for being vacuous, hedonistic and self-centered (because that's at the core of many sociocultural issues) and I haven't been banned, at most I get boo'd. 😅

freedom of speech means the government can't arrest you for speaking up. Neither lemmy nor reddit are the government, so freedom of speech does not apply.

I’d actually consider Lemmy’s freedom of speech to be very similar to the US. Nobody on the network can limit your speech in your own instance but nobody has to platform your terrible speech and everyone is free to ignore your speech and exclude you to just participating on your own instance.

Freedom of speech. Yeah, sorta.

Freedom from consequences of your speech. Nope.

lemmy isnt really an organization. its a platform that is then utilized by hundreds of different operators/groups implementing their own rules against much of the same content. there are many of these platforms that all offer differing capabilities and features while sharing a lot of the same content. this network is what we refer to as the fediverse.

the reddit-like side is the threadiverse and is mimicked by platforms like lemmy.

then there is the twitter-like (microblog) side i call the twitterverse and is mimicked by platforms like mastodon.

then you have platforms that can access both sides of the fediverse like piefed and mbin.

https://fedidb.com/

as for censorship...

its the beauty of this network' if one of those servers goes apeshit people can literally just move their 'subreddit' to a different server and tell the og one to fuck right off. this has happened a few times in different ways. users created new subs on other servers and effectively ignored the original, with no one having to make new accounts. it proves the idea.. no one person or company can control the content of the fediverse.

You don’t have freedom of speech on any site. Freedom of speech is freedom from the government restricting your speech, not private organizations.

That said, yes. I got banned from Reddit for merely suggesting that people who harm children should face stiffer penalties. I’ve said that many times here and even pissed off some pedophiles here, but never got banned or suspended for it. I think Lemmy takes a bit more of a hands off approach.

Consider: what I say about Reddit isn’t going to affect Reddit at all. But someone like me says bad things about Lemmy, it might have more of an effect. Smaller sites pick their battles more carefully. Bigger sites don’t care.

But even more than that, Lemmy is federated. That means your instance — lemmy.org — can ban you, and you can just join another, like db0 (what I’m on) or hexbear. We’re on different instances but we’re still able to interact.

In some ways yes, and in others no. On Reddit, shitheels like UniversalMonk and all of his sock puppets, along with Dragonfuck would have been banned a long time ago.

It has just as much freedom as any other platform. It all depends on who the admins and moderators are. We do have better tools of keeping those in check, with the modlog being publicly available tho.

Best to donate to another project besides lemmy.

The main dev for lemmy is kind of a shitty person who is not shy about their shitty beleifs.

He supports authoritarians and dictatorships and bans anyone who doesn't excuses the human rights abuses of dictatorships.

There is three questions to consider.

One is the site itself. Reddit inc has their own policies that apply site-wide no matter what. Lemmy has no central organization like that, although each individual server operator has their own acceptable use policy for what they allow on their server. This means it is both more free and more confusing- if you want to post potentially objectionable content like porn, there are plenty of servers that allow it or you can always run your own, but you have to make sure you are on one.

Next is individual group moderation. Both Reddit and Lemmy have this, community level moderators that apply whatever standards particular community requires. There is much less of the 'power mod on a power trip' situation than on Reddit currently, at least in my experience. I think some of that is because the overall traffic level is less, so it will be interesting to see what happens as Lemmy grows.

Finally there is culture and self-moderation. You see this on mass market platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where someone will say like they were roped at a party and want to buy a pewpew to unalive themself or some other such bullshit. Unfortunately that brain rot is spreading into Reddit, even though it is not at all required. Fortunately Lemmy seems pretty free of that so far.

I would say, Lemmy (or the Fediverse in general is just like real life. You can say anything you want, but don't expect anyone to invite you to their party or talk to you, if you are being an jerk.

Meaning, that noone can ban you from Lemmy for anything you say. But they certainly can ban you from their own instance and / or not federate with an instance, you are on if they don't like what you say.

Also, as a general word of advice, just be a decent, nice person and you'll probably be fine. Online or offline. A major idea of the fediverse is to imagine and be part of a better world and if we engage with each other respectfully, everyone is better off.