Hey all — just launched openmic.social, a general-purpose Lemmy instance with a specific mission: open discourse + transparent, restorative moderation.
The pitch is simple — anyone can grab the mic — and the thing that makes us different is what happens when you cross a line:
- No shadowbans, ever. If your post is removed or your account is actioned, you’re told — what happened, which rule, and how to fix it.
- We help before we punish. A heads-up and a path back come before a ban. Bans are the last resort, not the first reflex.
- Moderation in the open. Every call is appealable, publicly, in our
!metacommunity. - Hard lines only: nothing illegal, no targeted harassment, no doxxing, no spam. That’s what keeps the mic open for everyone.
We’re brand new, which means early adopters shape the culture. Come introduce yourself, bring a community that needs a home, or start one — I’ll help you set it up and mod it.
What is your definition of free speech?
Fair question, and have sat thinking about answering it changed my mind about the wording I am using.
What I actually built is due process, not a speech policy — no shadowbans, you’re told which rule you broke, warnings before bans, public appeals. That came from getting shadowbanned off Reddit for advertising my own business with no notice and no recourse.
“Free speech” was the wrong description for that and I’ve pulled it from the description. The line I’m drawing: you can argue an unpopular position here without being removed for it, but you can’t dehumanize people for who they are. Bigotry isn’t dissent — it drives out the people who make a place worth being in. I personally want OpenMic to be welcoming to others, with out the disenfranchising hate, or destructive speech. It’ll be there, it’ll happen and I’ll do my best to clean it up. I can promise one thing I learned a long time ago is we can all find something to disagree about, and we can easily come up with reasons to hate one another. Thats not very interesting and makes life not fun.
So while I appreciate your question (part of me thinks it had ulterior motives and was more of a trap, this thread is full of it) I think my use of free speech may have been misguided. I also teach my kids regularly that while you have freedom of speech, you don’t have freedom of consequences because of that speech.
I am human, I am learning as I go, I am definitely not perfect. I am however willing to learn and improve.
Okay, I say that is a lot more concise definition for what you’re aiming for. When a website declares to be for “free speech”, it carries a certain connotation these days. Look what Twitter has become after it got bought by Elon Musk and turned into a “free speech website” for example. And good that a line has been drawn so that bigotry isn’t allowed.
Thanks. I’m working on it. I don’t really have tolerance for hate and I’ll be honest I think many of the people here are just as bad ad the ones they are commenting against. I also realize we’ve all lived a different experience and I have to allow room for that, at the end of the day I have zero tolerance for hate.
People aren’t trying to trap you. What you’re seeing is vulnerable people who have seen and heard all of this before trying to get your boundaries out in the open before your instance gets momentum. That way, they can decide whether to interact with your instance, block it or defederate it before being exposed to yet more hate targeting them under the veneer of “civil debate”.
All Republicans and Zionists, Nazi’s cam fuckin bite the curb. Come at me imma take as many of ya out as I can
Also, in full transparency. You won’t find me in debates or discourse about much of the “hot topics” or the “footgun topics” Politics, Religion, etc. They frankly rarely produce any meaningful output or outcome and often devolve into circular arguments and hate on both sides of an issue. I personally am far more interested in technical discussions, engineering discussions, and business discussions.