Call to defederate from feddit.org over zionism (amended)
I find this morally reprehensible. I have always spoken against defederazation when others have mentioned it. This is too much. Apologies if this upsets anyone.
Palestinians are human beings and have a right to life.
Edit: I have been persuaded by some thoughtful replies. I will block them from my view. I no longer support making the decision for others. Thanks all.
If your comment contains the following, it will be removed from this community:
- Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
- Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
- Equating Israeli actions and (historical) Nazism.
- The slogan “from the river…”
- Endorsement of or justifications for Hamas or Hezbollah, or slogans or graphics positively referring to these organizations. These are considered terrorist organizations in Germany.
- … and obviously: Any of the common antisemitic tropes or calls to violence against Jews or Israelis
Comments will not be removed for the following:
- Denouncing genocide.
- Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
- Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
- Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
pretty reasonable, admins can't change the law.
they cannot change the law, but also they don't have to follow the law because they aren't within that country's jurisdiction.
From what I've heard these are german laws and their instance is based in austria. Those are different countries.
Not only that, this law has also in 99.9% of cases that I am aware of been enforced against the user who made the comment, not the site owner. Literally the only time I'm aware of it being enforced against the site owner is with Twitter, which kind of makes sense to me because (1) it is actually antisemitism in that case, not just "I wish Zionism would go away" and then BAN, (2) Twitter was actually arguably the source and the boosting agent for a lot of the antisemitism, it wasn't just a neutral forum where people could go on and maybe break the law all on their own initiative.
But yes, it is also relevant that brought up "our hardware could get confiscated" when it is the flimsiest of flimsy theories for how it could even happen, even if we assume that they were going to get raided somehow. I get it. No one wants the police to come talk to them, it's easy for me to talk over here safe (ho ho) in the USA. But the level of threat they are quaking in their boots over is very minimal. Very.
The slogan “from the river…”
Literally not a terrorist statement, sorry it just isn't and even including this makes it obvious how poorly thought through or examined Zionist's beliefs are. It should scare us all and I do not say that lightly.
If you will not resist your country deciding a statement is a terrorist belief when it provide zero actual evidence..the war is already lost and we are in for a hellish future.
The feddit admins are the worst flavor of morally bankrupt, which is cowardly AND morally bankrupt.
It was also, langage / phrasing issues and Wikipedia's carefully worded hedging notwithstanding, originally a Zionist phrase. It only became a crisis when the people to whom all that 100% of the land had originally belonged wanted it back, and were talking about employing the same kinds of violence that had already been employed against them, and using more or less the exact same slogan to talk about what they wanted (wanted back.)
fuuuuck that. there's only one kind of good zionist, just like there's only one kind of good nazi.
admins can’t change the law
Neither could the people that hid Anne Frank. And yet, somehow, they found a way.
My post doesn't seem to violate these rules, even if I find them overly-restrictive. Glad to see that it wasn't removed.
I just copied what exactly they are going to remove.
Tbh if German laws are so strict it might be better to just disallow any kind of political content on feddit instance and just stick with hobby/meme type of content.
I'm in favor. Feddit has proven before this incident to be extremely Zionistic and Islamophobic as well.
This is developing into some top tier Lemmy drama.
@CommanderCloon@lemmy.ml said:
These kind of posts will, sometime in the future, be referenced in a memorial of some sort as complacency in the face of crimes against humanity.
History will not look kindly at you.
Which is think is pretty fucking on point.
I saw that user was banned, which is a whole different level of fuckery. I got curious why the ban. It turned out it wasn't for sticking of Palestine, it was because they had said:
I would agree with that if Ukraine didn't have a history of murdering and bombing the regions Russia has taken.
And, of course, they were promptly temp banned for saying that.
As excessive as defederating an entire instance is, think about how insane banning anti-zionist speech across an entire instance is.
It's not like its one gardening sublemmy or the diary of Anne frank guy, its an entire instance banning a specific form of antifascism. That's unhinged and their justification is flimsy as hell.
If you wanna stay on that instance spam them with pictures of children in Gaza 24/7 until they ban you or reverse course on this decision.
It's plainly an attempt at palestinian erasure. They decided to ban anti zionism the same week Israel announced they would be exporting 1 million Palestinians to Libya and occupying Gaza permanently. It's not an accident, or for their safety, or German law, its genocide and feddit apparently wants to mandate it big brother style where you cant talk about eastasia.
It's insane. Power tripping mods to a new stratosphere. Nobody should just be okay with this. Speaking for palestine without fear of being banned is one of the main reasons a lot of us left reddit in the first place. Don't bring that shit here!
Fuck the zioNazis and fuck the spineless cowards that run feddit.com. Death to capitalism, death to America, death to Israel, free Palestine, and ALL power to ALL the people.
And frankly, I don't think feddit.org deserve to be a part of the SDF community, or polite society in general. ZioNazis are exactly that, Nazis with a different coat of paint, and should be treated as such.
BUT I still disagree with SDF specifically defederating instance-wide from Feddit or literally any instance. IMO the only reason I would support SDF defederating an instance is if simply federating with the instance is technically dangerous for out instance.
Because we don't deserve to be punished for feddit.org's crimes by throwing away our ability to communicate with, agitate, or monitor Feddit's users and mod team. I totally sympathize with other instances that specifically and openly curate what their users can and can't see nuking their federation if that is what their users want. Totally reasonable. But I suspect that a lot of us are here precisely because we don't defederate from anyone, even if they suck or deserve worse. A lot of us are on this instance deliberately because we want to curate our own feeds.
And personally, I reject the premise that communicating with a person means that I respect or endorse them in any capacity. For example, I've replied to various neoliberals all over the Fediverse because they said something horrible or uninformed that needs to be addressed, at least for the sake of everyone else watching. I don't endorse or respect the neoliberal worldview, but unfortunately in the US and a lot of places we've ruined, neoliberalism is the "default" ideology, so that's where discussions from any other position have to start from: rejecting neoliberalism and disproving its lies.
And as alluded to above, this is my position about neo-nazis, PDF files, cops, and ${insert any morally reprehensible group here} with respect to this instance as well.
So no, I don't support us site-wide defederating from Feddit, just as I wouldn't support site-wide defederating any instance unless federation somehow posed a technical existential threat to this instance. Not that they haven't earned it, because they've earned way the fuck worse, but we don't deserve to lose our ability to speak to them or monitor their monsters.
Well-argued. I'll give this some thought.
Yeah I'm sold. The more I looked into this instance the more horrified I've become. Straight up proud to be fascists they are.
I would go beyond this. I would say that any instance that makes a habit of policing its users' statements to make sure they conform to some kind of politics and don't offend whatever type of powerful grouping should get fucked.
To me, the fact that an extraordinarily obedient-in-advance reading of German law requires them to do this isn't really relevant. The chance that the admins will get in significant trouble for it is minimal. If this is their bar for standing up for the rights and the survival of others, fuck 'em. It's not my freedom or money at stake, so that's easy for me to say, but I'm in the US, you could make a strong argument that being an anti-Trump pain in the ass on the internet could carry a significant risk in the future depending on how things go down. At a certain point, you have to decide what you stand for, and if your government isn't on board for it, then oh well and let's see.
Also: As much as I agree in particular with the disgusting nature of censoring anything pro Palestinian for obvious "bro aren't you worried about going to hell" type of reasons, I actually don't think anyone should be "required" to have any certain position on Palestine to participate on Lemmy. I think it's fine if people disagree and talk about it. I think the critical thing is the admins policing what opinions people can express. If you're going to be on Lemmy and you want to help people communicate, deliberately distorting the conversation to make it comfortable for the powerful people needs to get all the way the fuck out.
I have no particular standing to call for SDF to do anything in particular, I'm just saying my opinion. It's maybe a little incongruous to go all the way to defederation, when there are instances that are just as shameless about censoring speech that is just as blatant an issue of "right and wrong" as the Palestine issue is. I feel like taking a step back and talking about the nature of the network and what we want to have and whether you as an instance owner have the right to police "your" users in this way. In my view, you don't, but most people seem to feel that you do. It's an issue that goes way beyond feddit.org and maybe should get some more thought as opposed to one-off decisions.
whether you as an instance owner have the right to police “your” users in this way.
I don't run SDF. I'm just an enduser. Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply.
Oh, I didn't mean you specifically, I didn't realize it came across that way. Just that in general a lot of mods / instance owners seem to feel like communications on their server are "theirs," to mold to be the way they want them to be.
There's a responsibility you hold to the users of your system to keep the bullshit out. (And everyone's definition of "bullshit" will be slightly different, which is why it gets tricky.) But roughly speaking, you need to be doing what your users want you to do, and your users need to be showing respect for your system and wishes and the social contract from their end. As soon as either side of that contract breaks down, it's bad. And specifically in this case, there are instance owners who feel that it's their job to make sure the opinions expressed on their server are in line with their own, and fuck the users if they don't agree, because the users aren't in charge.
This is very very wrong. My whole feeling on that, is why I felt the need to write up this whole mini-essay about it. As black-and-white right and wrong of an issue as Palestine is, I feel like it's a bad precedent to set to say that the issue of which opinion is the "right" one and the feddit admins being on the other side has any bearing on this. It doesn't. Simply the fact that they want to delete certain opinions is already enough for them to be in the wrong, in my opinion.
I don't want to defederate anything. What feddit is doing sounds super Orwellian and shitty, but so is .ml sometimes, and I still do stuff which seems positive over there. The thing that lead me to SDF in the first place was the low blocked/blocked by.
Agreed. I periodically check to confirm that SDF is not blocking other instances and feel pride at the free thought. That's part of why I changed my mind and amended the post. This is a topic that matters more to me than a lot of other reasons people on other instances have called for defedding. But rational arguments in the comments pulled me back. Thanks all.
Thank you speaking up, the double speak and lack of humanity here for Palestinians is sickening and anyone who doesn't condemn it is complicit in helping sweep a genocide under the rug..
The link appears broken, so I don't know the specifics here, but defederation really needs to be a last resort as it kinda halts any chance of the conversation going the other way too. It helps create and support the extremified echo chambers that actively cause so many of our societal problems.
If the instance is particularly problematic or exclusively causes harm, then it might be appropriate to nuke em. But it also effectively tells the entirety of Lemmy that this is not a conversation worth having, and that it is wrong (at least socially) to ever interact with these people. And, it tells the folks being defederated that whatever they are saying must be valid because it gets an extreme reaction. People are exceedingly unlikely to admit wrongdoing and change their behavior when action is taken against their community of like-minded buddies (echo chamber), they double down and become even more polarized.
I know you mentioned speaking against defederation before, and I obviously don't fully understand the details here, but I feel like it bears repeating that defederation has to go beyond the moral opinions of any individual if we want to stave off circling the drain of overreactive garbage that places like Reddit or Twitter became.
As a Jew, fuck Zionism, It's a stain on Judaism and Israel itself. Guess fuck feddit.org too.
I only would agree with defederating if it's proven that they are blocking anti-genocide content on other servers from being visible to their users.
In general I believe that maintaining lines of communication with those who otherwise believe in reprehensible ideologies is best, both in order to better understand such backwards ideologies, and also to provide a lifeline back to consensus reality for people who've been swept up by them.
I also believe that in the majority of cases, users should wield the power to instance-block for themselves. Or at least, servers where this is the case are the ones I prefer to participate on.
However, if it becomes clear that feddit.org admins are censoring content external to their instance due to their support of Zionism, then my first objection becomes irrelevant, and the second would be questionable, given the efforts of admins to put external fedi content thru a pro-genocide filter. At that point, defederation would be both warranted and wise.
I don't subscribe to any communities on that instance. If you defederate, I probably won't notice. If we can do anything that'll even make marginally better the lives of those who have gone through so much, I support what good we can do.
some of the politics communities are starting to get there.
Banning certain actions and defederation; both are censorship and also patronization. I am against any form of censorship. There are very few exceptions, mainly malicious actions, which need to be banned to protect your users.
We all have the choice to hide certain terms, communities or servers. A much better way is to get confronted by it and actively protest to this kind of censorship. Share your views, your opinions in a non-offending way. Give the others the chance to get educated. If it fails, move on and enjoy your life somewhere else.
I know, my views are quite unpopular. But they are mine. Feel free to block me at any time.
This is the third comment making me reconsider.
Politely disagree
if you gotta make your opinion non-offending to a zionist, then you're already a piece of shit. might as well just embrace the genocide at that point, because you aren't changing the minds of people literally engaged in genocide by killing them with kindness.
Yeah let's fight censorship with more censorship!! Total isolation!
If you isolate the users of feddit then you won't help them on having different views.
I have no input but Lemmy is closer to communes than a unified social media, you shun those that don't follow social rules like feddit has done, no?
Why help people who are comfortable with "I think brown people dying is neutral to good" is rational thinking?
If they're tolerant of death, and comfortable of being on a Nazi Table of "Maybe murder isn't bad", they're either too stupid to know better or too useful for Zionists.
You're free to educate them. Good luck without being banned for being "anti-Zionist"
It is possible to be pro-Palestinian and anti-Hamas at the same time.
Similarly, it is possible to be pro-Jewish and anti-Israel at the same time.
They key is to be in favour of, and supporting, the innocent civilians that are NOT wielding hate and bigotry, and in direct and vociferous opposition to the power structures on BOTH sides that have looked true evil in the eye and said, “hold my beer and watch this”.
I am as anti-Hamas as I am anti-Israel. Both power/political structures are among the most reprehensibly evil orgs on the planet at this time.
I stand with the innocent civilians; with THE PEOPLE.
Same - and it's weird to see so many leftists immediately jump to unconditional support for Hamas, who are literally a reactionary, religious fundamentalist force and who have done horrible things towards Palestinian people.
Armed resistance to Israel does not negate its evils or its reactionary internal role.
I'm not pro-Hamas but I dislike Israel more because Hamas are fighting their captors. I can understand that. I believe if Palestine was granted statehood and equal rights, Hamas would cease operating. If it continued to operate, I would be anti-Hamas as much as I am anti-Israel. The power imbalance makes treating them with equal disdain irrational.
Do you have evidence to support that hypothesis?
Hamas might be doing bad things, but there is no need to condemn Hamas in order to also criticise Israel. In fact, the exact opposite is true. Hamas exists and has the power it does because of Israel.
I dunno how many people have seen season 2 of Star Wars: Andor, but there's a part in that where the Empire funds rebels on a planet specifically because they want them to do terrorism so they have an excuse to come in and genocide the people. They want to manufacture consent for genocide, and while we don't see a lot of the broader public's reaction, it certainly seems to have worked.
That whole thing is literally taken directly from real-world conflicts, including this one. Netanyahu himself directly funded Hamas because he knew they were more extreme than other Palestinian organisations, and by doing that, he helped create the conditions where he can continue to escalate the genocide while the world sits by watching. Every person killed or otherwise harmed by Hamas is Israel's fault. And that's before you get into all the murders of children, doctors, and journalists done directly by Israelis.
In Star Wars, we side with the rebels even though sometimes they do terroristic things that cause innocent deaths. Why? Because they're rebelling against genocide. Once the genociders are wiped out entirely, we can talk about how a good government for the people should be run.
I don't "support" Hamas, but neither do I condemn them. I recognise them as the direct result of Israel's genocide. Effectively, another agent of the Israeli government. The only way to defang Hamas's actions is for Israel to pull back, unilaterally, to the 1948 borders and to provide massive aid in reparation to the civilians who they have harmed through the IDF, through West Bank settlers, and through Hamas. Terrorists thrive in injustice, and anything that doesn't fully call for Israel doing everything to cease the injustice is pissing in the wind.
If you oppose armed resistance against genocide you are pro genocide. It is that simple
If you are anti Hamas you are anti Palestinian. Because Hamas are the ones fighting against the occupation and genocide. Else you can pretend to be pro Palestinian by supporting the PA which is nothing more than an extension of Israel oppressing Palestinians.
But besides that, Feddit is straight up banning calls for Zionism to be abolished which is full undeniable pro-Zionism
It's not quite that simple. Hamas is a deeply corrupt and counterproductive organization. Israel arranges funding for them and supports them against their political opposition, because having Hamas largely in charge of (edit:
Palestine) Gaza is often a disaster for the Palestinians, which Israel enjoys.You can absolutely oppose Israel's genocide and also oppose Hamas's horrifying fig-leaf of "resistance" to that genocide which is mostly useless militarily, and just provides useful pretexts for Israel to do more genocide (not that they need them.)
This is where your argument goes from incomplete to bizarre. Why do you say the PA which Israel dislikes is an extension of Israel, while Hamas which Israel likes and supports (in between military operations) is an authentic resistance organization?
Hamas =/= Palestine, Like Zionist facists =/= Israel or represent any Jewish person with a conscience.
They have killed innocent people just like the IDF has.