getting_started | Moderation / Censorship on Dreamwidth?

I was a longtime LJ user back in the day, got sucked into the Facebook borg, and am now returning to my roots. Many thanks to the staff and volunteers for creating/maintaining Dreamwidth.

I'm still finding my bearings, so apologies if this is not the right place for this kind of question.

As y'all are probably aware, Facebook heavily censors a wide variety of topics, from porn, to vaccines, to erotic Bernie memes. (Ask me how I know about that last one). I've been banned (temporarily) and seen friends banned (temporarily and permanently), sometimes for posts they made years earlier that were consistent with Facebook's rules at the time.

As a result, I've become increasingly angry at being treated like a child by Facebook's Dolores Umbridge algorithms. One of the main reasons I've fired up my account on Dreamwidth is the founder's stated commitment to free speech:

"With servers in the US we're obliged to follow US laws, but we're serious about knowing and protecting your rights when it comes to free expression and privacy. We will never put a limit on your creativity just because it makes someone uncomfortable — even if that someone is us."

...and from the site's Operating Principles:

"We will not place limits on your expression, except as required by United States law or to protect the quality and long-term viability of the service (such as removing spam)."

While I'm heartened by the apparently vigorous commitment to free speech here, many sites that claimed to support free speech at their founding, grew to support censorship of a wide variety of topics. For example, when reddit was founded, it claimed to be a "bastion of free speech". Over the intervening years, however, it has censored or banned thousands of communities, on topics ranging from drugs to sex work to conservative politics.

The founders of Dreamwidth also don't seem very active on the site any more. denise hasn't posted publicly since 2015. mark hasn't posted publicly since 2013. Many of the founding documents are outdated with references to policies that don't exist any more (such as invite codes).

As a result, I'm hesitant to invest in a site that seems to be on autopilot, and de facto controlleded by volunteers who may not share the founder's commitment to free speech.

So, before trying to recruit my friends here, I'm trying to get a sense of the real boundaries of free speech on Dreamwidth.

To help clarify, I've made a list of topics that have been banned on other major services. Note, to be clear, I don't necessarily support the communities that were banned on other sites. For example, I'm not a Trump supporter, and I'm certainly not a Nazi. However, I'd like to occasionally be able to discuss those topics without fear of being banned.

Which of these topics, if any, is likely to put my Dreamwidth account/communities at risk of a ban/censorship?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this matter!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The crucial difference is, you are the customer Dreamwidth is serving. But you are the product Reddit and Twitter are selling.

Yes, that definitely improves their incentives. That doesn't mean they won't censor. Parler was a paying customer of Amazon, and was shut down with 24 hours notice.

My sense, and maybe I'm off base, but as someone who's been here since the beginning - I don't think the founders of this site are Not Paying Attention. They are, for the most part, not posting frequently because, well, they don't have to. You have the ability to limit who sees your posts and those people who find you can also limit what you see in return. That goes a long, long way towards making sure people feel safe posting content.

Over in my corner of DW, I haven't been exposed to the mass insanity that other social media sites seem prone to - but I also don't go seeking it out here, either. What I suggest to you, then, is to see how active you'll be here, what kind of people connect to you and so forth - and then decide whether you want to upgrade and support it.

Thanks for the feedback, it's good to hear.

I've already bought a year's Premium membership. What I'm concerned about is spending a lot of time building communities here only to have them deleted instantly without warning or recourse based on some admin's whim (which DW's TOS currently allows them to do). This has happened to many communities on Facebook, Reddit, Youtube, Tumblr, etc. If DW has already turned into a censor-fest, then I don't want to bother with building any communities, and I'll use it just for my own personal blogging.

What I've seen of denise's posts suggests that she has a strong commitment to free speech, but if she retires, or steps back from operations (as I understand it, her health isn't so great), I not confident that the future stewards will be so committed.

I don't know if anyone can guarantee that change won't happen when the original stewards of something are no longer in charge. However, I have faith that Denise and her team will ensure, as much as they reasonably can, that whoever comes next remains committed to the original principles upon which DW was founded.

Thanks! That's reassuring to hear.

Moderation / Censorship on Dreamwidth?

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