I didn’t ask whether you thought they were diverse, I asked whether you thought they would ever be given the same consideration in the name of “diversity of thought”. We both know they won’t.

Diversity of thought is very important

So she’s going to appoint a Democratic Socialist? No? Someone from Sunrise then? No? A Palestinian-American Democrat? They couldn’t even get 2 minutes at the convention. How about a BLM activist? She marched for that cause, surely that’s some diversity she’d want to have represented. Not that either? Hm.

Maybe this isn’t about diversity of thought and instead about the doomed Democratic instinct to try to coopt the center-right, which according to the theory of centrism will make them win forever! Just not any of the times they’ve already tried it.

I think there’s gray areas where someone comes in hot to play devil’s advocate and if they have a history that looks like a normal contrarian person elsewhere they might just get a removal and/or a warning, but if they’re a 2 day old account with 5 one word comments, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Granted, you shouldn’t expect mods to try to figure out your personal history and state of mind to know you weren’t trying to troll in your very first post in their community, but it’s at least something to try to sort out those gray area comments. Or something to review if the user appeals their ban.

And yeah, taking your bans with you in migration would be the cost of maintaining that history. It’s a commitment to owning your own posts and history.

From experience moderating on Reddit, user histories were pretty useful in judging whether they just made a mistake or were ban evading or trolling. If a fresh account drops in with a trollish comment as their first interaction with the community, they might just catch a ban rather than being treated as a good faith poster who came in too hot and deserves a second chance.

So if you migrate accounts in Lemmy, you’ll have to pay that price over again and risk more strict moderation because you have no history, whereas a Mastodon-like link to their previous account would establish a baseline.

It’s interesting how the most open instances aren’t the biggest ones with no user restrictions, but the smaller instances that no one has issues with. I moved away from LW because of performance issues, but I’m happy to be able to see both LW posts and BH posts. Sopuli has defederated from some instances, but I’m happy with their choices so it’s as unrestricted as I want it to be. Others would choose an even less restrictive/restricted small instance, or like yourself just run your own to have complete freedom.