Hey all — just launched openmic.social, a general-purpose Lemmy instance with a specific mission: free speech + 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 !meta community.
  • 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.

🎤 https://openmic.social/

  • TragicNotCute@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    This post about a new Lemmy instance is on topic for this community. You can all have your own feelings about this instance and what it’s trying to do, but a single post here announcing it isn’t spam.

    Please stop reporting this post and OP’s comments.

  • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    I also took these comments to heart and made some updates to our sidebar. I appreciate anyone who wants to participate in good faith, I started this because Reddit shadow banned me simply for trying to advertise my business. They didn’t even give me an opportunity to make things right, and it was a honest mistake. I think thats a really crappy thing to do to people. I don’t want to participate in that.

  • Emily (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    Lemmy already has public ban logs which have reasons listed. I’m not sure what you’re really offering here. I think you’re being extremely naive and are fundamentally lacking understanding in how oppression and the “marketplace of ideas” functions.

  • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Fair questions — you deserve a direct answer: No. A pro-Nazi community wouldn’t be allowed here, and neither is racism, transphobia, or misogyny — “aimed broadly” or not. I in no way support hate.

    “Free speech” here means something specific: we don’t shadowban, we tell you exactly which rule you broke and give you a path to fix it, and we won’t remove you for an unpopular opinion or a hard argument made in good faith. It does not mean a license to dehumanize people for who they are. Bigotry isn’t brave dissent — it’s harassment with a wider target, and it drives out the very people who make a place worth being in.

    If drawing that line costs us the crowd who think “free speech” means “slurs welcome” — good. They were never the point. The mic’s open to everyone; it’s not a megaphone for hate. Be a good human. It isn’t hard. You can debate your point with out dehumanizing others, when you can’t, you’ve already lost the argument.

    • eurodyne@piefed.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      You can debate your point with out dehumanizing others, when you can’t, you’ve already lost the argument.

      No. You can’t. And giving a “open mic“ to the Nick Fuenteses and Stephen Millers, and Charlie Kirks of the world who will put on a suit and a tie and try to “debate” you while dehumanizing others with nice sounding words gives them a platform to spread their hate while framing it as a “civilized debate“ rather than the coded bigotry that it is, while you cast aside any responsibility for letting them do it, tossing your hands up and claiming “free speech”.

      It’s plainly and obviously bullshit. It’s like inviting a vampire into the house and then being surprised when everyone turns up dead.

        • eurodyne@piefed.worldEnglish
          0·
          9 days ago

          I’m clearly not the only one here who feels this way, and I’m sure that none of us are surprised that, right from the start, you’re deflecting any responsibility for what you’ve created.

    • artyom@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      “Free speech” here means something specific: we don’t shadowban

      Shadowbanning has nothing to do with speech. I’d recommend you reconsider your verbiage.

      we won’t remove you for an unpopular opinion

      Most instances already don’t do that. Which leads me to believe you have unpopular (hateful) opinions and want to create a community where those opinions are welcomed.

      Be a good human. It isn’t hard.

      No, and yet many people fail to. And these are the types who will be attracted to your community.

  • Lumidaub@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Caught in some loop, the content warning just keeps popping up when I click Continue. Or maybe my phone is trying to protect me.

    • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      I’ll have to take a look and see if I can figure out why that is and resolve it.

  • adr1an@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans. There’s no recommender algorithm to make the “shadow” part. Or mod tool to edit votes. I believe you are using incorrectly the term. Please clarify. A ban is a ban. Shadowban is no ban per se, but from there on you post to /dev/null in whichever platform has support for that shit (i.e. meta)

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Lemmy most definitely has shadowbans, but they are applied at the level of whole entire communities rather than end-users. I remember being on the StarTrek.Website instance when that functionality was added to the Lemmy code, and discussing with someone my finding out that ChapoTrapHouse was no longer accessible from it, despite the fact the instance remained federated. No announcement of that fact was ever made iirc, it’s just that one day poof the behavior has changed, after Lemmy deployed a version that allowed for that.

      Some few instances are very open about their hiding of communities - see e.g. https://legal.programming.dev/docs/hidden-communities/, listing in detail every one - but most are not, and the Lemmy UI has nothing at all like the list that it shows for (de)federations.

      The Lemmy admins also can remove people even from the modlogs, in cases of severe abuse. Tbf it’s exceedingly rare and there is little evidence of this being abused (well there was one time, but the excuse that it was due to a bug seemed believable to me and most everyone else - Lemmy.ml quite often tests new versions of the code before they get rolled out to the rest of the Threadiverse, which is quite helpful actually).

      Lemmy also fails to notify someone of their having been moderated. The various communities are FULL of stories of people asking where their posts went, or why they can no longer post to a community, or stating their discovery that they have an event in the modlog. The notification of moderation activities is exceedingly poor on the Lemmy platform.

      Sadly, Reddit does a much better job at notification of an event, and also provides for a modmail to communicate with the mods to discuss the situation, e.g. to ask why, rather than leaving it to the end-user to wonder if they should DM each one listed in sequence until they find one that is even active much less responsive…

      Lemmy is imperfect. At least Huffman is not in charge here, but conversely the tools have aways to go before we catch up even to what Reddit offers.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Lemmy has bans, no shadowbans.

      Multiple instances and even an app has built in blocks.

      Instead of looking up a profile and seeing “banned” you get an error. Instead of seeing an an entry in the modlog, it’s literally baked into the code.

    • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      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.

      • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        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”.

      • QuentinCallaghan@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        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.

        • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
          0·
          8 days ago

          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.

      • phil@openmic.socialOPEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        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.

  • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Yeah, it’s a shame, “free-speech” gets abused by bad people and it can’t be the scope for any platform. I could imagine it being used for other purposes as well. For example I always wanted to run a Piracy community that doesn’t remove links or tutorials on how exactly we do it. But that probably also crosses the lines. …Some other Robin Hood activity… I mean it could be used for good as well, depending on perspective.

      • mrdown@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        9 days ago

        No we are not. I don’t support ethnic cleansing and I, do not believe in any race being superior to another unlike Zionism

              • mrdown@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                9 days ago

                It sad that people do not understand that Zionism is a supremacist genocidal ideology

                Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895

                The property owners will come over to our side. According to my conception, the majority of the local population will have to be transferred elsewhere.

                We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895

                Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly - Herzl’s Diary, 12 June 1895

  • spaceracoon@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    Thank you! Pre-blocking this so I won’t have any splash damage my main feed. “Open mic” translates too much on nazi or hate baiting nowadays. Open socials need moderation or become chesspools. I do not hang out with toxic people in real life, I don’t understand the principle that “I have to” do it digitally. Hard pass. Good luck!