Squabblr now officially a "free speech" cesspool, admins removed or forced out by owner

A ton of people flocked there because they think the Fediverse is too confusing, so now they're going to Discuit.

I have accounts on both out of curiosity, but I had a feeling something weird was going to go down on Squabblr. I just got a weird vibe from that place at first. I am not sure about Discuit yet, but it's yet another centralized service people are using because the fediverse is "too confusing"...

Yeah I've literally made accounts in squabbles and lemmy at the same time. At first squabbles was great, but somehow there's something there that I couldn't describe. I continued to go to lemmy but I've stopped going to squabbles for weeks now. And suddenly this!
Sometimes our instinct is spot on and we got to listen to it more often.
- The commitment to tweet-like self posts is what made me leave. I don’t like posting an image or article without being able to provide a title.
- Way too much drama on there. It's like every week you have to catch up on what happened.
I honestly prefer fediverse remain as that complex open source alt, because it's one of the few filters we have for users here.
I honestly don't believe rapid growth is healthy for any platform, and we've even seen it here with how comments and memes are getting increasingly vitriolic and offensive. Fuck, antivax memes are starting to appear on lemmy.ml's meme community.
I'm starting to think Beehaw had the right idea with vetting users, because there people here who think Lemmy should be another 4chan.
- I disagree. There are lots of good people out there who are not technical.
How is make an account on an instance, got to all, subscribe to interesting places, hard? It’s almost the exact same formula as Reddit
- When the majority of the world has been using centralised platforms that don't have the complexities federated platforms do, it's understandable that there will be people that get confused over why there are several "Lemmy" servers, or why they can't sign into a Lemmy server when they signed up on another, or why when they try to find a Lemmy community on their server they can't see it, but they can in Google.
  Somehow email providers have avoided this problem, I think because they are pre-installed on devices as the "Email" app.
- We need more topical instances. Nobody found PHPBB's confusing. Let people sign up for an account on the blindness instance, and the cooking instance, and the gaming instance. Eventually they'll discover that they can use one account for everything, and it's just easier to do it that way. But in the meantime they're not confused. We're probably going to market rblind.com that way; a spot for blind folks to network. Eventually they'll discover the federated communities on there own, without us pushing it on them.
- Except going to "all" only provides content from other instances that people on your instance are subscribed to. That is not well understood nor well explained. Whereas "all" on reddit is actually "all."
- People can’t seem to compute the fact that each Fediverse site is basically like email in reddit/twitter form.
- It's identical to Reddit. I don't get it either. Federation is completely optional but people act like it's forced upon them.
- It's much better now, but at the first I gave up because I couldn't figure out how to even sign up due to the rather poor web design. And I'm a programmer.
- The first step is choose a server. On reddit you sign up for reddit, on Twitter you sign up for twitter, but on Lemmy you sign up for an instance that functions as a copy of the site that talks to other copies. And the choice of instance does matter because the admins run that instance. Already, the vast majority of normies are out.
- It's even easier on kbin since it shares pretty much the same general layout as Reddit.
Not only is the Fediverse puzzling, but it also struggles to clarify its essence; the majority lack an understanding of its functioning
- My only complaint about it right now is that most instances only know about communities that are hosted there or that their users deliberately subscribe to. Which works fine for huge instances like lemmy.world, but small instances that aren't running federation helper bots just don't have much of an All feed, and initiating federation requests to remote communities you heard of through a directory or elsewhere is a confusing process.
- "The fediverse" is puzzling, but Lemmy is simple. I find it weird people get so off put by sites just because they allow Federation. Like- are those same users going to quit Threads when it enables Activitypub? Just seems like a really weird place to draw the line.
Who owns Discuit?
- previnder is the owner. I don't know enough about the platform yet, but it's yet another centralized network.
I went there because it was simpler and more like reddit. Once this shit started to brew a few weeks ago I noped right out of there. Lemmy ftw
With name like "Squabbles", I knew it was only a matter of time, lol.
The people who think making an account on Lemmy.world is "too confusing" but think making an account on Reddit or one of these other random sites is somehow simpler really surprise me.
I get that federation is a new weird concept but it's not like anyone needs to know what it is to sign up somewhere and start posting.
- I'm sure it doesn't help that people are complaining that lemmy.world is a huge instance. That only adds to the confusion.
  Proponents of Lemmy: "Just join the instance that has the content you like!"
  Also proponents of Lemmy: "OMG WHY IS THERE ONE HUGE INSTANCE"

Funny, during the boycott of Reddit when squabbles was growing, I signed up and created two new communities - one for earbuds and one for vaporents (dry herbal vaporizing).

My earbuds community was quicky approved, but the vaporents group took almost a week before it was approved. It's almost like the site's owner (since back then he had no mods or admin team) was hesitant when it came to something possibly clandestine in nature. I guess drugs aren't cool, but hate speech is?

It's starting to worry me that "free speech" has become something to be feared and avoided. Avoiding confrontation to your beliefs just makes you and your beliefs weaker.

Of course, but it's important to keep in mind that so-called "free speech absolutists" don't actually want free speech. They want freedom of consequences for their very specific, narrow, non-free speech. They would love to censor the living shit out of everybody else.
So there's a difference between free speech, and, well, "free speech".
- Yup, that's been my experience of listening to them as well.
  It's so enticing to people that are unfamiliar with the narrative that free speech absolution is the ideal and that these guys are standing up for it. When you pay attention they bend their own rules for themselves all the time.
- The biggest problem with this "us vs. them" mentality everyone seems so eager to jump towards, is that since both sides must always be opposed, you're now on the side that is against free speech. That's going to do nothing but strengthen their side and weaken yours. Open your heart to other humans, especially the ones you don't like. Try to understand them and realize you can hold your beliefs without silencing theirs. How will anyone change if nobody talks to each other? Words are what make us human, they have the power to change everything. It's how we've survived as long as we have. One "hello" from a fellow human can save a suicidal persons life. The only way you can change the world is if you speak your heart and listen to others.
  I know there is a lot of hate and nonsense out there but you're grouping it all together under one image and painting everyone who doesn't think like you as the enemy. It's not helpful. Yes, they do it too, but that's not an excuse. Be better.
The term is being abused as a dog whistle for freedom to pass prejudice and discrimination. Being apposed to a "free speech" platform risks you as being against said free speech. It's falling under the paradox of tolerance concept.
Your comment history is a cesspool. Yikes.
- Exactly, and that's why this topic is important to me. I don't wanna be silenced for wrongthink.
"Free speech" has become an anti-feature now due to the prevalence of people who use it to justify enabling bigotry. It's sad.
I completely agree. I am a stressed sideliner politically, and I like to hear differing opinions, but I'm so tired of the term "free speech" being associated with alt-right dog whistle rhetoric.
- What ideas have you heard from the Right in the last decade? Seriously, what have they come up with that wasn't misleading at best and a total grift at worse? I made the move politically left over the last 15 years and don't feel I really changed all that much.

Sucks. We had lots of fun there when it first started. But I've deleted my account now. It's hilarious to watch Jake try and make an empire. What a loser.

He clearly cares more about his idea of what the site should be than he cares about what the people on the site want.

This is why non-federated services are crap.

Exactly! The great thing about Lemmy is that if your instance’s admins start doing stupid stuff you can just go to another instance.

Wtf is a squabblr

Used to be "Squabbles". It, Lemmy, and Discuit were three of the major Reddit alternatives thrown around during the Reddit protests.

I've legit never heard of Squabblr or this... Discuit? What even are these?

Reddit alternatives that didn’t pick up a lot of steam yet. We’ll see if they end up winning out over the fediverse or reddit itself, looks like squabblr won’t if it’s already gone the truth social route
Squabblr was called squabbles until a very recent rebrand. You may've known it under its old name instead.
- That was this stupid Reddit + Twitter mix, right? Never understood why some people were hyping that platform up so much.
- Hot damn. I was reading the name and thought first its about squabbles, which I considered to be checking alongside lemmy how it develops.
  So I was briefly shocked about this development, then I realised this says squabblr and not squabbles. And then I read your post.
  Rollercoaster.
- Nope.
Sites that are centralized and therefore have the same potential problems as reddit.

Since "free speech" is a dogwhistle, what should a hypothetical place actually interested in free speech as more than just a bigotry shield call what they're trying to do? Some place interested in allowing discussion of objectionable topics without bigotry?

Yes, whatever, those don't exist anywhere, you don't need to respond with that tidbit. Humor the hypothetical here.

Call it "Open Discussion". Make it clear that the purpose of the site is to allow for discussion from all walks of life and perspectives, but that it has to be actual civil discussion. Outright hatred and bigotry, as well as arguing in bad faith, aren't helpful or productive in an open discussion, and as such would be shunned and banned. This way, you can still have opinions that aren't "mainstream", but you won't be removed as long as you're civil and respectful about it. Doing this will attract people who are really interested in hearing other perspectives and sharing their own, instead of alt-right shitheads looking for another place to infest.
- This way, you can still have opinions that aren't "mainstream", but you won't be removed as long as you're civil and respectful about it.
  I mean, you sort of identified the problem, but still missed it. It isn't "mainstream" because we're taking about marginalized minority groups. It can only be seen as leaning mainstream because LGBTQ+ have a lot of allies that don't fall under that identity, but it still falls short of actually being mainstream and short of a supporting majority.
  Think about the numbers this way; you have LGBTQ+ (or some other minority group), allies, "don't cares," "don't want to knows," and bigots. We think we know the bigots, those are the haters. What is surprising to most is that the "don't want to knows" are the biggest faction of bigots, although it is an indirect association.
  A common transition for the "don't want to knows" is saying, "I'm tired of hearing from those Zorb snowflakes only, the other side should be heard as well -- free speech. We should have an open discussion."
  This suggestion, while it sounds positive, enables those who want to troll and slander, and they get to do so behind anonymity and with the support of others. For the bigot which openly expresses a hatred for Zorbs and Narfs, they just been given an umbrella of protection under "free speech" to say hurtful things. -- Oh, blatant hate speech itself is still considered a violation of TOS? -- Good luck trying to moderate an influx of alt accounts which just stoke up the problem by saying, "The Zorbs and Narfs are taking over." "It might be an unpopular opinion, but non-Zorbs and Narfs need a voice too." "What Zorbs and Narfs practice is against the teachings of The Great Plunis." "Plunis said that the Zorbs and Narfs are immoral." "Zorbs and Narfs are stripping away our Constitutional rights." "Even taking about Zorbs and Narfs in our schools might trick our kids into supporting or even becoming Narfs themselves. Think of the kids."
  Now telling a bigot that they can't offend others isn't hurting them. Giving them a platform where they can be safe to constantly etch away at human decency of marginalized groups is a platform too high, especially when it provides an opportunity to express their vile dislike of a group of people that are somehow different than them with a different perspective of the world.
  So how about those Zorbs? From their perspective, anyone might be threatening to them and might want to cause them harm. How can a Narf recognize that someone else is a Zorb, a Narf, an ally, a "don't care," a "don't want to know," or an outright bigot? As a group of people already in a minority, they need safe spaces to find others they can identify with or who support them, so that they can openly discuss the social challenges they face daily. It isn't a debate, these are challenges and problems they gave daily. If a social forum which seemed to offer that sort of protected space suddenly changes their TOS in support of "free speech," and the maintainer of the site declares that they want to encourage discussion and multi-sided debate, that safe space has just been ransacked. Whereas the community they had joined was reserved for peers and allies, that may no longer be the case and those bigots can still be threatening even if they don't come out and directly say "I hate you."
  There aren't two sides to an "I am a Zorb," and "I can't stand Zorbs" debate. It isn't the same as one side saying "I like tomatoes," and another side saying "tomatoes are disgusting," it is more like the debate about being Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life... It isn't as though the Pro-Choice folks are Anti-Life, but the Pro-Life folks are very much Anti-Choice. The sides of the debate can't even agree about what they are against.
  So, as an ally, and someone who really liked squabbles.io a month ago, because it felt like a positive community, I'm disgusted with the changes made this past week. As far as I'm concerned, squabbles.io should have replaced their logo as they did, but they should have replaced Bort with a giant red tomato, to really emphasize how vile and disgusting the site has become.
It's hard to find a name because nowadays people often use terms like 'bigotry', 'hate speech' and 'bad faith' to refer to anything they don't like so they can shut down discussions.
A forum? (Online this means a specific type of website architecture though, so idk.)
You don't need to label it. The vast majority of the internet will allow anyone acting in good faith to discuss their ideas. Every single time someone complains about being muted/silences/shadow-banned etc you can bet they subscribe to right-wing ideology using dog whistles or other hateful rhetoric. I was never banned anywhere for being Pro-Hillary instead of Pro-Bernie. I was downvoted sure, but that's everyone elses prerogative. I wasn't silences because some of my posts were hidden due to it. It's asinine to claim that, and that's what these people are whining about.

The sole dev of Squabblr (Jayclees) really needs to hire someone to do the community management/PR side of things. He is great at programming but he keeps making snap top-down decisions that go against what the userbase wants. And his use of language (i.e., "free speech platform") sounds like a fkn dog whistle.

All these big names on Squabblr going to Discuit like the devs can't do the exact same thing over there. I'm tired of migrating platforms. If Lemmy doesn't work out, then I'm going to just go touch grass for fun.

It sounds like a dog whistle because it is a dog whistle.
Reminds me of the scene in Casino when three jackpots go off in 20 mins: "if you didn't know you were being scammed you're too fuckin' dumb to keep this job, if you did know, you were in on it. Either way, YOU'RE OUT! Get out. Go on, let's go."
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=v0fI_HS79NA
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

The sole motive behind transforming a three-month-old online forum into a "Limited Liability Company", which they did, appears to stem from either intentions of selling it or the reception of funding, consequently relinquishing your authority over it.

what the fuck is squabbler?

The reddit/twitter clone formerly known as Squabbles.io
Another shitty centralized proprietary social media clone. They already knew they failed so they're doing this to get that right wing grift.

Here I go deleting an account, sigh, I liked the platform there

IMO if sites want to take a "free speech" approach without allowing bigots, maybe they should adopt the Canadian law. We don't have free speech, we have what's known as "freedom of expression". Essentially, we can say whatever unless it's hate speech or bigoted.

Yeah, Canada has censorship, but it's essentially just to censor racist idiots and homophobic fools.

A way to improve it further is to see freedom of speech as quantitative, try to maximise it for all parties involved, and look at the consequences of banning a certain discourse or not.
Using hate speech as an example:
if you forbid it, you're lowering a bit the freedom of speech of those who'd otherwise voice it. It's only a bit because they're still allowed to voice non-hateful discourses there.
if you allow it, you're lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who'd be targeted by it. It's a lot because they'll disengage and leave.
So by banning hate speech you're actually increasing the overall freedom of speech, even if reducing it a bit for a certain audience.
The same reasoning applies towards other situations. Like "that fucking user" doing the online equivalent of megaphoning so nobody else is heard; misplaced porn, gore, or other things that a lot of people would rather not see; harassment (it is performative speech, and yet you need to prevent it).
I feel like this covers what you've linked about freedom of expression in Canada, but it's a bit more practical and flexible to adapt into online communities.
Also, it's important to take into account that there's a hierarchy between discourses, when trying to maximise freedom of speech: descriptive > prescriptive > performative.
- if you allow it, you’re lowering a lot the freedom of speech of those who’d be targeted by it. It’s a lot because they’ll disengage and leave
  I disagree that this is lowering free speech. Those people who leave are still entirely within their ability to stay and continue speaking. Free speech isn't lesser just because someone doesn't feel like speaking
And Canada fucking sucks.
- Better than America.

I may not be onto anything here, this may just be a coincidence. However, the timing of these two events are suspicious.

1: Squabbles.io rebrands to squabblr.co. The .io domain explicitly forbids anything that may be considered illegal by any country. The site could be shut down if this is violated. You know what would be considered hate speech by some countries, such as Canada? Discrimination of someone based on their gender identity, ie trans people.

2: Squabblr rebrands to a “free speech” website and removes all explicit mention of LGBT+ being protected under their ToS. Within microseconds (slight exaggeration, but within less than 24 hours) people are chiming in with the “trans women are not women” statements.

Was that planned, or just extremely unfortunate timing?

I mean I don't care for most of the "free speech" sites because I don't care for the content that's posted to them. In addition of never heard of Squabblr. But lets not be hypocrites here, the normal line is: "It's a private company." This also applies for companies you don't like. Not just when a major platform bans people you disagree with in the name of reducing "toxicity" (a completely nebulous term that could be used to describe anything you don't like.) They can do whatever they want. If you don't like it, don't use the site. Simple as.

If you fall into the right or left sides camp this will be an unpopular statement… I can’t understand why this has become such a hard thing to grasp

I'm surprised it took Jayclees this long to remove his mask.

I used the site for a bit. It had some serious potential as a reddit alternative, and was poised perfectly to reap the benefits of a mass exodus. Of course, I used it when it was called Squabbles less than a week ago, before the cringy name change to drop a vowel to be more like the websites from the early 2010's. I think the biggest hurdle for them was that they were a .io domain and couldn't host pornographic material, so the porn subreddits couldn't use the platform even if they wanted to. I think they recently switched to .co, so that might change, who knows.

I'm not sure I agree with the owner's top-down approach to website design and management. I had no idea about his anti-LGBTQ opinions until now, but that's one more reason to not to continue using it, aside from the fact that growth is basically reversing and very little OC is being posted.

When I hear "free speech purism", I immediately think that either the person/people who want that don't know the dark forces they are inviting, or worse, they do know and they want it to happen. Neither of those are a good look. Some speech absolutely should be banned from these websites for obvious reasons. People who conflate freedom of speech for consequence-free speech are idiots who deserve to be banned from everything everywhere.

"Free Speech" is a dog whistle for far-right hate speech, when they spew hatred against minorities they try and call it free speech to make it sound acceptable.
- And those same individuals will ban you or harass you if you call out their shitty behavior and vitriol. The far-right has no interest in real free speech, and want to censor any opposing worldview.

Didn't they realise that Gab, Voat and Poal already exist?