A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good. Each should have its own reward.

There’s an old saying: “Linux users use Linux because they hate Windows. BSD users use BSD because they love Unix.” Obviously this is not true for every individual user, but I think it describes a trend or pattern.

“Hello, support? How do I get through the Gnomish Mines in Nethack?”

I agree with that. Big players have too much power. In theory there’s nothing that stops us from self-hosting e-mail, but in practice today it takes a lot to make it work and be accepted by the big players. I think free speech is desirable and wish that it was the norm. The best we can do is to use services that align with that ideal, and make sure that the system itself is built so that it is open for anyone to be in control over who they interact with. Even if that means someone choosing to not interact with certain others. As long as it’s easy to use an alternative when there are restrictions.

Imho, the argument doesn’t translate to countries. In Iran, the government has a monopoly on governing, and most people can’t just hop over to another country with different laws. In effect, you can be stuck with a system you don’t like.

In the digital world, and Lemmy in particular, the same is not true. If you have a computer, you can “start a new country” with your own rules. No one is forced to join, and you can’t force anyone else to do anything. As a whole, Lemmy allows all opinions. The problem is central power, and free federated software is a solution.

Being able to run your own instance with any policies you want is a strength of lemmy.

At my work they wanted better security, and made the rule of minimum 12 characters, must include all sorts of numbers, special characters, etc, no previously used password and it must be changed every month, 3 attempts then the account is locked and you have to call IT.

The result was that people wrote their passwords on post-its on the screen, so it led to worse security overall and they had ro relax the rules.