this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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New Lemmy Drama: "Feddit.org officially announces they will ban criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian posts and comments."

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.

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[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 22 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (20 children)

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.

[–] Commiunism@beehaw.org 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I believe if Palestine was granted statehood and equal rights, Hamas would cease operating.

Do you have evidence to support that hypothesis?

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

No. That's why it's a belief. That's also why I stated that if it turned out to be wrong, I would consider Hamas just as bad as Israel.

[–] refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Fair enough. I just don't know of a case where a violent rebel group took over a government/land and then immediately dissolved.

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[–] Turbonics@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 5 days ago

I'm in favor. Feddit has proven before this incident to be extremely Zionistic and Islamophobic as well.

[–] ewo@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

As a Jew, fuck Zionism, It's a stain on Judaism and Israel itself. Guess fuck feddit.org too.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 16 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 4 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 points 5 days ago

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.)

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

admins can’t change the law

Neither could the people that hid Anne Frank. And yet, somehow, they found a way.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago

fuuuuck that. there's only one kind of good zionist, just like there's only one kind of good nazi.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

My post doesn't seem to violate these rules, even if I find them overly-restrictive. Glad to see that it wasn't removed.

[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 4 days ago

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.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 11 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] Auntievenim@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

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!

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 5 days ago

Well-argued. I'll give this some thought.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] Panamalt@sh.itjust.works 7 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago

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..

[–] ThorrJo@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

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.

[–] 52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 5 days ago

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.

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