I think it is a dog whistle , here in India there are people who openly talk of genocide , homophobia and what not and call it their right to speech and expression !

is there ANY self-described “bastion of free speech on the internet” that is not a cesspool full of awful people? Just one?

No, because awful people congregate wherever they are tolerated.

is there ANY self-described “bastion of free speech on the internet” that is not a cesspool full of awful people

When you have a "free speech" policy, you attract principled free-speech advocates who want to discuss issues rather than shouting down unpopular opinions, a few people who are well-behaved and intelligent but write about ideas that the majority may find offensive or horrifying, and a whole bunch of people who got banned everywhere else for being rude and disruptive.

The best-moderated such place that I've seen had a policy requiring politeness and high-effort posts, which kept out the third group.

The second group can be tough to tolerate. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes they're a Holocaust denier who cites references, and you look up those references and they appear to be real papers written by real academics, and you know this is all wrong but you're not a historian and even if you were you don't have time to address every issue in this guy's entire life's work and you just wish the topic never came up. But you can't keep out the second group unless you compromise your principles as a member of the first group.

I dont think most people care about whether something is centralized or not. I definitely dont. I am on Lemmy because it is afaik the biggest alternative to reddit with the most content. If there was a centralized version with more and better content I would go there

Most of them seem to be moving to discuit, another centralised platform, Lol

It's always telling when people describe a minority as a "political movement" rather than... people

"Let's have a reasonable rational debate about whether certain groups should have the right to exist! If you're a member of one of these groups, please be respectful to the people who say you should be exterminated!"

honestly reading this, it just sounds to me like he isn't cut out for community management. It is stressful and hard sometimes, so I get it, but he's going to kill his own site doing this. I did wonder about this before - it seemed like to me he regularly made changes based on feedback on a whim, and these changes were often rushed without much thinking. Needs to know when to pass the baton elsewhere and stick to development, but alas...

The last comments also speak to someone who's probably hiding some contrarian views of his own.

Shame.

Allowing bigots just means you are one. Rip squabbles.

LGBT people: "We have a right to exist."

'Free speech absolutists': "Ugh, take your political bullshit someplace else."

No idea how people think this is a valid way to talk about people literally fighting for their right to simply be present in public spaces without people attacking their very being.

Grand opening, Grand closing

“Free speech” is just a dog whistle and gas lighting now.

You're not wrong, but I remember when free speech was more of a liberal issue. Freedom for artistic expression and all that. Freedom to curse in music, freedom to create and view porn etc.

It sounds like they’re going to be allowing anti-LGBT hate speech, which was formerly a ban-worthy offense on their platform. Reddit and most Lemmy instances have rules against this, so I imagine Squabblr is going to attract the same sort of people that like using Truth Social.

Removng vovls s col nd trndy!