Re: "dangerous for democracy". That's a little hyperbolic, don't ya think?

I don't support defederation. I think the calls for defederation strictly arise from political clashes that boil out of control and people that don't remember the Internet-that-was, before Reddit. "Free speech absolutist" wasn't a thing because no one pictured their little forum as mattering that much. Forum moderation wasn't about enforcing a specific world view or preserving an echo chamber, it was about preserving civil discourse. And since I'm typing this out I might as well add that I think if I was to dust off an early 90's or 2000's mod hat, I'd do the following:

• Referring to other commenters as reddit refugee/hexbear/liberal/grad/imperialist/shill/anti-westerner 's is a 3 day ban
• Bringing up the Iraq War, Tienanmen Sq, etc is a 3 day ban. Not some conspiracy to bury the truth. It's because everyone's friggin' heard it already and we definitely don't need more of it.
• Lazy whataboutism is a 1 day ban. This is vaguely defined for a purposeful chilling effect.
• War Is Bad. When not the topic of the article, fantasizing about a US-Ruso conflict/popular uprising/Taiwan invasion/WW3 is a 1 day ban.

What do people want this place to be? A place where all sides can meet (if they strictly behave)? An echo chamber? A raging angry gladiator pit? Like I said above, as a major Lemmy instance, this place should be downright boring and the extremists can retreat to other instances better suited to their anger.

This isn't about their political views in particular, this is about them brigading comment sections and derailing from the original topic and shouting down anybody who disagrees.

Defederation because of political views is, frankly, dangerous for democracy.

What? This is such a ridiculous claim I'm not even sure where to start. Federation does not equal democracy, and defederation from a shitty spammy instance has zero impact on democracy.