gabe

I know people who were directly impacted by the Charlottesville riot as well as people who were actually there who had to bear witness to watching Heather Heyer getting murdered. It was a trauma that had a direct ripple affect across the entire American Jewish community, especially since that area is such a big hub of Jews in that area of Virginia. It was so impactful to a lot of American Jews not only because many Jews actually had some degree of connection to someone who experienced what happened there, but it was also an inflection point for many gen z Jews who hadn't really bore witness to such an intense public celebration of our peoples hatred before. Like yeah, we knew that people hate us but when Charlottesville happened and then hearing the president afterwards say "good people on both sides" was just an indescribable feeling. It was a moment of realization of "They don't just hate us. They want us dead, and our own president just defended them in spite of that being made clear. What the fuck? Am I actually safe here?" And after when Pittsburgh happened, it just echoed that feeling even more.

It was so impactful that for a lot of right wing leaning young (Ashkenazi, primarily) American Jews it was made crystal clear for the first time to them that the American rights support of Jews is not just conditional, but their perceived whiteness is conditional as well. Their acceptance as "white Americans" can be revoked extremely easily. That fact made a pretty high amount of Jewish gen z-ers fully reflect on that and swing dramatically to the left politically.

Knowing all that and having talked with the people who were ran out of their synagogues back door with their torah scroll clutched in hand for their own safety and having to go into someones house to literally hide from nazis threatening them and then later witnessing the shit people were saying online about it was just too much to deal with. What has rattled me the most even after all these years that is almost never discussed online or really highlighted at all is that we are extraordinarily lucky more people didn't die. All it would have taken was one slightly different decision on someones behalf for that entire situation to have turned into a genuine massacre. It's really hard to emphasize just how close that incident was to turning into a mass causality event, and the quick thinking and actions taken to diffuse and protect their community by community leaders in that synagogue likely saved so many lives both in that synagogues community and outside of it as well.

Knowing that fact and having to witness the conversation unfold online was honestly sheer hell to deal with mentally tbh, I quite frankly felt like I was losing my mind at times watching people talk about it. Which granted is probably the point, make you question and second guess yourself to invoke that sense of terror

What @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone said. I use the seirdy fediblock fedinuke list which is basically a consolidated list of the worst of the absolute worst instances that exist across the fediverse, hence why there are so many on there that are on completely different platforms. Lemmy's cross interactions with other activitypub software is finicky at best, but as a gay jewish dude it makes me more comfortable hosting and engaging in such a space when those places are blocked out of an abundance of caution. Basically all of them are either extremist instances or known to host illegal content. I didn't defederate from as much instances as my book/writing focused instance, the NSFW subs are federated (and I will federate with those again in time on literature.cafe, they just clog the living hell out of c/all) still there at least as I hope instance based blocking and more granular federation options are coming soon.

I looked at mastodon.art's policys and content guidelines a bit and utilized it as inspiration as well as consolidating those rules so they fit neater on the sidebar and also reflected lemmy a bit better.

1. Basically, all art that is posted on the instance that is original content is solely owned by the poster alone. I claim no usage rights or ownership of anything that is posted there except for my own art that is explicitly tagged as such and promise to never use the artwork that is posted there that I do not personally own for any reason whatsoever beyond cases of headers and icons, and those instances will only be done when users explicitly consent for that purpose or set it themselves. The site icon and header right now are placeholders using creative commons images, but in the future if someone decides to create one and they grant permission to use, or someone makes an icon and or header for communities and offers to set it for the communities there it will be done when permission is given by its creator. This instance will never be monetized, and will rely solely on donations and volunteers. I love art of all kinds and want to give it a space on lemmy.

2. Any content that is posted that isn't original content must be directly credited at the very least with preferably fair use critique/discussion and clearly stated as not OC. So long as it's something like, "oh hey this is pretty!" is preferred and serves to contribute to something new beyond just reposting the content. Linking to artwork of artists works must be done so in a way the centers that artist, and if they do not want their content shared that must be respected. Alongside that, content that is paywalled must not be reposted regardless. If someone posts something on say, Instagram for example, it's preferable to link to their post and or content in a prominent way at the very least.

3. Artists who are taking commissions or offering to sell their work are encouraged to post so prominently in the post body or directly link to their store in their profile, or both. Focusing creators is deeply important to me personally.

4. I am figuring how to best add to to the sites robots.txt to filter out AI scraping on both this instance and the book/writing focused one as well. (@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone if you have tips on how to best do that I'd appreciate it)

Yeah, shit on Reddit is bad. The prevalence of antisemitism on there goes in waves from what I have seen, always ebbing and flowing but becoming significantly worse during the existence of prominent hate subs. Probably the absolute worst time was around the both before and during the era of the Charlottesville fascist riots and their terrorizing of the Jewish community there and when The_Donald was at its peak. Those were when I really had to fully disengage for my own mental health because it was just so intensely unsafe being on that site.

And absolutely, I value much of the activists and the work they do so much. In the past year alone and as I've gotten more involved in the fediverse (and for the first time ever online feel comfortable to actually assume good faith in people and in discussions, which is crazy to me) I have been to able to realize I am a lot less alone than I have previously thought which I am exceptionally grateful for. But, being in the moment of dealing with the barrage of hatred weighs on you heavily. It goes without saying, the stress of being pretty much any kind of minority quite literally eats away at you, both mentally and physically. It's just hard to describe the feeling of how incredibly isolating it is when stereotypes and hateful statements are given legitimacy on social platforms positioned for "civil" discussion. My right to exist as a human being a topic of debate for people and actively bearing witness to the Overton window shift is incredibly distressing and tiring. And then having the fact you feel distressed by it be completely invalidated by others saying you're an alarmist or overreacting just adds salt to that wound. There comes a point where you genuinely just can't deal with it anymore, you just don't have the energy to be hyper-vigilant in digital social spaces and for your own personal safety you have no choice but to assume the absolute worst of everyone you are interacting with if you decide to stay as a spectator.

It’s amusing that this is brought up, because several of us here ARE the SRS movement. Both as users and as moderators.

That makes the discussion all the more interesting. Like you said, it's kind of interesting 👀👀👀👀 how people are extra averse when Marxism is thrown in.

Something that is interesting to me that I think is a point to add... a large portion of right leaning/enlightened centrists/"no labels" folks from reddit seem have a bit of a habit of flocking to giant instances and seem to be those who are the most actively hostile to spreading across the federation. Especially on instances with no registration approvals. If lemmy.world wasn't as big as it was, I would have likely contemplated blocking it as it has been the only place I have witnessed outright antisemitism outside imploding-heads (rest in piss lol). From what I have witnessed though people are spreading out around the federation with lemmy over time, and overall the users who just want Reddit 2.0 are calling it quits and going back because they realized they are never going to get it. Which in my opinion, good. We can make something better here. I might have my qualms with lemmys current software backend but the focus of removing the algorithmic rage aspects that was consistently apart of Reddit is commendable by the lemmy devs. The inherent features to make things toxic could be much worse than people seem to be willing to realize, and it seems the devs are being very mindful of that fact.

Oh hey! I'm the admin on this instance, this is my other one that was made a few days ago. I hope it's OK for me to provide a bit of extra context here because I feel like it might clear things up and make it clear I hold no ill will towards hexbear as a community.

Basically, I had previous reservations and bias that wasn't really fair to attribute to this community as a whole. Being a practicing Jew online (especially these past few years, holy fuck) and attempting to engage in any space on traditional social media has been consistently a mentally taxing nightmare. It goes without saying, but Reddit never felt like a safe place for people like me. There was a period in time where the antisemitism and general hatred on Reddit (and honestly most social media..) was just so intense that I had to quit the platform entirely due to just how mentally taxing it was to witness.

Due to being on such high alert and expecting bad faith from everyone on Reddit no matter the community, anything that was antisemitic at face value was something I took a mental note of at least prior to leaving the platform for my own well being. I don't know what it was that caused it specifically, but I had experiences of antisemitism within jewish focused subreddits that I had attributed in some way to chapotraphouse. When I was making my instance I initially had planned on it being a personal focused instance and when I heard in passing that hexbear existed as an off shoot of CTH I blocked it out of my own perceived safety. I shortly after decided to open up my instance for book and writing discussions as I am a fan of hobby focused fediverse instances.

After everything with lemmy.world and all the issues they've had, in a matrix chat I began to participate in discussions in regards to critiquing how it feels like they are centralizing things and not taking action against it (not closing sign ups, hostility towards letting communities migrate, etc) and are more focused on rapid growth over organic sustainable growth. I saw the head admin for hexbear in the chat and was agreeing with pretty much everything they were saying and as the conversation progressed I eventually privately discussed my concerns with them and got clarity as well as realized that the bias I had towards this place wasn't fair at all.

Later on, I discussed making an art focused instance and I let the admin I talked with know. They decided to allowlist it, and as well offered to allowlist my book focused instance as well. Inevitably I do foresee federating with hexbear within the next couple of months on literature.cafe as the platform grows, and the essay that was made above highlights my current feelings on the matter. If it was my personal private instance with myself only, I would federate as I now feel safe to do. But literature.cafe is an established community now and I didn't want to make a sudden change without getting peoples input and feelings on the matter. It's not really just my personal instance anymore, it's that community's.