Is it possible to create a free speech reddit alternative that doesn't immediately turn into a right wing extremist site? My mind immediately turns to the Paradox of Tolerance, and I think the answer is no.
Probably not, because here's the thing: Reddit isn't all that restricted.
Reddit still has swear words, porn, angry arguments about politics and religion on any subject, people arguing that most any social norm should be done away with... now you'll have to find the right subreddit for that, but that's about the only problem.
You have to dig quite deep to bump into a subject that you won't find any outlet for. Even in the cases where a subreddit got banned, you can almost always go and express the same opinion in r/changemyview and not be kicked off the site.
This means that there's about 3 reasons to ever seek out an alternative:
1. You have an issue with the management. Eg, you object to how the company works and don't want to give them money/traffic.
2. You have a purely philosophical disagreement with how the site is run, even if it doesn't impact you personally. You're offended the code isn't Open Source, or that moderation exists, or that people aren't able to hate on fat people, even though your personal usage of the site is just posting cat pictures and not impacted.
3. Your interest is one of the banned subreddits and you're a persona non grata on Reddit.
Of the three, the third is by far the most likely, and they're going to swamp out any influence the first two might have easily.
You’re offering a comparable product except with no real existing user base and a higher friction to gain new users for your community.
There’s some marginal audience in people interested in the principle of the thing, but the bulk of your users are going to be users that can’t be serviced by the main players.
If your only offering is “X, but we won’t ban you” then you’re going to collect the dregs of the internet.
There’s a bit of a feedback loop here as well in that many of the existing services are banning users and communities because they’re negatively impacting advertisers and the rest of the community. So when your service is overrun with the undesirables in short order, the rest of the communities are going to be negatively incentivized to migrate and you’re going to find it impossible to find any real financial support or backing.
So no, I don’t think “X, but free speech” will ever turn into anything but a cesspool. You need an offering that will attract desirable users as fast or faster than the undesirables that have been kicked out of anywhere else can sign up and that’s going to take some sort of additional value.
You either approach it from the social perspective, or the utilitarian perspective. From the social perspective, the goal is building a community. To build a community, people need to be held accountable for antisocial behavior. The technology is secondary.
Most of the times leftist communities split off from mainstream platforms, it is because the platforms either enable rampant antisocial behavior, limit the community's autonomy in deciding how to deal with it, or its just plain censorship.
The libertarians see it as a utilitarian problem. Banning any content or behavior is beyond the pale, and they try to build out their technology to ensure this "marketplace of ideas" prevails. They consider themselves rugged individualists, so the goal of building a community is an afterthought.
I wonder if there are any actual free speech services out there: Would any of them tolerate being swamped (as in 90%+ of the content) with insults hurled at their owners and operators?
My guess would be that there's already a limit to their tolerance. And from there, it's really a matter of seeing what kind of content they _do_ tolerate.
A site full of extreme* right wing stuff: That site is an extreme right wing site. If it is indeed "free speech" (which isn't demonstrated yet), that's merely coincidental, but it's not its defining property.
* To adopt hunterb123's preferred phrasing, because for them extremism apparently only begins when people start to draft assassination plans, not just daydreaming about it. I don't care about that particular semantic game, so I'll be as compatible as possible on this thread.
I'm a fan of lemmy, but that's patently untrue. The main instance has a very strong anti-capitalist and anti-discrimination lean inherited from its devs.
Even lemmy as software was not in favour of free-speach for the period they had that famous(ish) forbidden words filter in the default build.
I think the key is to avoid going full free speech. What you want to create is a more permissive community that's still under someone's thumb to a degree. It's difficult to start a community under just a slight change in priniples like that, though, because the lion's share of the people in the old community are fine with the status quo.
...So in addition to being more permissive, it seems that you have to have a better product, generally.
From SSC:
> ..if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. Declare that you’re going to stop holding witch hunts, and your coalition is certain to include more than its share of witches.
Reddit still has swear words, porn, angry arguments about politics and religion on any subject, people arguing that most any social norm should be done away with... now you'll have to find the right subreddit for that, but that's about the only problem.
You have to dig quite deep to bump into a subject that you won't find any outlet for. Even in the cases where a subreddit got banned, you can almost always go and express the same opinion in r/changemyview and not be kicked off the site.
This means that there's about 3 reasons to ever seek out an alternative:
1. You have an issue with the management. Eg, you object to how the company works and don't want to give them money/traffic.
2. You have a purely philosophical disagreement with how the site is run, even if it doesn't impact you personally. You're offended the code isn't Open Source, or that moderation exists, or that people aren't able to hate on fat people, even though your personal usage of the site is just posting cat pictures and not impacted.
3. Your interest is one of the banned subreddits and you're a persona non grata on Reddit.
Of the three, the third is by far the most likely, and they're going to swamp out any influence the first two might have easily.