this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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The Agora

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Censorship on feddit.org (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago by pastermil@sh.itjust.works to c/agora@sh.itjust.works
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Hi all, I noticed this community hasn't been active for a while. Might be a good time to bring it back.

Chances are, you already know what I'm talking about. For those who don't: the moderators and admins on feddit.org, especially !europe@feddit.org, have been removing comments and banning the users that are pro-Palestine, most of the time without even directly addressing them, just straight to banning.

Check out this pinned post. While a some were legit insults and calls to violence, most were just expressing dissatisfaction and questioning the policy.

While not all of us would always agree on things, we've been trying to engage in meaningful discussion even if we'd sometimes end up agreeing to disagree. The same cannot be said on the above community. At this rate, it would become an echo chamber for pro-Israel who'd say anyone disagreeing with them is antisemitic.

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[–] MysticMushroom1776@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I stumbled across this post and I'm not a sh.itjust.works user but I'll just say I do think their behavior is bad and problematic here, especially for a general european community. Ultimately it is their instance so they will do things however they want which is why I created a European community that isn't on their instance and thus won't be subject to the problematic biases brought about by extremely overzealous German law and its associated compelled speech. !europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Thanks! I'm sure this could come in handy!

[–] Shihali@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

SJW here has similar policies to feddit.org. If it's illegal in Canada, it can't be hosted here, even if it's legal in your country of residence.

Are there any comments that were "just expressing dissatisfaction and questioning the policy" that survived in the modlog? It's got a lot of users banned without a record of the comment.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They're hosted in Austria, but some of the admins and mods reside in Germany.

Seems to be removed completely from the log :(

[–] Shihali@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Looking at feddit.org's homepage now, it has this rule:

"Content that is illegal in Germany, Austria or Switzerland will be deleted and can lead to an immediate ban of the account." (emphasis mine)

I am totally ignorant of how German law applies to social media hosted in Austria and moderated by Germans, but the intent to not host content illegal in Germany seems clear and a clear motivation for their censorship. I also can't evaluate the quality of their censorship because I'm not familiar with the requirements of German law.

I wish some of those comments “just expressing dissatisfaction and questioning the policy” had survived, because without them it's your word against theirs. :(

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Okay, I've looked at the post and there are some replies. Some of them have the text they're replying to quoted.

[–] Shihali@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

I didn't see any relevant surviving quotations elsewhere in the pinned post, and I'm not going to go through a whole community looking.

[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works -3 points 2 days ago

The way I read it, they are allowing discussion of both the policy and Israel in general while following the law in Germany.

I don't read modlogs and I mostly ignore people complaining about mods, so I couldn't say if their bans are heavy handed.

[–] gigachad@sh.itjust.works -2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

So what is your point? If you don't agree with the policy of that community you are free to block it. I think the mods clearly explained their point and I find it very refreshing they leave their post open for discussion instead of locking it.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

My point: the community is about Europe, not Germany. Their server itself is located in Austria. Yet the admins and mods are enforcing rules as if they're sponsored by the government of Germany. There are many different opinions over there, yet by blocking some of it, they are effectively steering all the discussions there into an echo chamber.

Even though they let it open instead of locking it, most of disagreeing comments were removed and the authors blocked.

In the same spirit of your question of "why not just block the community?", I ask you why you're even commenting here?

[–] PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 days ago

I can say I'm personally very interested in knowing about what degrees and topics of censorship are occurring on various large Lemmy instances. I'm thankful for this post, I wouldn't have known otherwise. Not trying to start an argument or dunk on you, just registering a different perspective.