Why uneasiness? This is federation working exactly how it’s supposed to. People are free to spout whatever garbage they want, and no one else is obligated to listen to them if they don’t want to.
No one is infringing on hexbears so-called “free speech”. They’re still free to shout into their megaphone. But the rest of us can close the damn door on them if we don’t want to listen. That’s quite literally the best of both worlds.
The only people that are “uneasy” are the people who think that “free speech” means being able to force people to have to listen to their bullshit. It’s not. Never has been. Never will be.
I for one love how federation tends to sort itself out without stripping away anyone’s right to free expression. Hexbear, or whatever instance happens to be controversial at the moment, can still say whatever they want. No one is shutting them down. No one is censoring them. No one is stepping on their rights. The rest of us just have the power to not have to listen to them. It’s a great system working exactly as designed and it’s absolutely how the future of social media has to be.
No it most certainly is not. Not by any legal definition of the word. Preventing people from speaking is censorship. that’s all. “forcing people to listen to you” isn’t free speech. And I’m not even going to bother going into the fact that free speech is quite LITERALLY in regards to government’s and have absolutely nothing to do with private servers like Lemmy instances.
As someone has already mentioned, the right to free speech is NOT the right to an audience. Just because you don’t agree with that statement doesn’t make it not true. Facts don’t give a shit about your opinion.