[Comm policy] Feddit.org admins respond to criticism regarding pro-Israel stance
Feddit.org admins have responded to the recent controversy about the pro-Israel censorship on ![email protected] and elsewhere on their instance. I thought I'd repost it here for greater visibility (since it's posted in a mainly German language comm). Also, there's a fair bit of comment removal going on in there, and the contents are not being shown in the modlog, so it's a bit hard to tell what's being removed and how it's affecting the discussion.
TLDR: They stand fully behind the mods of ![email protected] and their actions (Edit: Because the law, or at least the way the law is being enforced, says they have to)
![email protected] mods have also spoken up: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12550375 (https://feddit.org/post/12550375). Their stance seems to be "We live in Germany, and we don't want the cops breaking down our door. Here's some examples". And that's totally reasonable, I get that and if I lived under that law I'd be behaving the same way. The question then is, should the biggest europe-centric comm be hosted and modded in such a way that criticism about one of Europe's most powerful nations isn't allowed?
Alternative Europe-centric comm, if you're looking for something censorship-free: ![email protected]
You can find their post here: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12529640 (https://feddit.org/post/12529640)
Previous post about their behaviour: https://lemsha.re/sh.itjust.works/post/37918115 (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37918115)
@[email protected], let me know if this is outside the boundaries of this comm and I'll move it elsewhere. I'm mainly posting here as a follow up to the previous post.
::: spoiler Quote of their post follows:
Hello everyone,
in the last few days there have been some accusations against the moderators of [email protected] as well as against our admin team of being Nazis or Zionists, mainly because of the way of dealing with criticism of Israel.
We explicitly reject these accusations and will not tolerate such accusations. In particular, people who accuse others in this way without any concrete objective reason are not welcome on feddit.org. This is already covered by our rule of respectful interaction.
First of all, we would like to remind you that the use of feddit.org must be compliant with the rights and regulations of the DACH region. This is explicitly mentioned in our instance rules, and includes Germany (D), Austria (A) and Switzerland (CH). The infrastructure of feddit.org is maintained by the Fediverse Foundation, a non-profit association in Austria. Our Admin team, which takes care of the instance wide moderation, organization and supporting infrastructure operations, is based in Germany. Since we primarily target the German speaking coutries, we also try to comply with laws and regulations of Switzerland.
Even if we do not have to actively search for violations of the law, it is necessary to intervene after becoming aware of them. This includes, for example when moderators or admins receive messages about posts or comments, but also when such content is discovered by chance when browsing Lemmy.
https://www.wko.at/internetrecht/providerhaftung
In the case of “hosting”, the service provider has limited liability if the provider
- has no actual knowledge of specific unlawful activities or content and is not aware of any facts or circumstances with regard to claims for damages from which the unlawful activity or content is obvious, and
- as soon as it obtains this knowledge or awareness, takes swift action to block access to the illegal content or to remove it.
Relevant criminal offenses include the following:
Legal instruments against the dissemination of anti-Semitic statements or statements condoning terrorist acts of the German Parliament (German)
::: spoiler excerpt, unofficial translation
Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.
- From 2.1.1 Criminal condoning of criminal acts
According to Section 140 No. 2 StGB, anyone who publicly condones certain types of unlawful acts listed in Sections 140, 138 and 126 StGB in a manner that is likely to disturb the public peace is liable to prosecution. Such related offenses include murder (§ 211 StGB), manslaughter (§ 212 StGB), genocide (§ 6 VStGB), crimes against humanity (§ 7 VStGB), war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 VStGB) and aggression (§ 13 VStGB), but also various offenses directed against sexual self-determination or personal freedom...”
- From 2.1.2 Incitement to hatred
Pursuant to Section 130(1) StGB, anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb the public peace, 1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious or ethnic group, against parts of the population or against an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population, incites violence or arbitrary measures or 2. attacks the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming a designated group, parts of the population or an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population"(...)”1. distributes or makes available to the public any content (Section 11(3)) or offers, provides or makes available to a person under the age of eighteen any content (Section 11(3)) that a) incites violence or arbitrary measures against persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a), or c) attacks the human dignity of persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a) by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming them, or 2. produces, obtains, supplies, keeps in stock, offers, advertisements or undertakes to import or export content referred to in number 1 letters a to c (§ 11 paragraph 3) in order to use it in the sense of number 1 or to enable another person to make such use of it.”
- From 2.1.3 Incitement to hatred related to crimes under international law
"As of December 2022, the new criminal offense of incitement to hatred related to a crime under international law was introduced in Section 130 (5) StGB. According to this, it is a criminal offense to publicly condone an act of the type specified in Sections 6 to 12 of the German Criminal Code against one of the majorities of persons specified in Section 130 (1) No. 1 of the German Criminal Code in a manner that is likely to incite hatred or violence against such a majority of persons and to disturb public peace...”
- From 2.1.4 Formation and support of terrorist organizations
Pursuant to Section 129a(1) StGB, “(1) Whoever establishes an association (Section 129(2)) whose purposes or whose activities are directed towards 1. murder (§ 211) or manslaughter (§ 212) or genocide (§ 6 of the International Criminal Code) or crimes against humanity (§ 7 of the International Criminal Code) or war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or § 12 of the International Criminal Code) or 2. offenses against personal freedom in the cases of § 239a or § 239b (...), or whoever participates in such an association as a member ”
- From 2.1.5 Disseminating propaganda material of terrorist organizations and using their emblems
“Finally, it is also a punishable offense to disseminate propaganda material of terrorist organizations and to use their emblems (Sections 86, 86a StGB).”
:::
Section 130 Incitement of masses
::: spoiler excerpt, unofficial translation
Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.
(3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the child indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of Crimes against International Law in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or a fine.
(4) Whoever publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner which violates the dignity of the victims by approving, glorifying or justifying National Socialist tyranny and arbitrary rule incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine.
:::
Some further links, mostly in German:
- Public approval or condoning of criminal offenses (Germany)
- Hate and Incitement in Criminal Law (Germany)
- Guidelines for the Prosecution of Antisemitic Crimes
- Working definition of antisemitism
- https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/kampagne-gegen-antisemitismus/fragen-und-antworten/antisemitismus-im-internet-moegliche-rechtliche-konsequenzen/moegliche-strafrechtliche-folgen.html (Austria)
In this instance, we fully support the moderators of [email protected] to potentially remove too much rather than too little in case of legal uncertainties.
One of the triggers for the current debate is this post, which followed the removal of a comment comparing National Socialism with the current situation in Israel, which can be considered a trivialization of National Socialism. Such statements can, among other things, lead to imprisonment. Among other things, the post claimed that the removal had a Zionist motive, an accusation that should always be supported by appropriate evidence and prior to which it should be ruled out that there are alternative explanations.
We will not be removing every comment that goes even remotely in this direction, but we reserve the right to permanently ban users from feddit.org who make unfounded accusations, such as labeling our instance, admins, moderators, or other users as Nazis or Zionists, without substantial supporting arguments. This is especially the case when this is recurring behavior and not an isolated incident.
This includes content such as this post by @[email protected], who was banned from our instance shortly before that post due to multiple incitements of violence and terrorism. This person also seems to be the admin of the instance quokk.au, or at least to have good relations to the admin, since we received a censure on Fediseer from quokk.au around the same time, in which we are being accused of being Zionists and Nazis, and @[email protected] has suggested [to defederate quokk.au from us].
If this censure by quokk.au is not withdrawn in a timely manner, we will defederate quokk.au from our side for these unsubstantiated and untrue accusations. quokk.au is a relatively small instance with only a few local users, which tried to build an alternative news community that is not on one of the “big” instances. Unfortunately, this community also seems to be a poor alternative if this is how their admin typically acts.
:::
I'm going to let this up, since it might affect future posts in YPTB. But I think we need some sort of [tag] to assign to these posts to make them easily findable in the comm. It can't be
[meta]since that should be about comm-internals. Any ideas?deleted by creator
Hm, probably something that can encompass both 3rd party instance and comm matters
[instance and community]
[Discussion] or [General]? Anything that's not about specific incidents.
I feel this is more of a topic on the moderation practices of a different comm, should have a more specific tag. [comm meta] or [comm policies] perhaps
I'd go with the latter, since the former seems open to confusion (and overlapping search results)
Why not keep it simple and use [comm]?
I'm trying to prevent confusion with topics about this comm
How about just [Policy]
Politics and legal?
[INPOL] or [Instance Policy]?
I suggest anything re mods or admins of feddit should be tagged [Arrogant_Kuntz]
TLDR - We were just following orders.
Germans gonna german.
What a powerful keyvoard warrior we have here today.
I blocked their instance. I did comment on that post, and the replies weren’t worth responding to. They can argue the granular details of what Zionism is, and is not—I don’t care. I could be factually incorrect in my replies (I am human and capable of error) but I still stand by them. At the end of the day, it’s not worth the time and effort to engage any further with them.
I’m going to get back to the leftist memes and shitposts, just as god intended.
I still stand firmly with the people of Palestine, and hope to be able to support them further from here on out. I don’t have any extra money to donate, nor do I have the time to be able to go out and protest (I work 3rd shift and have to sleep during the day). But I will try my best to do more.
The Palestinians deserve for their voices to be heard loud and wide. Fuck Israel, free Palestine.
So that the gist of it is that they're doubling down on the Zionist apologia and the IHRA definition of antisemitism basically. And are trying to frame all the issues as some trolls making accusations against them instead of something to consider. Good to know.
Just so everyone is aware I made a ![email protected] community thinking this might happen. If you want a Europe community that isn't run by Zionists or an instance committed to an actively Zionist policy you should check it out.
Also IMO as much as @[email protected] may cause issues, if Quokk.au wants to defederate that is their admin's decision and trying to blame another user because their admin chose to defederate is disgusting and childish. Shame on Feddit.org for acting like children on the playground calling someone else a "tattle-tale" for getting actioned by admins after being called out.
There's already a [email protected]
I started ![email protected]. Which is probably a better choice since europe.pub is also "commited to enforcing German law and will probably face these same issues in the future when the truth and reality inevitably disagrees with German Zionist Law.
From europe.pub's TOS:
Good point.
None of this addressed the locking of post regarding the current genocide with 0-1 posts.
They are actively removing the ability to discuss, regardless of opinion, Israel's genocide and only Israel's genocide.
That was previously explained here: https://slrpnk.net/comment/15701097. I think it made things worse, but hindsight is 20/20.
That is true. For legal reasons, so the blame should fall on the govt of Germany, but true nonetheless
This is using "for legal reasons" very broadly, too broadly and shifting any accountability away from the moderation.
If entire country cannot be discussed "for legal reasons" on a large Europe community then should be a strong justification to move the community to somewhere that it is not a problem.
Have you read the post? There are 3 things you cannot say about Israel:
Anything else has zero risk and can be freely said.
The first one is objectively speaking a hyperbole so it's not necessary for discussions. Use any other genocide to draw a parallel to such as the US's genocide of the indigenous population. The second one can be interpreted too vaguely but you're save if you just put the word "peaceful" anywhere when advocating for a one state solution. The third one is a slogan that shouldn't be banned but is, so just don't say it.
Yes, this law is too broad and designed to criminalize discussion about Israel. In a moderated forum this law is trivial to follow without changing the message behind any comment.
Is that what everybody said last time? At the Hague and whatnot?
I'm not going to condemn people for choosing to follow the law while they live there and without knowing the context of their situation. The law is what has to change.
Rubbish.
Edit: to clarify, law is being used as an excuse here. It doesn't need to change, it is feddit admins who need to change.
Unheard of even!
Maybe we can ask the ADL if Palestine has humans worthy of life next. Surely we'll get a the default and sane answer of "What? Yes of course."
I don't think they realise I can't see any messages from them as we de-federated days ago. As for the record, I am not @Deceptichum but I rarely use Lemmy and trust their input here and what they've shown me is validation enough.
The fact that Feddit.org is more upset about the comparison to Nazi's than they are for allowing genocide deniers to exist on their instance is reason enough for our position to continue. If Feddit.org can show serious systematic changes in how it deals with its hate speech problem, we may consider changing our stance in the future.
if i were feddit.org i would probably be asking everyone to migrate to another instance
Again?!
Dear admins of feddit,
Instead of suspending overeager mod and apologising, you have doubled down.
If you are afraid of "police knocking to your door" (which is moronic by the way), what about removing these cretinous mods and migrating the community to another instance? I suggest the one you mention in your post.
Oh so they aren't Nazis and Zionists, they're just poor little cowards who so scared they support Nazis and Zionists.
"We're not Nazis and Zionists, we just platform them and censor anti-fascists and anti-Zionists."
Feddit is now one big Nazi Table.
Specifically feddit.org
also .uk
And they're transphobic too!
I saw this the other day and in that time I immediately deleted my account on Feddit.org. I'm not going to associate myself with this server if they are going to uphold and support Zionism. I don't care if it is for German law or not. Also their whining and complaining about defederation is laughable and makes them seem more petty than lemmy.ml, who didn't whine and complain and threaten counter defederation when they got blocked by any of these other servers.
This is a historic moment because it's the first time that a server I've joined has ended up becoming one of the few servers I actively work to embargo however I feasibly can.
Just because they speak German doesn't mean their servers have to be hosted in Germany
I rather see a fundraising effort and a temporary lock on Comms related to politics just to fix this.
They doubled down, so I don't expect this happening, I just hope it is shunned and defederated, just like Lemmy was meant to be used.
They live in Germany, and are subject to its laws, regardless of where the server is hosted.
By that logic they should defederate from all of Lemmy
🤲 inshallah ya rabbi
I had some completely unrelated issue with those mods. But it led to me abandoning and blocking that community.
Being a mod is not easy. No everyone is fit for it. I'm bot specially harsh as I, myself, am not fitted to be a mod.
There's not shame in stepping back if things got out of hand. If things are going so complicated, specially with severe legal issues involved, and potentially a lot of people not happy with the way they do things, maybe is better just to stop and let others try to mod an EuropeanCentric community.
I'm going to go and try ![email protected] I've always felt great affinity with how decisions are made in this instance, so I'm hopeful.
Guys, they're following German law.
They're 'good Germans.'
So... because it's hosted in Germany... it's functionally illegal to criticize the (Israeli) government? The irony of that is painful.
No. You're allowed to croticize it obviously. Whoever told you that ridiculous lie is lying to you. Don't let yourself be fooled.
I'll even prove it to you: Nettanyahu is an authoritarian that flirts with fascism. I am worried by the complete diaregard for palestinian life and the war crimes in the region.
All completely legal
What you're not allowed to do is say israel doesn't have a right to exist or say that the actions of the israeli government are representative of jews in general. Because that's not criticism, that's anti-semitism.
You misspelled "Nazi".
If you don't know what dofferentiates nazism from fascism in general, you're allowed to just not answer at all
I do know sweetie, unlike yourself. You are allowed to not answer.
Then please tell me how Nettanyahu, a jew and head of Israel, is antisemitic lol
Firstly, it is a "Jew" - capital letter as it is a name of nationality.
Secondly number of Jews are antisemitic and some people are even making an argument that Zionist movement is antisemitic, although this is not what I referred to - see below.
Thirdly, Nazis believe that certain races are inferior. Nazis remain nazis, only their targets change. Now nazis believe that Palestinians (and Arabs in general, apart from Saudis of course) are inferior.
I'm asking you to elaborate on that one. Because the way I read this, you're just blatantly anti-semitic.
Number of jews is antisemitic? Do you know what antisemitism is? It's pseudoscience for jewhate. the same as racism.
Nazism is a specific form of fascism as it was lived and propagated by hitlers Nazi-Regimd during WW2 (shocker). A key pillar of Nazism is antisemitism.
Nazism is literally just hitler-flavoured fascism.
If you don't follow hitlers flavour, you're a normal fascist (which is just as vad as nazism btw)
Police beating anti Zionist ultra orthodox and discriminate against Ethiopian jews . Bombing the Israelis hostages. Say that Hitler didn't want to kill jews claiming it was the mufti who fooled him
Careful, the Feddit admins will ban you for saying that kind of thing because it goes against German laws against antisemitism.
Sarcasm is dead.
Edit: I actually completely missed the most ironic element of your comment the first time.
You mean... like Feddit admins are doing... which they say is to comply with German law...? Use context, homie.
Posting the popular opinion while adding nothing to thw discussion
Dang, I thought we left Karmafarming behind on Reddit
I’ve added feddit.org to my personal instance block
Keep up the good work!
this is unfortunately how lemmy currently works when it comes to instance bans. we would have to manually remove every single comment of those accounts separately for them to show up in modlog. if you look at the ages of the accounts and the names being used it should already be clear that those are all just troll accounts. if you've run across "anti yank" accounts in the past, these seem to be operated by the same person, with their only purpose being to troll by trying to stir up more shit on current drama (they seem to always be aware of the latest drama on lemmy) and frequently call americans and german genociders, not even being consistent in their own arguments.
you can see some of the original contents here:
::: spoiler spoiler
:::
these are all sockpuppet accounts with the same agenda of making lemmy a less desirable place.
This person created a new account just today @[email protected] and they're in this thread right now
Sadly, the decentralization makes sockpuppeting easier
Thank you fxomt, you're really doin' the god's work! I'll keep it in mind
i'm counting at least 12 accounts registered within the last week that are participating in this. some of them just after the previous post in [email protected], others newly registered within the last day.
They have hundreds. They've been making alts since last year.
Thanks, that's been more useful than anything else in helping me figure out which side to support.
Spoiler: it's not yours.
Removing comments saying things like "just create a secular state that respects people's right" should've been your "are we the baddies?" realization moment.
If you're getting banned from THIS comm / instance you're probably doing something deserving.
No one who has been paying attention is surprised.
As I've said in the last however many posts people made to YPTB about feddit- yes, you guys have been breaking the rules. But these rules are fucked, so that is a good thing!
Do the unlawful thing in a space where the laws are wrong and immoral and unjust! Why is this so hard to understand? Get banned by assholes! Wear that shit with pride! Call a nazi a nazi to their face! Anyone protecting nazis is a bastard! Scream that genocide is real! Getting banned from an online space isn't even a slap on the wrist. It's so barely inconvenient, it's literally the least you can do!
A lot of comments don't seem to understand what's the explanation, in essence they say comparing the Gaza genocide to the Nazi era, downplays the Nazi era, which is illegal in Germany. Its not about criticism of Zionism, but comparing it to the Nazis era
How does comparing one genocide to another similar genocide downplay it?
Notice how nobody bothered explaining either. They know it's bullshit.
If one genocide is lesser in scale or severity it can be (and has been) argued it is downplaying it.
There are very few genocides you can directly compare to the Holocaust as its scale and speed was unprecedented even for the time.
I'm unsure you can compare any other genocide to the Holocaust in accordance with German law.
It's hard to define any genocide as worse or better than another, genocide is bad in every way shape and form. I could argue that in terms of scale and effectiveness there are many contenders which would be worse than the holocaust. The Genocide of the native Americans was several orders of magnitude greater in scale but also in time, and also in effectiveness wiping out 95% of them. It was significantly slower though going on over a few hundred years. So it's difficult to compare them.
They would never acknowledge any as being worse due to personal shame and trying to codify acceptable speech through law. Even if it killed more people, in a shorter amount of time and forced said population or culture to extinction entirely. They would probably never admit it unless it would make Germany look better.
You can always define a ranking. Being not ok with the words "better" or "worse" in talking about that ranking is purely emotional response. There is an objective ranking of genocides, but that does not change that everyone agrees (at least everyone I can think of on feddit.org, including all mods) that every single genocide is completely unacceptable.
Completely moronic and likely to be just a daft excuse. Survivors of holocaust and Jews who actively fought nazis compared Palestinian struggle to their own.
See example:
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/thirteen-holocaust-survivors-compare-zionist-policies-to-those-of-the-nazis/
What do literal Holocaust survivors and their families (see: Normal Finkelstein) know tho? I wanna see what white Europeans think about genocide before I make up my mind
The underlying assumption there is that the Gaza genocide isn't as bad as the Nazi genocide, which is itself racist against Palestinians.
In reality, they're not downplaying the Nazi genocide, but instead trying to make a point that the Gaza genocide is really really bad too.
So what you're saying is that Gaza is a planned, industrial genocide with its literally only aim the extermination of all Palestinians? I'm only asking to find out what your actual position is so I can know if we disagree on facts or on feelings.
So are you saying that you think you can calculate ethics using arithmetic, or are you ignorant of the progression of the Holocaust (e.g. how the reason the "final solution" was called "final" was because previous "solutions" to removing Jews et al. from German-occupied territories proved more logistically difficult than expected) and how the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians seems to be following in lockstep?
No, I'm not saying that. Glad you asked.
Well those are the only two legitimate possibilities, so what the fuck are you saying if not one of them? That you're just an antisemitic (note: Palestinians are Semites too) genocide-denier? I'm only asking to find out what your actual position is so I can know if we disagree on facts or on feelings.
I guess that's what you think is happening. I'm not a genocide-denier in relation to what's happening in Gaza, thanks for asking. Btw, since you have now devolved into implicit name-calling, I no longer care to find out what you think. Hope you can find peace.
LOL, you start off in bad faith asking bullshit 'gotcha' questions, and now you have the utter fucking gall to try to claim moral high ground?
What I've done isn't a devolution; it's self-defense. You're just butthurt I didn't fall for your ploy.
But sure, if that's what you want, I'll make it explicit: you're a toxic POS and have been since our first interaction.
There are literal holocaust survivors making this comparison!
Your personal history does not guarantee you to be factually correct about any topic.
Sure, but I'd say it's worth taking such testimonials into consideration, especially when we can see with our own eyes the wanton and wholesale destruction of innocent lives by the Zionist regime.
What if literal holocaust survivors are offended by this comparison though? Because that is a thing as well.
Super tired of the:
Just pull the plug.
If quokka thinks they're Nazis, then they should defend.
If feddit think being accused of being a Nazi means the person who accused them is really a Nazi...
Well, they should defed, and maybe look into attending the American Republic National Convention, because they seem to share similar ideas...
I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt of not being an experienced admin once, especially considering the impact this will have of their news community no longer being federated with us. If they were repeating this behavior in the future that would most likely be the result right away. We don't usually take defederation decisions lightly. It's possible that their admin was acting without much thought put into it, given that we're not yet defederated from them, so if this can be reasonably resolved by them taking back the accusation and not repeating it elsewhere it seems tolerable to stay federated with them, as long as this isn't happening again.
Dude they chose to defederate from your instance because they saw @[email protected]'s thread and then saw how you all were handling things and decided they didn't want to deal with you anymore. They defederated lemmy.ml already for similar reasons, they aren't going to and really shouldn't back down just because you threaten to defederate them back over it. You aren't going to paint quokk.au's admin as the bad guy here, they didn't want to associate with Feddit.org anymore after the incident and I don't blame them. Zionism is atrocious and disgusting, and the fact that you are basically saying (I won't sugar coat it or dance around it with technicalities) that German law requires upholding an amount of Zionism they and most of us find unacceptable, really means this outcome isn't surprising. Take the hint and quit trying to virtue signal, I'm not buying it and neither are the rest of us.
@[email protected] is absolutely right to call you out for the being butthurt and acting like no one is allowed to defederate you. You got defederated and Censured. Deal with it. Maybe expect more of them to happen since people do not like Pro-Zionist sentiment, legally sanctioned or otherwise.
(Using a burner account because the person above you is banned on my home instance)
Didn't even know I was banned from SJW...
Apparently I also got banned from a bunch of communities on sopuli despite not commenting on them... Apparently I "down voted rules" which got me a month long ban, then got banned again for "trolling", probably because something was down voted the admin didn't like.
I really really don't understand why so many admins are so upset about downvotes. I wonder if that what happened with SJW too?
So they said, "Of course we need to make Nazis illegal, how can you even say that, why are you fighting for Nazis and supporting them."
And I said, "Yes but that's not how government works. Every single law that gets made is enforced by the government. Every government in history has branded the people firmly opposed to their crimes as 'terrorists,' 'hate speech,' 'dangerous extremists,' and so on. You do not have the option to only make Nazis illegal. You can either have Nazis, or else you can have no Nazis, no committed animal rights / climate activitists, no pro-Palestinian protests, and so on. The same laws that make Nazis illegal will instantly get used against all kinds of people who are trying to fight against the evils of the world. And so, Nazis need to be legal."
And they said, "Bro STFU it doesn't work that way what even is this, why the fuck are you sticking up for Nazis you are bad it's so simple."
...
It will always work out this way. Every time. You will not get to have a government which shares your ideas about the crimes of the powerful and your right to speak up about them, because the government is the powerful. The best you can hope for is a government which will allow you to say whatever the fuck you want, even if in their self-serving classification system it is "extremist hate speech which threatens us all." That, you can realistically get, and it's a very valuable thing if you can get it.
What nazis are you supporting? It sounds like these people are simply delusional.
Agreed
Given the current problems with sockpuppets and trolls, it might be best for you to be commenting this from a more established account.
I don't think it's just a German thing.
Germany coercing people to promote genocide?!?! I'm shocked! SHOCKED!!! \s
You are willingly misrepresenting and poisoning healthy discussion, what is your aim in this?
I'm personally not a fan of the legal situation, but you can't mod or admin from prison and evading a country's law is pretty hard in the long run if you live in that country.
You can discuss whether this legal situation is wrong or not and whether the German government should support certain countries, though, if you don't include stuff like "you're a nazi/zionist/etc." (usually unhelpful, anyway) or "this country should be destroyed" (I don't think it's super necessary for discussing Germany, unless you also want to destroy Germany).
That said, I agree that it's probably better to move English-language discussions of that topic to a different instance; German law enforcement is pretty gung-ho on that topic and frequently breaches the law itself.
Simping for the government is passivity. It's complacency. Hey, watch this: I want to assassinate the leader of AfD! With a bullet! To the temple!
I steal shit, I have sex in public, I advocate for violence and I'll do it proudly. If you're not willing to go to prison for what you believe in, then you don't really believe it now do you?
You're so based for this.
Not at all. I'd rather go to prison for my ethics and morals than sell out and be a good little mindless worker drone, obeying all the laws I am told.
Good for you, but I don't think it's alright to just demand it from others, especially not in this way (like telling people they're nazis if they don't want to go to prison).
The Nazis imprisoned those who spoke out. Sound familiar?
Do you call every German under the nazi regime who didn't speak out out of fear a nazi?
Complicity is acceptance. If you don't resist, you're silent to their actions.
How many times have you been jailed fighting for your beliefs and what was it for? Asking for context so I know if you apply your own standards to yourself.
Nothing yet, but I'd have people punch for me standing up to racists. I have scars to prove it.
I have been beaten, verbally assaulted, and been ostracized from social places because I stand for what I believe in. Sometimes its "I don't think we should tolerate Nazis" to "Why are you recording this public space, there's nothing wrong happening, this is a waste of the money you could use to improve this space."
I haven't been arrested yet, nor the people who punched me because the cops were on their side. But I'm sure someday I'll be arrested and sent to Gitmo because I questioned Trump's actions.
It saddens me that people are just looking at the 'overview' (2-3 reports by 1-2 users, here at YTPB, all in a few days) instead of doing their own research. This announcement right here, includes a disingenuous 'tldr' that seems to now be pointing fingers to the instance admins on feddit.org (like, extending the accusations that fell upon c/europe moderation team).
followed the original community (![email protected] now has a fork under this instance), and I couldn't say they're zionists, nazis or anti-semites. Those who are doing it, stretching these concepts, do it with an agenda (either theirs or 'given')...
That's funny, seeing as I purposefully kept my post neutral in tone. The TLDR is almost directly lifted from their own statement: "In this instance, we fully support the moderators of ![email protected]". I made no claims or insinuations one way or another, it's weird how you're being so defensive right off the bat. My purpose for this post was to spark discussion, not condemnation.
the problem is that your tldr does not take any of the explanation into account, while the previous posts were actively accusing the moderators and admins of being zionists and not understanding the reason for removal was instead the trivialization of national socialism.
The previous post which I linked, did not make any accusations beyond stating there was a trend to the posts being locked (which there obviously was). The comments were, but I assume if you've read all the comments in this comm in the past few days you've had ample opportunity to make up your own mind and the TLDR isn't going to influence that.
Nothing in the announcement is really a surprise, or unexpected. I disagree with the extent of the mod actions, and I feel reasonably certain some mods are using it as cover for pushing their own opinions. I also understand how the legal threat binds the behaviour of the admins. I will say that those who think this legal restriction on speech and discussion is a good thing are deluded.
This doesn't account for the locking of posts made about the current genocide with 0-1 comments.
That was previously explained here: https://slrpnk.net/comment/15701097. I think it made things worse, but hindsight is 20/20.
the title of the post is literally "[email protected] supports Zionism" and claims that the comment removal was
That's... not the previous post I linked.
Am I correct in saying that the announcement essentially boils down to 'We support the mods, and don't think they (or we) have done anything wrong. Here's why.'?
I admit I didn't follow the link, but given the context I think it's only fair to start with the first current post on this topic, as that's one of several that contains accusations of zionism.
considering your update, it would still be reasonable to explicitly include the trivialization of national socialism as the original issue, because even though there are certain laws that we might not agree with, at least I fully agree that it shouldn't be acceptable to trivialize national socialism.
At some point, the TLDR stops being a TLDR if you pack every point into it. That also brings up the discussion of what is considered trivialization of national socialism, etc.
I updated the TLDR to (hopefully) make it clearer.
I presume you are one of these feddit admins or moderators. You should be ashamed of yourself.
You mean people who failed to remove the mods in question and instead doubled down on their ridiculous stance?