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… [email protected] 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:

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.

  • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    9 days ago

    No sweat, I appreciate it. I’ve caught a bit more dialog elsewhere, and I do appreciate that even just a thread like this (let alone actual admin duties) can be real demanding.

    • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      5·
      9 days ago

      And I know we’re a cantankerous bunch at best lol, hard to please everyone. But it needs to be clear this isn’t the Flatworm show, please, because of how central that is to the premise and organizing principles here. Ya know?

      Yeah thanks for the feedback. I agree I did a better job with representing all positions on the last vote to be honest. I think maybe part of the reason was that I felt we were in general agreement on putting it to a vote, so there wasn’t much diversity of opinion to report. But yeah, still.

      Maybe for these governance decisions, a primary post with the main info as is, and one or more top level comments with specific categories of additional info? Maybe a blurb or POV from each admin/mod team contributor, maybe a section with concrete “we want this to improve by doing such”, or etc.

      Good suggestion tbh, thanks.

      Edit - to elaborate a little more since I never really manage to be brief, the biggest thing I’ve liked about this instance from when I first got to know it, is the commitment to transparency around decision-making. I’m just asking for that. If trying to change instance governance, the discussion among y’all should simply be here. I can imagine that poses some challenges.

      You’re right, we should probably commit to having a public discussion first before putting things to a vote in future.

      I’m more willing to make charitable assumptions with y’all than just about anywhere, and I’m telling y’all that even with that, this isn’t enough. I can’t tell how anyone feels but you, and the goals need some guesses too. But again, thank you for being the one willing to take the effort here.

      Yeah I probably didn’t really sell the case that well and should have put together something more compelling. What is kind of surprising to me is how strong support for the proposal has been, despite that fact. But all I can do at this point is to try to do a better job next time. Thanks for the constructive criticism.

      • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        3·
        8 days ago

        Rad, I really couldn’t ask for a better reply. Gave me a big feeling of relief, even, which surprised me a little. I do like this place a lot.

        Thanks for all your efforts around here. It’s probably past time I found some ways to contribute a bit myself, happy for suggestions if you have any.

        [Edit - yeah I’ve been surprised by the responses too, but heartened of course to see such very low tolerance for Zionism]

        • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
          2·
          8 days ago

          Are there any communities I mod you feel a particular affinity towards? We could always do with more mods. And if you’re a c/piracy enthusiast we could do with someone keeping a closer eye on piracy community wiki updates.

          • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            8 days ago

            Okay, I’ll give those some thought. Not sure I have quite the commitment to consistent reasonableness that moderation requires, TBH, sometimes I’m an asshole lol. But I do have technical chops and should find wiki maintenance like you’re describing well within reach (and I even had a correction I intended to provide months back and let that task fall off my list, shame on me).