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.
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591
This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:
- For: (5),
(5), 
(1), 
(1), (1) - Against:
- Local Community: +0.4
- Outsider sentiment: Supportive
- Total: +10.4
- Percentage: 82.00%
This vote will complete in 4 days
- For:
I never encountered Zionist trolls. Are they really that common? But I enjoy ich_iel so after a defet, I might use a different account more often.
Defed, definitely.
Do Feddit users come here and harass communities here with Zionism to an intolerable degree? If not, I am completely against defederation. It is wrong in principle and should only be considered as a last resort. And that is not the case here. Most Feddit users are just average people who probably don’t even know what Zionism means. But we’re excluding them all. This also applies to blocking “only” the communities. If you don’t like them, block or ignore them yourself. But don’t dictate that to me.
I want the Fediverse to be as open as possible. People like you are turning it into a walled garden. Isolated, small, and insignificant. Unfortunately, this seems to be an incurable tendency among left-wingers.
defed.
I’m for a defed.
Israel is real?
My first comment on platform, supporting this ban
Usually i’m passive and value balance but seeing how all world is going past 6 months i’ve never been more ready to take hard stand and actually make any dent i can, this is far from enough
I don’t get it, what does banning communities on other instances achieve? Does that mean that we won’t see them?
Defed.
Zionism is just a fucked way of thinking. Nothing gives you more right to a home than someone else.
Who needs Zionists messing up the joint? Not me. Defed 100%
Get rid of them please. Defed completely
Pro complete defederation. Same reason instances don’t federate with Nazi instances. Nazism and Zionism are both just different forms of fascism.
My opinion is more or less that we shouldn’t cut ourselves off from big communities if their theme is not centered on endorsing crimes and if they’re not a community solely for whitewashing them / spreading disinfo.
I think a lot of German speaking users are people who have been exposed to only a narrow view of the world and that they can be valuable allies in the long run. Our instance has been relatively successful at bridging many gaps, I think it would be a shame to defederate entirely.
I’ve seen some questionable takes in places like YUROP but it’s no worse than a large enough .world thread or shjw thread.
My thoughts are unchanged since January. Strikes system for external users promoting imperialism (and the lebensrauming of me, I’m in Lebanon!) on our instance, a special text in German because of how prevalent this issue is among German people. And banning Zionists from signing up to the instance. I’m sure a fellow Arabic speaker could imagine a similar situation for antisemitism. It’s the socialism of fools after all. Surely concern trolling about women’s rights in Gaza is a sort of (subtly imperialist) feminism of fools?
I want the tent to be as big as possible. I want those who excuse these crimes to be exposed to as much common sense as possible. I don’t want them to feel like they have the mainstream opinion anymore.
