Shush, let an old man dream.

Retired, so I finally have time to finish the dozens of personal projects that I’ve started in my first 36 years.

And at the same time, you rephrase it to imply something that was nowhere in the original sentence.

“Don’t make me ban you” doesn’t necessarily mean “Don’t say anything I don’t like” but maybe just “Don’t post anything illegal” or “Don’t make the experience worse for everyone else”. I fully agree that the original phrasing is too vague which is why I’ve provided a whole list of more specific suggestions.

You are the one who brought up censoring. The person you replied to just said “consequences”. Others not liking you and not wanting to talk to you anymore is a consequence.

Your comments in this thread sound a lot like you not wanting us to say anything you dislike. I respect your opinions and I would fight for you being allowed to share them. I just think they’re wrong and disingenuous.

Someone who disagrees with you and calls out your hate is not a censor.

As an abstract concept and a logical conclusion, I would say it’s neither good or bad.

What is bad is when people interpret free speech as being allowed to hurt others without consequences. And in my personal opinion, most people who criticize a lack of free speech fall directly into that category.

If you’re allowed to say everything, then as a logical consequence I’m also allowed to say everything. Including “You are wrong, you are rude, I don’t like you and I never want to talk to you again. Please leave.”

Note, this is just an example. I don’t really want you to leave. Yet.

Free speech means that you can not be punished by law for your opinions. It explicitly does not mean that others are required to listen to you or even like your opinions. Just as you are allowed to hold a controversial opinion, they are allowed to disagree with you, argue with you, walk away or show you the door if you’re in their house/community/instance.

Some inspiration for what to include/how to phrase the rules:

• “Be nice to each other”
• “You are allowed to share your opinion. Others are not required to like it”
• “Accept that others might have different opinions from yours, just as you would want them to accept that your opinions are different from theirs”
• “Moderation is based on how you say things, not what you say”
• “Free speech has legal limits in most jurisdictions. The instance owner may be forced to remove illegal content even if they agree with you.” (for example, saying that all billionaires should be killed may or may not be a valid opinion but it may be considered incitement and depending on where you live, instance admins can get in trouble for not deleting it)

Bad: most people who use the term “free speech” don’t understand what it means and what it doesn’t mean. Have a look at this handy xkcd.

Please rewrite this or at least add a tl;dr and change the thread title to something more descriptive. I’m sure you have a great idea somewhere in there but I’ve had to stop reading after a couple of paragraphs that just sounded preachy and got nowhere.

In a “no time to explain” situation: most of my friends and family

If they actively refuse to explain: maybe my 2-3 closest people whom I trust they have a good reason for that kind of secrecy.

Having set up a couple of mail servers myself, I wouldn’t call it easy. Most solutions boil down to a tangled web of dovecot, postfix, ldap and amavis. There are preconfigured docker containers which make setup easier than a couple of years ago but if your use case is even just slightly different than the maintainers’, you’ll have to dive deep into a few dozen different config files. And of course, you’ll have to find out how to configure SPF, DKIM and DMARC to have even a remote chance of your mails getting through to the big providers. I’d probably give email somewhere in the range of 8-12 points in that category.

Other than that, great summary!