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Just a reminder - the economy is an artificial construct invented by rich people to make themselves richer. There is no reason why it has to be the way it is (:

The foundation of free speech is that you cannot force someone to say something they do not want to. This is a lot more foundational than the “you can say what you want” aspect of free speech. You can’t force someone to agree with you, you can’t force someone to publish or say something in their name, you can’t force someone to host content on their website.

Similarly, you can’t force an owner of a Lemmy instance to host or say something they don’t want to. If an owner said “you know what, I don’t want to host this” or “I don’t want to federate with X” then you can disagree with them sure, but you can’t force them to say/do something they don’t want to.

Whether this is or isn’t authoritarian, the alternative is that someone can force a Lemmy owner to host things they don’t want in their server. Imagine if some really repugnant communities showed up on your instance and you couldn’t remove them. Now that really would be authoritarianism - it’s removing your freedom to choose what you say… Just because someone can say something, doesn’t mean you as an owner/individual have to listen to it, like it, agree with it, or host it.

The big free instances are running off of good will, they don’t owe you anything, they certainly don’t owe your view a voice unconditionally. If you don’t like it, especially with Lemmy, you can set up your own instance/club and say and not say what you like.