Ahoy mateys!
A few of our users have recently pointed out that a lot of the pro-Zionist accounts on the fediverse nowadays seem to come from the feddit.org instance.
Feddit.org's explanation for this situation seems to fit into a few common variations:
- They accept both pro- and anti-Zionist members, so it's not proof of a bias.
- They [choose to] comply [in advance] with strict German / Swiss / Austrian laws regarding [overly broad] "antisemitic" language, or they might get in trouble.
- Calling for the destruction of Israel must obviously mean you want to kill every last man, woman and child, rather than simply wanting to overthrow Netanyahu's genocidal fascist regime. Because [bad faith] reasons.
- Lots of Euros (and Germans specifically) are pro-Zionist, so they feel like they have to accommodate this view.
But whatever the excuse happens to be, they need to do better imo. Israel is currently the most violent, fascist and genocidal nation state in the Middle East (if you exclude the US military bases there). And yet feddit.org seems to regard the Palestinians fighting against Israel's ongoing illegal occupation of their land as the real terrorists. As such, I am calling for feddit.org to:
- Explicitly prohibit pro-Zionist accounts from joining.
- Take measures to resolve their claimed legal issues, e.g., moving their server location to a less regulated jurisdiction, and ensuring that admin accounts remain anonymous regarding their location.
- Stop referring to folks who call for "Death to Israel" or similar as though they are the terrorists or violent extremists. The Zionist Israeli settlers, the murderous IDF rapists, and the entirety of the Israeli government are clearly the violent ethnostate extremists we should be worried about, not the Palestinians in Gaza who are fighting for their lives every single day against completely disproportionate levels of Zionist violence.
More context
Our instance already voted to ban pro-Zionist accounts (see https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/60585441 for reference) and the rule that was implemented is here: Golden Rule #8.
As further context, you can find relevant comments and discussion in this post by a banned feddit admin in MoG (that fact they chose to post in MoG is in itself quite telling), and this post about their defederation from quokk.au over anti-semitism allegations has recently become active again.
I've also pulled out some choice morsels from the modlog to illustrate the sort of thing we are talking about:
This one says it all... mrdown@lemmy.world being banned for calling out feddit.org users for being Zionist apologists. It's apparently "xenophobic" to state a few hard truths.
If you have had similar experiences on feddit.org, please feel free to share in the comments.
Voting instructions
I am proposing to ban the following communities from feddit.org, which seem to be the most problematic communities in terms of hosting pro-Zionist posts/comments:
- https://feddit.org/c/YUROP
- https://feddit.org/c/europe
- https://feddit.org/c/buyfromeu
- https://feddit.org/c/europa
- https://feddit.org/c/dach
- https://feddit.org/c/deutschland
- https://feddit.org/c/germany
Upvote this post if you want dbzer0 / anarchist nexus to ban these communities.
Downvote this post if you'd prefer not to ban these communities.
Note 1: Votes from external instances do not count, unless one of our admins has vouched for you.
Note 2: If you think feddit.org deserves a full instance ban instead, or have alternative suggestions, then please leave your comments below. If enough people think that's the better option, then we'll do that instead.
Note 3: Although I don't really expect this to happen, if feddit.org agrees to make policy changes to address these issues then we are willing to reassess the situation.
Just to note, this is a community vote, not me enforcing my opinions on the instance. Sure I have my own opinion on the topic, but in reality I have very little influence over anyone else, and as proof of that not every vote passes. And in fact, our community members asked for this vote, not me. I have very little interest in feddit.org, personally, except when having to moderate their Zionist users.
I'm gonna quote Ada here, with one small addition []:
Even if the majority dictates it to me, it is wrong in principle. Furthermore, it is stupid, sectarian, mere symbolism, divides and weakens the Fediverse, and is unfair to all dbzer0 users like me, as well as to all feddit users who explicitly express anti-Zionist views there (and receive a lot of approval), as can be read in the discussion here, for example. All feddit users who are interested in anti-authoritarian topics will then be forced to make a decision. Future feddit users, i.e., most future German Lemmy users, won't even know that this instance exists. It's dumb in every way.
And of course it makes you excited to finally press that defederation button. Otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to list all the reasons for defederation and none against it. An anarchist admin on a power trip. What a fucking joke.
But go on. dbzer0 will then end up like one of those niche phpBB forums where there are 10 active users with >10,000 comments and every few months someone signs up and the first thing they get is the sacred forum rules thrown in their face.
Reddit.org is a Zionazi (apologist) bar. If you are a decent human being and still on there, that's on you TBH...
Which principle? Seems you are more angry at the Tyranny of the majority than anything else. As a reminder, we've never had a policy of federating with every instance in the fediverse.
Seeking broad consensus from our users is power tripping? That's a pretty shitty take tbh.
If you are willing to write up a proposal to withdraw some/all of our defeds then I'm willing to put it up for a vote, but I don't think it'll get much support tbh. See https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/instances for all our blocked instances and you can see for yourself what you are missing out on... stuff like threads, exploding-heads.com, kiwifarms.cc, posting.lolicon.rocks, and skinheads.io. We don't defederate for no reason, or do so often.
I think you are just upset because you like feddit.org, and are lashing out with personal attacks because you want someone to blame for the outcome of the vote. You are right that it is largely a symbolic act - one of solidarity with the Palestinians. Will it annoy some of our German users? Yes, it already has. But if I have to choose between an act of solidarity with our German users over how conveniently they can access a website, vs an act of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, then I'll pick the Palestinians every time. Because they are being killed right now with German weapons, by a German-trained IDF.
You don't seem to realize how out of step the majority of Germans are with the rest of the world on this issue, particularly in leftist communities.