One of the worst changes on the internet over time was the increase and normalization of dictators at every turn. It's all done under the guise your usual "won't someone think of the children" level of disingenuous arguments, but it's really all about people that shouldn't have any power getting a tiny amount and abusing it and more broadly about the continued hyper polarization of the populace in general and pushing special interests in some cases.

Content that is perfectly legitimate is getting removed because it doesn't fit one agenda or another and is claimed to be "bad". The internet is no longer a place to exchange ideas but a place to pick your poison, echo chamber.

Not that complete anarchy would be the way to go, but right now it's far too much completely authoritarian garbage everywhere.

I don't know about this Lemmy business in general, and I'm sure there are instances and communities that are just like how I described, but I hope at least here it can be different.

As a reminder, please do not include commentary on presumed motivations, intentions, shillery, name-calling, etc. Thanks for keeping tensions to a minumum.

crosspost: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/12245

Disclaimer: This is a repost from the deleted sub DRSyourGME. Since this sub got deleted by reddit as did related DRS subs without proper warning, one may wonder how deep reddit is into censoring GME.

Welcome to the ASS.

So, we should find ways to make the community more resilient against censorship, which necessarily needs platforms outside of reddit. Remember, not only does Reddit provide tools to censor, Reddit applies censorship rules for subs by themselves! We need Apes Shitstorm Shelter (ASS).

Quality of the Apes Shitstorm Shelter TM

We already defined censorship as deletion and suppression of content in part 1. Since companies cannot act against the law, we will exclude government ordered censorship. Further our Apes Shitstorm Shelter TM should have free access (registration via email, no payment required, no login required to read), it should be easy to publish content (small text to long from DD), if somehow possible it should already widely be known and accepted (so ado, also it should have a reliable platform (ddos resilient). As a bonus there should be end to end encryption for direct messages (DMs) to allow censorship free communication. Last but not least, we must know who owns a platform, so who has ultimate control over it and could have conflicting interests.

The platforms which may act as Apes Shitstorm Shelter TM

Some weeks ago GreeDplayer asked “What are the current alternatives for reddit?”. So here is the list: Minds, Youtube (Gangnam Style), mastadon, Twitter, Discord. There were also mentions of Telegram, Truth social, DIGG, Myspace Group, Lemmy. I won’t check those out but anyone is invited to do so and contribute.

Some of the biggest GME subs already have a Discord server, the two biggest by early 2022. While some of you might remember when Discord shut down VVSB in Jan 21, maybe it might be new to you that Fidelity became an investor in September 2021.

Rating the ASSes

Please poke holes into what I found. Happy to discuss ASS with you.

Minds and Twitter look promising

Looking at the table “Minds” looks like the perfect fit. I found it very interesting that before GreeDplayers post I haven’t in fact heard of it. Especially, since Patrick Byrne is on the board. Wow. However, the drawback is the comparably tiny user base. So “mental switching” costs might be too high for the majority.

Okay, so looking at the next best alternative this seems to be Twitter. But don’t they eat ASS I hear you say, don’t they delete or suppress content? They themselves say “Freedom of Speech, Not Reach” and define this within their rules and transparency policies. Well, trust is good control is better. Thankfully Twitter added the view count, so I checked Pultes tweets about [GME, $GME, GameStop, DRS] which without replies have about the same number of views as his other tweets (>100k-~600k or more). Additionally, there is GameStop, RC, Pulte and so many more active on twitter with a large active user base which might lead to a lower barrier to create an (additional) GME related account. A drawback certainly is that end to end encryption and long content is only provided for paid twitter blue accounts. Another issue to think about is, there is no content moderation but also no subs. So, everybody has to build up their follows or other techniques.

TL;DR: This post shall contribute in forming a backup communication plan, when shit hits the fan. While “Minds” looks like the optimal Apes Shitstorm Shelter, it is very limited in its user base yet. Twitter looks as it becomes the better solution with least censorship, a great reach already (RC, GameStop, Pulte, …) but end to end encryption and longer content creation has to be bought with twitter blue. Also, as there are no “subs” everyone has to build up their individual follows / news feed.

crosspost: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/12248

Disclaimer: This is a repost from the deleted subreddit DRSyourGME.

“[Censorship is] a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to express and prevents books, films, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas”

Welcome to reddits “moderated” GME subs, looking back at part 1 and additional information

Part 1 TL;DR: censorship is different per sub and at some subs remarkable high (see table at the bottom). We should find ways to make the community more resilient against censorship. Addition: roughly one day after part 1 reddit admins deployed censorship rules to the least censored sub.

In the first part I showed that most GME subs are heavily deleting posts. This in a range from 5% up to 60%. While the biggest subs (65k-876k members) range from 5-37% deleted posts. I found that one GME subreddit still allowed tagging subs or users, which was banned by reddit admins roughly a day after my post.

It is claimed that certain theories or authors are suppressed. Since it is not allowed to link to certain content or users, which in my point of view already is censorship, we will apply a workaround for further evidence.

We’ll take the GME subreddit with the lowest deletion rate (2%) which at the time post had roughly 10.5k subscribers. For the ten top posters of this subreddit (https://subredditstats.com/r/[INSERTSUBHERE]) we’ll check their deletion or orphanage rate with other GME subs (https://www.reveddit.com/y/[USERNAME]/?all=true&showFilters=true&removedby=anti_evil_ops%2Cmod%2Cunknown%2Cmissing%2Corphaned). Just counting results starting at least at 20 posts and comments per sub content deletion averages around 11-17% and even peaks at 41% for a single user in one sub.

Due to the nature of reddits removal mechanism those users might not even be aware of the removal or orphanage of their content (see post 1).

So, we should find ways to make the community more resilient against censorship, which necessarily needs platforms outside of reddit.

crosspost: https://lemmy.whynotdrs.org/post/12243

"Without the freedom to criticize, question and challenge the dominant narrative, [Streisand effect takes a little longer]" someone on censorship, probably

**Disclaimer: **This is a repost from the deleted sub DRSyourGME. Since this sub got deleted by reddit as did related DRS subs without proper warning, one may wonder how deep reddit is into censoring GME.

(Original) Edit #1: I posted the same content to another sub to test what happens. It was removed for tagging other subs / users, which seemed to work with lower traction posts/comments before. I updated the table accordingly.

(Original) Edit #2: You probably read the post of Bibic-Jr. Radmins reached out to the sub and implemented automod code to ban tagging users or subs also here. Updated to table.

Preamble

Okay guys, you all know our favorite company is financially sound. Business is running fine. They got our back and I feel very comfortable with my investment as well as occasional additions.

However, I, as many of you, was rather disappointed by the low DRS numbers. I didn't put much thought into the rug pull theory and moved away from reddit for a while. Especially since I hated that sstonk banning tagging users or links to other subs. Interestingly, I learned about the heat lamp theory via Twitter (via a link to DRSyourGME). Looking at the bigger GME subs I saw nearly nothing of the theory, and yes the immense trading volume at the reporting date felt really interesting and discussable. So why wasn't there a discussion running?? Why weren't people talking about it? THEY WERE! It just got suppressed and deleted. Remembering back early 2021 when I learned so much from this community. FTD, where are the shares, OBV, dark pools, OTC, the big players, payment for order flow, bankruptcy jackpot, cellar boxing, sold but not yet purchased, Chewy, cats with bananas, overvoting, DRS and lots more. Oh man, such a fun time. One where my diamond hands were forged. And I really felt, this free sharing of DD and discussion was what was invaluable for household investors. During the same time it felt like a constant fight of suppression, narrative creation, censoring vs discussion and DD. Subs changed. Some valuable fellow household investors died during this journey. We never sold.

Talking with the community, I feel like everybody knows what’s happening regarding censorship and feeling it really sucks. So there should be a discussion on how household investors freedom of speech, discussion, sharing of DD can be made more resilient against censorship. We are at the event horizon, time may be relative, but there is no way back.

Thanks to all of you, putting so much effort into this community and registering the shares under your name! I salute you!

WTF happened? Censorship the fuk?

I am looking at all this censorship for a while and read some articles about how reddit is supposedly more and more making censorship really easy (shadow banning, removing posts without noticing you). This seems to be the case for every bigger web 2.0 company. (there are many sources, maybe read this: https://medium.com/yardcouch-com/the-fall-of-reddit-why-its-quickly-declining-into-chaos-cb0da61aca56 )

However, still reddit allowed wsb to continue during Jan 21 while others like discord shut down the discussion about GME completely. This could have been either a decision to try to control household investors in one system or genuine reddit standing to household investors. However, looking at what Twitter is currently doing to "uncensor", Reddit seems to be way behind - but this should be another discussion. Still reddit seems to provide much leeway to subreddit mods.

I want to focus in this part on censorship. I think it is equally important to talk about narratives, but this should also be another post.

So as a start lets pick three elements we define as censorship:

• not allow to mention other subs (with good intentions)
• not allow to tag other users to discuss
• removing posts

The latter is surely a difficult topic to assess, since posts might be removed for various reasons. Debatable but legit reasons might be karma requirements not met, reposting of URLs, other spam or surely things against the law. The lesser debatable is removing discussion about new ideas or a new thesis (like the heat lamp), especially if it casts a narrative in a different light. Also an additional factor could be a narrow focus of a sub, e.g. just DD, all other content being removed. However, at first we will do a quantitative assessment, which results I found interesting enough to share with you.

So thanks to u/6days1week I came across reveddit and played a bit. I was very surprised by the results.

The settings were content: only posts, sort by: new, status: actioned with admin, mod, auto or unknown removed for 1000 items per page, before 2023-04-25.

To get the results yourself, just fill in the sub you want to check in [SUBREDDIT_NAME] without the brackets in the following URL: https://www.reveddit.com/v/[SUBREDDIT_NAME]/?showFilters=true&n=1000&removedby=anti_evil_ops%2Cmod%2Cunknown&rr_sortby=rate&before=1682373600 e.g. https://www.reveddit.com/v/DRSyourGME/?showFilters=true&n=1000&removedby=anti_evil_ops%2Cmod%2Cunknown&rr_sortby=rate&before=1682373600

Furthermore, I checked on whether its allowed to tag subs or users.

As mentioned above, removal may have several reasons and is thus just an indicator for further questions.

Interesting topics to discuss further are:

1. what narratives do exist and what happens if we openly discuss them?
2. what part of the removal are actually regarding topics like book, dspp, heat lamp?
3. how can the censorship resilience of the community be strengthened further?