Join the Pledge to boycott lemmy.world! [GenAI]
Note: Judging by the comments, a lot of people are obviously not reading the post and are instead assuming we are calling for defederation of lemmy.world. That is not the case, and in fact the opposite is true. LW already temporarily defederated anarchist.nexus once, and the evidence suggests Mr Kaplan is now pushing for full defederation of all the FAF instances. We are trying to build a coalition of instances that will agree to defederate from lemmy.world IF Kaplan goes ahead with the defederation. Apologies if you weren't aware of the context.
🏴☠️ Hoist the Black Flag: Pledge to Boycott Lemmy World!
... if Lemmy World dares to defederate from any ship in the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, https://anarchist.nexus/, and https://quokk.au/.
Mateys, we can’t let a mega‑instance captain bully the rest of the fleet just because their ship’s bigger. If Lemmy World tries to throw the FAF overboard, we’re calling for a show of solidarity: a fediverse blockade of Lemmy World in response, until the landlubbers see reason (i.e., there is an acceptable change in their leadership and/or this policy).
This is about mutual aid, not mutiny - standing together so no single admin gets to rule the seas unchallenged. A united armada of smaller instances can absolutely blunt Lemmy World’s outsized influence (and, let’s be honest, their ego).
☠️ A word to the captains: before hoisting colours or locking in a course, we ask ye to let your crew have their say. Run a poll, open the deck for discussion, and listen to the voices aboard your vessel. These seas belong to all of us, and decisions that shape our fediverse should be made together, not from the captain’s quarters alone.
If other captains be keen to chart this course with us, drop anchor and make the pledge public in the comments. The more hands on deck, the harder it is to sink any one of us. Let us know if you are holding a vote!
dbzer0 and AN members can vote on this pledge in [email protected], and quokk.au will be holding their own vote.
🏴☠️ Solidarity forever, and fair winds to the Flotilla!
governance type: sense check
To clarify, this is not a vote to defederate. This a call to instance admins to pledge for a mutual protection pact.
No this is a vote to see if .world defederates us
NGL, I kinda want us to defederate.
I've started to reply a few times trying to dig into what Zionism exactly means and all that. The truth is, the nuances of what is happening over there is a bit beyond my understanding. I thought it was wrong when the Germans were rounding up and gassing Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. And I think it's wrong that the Jews are now committing genocide against the Palestinians. The difference is, the world sided against genocide almost 100 years ago... but most of the world seems to be siding with genocide now. I don't get it.
Here's what I do know: Lemmy and the Fediverse is fucking awesome. I even kind of like how shit places like Truth Social and Lemmy.world can exist... I do not believe in an echo chamber. That said, if someone is toxic, I think it is fine to cut them out. I think the problem if we do not defederate is, we justify the actions of the people who are fighting to make Lemmy.world the only instance people care about. I browse /all, which means I see all the comms on all the instances. And it seems like there are two kinds of Lemmings who create posts: those who cross-post across Lemmy.world, and those who cross-post across multiple instances. I like the latter a lot more, because if we do defederate from Lemmy.world, then we'll still get content. The former group bugs me because I feel like interacting with them at all supports Lemmy.world, and if they're siding with genocide, against human rights, I do not want to be a part of that.
Since the drama with Lemmy.world has began, I've seen that a lot of the communities I enjoy following are actually on Lemmy.world. But I don't want to support them. I make long, thoughtful posts and I feel we need more of that on Lemmy. I don't want to contribute to people I'm politically and/or ethically opposed to the actions of. I would rather dbzer0 or other flotilla involved or flotilla aligned instances had those same comms and discussions, and that my energy would be better spent there.
Even though I may be among the least political dbzer0 user, I'm here because I looked at the instances and said "hey, I don't really dig everything dbzer0 is about, but they seem to support free speech, and I'm here for that." I looked at Lemmy.world too, but it just seemed too... I dunno. Too much like Reddit? Too... corporate? I like that it's big and it brings new Lemmings in, but I don't like the lack of diversity of opinion over there. Reddit was such an echo chamber, and while its opinions shifted, it was always a bit of a problem. I'd rather be welcomed on an instance I don't fully agree with because it supports freedom of speech (to a point, obviously; we're never free from consequences) than walk on eggshells on Lemmy.world.
I also have a PieFed account on an instance that is wholly apolitical, so I don't think it will defederate from anyone or be defederated by anyone... except maybe the porn one? But no great loss there, IMO.
...yeah, I think this is the one I post.
Will this end up splitting the fediverse into islands, if the protection pact gets activated?
What about sending all the fediverse admins to a bar where they can talk it out while drinking beer.
the fediverse is already islands, thats the whole point with federation
no, there will still be instances people can join that cross federate. but the reality is LW is a cess pit of shit moderation by people who think advocating for a genocide is perfectly fine while suppressing the voice of people who advocate stopping a genocide, unfortunately they're sitting on first mover advantage and got a lot of users from the initial migrations.
the fallout from this will be world getting isolated and better moderated communities cropping up to fill in the gaps.
byyeeee glhf
👋
no smurfing, promise?
The typical level of reading comprehension of worlders in full display.
This reminds me of when Beehaw de-federated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works and the lemmy.world users acted like Beehaw's administrators were dictating for Beehaw's users what they could venture out and see rather than what had happened: open signups had allowed a greater number of trolls into Beehaw's space than they could reasonably deal with.
The longer the threadiverse experiment goes on the more it seems to me like Beehaw's admin team knew the problem they were seeing the instant they saw it, and have been proven right in their approach to dealing with it. My Beehaw account used to be my main account (really should update my profiles at this point to reflect that this is my main one and the beehaw one is for when I'm too fuckin' sick of how many assholes abound on the threadiverse). It's a really good instance and I have a huge amount of respect for that admin team.
IDK... There seems to be an instance culture with .world that:
I don't think this one is true. They pre-emptively defederated hexbear early on and they defederated anarchist.nexus due to one mod not even interacting with them.
yeah i think the admins have a better understanding but it seems like the users have a different idea of what the fediverse is than i do. you're right that my wording doesn't quite capture concept i'm trying to capture though.
maybe it's something more like "the only justifiable instance defederation is the one we engage in"
Seriously though, why we are clinging to continued federation is beyond me.
Randomly join an instance. Now just an ignorant 'worlder'. But I wasn't like those other 'worlders'. I pledged myself to a greater cause. I crossed the deserts seeking those gilded forums talked about in stories. Even now, if you look out on a clear night, you can see my wandering star.
on .world. 😭
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591
This is a non-voting post. Known users should leave comments with your thoughts on the subject.
I made a very similar post to this on the LW Announcement post, but this has since been slightly edited and fleshed out. But... for those unaware...
A user by the name of Luminous was an admin on Anarchist.nexus. They banned MrKaplan from a community for 'posting zionist apologia.' Luminous also had 'Murder all Zionists' as their display name. MrKaplan took this as a personal death threat. Instead of speaking with any other admin from Anarchist.nexus and reporting the behavior, MrKaplan instantly defederated from Anarchist.nexus. In the next couple of days, Kaplan messaged other users/admins of Lemmy about the defederation and suggested defederation to others as well.
After being posted in the Piefed general chat, PugJesus pushed back against the defederation.
The conversation moves elsewhere.
So, I messaged Kaplan. Conversation goes on and one thing is made clear, that Kaplan did not reach out to any of the Admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus until after defederation had occured.
LWAdmins made an announcement post discussing the defederation but the post was not featured unlike all other recent posts made by the LWAdmin account, which felt underhanded. To make matters worse, Serinus (a moderator with admin level abilities), proceeded to step into the conversation and start removing offending posts for reasons listing anything from "We've heard your opinion" to "Misinformation" when screenshots proved otherwise. I say he has Admin level access because @[email protected] was banned from the Instance by an Automod I (and Jordan Lund) previously had access to. It sort of sidesteps the Modlog by not logging who actually did the removal, which I'm not a huge fan of, but this was also admitted by Serinus in a comment where he said he was the one who banned them. This being the same Serinus who said this of defederating with Anarchist.nexus:
Kaplan later doubled down in the LemmyWorld Discord Server, after the conversation I had with them in which they admitted having exactly zero evidence for this stance other than it "feeling odd", by stating:
Ruud, the head admin of Lemmy.world, has had no feedback on this position. The only natural conclusion one can come to is that the LW Admin team (of which Serinus now seems to be a part of as he speaks for the admins in the admin community and has admin tools) are not just fully willing to act based off of knee-jerk reactions, but aren't capable of communicating with other admins on issues that they may have with their instance. Or that they only will confer with you if your instance has enough users for them to consider a valid one.
Now, they have refederated with Anarchist.nexus since this situation but they haven't backed down from the threat of defederation. This is much like every other major problematic issue that has been brought up in the past with Lemmy.world. Their admin team drags their feet for an absurd amount of time, despite rolling in reports about moderator abuse or whatever else, and then expects people to act with pre-cog abilities without them informing you of their problems with your instance. Also seem to be willing to police how good your reasoning is on how you feel about the situation to judge whether or not it's appropriate to defederate.
To paraphrase what Kaplan said in one of those screenshots, it is not my intention to control who can or can’t be on admin teams on another instance but I do expect other instances to understand that an individual admin’s actions reflect their instance as a whole. Something Ruud seems to not care about and something that Kaplan belives does not apply to themself. Overall, the primary response by the LW Admin team has been to frame AN and Dbzer0 as either a small instance that “only has 165 users” or "only 71 monthly users" or a “vocal minority with an agenda”. For 20,000 users.
How long before its your instance on the chopping block for not telling them exactly what they want to hear? How many of your users will be silenced by Lemmy.world for a perceived sleight against them?
What Luminous did was idiotic and troll-esque. But what Kaplan is doing is considerably worse.
I don't think I have to state where I stand on this.
Can you link to the post please? This is important. I've heard a lot of accusations that they were zionist, but I'm still searching for proof.
Sorry for being unclear. That was the reason that Luminous gave in the modlog. I have no idea/input on that personally, especially when Luminous isn't an admin anymore.
then please make it clear that u have nothing to support this, and that u were just quoting luminous' modlog message.
as it stands, it taints ur entire post with the (possibly false) assumption that mrkaplan posted zionist apologia.
I added quotation marks. That being said, I refuse to accept that a single off-color ban reason is enough to 'taint' an encylopedia of abuse by Kaplan.
thanks. i didnt mean to imply it tainted the content of the post. what i meant is that it starts the reader off in a particular emotional state, based on an assumption.
for what its worth, i do agree that kaplans behaviour was wrong, especially for an admin.
Yeah, this is a big thing for me, too. Sure, the admins at .world seem to be pretty egregiously losing perspective and power tripping, but if they're defending a state doing a very public genocide right now, that's beyond insane. I'm probably in favor of the proposal either way, considering the blatant disregard for other admins and dereliction of duty for something as simple a just fucking communicating. However, if this behavior is also accompanied by someone defending a genocide state, we have some cleanup to do on the fediverse that may require some kind of campaign, because fashy behavior from someone with that much influence over the biggest instance is absolutely unacceptable in our fediverse.
Wait, they actually did defederate from anarchist.nexus, temporarily?
I've not been following this very closely.
That tempts me to just block the instance outright, now, personally... I've already blocked most of their mods, and I'm 95% sure jordanlund has either been personally, or assigned a bot to downvote any comment or post I make on .world that he notices, in retaliation for me chewing him out as an objectively racsist shitlib hypocrite like a year ago now.
... if they move another inch, fuck em.
I am beyond sick of these hollier than thou, smarter than you, emotionally unstable neckbeard dorks.
EDIT: Hey look, that one, solitary downvote showed up here too! ... how odd.
Correct. The most you could say, as Tenchiken did in the FAF Matrix, was that Kaplan defederated at the same time as they threatened Db0 (the user).
No attempt at outreach was made in order to rectify the situation prior to a defederation. It was taken as the first resort, not the last. Despite the admin being gone, refederation only occured, as the LWadmin account posted, because "there is no point in keeping anarchist.nexus defederated while [dbzer0] is federated."
This is the same admin team who dragged their feet for weeks on Jordan but instantly defederated from Anarchist.nexus, all users and all other admins be damned, and then threatened dbzer0 as a whole.
Fucking nuts.
Good on you for the writeups you've been doing on this... I don't have the patience or spare sanity meter, so to speak, to deal with and catalogue this absolute horseshit.
It's a nice distraction. My birthday is on Thursday and every year something usually goes catastrophically wrong. Just sort of waiting for it to lol this just gives me something else to focus on.
o7
Mine was last Tuesday. Here's to getting older!
Lmao of course rimu would be the first to support this, fuck these bootlicking fascists with their Zionist victim cards always at the ready
Really alarmed by the lack of professionalism in the leadership of some of these platforms. Rimu's response to me being shadow banned due to a glitch in the login screen of piefed.social was "yea, that happens, you should probably find another instance.". That's how I ended up on anarchist.nexus. 😆
Anarchist nexus won't mask it's censorship behind false error codes.
Anarchist nexus won't personally remove you from the database because you tilted an admin.
Anarchist nexus isn't ran by Rimu, so it's already better.
Thanks for this rundown, I appreciate it
So if I'm following this right... Let's replace the term Zionist with Nazi.
Person 1 says "Nazis deserve to be murdered." Person 2 spouts rhetoric that sounds very Nazi-like. Person 2 gets called a Nazi. Person 2 now goes on a campaign saying that they're receiving death threats because of the transitive property and makes the nuclear move of defederating.
Is that what's happening here with Kaplan?
Exactly so.
Basically, yeah.
This should be pinned as well I think not a lot of people are in tune to the drama and I'm already seeing some misinfo flying around @[email protected]
It's not possible to pin other people's comments
Lemy.lol has a new administration team. We stand with Dbzer0 against Lemmy.world's flagrant abuses of power. Their admins have forgotten the purpose of defederation. To see it used as a cudgell against a single user they feel distasteful, not to mention not having any evidence to back up their claims, is a gross offense to the Fediverse as a whole.
That's awesome news!
based
first time?
Yep, exactly the same.
Yeah, that really doesn't set a good look.
As someone who has completely replaced Reddit with Lemmy cold turkey since the blackouts, LW is still absolutely massive and federating with them has made me feel much less detached from the ebb and flow of online culture even if it’s filtered through the self-selection bias of people who would actually sign up for Lemmy.
I think this entire fiasco is pissy, utterly unnecessary posturing by their admin. But my bar for whether someone is a full blooded apologist for crimes or just deeply socialized into accepting them is this litmus test: is this person genuinely in favor of me being murdered, or is this person simply German?
I am personally affected by the rapacious ideology that is Zionism. I cannot currently access my familial hometown, even though it’s north of the Litani, it’s unsafe. I am almost certainly in the Palantir repository of “fighting age” males. So I’m not just happy to ignore a distant problem. I don’t want to dox myself but I am a former emergency healthcare volunteer and had to be called in during that Wednesday two weeks ago to help with triaging all the injured. They were all civilians, many who who looked and talked like me, who spoke my exact dialect. I have personally lost four acquaintances in this war, all decent people, all civilians. Some of the beggar kids who I walk past on the street every day are also dead and I fucking cried looking at a cinder block where one of them used to sit. A building I lived next to as a student, three buildings down, in a safe fucking area in the middle of the city, got fucking erased. This is very real to me. I have witnessed a lot of human suffering on that Wednesday, about as much as during the entire hell pandemic + explosion summer.
My opinion is not more important because of my experience but I have had ample reason to examine who I’m willing to talk to and who I’m willing to avoid. Back on Reddit I would openly speak about this very sensitive subject in big threads, intentionally choosing more measured wording, and I would get a lot of positive responses from people who seemed to really not know the situation. Granted this was before the mask off phase of that place.
I think our instances, and Hexbear for that measure, are exemplary on this issue. Nobody is born deserving to be murdered. I also think wider, more conservalib users from the wider Lemmy ecosystem getting to see us unapologetically call crimes crimes, and genocide fans getting downvoted by everyone, including fellow users of their own instances, is very important. This is not an abstract political idea, this is a fucking excellent litmus test. Many of the cooler users eventually migrate to our instance, I think that’s awesome. I think being so willing to federate with mostly everyone above room temperature decency is important, let them see our politics, let them be mad that they have to confront horrible ideologies they have been born into. And if they voice support for this murderous ideology, or any other genocidal belief, in our communities, then our rules are clear. Let them feel confrontation.
That said there is one annoying Zionist user on our own instance constantly pissing in our nice community pool. This person has crossed the German line.
I don’t think we saw that with LW yet. I think nothing I’ve seen so far from their admins crosses the “Is this person evil or just fucking German?” line, specifically. The broader LW userbase is on the libby side but they are broadly well meaning and can learn and be valuable allies and friends. And the large volume of posts provides plenty of opportunity to have good conversations. I have a lot of goodwill for Hexbear, despite also not loving some of what is considered mainstream on there (although I understand it. Critical support is important. Ask ne how I fucking know. I still have a town for a reason.). But Hexbear is very insular. It’s the same 200 users most of the time. A lot of the discussion there is pretty good, and frankly CTH is probably the funniest community anywhere on Lemmy. Some of the most concise and accurate English-language writing on political currents in the Levant I’ve ever seen is on Hexbear. But I think our role as an instance is different. I like that we federate with both. I like that a lot actually. I don’t have one account for shitposts, one for memes, one for saluting the blahaj flag, and one for hanging out with the MLs. This is everything I liked about Reddit back in 2011 and better. As it stands, dbzer0 is the LW of the flotilla. Does that make sense? That might be unpleasant for some people, but I think that’s a strength. The gate is wide fucking open. Solidarity to me also means getting people on board. Genocidal ideologies hurt the people they’re sold to as well, they impoverish the world we share.
Until the LW admins do something much more stupid, I strongly vote Nay. If they do, I’m happy to respond accordingly. But I don’t think it’s hit that point, I hope it doesn’t. I think this is a good initiative but that it’s being deployed too preemptively. I hope this comment isn’t too all over the place, but I really have a lot of thoughts whenever defederation or Zionist Bar problems pop up.
I do think we should try mediating first if they block our sister instances, and only defederate if they become worse about this whole thing.
Sorry decent people of Germany. Not all Germans etc etc
I think you misread the proposal. The proposal is to pledge to boycott (aka defederate from) Lemmy World if (and only if) they decide to defederate one or all of our instances. We aren't planning to defederate from them pre-emptively.
It's basically a call for unity amongst the middle and smaller sized instances, to ensure there are negative consequences for LW if they go through with it.
I thought every post here has a vote element to it, so my reading comprehension failed me there. My bad.
My point is that an immediate defederation feels extreme to me at this point in time. I like the idea of our instances doing things together to make (let’s say) a stupid defederation of one of them have more consequences, but in this specific case I wouldn’t prefer this specific decision. I’m saying I don’t think we should defederate from LW ourselves unless something much more egregious happens than has already happened.
This is a great take, and thank you for posting it.
I don't have much else to add to this beyond I agree on all counts, and vote nay to defederating in all but the most extreme circumstances. User level controls for filtering/blocking exist for anyone that feels differently.
I think you misread the proposal. The proposal is to pledge to boycott (aka defederate from) Lemmy World if (and only if) they decide to defederate one or all of our instances. We aren't planning to defederate from them pre-emptively.
It's basically a call for unity amongst the middle and smaller sized instances, to ensure there are negative consequences for LW if they go through with it.
Yeah I get it. I still vote no, defederation should be a total last resort and if world is being shitty with any of these other instances they sure aren't gonna care about the rest. But that's just my opinion, I don't run db0.
It’s not just your opinion, we are a collective. We all take part in running dbzer0.
actually, only those who pay the admins take a part, the others serve as a tie-breaker at best, unless i missed a memo*. this post in particular is only directed at instance admins tho.
EDIT: *users can also get vouched for by those eligible, and get voting rights that way
You missed the memo. It's for verified and vouched members of the instance. One way you can get voting rights is to donate. Another way is to support the community and be active on the instance. Another way is to be vouched for by someone else who has voting rights. There are a number of ways, all listed in the link in the sidebar.
Find it odd that you're gonna give me shit for not having quotation marks in a post and then (twice) in this thread misrepresent stuff.
i think i made it clear that it was only my understanding of the situation. "unless i missed a memo" is another way of saying "as far as i know".
still, ive seen few members in a voting poll so far that have the "vouched for" flair in the bot response, so i doubt this changes things for the three ppl present here. still, thanks for the correction
also didnt mean to come off as giving u shit for it, i just felt it important, no ill will ur way from me
that's literally an Aye, i think you misread/misinterpreted the proposal
oh god my sides
deutschland verrecke
Good write up though thank you very valuable to read
best answer ever of this thread
LW joined Cloudflare’s centralised walled-garden. Then they abused that bandwith to grow without restraint to be the biggest concentration of network-effect-exploitation in the fedi by orders of magnitude beyond multiple standard deviations above the avg size. Power mongers with absurdely disproportionate influence and control. This alone is cause to ditch LW. It’s like a Facebook within the fedi trying to masquerade as “decentralised”.
.world admins are a "both sides are the same" instance and will equate the atrocities of one side with the resistance of the other. I find myself constantly checking to see which instance I'm on before commenting. I didn't even realize I have been banned on certain .world communities for my comments and nothing of value was lost.
Lemmy (the platform) of today is very different than that from even a year ago. Many parallel community on alternate instances exist, albeit with varying levels of activity. While most people may start on .world, I'd be interested to know how many stay there.
I'm supportive of this action and would encourage.
I'd call it less a "both sides are the same" and more a "both sides' money spends the same" but like, it's a distinction with hardly any difference.
Lemmy.world has always been the shitty centrist wanker instance.
"Centrist" in American terms.
Which in World terms means "so far to the Right that they actively support Genocide of non-whites as long as its done abroad".
I mean sure, if this is going to come up again then yeah just defed FAF from .world. But all of this is a bit LARPy... Let's not make it more dramatic than it needs to be, if zionists are doing their thing then just break the link (ban, defed, mute, whatever) with them and move on, all the fanfare about standing up to their bullying etc. is silly and a bit embarassing when contrasted with the actual oppression Palestinian folks are facing.
The issue is, they're the largest instance on the fediverse. Their users aren't the issue. The staff are. They think they have the authority to control Lemmy at large because they control the most users.
The fediverse is strong because no one having control of it protects it from people like this. People need to know what's going on, and an attempt needs to be made to ensure the staff there doesn't have the power to control the fediverse, or it'll become the same as Reddit. The users of Lemmy.world should be informed and given the chance to leave, which the staff there doesn't seem to be keen om doing.
We are not voting for a preemptive defederation. This whole proposal is only for if they decide to defederate from us first, which they are currently considering.
Yeah I understood it was not a vote on pre-emptive defederation, I guess to be clearer in my position: I expected that one FAF instance should/would always respond accordingly to any negative actions against another FAF instance, especially when that action is based on reactionary politics like zionism. Otherwise, what's the point in the FAF?
Oh I see. Yeah I guess that's what I thought too, but it's not guaranteed that everyone would hold the same position. 👍
Someone posted Pro-Putin propaganda in their progressive politics community and not only was it not deleted, but my comment telling the OP to go fuck themselves for it was deleted. Added the whole instance to my block list.
I had a similar case where I called someone's talking points, ones the Tankies are using. Got banned for it.
i doubt it was pro potin propaganda
The post was a video of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin and the user's arguments boiled down to "you won't listen to him because he's right and you know it".
So yeah, I'm pretty sure it was pro-Putin propaganda.
a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
That's nice sweetie, but you know there's a modlog you can check and see for yourself, right?
yep. none of the comments i see say what you claim
Easiest aye ever
Users on lemmy.world are mostly sound but they are a very undemocratic instance where an admin has oversized power and can act on a whim without consulting its users.
Hm to think of it they are quite an analogue for USA
That's basically every instance except for kinda this one and maybe one other. At the end of the day they run the server and are legally liable for the content so that's just how it is. If you have an instance with open signups you'd be crazy to leave admin questions to unvetted actors
Honestly this will be the death of the flotilla. If .world cared they would defederate dbzer0 at this point and we would float into an echo chamber of hatred. If people can't take a centrist disagreeing with them, they are weak, foolish, people who cant put a word behind their thoughts. .world isn't the far right, they aren't the far left, they are every standard person who will join Lemmy/PieFed in the future. If we want a bubble where discussion dies, that's fine, but this sounds like stupidity to me
"Echo chamber of hatered"?? Lmao
Explain your thoughts
I understand your intent, but "echo chamber of hatred" is inaccurate.
I'm always team fuck Lemmy.world. if I wanted garbage ass reddit takes, I'd just got to reddit.
Reading this on lemmy.world and wondering what new online drama am I missing.
I raise my pint to defederating from cringe.world!
Seriously. The problem will only get worse.
What is the practical definition of this blockade? I'm assuming that because the word "defederate" only appears once, in the context of Lemmy.world's actions, that this blockade is separate from defederation. If so, what does it actually mean? If this is actually a vote for defederation, I think that it should be more clear in the post.
A blockade would be a big group of instances defederating from lemmy.world to isolate them as opposed to one or two instances deciding to defederate with no coordination
Please remember that this whole proposal is only for if they decide to defederate from us first. In that case, it would trigger the "blockade" which is (hopefully) a group of instances defederating from lemmy world in protest, en masse, until such time as the issues are resolved. All it is about really, is asking for mutual aid from other instances to ensure Lemmy World can't act with impunity with regard to defederations. It's purely a defensive measure. Does that make more sense?
Kaplan basically threatened us all with defederation after a "review", because they felt it would be "pointless" to only ban one of our instances (AN). All we want from LW is for them to put it to a community vote, instead of hiding their discussions in Discord servers etc, and leaving it solely in the hands of the current leadership team. Can anyone imagine Mr Kaplan and Jordan Lund doing any amount of self reflection, or coming back with a more moderate and reasonable take?
As things currently stand, LW is run top-down, with no accountability or transparency around policy decisions, poor (and slow) decision making on important issues, and an almost complete lack of community involvement in the running of the instance. It's basically run like Reddit, but with federation. They also consistently double down on bad admin decisions instead of doing some reflection, and so naturally, we are concerned that after a week or two of seemingly doing nothing, they will announce the end of their "review", decide they did nothing wrong (again), and proceed with the threatened defederation.
Thanks for explaining. I appreciate that this is a proactive plan of action with clear goals and trigger events.
I vote aye.
“I have no idea what’s going on but it sounds very real and important” - Me, who just signed up a few days ago
Don't worry, switching instances is quite easy here, and you can keep all your communities and subscriptions. If things go south I can recommend lemmy.zip and lemy.lol as general-purpose instances, hexbear.net and lemmy.ml as communist/socialist instances, and lemmy.dbzer0.com and anarchist.nexus as anarchist instances.
Aye from YuruLemmy! We'll gonna block l.w when they block you all!
Wait the fuck did I miss
.world defederated anarchist.nexus because someone said Israel bad
So they want to fight a war, huh?
Here is a good write-up by stamets https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25750862
Not as simple as Luffy said.
It was more like anarchist.nexus mod called some .world mod a Zionist and prompted for violence (something something "kys", something...). That prompted .world mod to defederate anarchist.nexus. All that crap while that specific mod lost mod privileges.
While at the center of this bullshit, mod of .world also suggested to defederate db0 as this instance is also anarchist-oriented.
To finish off, mods of .world backed out of their defederation plans cause community was like "are you dumb? cause of 1 user you defederate an instance(s) and didnt even ask us?! thin skinned much?"
No, also wrong see https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25750862 for a detailed overview
Aye for cooperation with AN, nay on proactive decisions.
I feel like everything from the beginning was a completely unnecessary drama. The biggest instance should have more mods and proper communication between them to balance them out, without jumps to defeding at the drop of the hat. That's something everyone on LW should ask for, and other instances can encourage.
At the same time I feel like mirroring their unserious behavior is not a proper way around that, and it's only right if they defed someone from flotilia. Unless that happens, they should be alone in that unhealthy way, for it to be their own public disgrace. We should shoe that we are up to communication if they stop being irrational.
That's exactly what is proposed. We are not voting for a preemptive defederation. This whole proposal is only for if they decide to defederate from us first. We would love some other instances to commit to the boycott as well, in the event that happens
As a lemmy.world user, how can I help this cause?
I'd recommend joining a new instance.
The problem is ultimately a consolidated user base. Even if the current admins are expelled, the root cause still exists.
Reducing the number of users on world reduces the impact of them throwing their weight about the fediverse. Nothing you can do to change the admins mentalities; and theyve routinely avoided letting their own userbase know let alone have input, so best option is to vote with your virtual feet, IMHO.
What I did was the first time they deleted my post for mentioning Luigi I moved out. I had enough of that shit on Reddit
Similar to me. I left them when they first started censoring Luigi content. I went to lemm.ee (RIP), and then to this one.
That's funny (not the part about deleting your comments), I went the opposite direction. I went .ee -> .world, and I guess I'll now go to .fineillmakemyowninstancewithhookersandbeer
They didn't delete my comments, that was TheEighthDoctor. I just don't like toeing the corpo line, which .world enthusiastically does.
Ah, I assumed that you meant your Luigi content
You should probably migrate to another instance, unless you're also pro-zionist. The lemmy.world admin team will not give up on defending Israel.
So how do I do that and which instance do you recommend?
It's probably best if you choose an instance yourself, so we can all spread out as much as we can - take a look at the Lemmy instance list and/or the Piefed instance list and choose one which appeals to you, and register a new account there. Piefed and Lemmy are both intercompatible.
You can then manually migrate your subscriptions, block list, etc. or you can also use automatic tools to do so, if you prefer.
Then it's just a matter of using your new account at the other instance. Should be completely intercompatible with Lemmy.world, assuming LW federates with the new instance you choose - you can check Lemmy.world's list of linked and blocked instances here!
Thank you for not scolding me.
Let me explain this from a newb's perspective. Maybe I'm not the only user here that literally just surfs without greater knowledge of the inner workings of the platform.
I left Reddit in the exodus. Found Lemmy through an online search for alternatives. I don't really understand federation. Thought it was kind of like Borg technology, you know spread across the globe instead of calling one location/company home, so safer. When I signed up 3 years ago I really don't remember what it was like. I selected .world because it sounded generic and all encompassing, I guess. I didn't know each instance had a bent. To be honest, I still don't. This post seems to imply the mods are pro-maga or anti free speech or something, but when I peruse Lemmy I don't see any of that, in fact it feels pretty liberal to me. But once I was called names for belonging to some horrible instance which was hilarious to me because I wasn't even sure I had a choice.
Later I saw a description from someone of all the instances, but that was HIS opinion. But I figured, sure I can change, what do I care. As long as I see similar content (memes, news, asklemmy, til-style stuff, etc), but I didn't see how to do it. The pullout on the side showed my instance but not really how to select a different one. So thank you for clarifying. But, to be honest, I have no clue how to "select one myself" now anymore than I did back then. The only thing I've seen is that .ml is probably not for me. I could be jumping into the fire from the frying pan only to have someone later tell me how horrible my instance is and that I should change.
I see that piefed is intercompatible with Lemmy, but that's literally all I know about it. Why do they both exist? Were they two different platforms that just decided to link? Also if I create a new account, how does that hurt .world? Shouldn't I delete my current account too? I didn't really subscribe to communities but I did tag some favorite posts. Can those be transferred? It's all very confusing to me because I have a life and a lot of stuff to do that's not studying every aspect of federation. I just want to come here to unwind.
Take note. While most mainstream language equates the two, "liberal" doesn't mean "left" for the most part. It just means "not the GOP," in the context of the United States. Liberalism promotes Zionism, or at least, doesn't discourage it.
Obviously, the distinction is more nuanced and lengthy than my summary, but the point is that we don't tolerate hate of any kind. Zionism is a form of nationalism and advocates for a greater state of Israel at the cost of Palestinian, and now Lebanese, American, and Iranian lives.
Nobody should die in the name of statehood, state pride, or nationalism. That's what Zionism promotes.
I choose all lives.
(also, congrats on your departure from reddit. I chose Lemmy.world first, too. It was the biggest instance and made the most sense to join. Later, I realized that my instance could better represent my own beliefs.)
Thanks for the comment. I may sound lazy but I'm not looking up liberal either. I know I'll find 10 different definitions. To me it's just left and right and people can pick nits all they want.
That's about the speed most people live. Probably why we're in this mess to begin with.
I'll say it again so it's clear to you:
Of course, happy to help! You're far from the only person on the Fediverse who isn't entirely sure how the whole thing works, it's kinda confusing stuff to wrap your head around, so please don't sweat it at all, and ask as many questions as it takes <3
Some instances are general-purpose, some instances are specific to a certain locality/country, some (such as my own, pawb.social, which is a specifically furry-friendly instance) are for special interests, and so on. There's no harm in creating a few accounts on a few different instances and just seeing which you prefer the vibes of, or just pick one and roll with it. I'd personally recommend avoiding lemmy.ml and hexbear.net as well, as those are both pro marxist-leninist instances and can be quite intolerant of people who do not agree with their world views, and are widely defederated, so they're a little bit more siloed, but it can be worth having an account there too if you're interested in seeing content from them from time to time.
There are some admins of the Lemmy.world instance who are pro-Zionist/pro-Israel, and who are intolerant of anti-Zionist messaging. The way that they suppress dissent is generally hard to spot unless you yourself engage in anti-Zionist conversations, because it's generally through silently deleting comments and enforcing rules more harshly and in a one-sided way against those who they personally disagree with, and selectively not enforcing rules for those who agree with their views. You'd need to be looking for trends in what kinds of posts/comments are most commonly deleted in the Lemmy.world mod log - when the mod logs are even made public, which sometimes they aren't. So you can't be blamed at all for being unaware of the issue, especially considering that the admin team are quite cagey around the topic.
So, basically, Lemmy and PieFed are both just different interfaces into the same content. It works a little bit like email - you have your own email provider and other people have their own email providers, and everyone can communicate with each other through email, but the different providers have different interfaces and so on. Some providers use the Lemmy interface, and others use the PieFed interface. PieFed has a couple extra features, like polling, but Lemmy has existed for a lot longer, and may be a bit more stable. Basically, just pick whatever, feel free to try them both out and see what you like.
As for why, basically, because someone decided they could do a better version of Lemmy, and decided to just go off and do it, and they made PieFed. There's a bit more of a story behind why they decided to, but it's ultimately not important for users.
Because Lemmy.world has the overwhelming majority of users and communities, they can throw their weight around and bully other, smaller instances, which is basically what is happening in this recent drama. By migrating users (and ideally, communities) off of lemmy.world, they become less capable of doing that, and so they have to act a bit better behaved and play well with other instances for mutual co-operation.
It's up to you whether you delete your account or not - usually active users are used, rather than overall users, to judge the size/activity of an instance.
Yeah, you can do it manually, or you can use the automated tool I linked above - it'll move your saved/favorite posts/comments over as part of that process.
Hope this helps, feel free to ask if there's anything else you need clarified!
Thank you for taking the time, a lot of time, to help me. It's much appreciated and very polite.
the instance i'm on tends to be pretty ok with most federations
I recommend trying a smaller instance on piefed, it is better than Lemmy in a number of ways.
If you don’t mind disproportionate concentrations of power in the hands of very few and don’t mind one US tech fiefdom dictating who gets access to ~35% of all websites in the world, where you are now is perfect.
If you value decentralisation, then I suggest visiting lemmyverse.net. Click the “Tags” button, then in the popup click “hide tags” on the “Cloudflare” row. Then close the filter list [X]. From there, the instances showing are non-Cloudfare instances.
I personally go a little further by cancelling instances that have more than 2 standard deviations above the avg number of users because they are centralised due to size. But that’s not as easy to do. I harvest the datasets and use a script to work that out.
I'm pretty sure that I understand what you're saying, but I don't want to make assumptions.
For context, I'm pretty sure my comment history is relatively littered with comments along the lines of "fuck Israel," or "fuck my Zionist Nazi family," but let's say it weren't. Let's say that I frequently commented, "I'm glad that people are being killed because I value property and politics over human life. Yay genocide." Are you saying that the lemmy.world admin team will somehow prevent me from migrating my account to another instance?
Because that seems like a frightening level of overreach and control that would require infrastructural changes before it kills the entire fediverse.
I'm hoping, though, that you're effectively saying "Zionists need not apply."
No, no, not at all - I'm just saying that if you were pro-Zionist, you don't need to move to begin with, basically
Got it. Well, just cuz it's the right thing to say: fuck Zionists. I guess I'm not cool enough to stick around.
You mean don’t leave /over this fiasco/. Of course, if you support decentralisation then you already avoid both LW and pawb.social, as both are centralised in Cloudflare Inc’s giant privacy-abusing walled-garden.
Me right now
🫡
I've been meaning to make a switch to a more niche instance for a while and I couldn't be bothered to motivate myself to do it, so I guess this is as good of an excuse as any. Hello pawb.social.
To be honest, I find the instance tribalism to be a bit cringe and painting entire swathes of users with the same broad brush is just not something I'm interested in taking part in. That being said, I also don't want to be associated with the armpits of the internet either, and when you start catching strays just because you have .world at the end of your username swapping to a more low-key instance is more an act of self-preservation than it is protesting anything about how lemmy.world was run for average users like myself (I posted lots of anti-Israel sentiments on /c/politics and never once got a ban or a warning for that specifically), but I see the benefit in diversifying the fediverse a little bit more.
I moved here from lemmy.world. It’s nice here!
Keep the mods on tight leash please, otherwise the fuckers get powertripped too easily.
In favor of this, lemmy.world needs accountability for their actions, them throwing their weight around to justify bad administration decisions is exactly what we feared when Facebook said they would enter the fediverse with threads. Hopefully we can get more instances on board with this like with Fedipact, or it won't mean a whole lot.
So we are voting to confirm that if they attack one of us they attack all of us?
Obvious y is obvious, no matter how much fascists are simply incapable of understanding the concept of solidarity. May this serve them a lesson.
I just jumped over to lemmy.world and wow it's a shit show. They are banning ANYONE that doesn't agree with them. Turning into reddit over there. Time to stop going on lemmy.world.
I feel there needs to be a more nuanced federating system, wherein rogue admins can be banned from interacting with an instance and its users without splitting the whole fediverse apart. I dunno, that sounds like it creates other issues, but I'm all for the Canadian approach of bringing the middle powers together fwiw
The thing that makes this hard for an instance itself to root out its own corruption is that admins (and mods) can control what language and thought is present at any moment on an instance.
Dissent by users can be silenced by mods and/or admins which suppresses what the other remaining "normies" see. And even though these things may be tracked in the modlog, a lot of Lemmy or Fediverse normies may not have the time, energy, or knowledge of how to evaluate those modlogs themselves (unless they're uniquely motivated). And even though I'm not claiming that LW does this now or will in the future, instances may run votes asking about specific admins or mods to be deplatformed, only to delete downvotes or dissenting comments in an effort to sham the results.
Freedom of thought and expression across the Fediverse allows for transparency, solidarity, and punishment through isolation. Defederation is objectively worse for an instance's digital people's (really all instances), but it is a necessary tool to prevent accelerated corruption to the largest instances out there.
Uhh sure, why not.
I have no nuanced take but you have my Aye.
Yo ho!
Aye.
I stand in solidarity.
This seems reasonable.
I came here to make a joke about how LW removing themselves would be doing you a favor. Instead though I've gotten a semi-serious thought about a pact to defederate any instance that gets too big: either a set number of users, or maybe even a percentage of total Lemmy users.
Already personally blocked .world. Partially because too big, partially because they suck.
I agree that of an instance gets to big we should spread it out, defederating over size is stupid though. Education is always key. We need to teach people why different instances need to exist. .world is an example of how something like reddit could come to be on Lemmy. But defeating without first educating just makes for a stupid situation that will ultimately kill all of Lemmy/piefed
Nobody is arguing for that, read the damn post. They are the ones threatening to defed from the FAF. We are just calling it out and agitating for a boycott if they do.
I don't see how. I just blocked lemmy.world and there's still a ton of things for me to scroll and post about while I poop.
True shitposting.
Sure but how do you do that? What does it mean to "educate". What I'm talking about is a concrete action that protects Lemmy. I think the greater danger to the community as a whole is user concentration. Anyway, it's just an idea.
He who downvotes and run from conversation proves my point. Needs an echo chamber, the death of a pirate is one who cowers and flees looking for hiding. Refute the words or admit you have no standing.
I truly don't understand why you're being down voted.
Edit: You know, instead of explaining it clearly to me, I get downvoted or told, "You didn't read it well." Lovely.
Because you didn't read the post either.
I thought they'd decided to refederate? Isn't this just continuing the disagreement for no reason at this point? I'm completely against defederation unless absolutely necessary. The more fragmented it becomes the less the concept of the Fediverse actually exists, and it just becomes a bunch of random websites. The main reason I joined this instance was the lack of defederation and the lack of drama.
I'm not necessarily against the idea of a Fediverse wide boycott of LW if they do keep unnecessarily defederating smaller instances but I'm not convinced we need to have this discussion unless they demonstrate a clear pattern. Also due to their size unless the majority of other instances are on board its going to be completely ineffective.
You are right that they did decide to re-federate, but only until they completed a review. Mr Kaplan feels there is no point only de-federating from AN, he is pushing hard for LW to de-federate from the whole FAF. We don't want a defed, and this is simply an attempt to raise awareness and pressure LW to act more reasonably.
Ah ok, I didn't know that. Definitely need more instances on board for it to be effective in that case otherwise it's just a "you can't fire me I quit" situation
I feel like defederating from them isnt rge worst loss. Theyre too big. Also they suck.
I am gonna ask the admins of my instance if they make a post for this.
Btw has anyone an overview how big lemmy.world is in comparison to the anarchist instances and in comparison to instances like lemmy.ml?
It took yous all long enough after their anti-vegan bullshit to realise that maybe they had garbage values and a problem with admin overreach.
Leftists cannot be anti-vegan. I've brought up how dumb LW was when they removed their vegan mods. That was also done without a discussion and their userbase's reaction was to side with their admin who admitted they were in the wrong.
Incredible
I think it would be a good idea. We need to band together against LW.
aye
Looks like I'll have to start a petition to my admins to defederate from themselves.
I'm on your side.
Yarr
on board. most of their comms are cesspools anyways. defedding lemmy.world will make browsing all usable again i think.
I think the four major points people need to take away from this vote are:
Assuming I'm reflecting the ideals of db0's admins here, I vote Aye.
Yeah, fuck them
aye!
Just saying as a FAF user - full support here, and I hope other instance admins take note of this long history of behavior to be ready to support as well.
Wow. i chased the rabbit hole in this drama and im surprised whats going on here. i wish i could support you.
was this something i did? 🥺 are my daily posts not good enough?
I came to say "every Lemmy drama day"
Don't even know what you're talking about... but hopefully all (them) agree that more federation is bestest federation.
I blocked Lemmy.world and have not noticed much. I can't see FuckCars or Cooking, but other than that, I just get more tech articles. No issues here without it.
So I will say this. I got annoyed with cm002 reposting stuff from smaller instances. I blocked world but it blocks both the users and the communities. If blocking were seperate I might have kept it going on just the communities. I do think its important the software allows blocking like that because the users just picked a convenient instance but if an instance gets to big I can see totally wanting to block out the "default" communities.
I think you guys should just defederate, because even if you loose access to some popular or good comms Axis.world is just going to keep getting worse
They now are being pretty defensive of zionists, they rarely if ever moderate transphobia, they are eventually going to go more hands off on other issues until they start defending the wrong side over civility and eventually they will attract more like minded bigots who will join so their takes dont get moderated
Its the beginnings of a nazi bar basically
I agree the time will come eventually, but right now I would guess a significant majority of our users would prefer to stay federated with LW for the content. Once all the dust has settled, and if LW does decide to stay federated, I think that's the best time to consider having a vote on it. But to be honest, I'm very doubtful a defed vote would succeed in that scenario. And if it goes the other way, then the decision is made for us.
I don't blame you tbh
Did unjust defederation actually happen?
Normal people: Hey man what's up
As someone who is brand new to the whole Fediverse and Lemmy and all of that, I am rapidly trying to piece together what's happened/happening here. If a kind soul would help me with some context that would be phenomenal. I know .world is like, THE biggest instance that hosts very large communities, but I am not sure what exactly is happening with the instance as a whole, or what we are wanting to happen to it.
I understand blocking authoritarian bootlicking instances like Hexbear and LemmyGrad—hell, that's half the reason why I switched to Lemmy World after Lemm.ee died—but why block the good guys?
I'm all for this; LW needs to be taught a lesson. Needless to say I'm switching to dbzer0 ASAP.
I'm using lemmy.world only because cant see porn db0 for some reason. I'd gladly use only db0 if the new nsfw instance would be visible there.
It is.
Well, for some reason cant see shit, on .world nsfw stuff starts popping in on page 3-5, never seen fedinsfw.app (or what ever that is nowadays) on db0.
Check in your settings in case you've hidden nsfw content
Hey yeah, so I turned the content off, saved, killed jerboa and turned it on, saved and killed jerboa, and I think it now works.
Thanks
Db0 user since the reddit 3rd party app exodus and porn has always been allowed here. There are times when there aren't many posts, i.e. when the big NSFW I can't remember the name of was down.
I see those on my feed just fine especially from fedinsfw.app Maybe nsfw is disabled on your db0 account settings
It's always coming up in my feed. I don't see that restriction.
I'm using lemmy.world, because it can somewhat be used without Javascript.
Rhere is a ton of instance allowing it though
Who could've thought that a bunch of nerds all running their own instances would have drama.... 😂
lol
How is defederating an "injury"?
What a massive waste of energy. The fediverse is small enough, can you guys not try to discuss politely about your differences of opinions without any ego-powered threats and hot-headed reactions?
Unfortunately, Kaplan refused to even attempt to do so and instantly resorted to defederation. No attempt was made at reaching out to the admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus before the initial defederation. Now, despite the offending admin being gone, Lemmy.world is still threatening to defederate from Dbzer0 with no fact-based justification.
If you would like to file a complaint about this situation, it will have to be with the admins of Lemmy.world.
We are not escalating, and are only proposing the blockade in the event LW defederates us again based on the whim of one of the admins again. I agree it is a massive waste of energy, but we didn't pick this fight.
Being against genocidal supermasist ideologies is not an opinion it is a objective moral stand
Literally what .world did first. Kaplan got offended at a username of one person, defederated, took days to come up with an excuse, and then the admin team banned anyone calling them out.
They're the issue, not us.
I don't agree with what .world tends to do, but I find the above a liiiitle hypocritical
What's the problem? If it's a shitty instance full of shitty people, why do you want to see their stuff so bad?
The problem is the admin has gone rogue and is making defederation decisions that will affect thousands of people. There's no way LW users would freely choose to defederate and fracture the fediverse in this way.
Idiocracy, right here. Thinks they are better than every person in the world, because face it.... The largest instance is where the largest amount of people will join. This person thinks he is 100x smarter than anyone you have ever met. I'd say they're a fool
I have instances turned off and can barely remember which one I signed up for so all this petty dick-waving is actually equal parts hilarious, annoying and confusing. We're all just lemmings ffs
and so we tear eachother apart while corporations laugh
Aye. Luminous did NOTHING WRONG. Infinite death to and forever!
Fuck it I'll have to be the one. This is absolute stupidity. Cowering from conversation, backing ourself into an echo chamber. Why would a floatilla of pirates flee unless they were all cowards. These are centrists making us bow and look life pitiful nothing. If you have nothing to say to refute them, then you never had a word to say. You have just been regurgitatating nothingness. If you believe your convictions are true, then refute them or block them. This post is pure cowardace and shows we are the weakest I have ever thought we were. If dbzer0 isn't going to stand and speak their mind, the flotilla should die. Fuck your cowardess.
The fediverse is built on voluntary connections between communities. This post is literally a post to discuss and debate the issue. There is no active proposal or vote to defederate from lemmy.world, unless they defederate from one of the mutual anarchist instances first. It's basically saying "if you do this, it will be bad, so don't do it". I.e., using solidarity between communities to force the issue one way or another. In what way is that cowering or "trending towards fascism"? Defederation is built into the fediverse, and it is not like it is being used willy nilly here to silence people. At least not by any of the instances signed on to this flotilla. This is a response to that actually, more than anything.
What the fuck are you on about? What do you think this is about?
It sounds very much like you are on a trend to a fascist regime blocking out all thought of anyone who disagrees with you. If that's not what it is you should figure out how to explain how you aren't. Right now you sound like a tyrant trying to destroy all of federated Lemmy/PieFed. I've stood by dbzer0 from jump, prove me right please, I don't want to find out this is the villain ark. If there are several bad mods in .world, we debate and discuss and make them understand. We don't cower
Explain how you come to this conclusion. What part of this post is "blocking out all thought"?
How do you figure we are going to do that?
How is this "cowering"?
You have it 180 degrees backwards. You're heading into the wind.
It seems you missed the entire post:
IF lemmy.world defederates dbzer0 (or the other FAF members), we are asking that other instances defederate LW in protest until LW changes their policy or leadership. We also ask that instance admins talk to their userbase about it as well.
We have already tried that. Also our userbase is interested in staying federated with LW which is why we are federated in the first place.
Not this dumb argument again. You think opposing a genocidal ideology is a matter of opinion?
You can win battles, but never the war. Power always corrupts. Eventually, one will be stronger, then much stronger, and as they get stronger, they become more corrupt (Reddit). The only solution, apart from headge trimming, also a temporary solution, but more cathartic and maybe longer lasting, is to leave for a different option (Lemmy), and then the cycle repeats. And, in the end, the warriors die, and then a bigger cycle repeats. Cycles within cycles, we repeat the same circles, generation after generation, millennia after millennia.
More power to you, but if you get it, it will corrupt you, too. No one is immune. Power always corrupts.
So do nothing then?
I get the frustration tho. I'm no Zionist, but I get accused of it and regularly get banned on different subs just for discussing things from a centrist pov. It's ruining Lemmy and if we need to split to have open discourse in one place and some isolated echo chambers, so be it.
You get called a Zionist because you always take Israels side and have outright said on numerous occasions that you don't believe Gaza should be defined as a genocide.
After the more recent (last year or so) ramp up of Israeli violence and after plenty of discourse here on Lemmy and other places, I see what Israel is doing now as genocide. Immediately after the Oct attacks, I saw it as a overzealous response that didn't take civilian safety anywhere nearly seriously enough. War is war and it sucks and should be avoided. After those Oct attacks, I felt Isreal was pulled into that war and did have to defend itself. But later on Isreal kept going even as the threat seems relatively neutralized. They buddied up with the U.S. under trump and got support to continue to commit atrocities with no goal other than revenge and the killing of Palestinians. And now they are attacking Lebanon in the same way. Maybe I was too slow to see when they crossed the line, but there's so much misinformation and evil on all sides it can be difficult. But the point here is that if I'd just been banned from discussion because I figured Isreal shouldn't have to put up with terrorists killing civilians at a music festival, it might have taken me a lot longer to gain a broader perspective of what's going on now. Banning people is stupid just because they disagree. Disagreement and the discussion over it is in fact really the main point of lemmy, I would think.
Centrism is a privilege best enjoyed in a world at peace. As things are, the world is full of violence and victimization. If you can't stand up and say that shit is wrong then you're not a centrist, you're a coward.
Of course one should stand up against evil. As a 'centrist' I stand against Ireali genocide and war crimes. But I also condemn rocket attacks on Israeli civilians; and calls to genocide them. Just as Jews went from being victims of the holocaust to running Israel as it commits genocide, I wouldn't want to support Palestinians turning to be the evil of which they are now victims. That doesn't mean I stop detesting what Isreal is doing, or that I support it in any way. And yet, with such statements, I'll get called hasboro and a Zionist or Zionist apologist and told I'm repeating talking points. And then I'll get banned. It's happened multiple times and it's ridiculous. If people just want someone to agree with them 100%, they should use chatgpt. Lemmy should be for fair discourse.
I think you may be conflating specific centrism with general centrism. Sometimes when you take a hard stand about something, you wind up on one person's side or another, but sometimes you wind up against both sides depending on the day or year. That's a specific centrism that emerges as a result of actually not being a general centrist.
The general centrist shows up to the fight of the day and instead of saying "this needs to stop, genocide is wrong" to whoever is doing it at the time, they go "well hold on now, there are good people on both sides here and I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding. Let's not take sides!"
Practically tho it's more like 'hold on a minute, there are fucked up evil people on both sides, but we've got to figure out the best path forward now without getting too hung up on historical crap'. Morality is great, but realism usually gets in the way and we have to be pragmatic sometimes. Not that this really applies the the current situation in the ME; there's fuck all we can do except pressure other (non US & Isreal) governments to take a stance against genocide and wait for the midterms and hope to hell enough Americans wake the fuck up to provide some pushback against the gop and other blind Isreali supporters.
Yeah, that's that limp general centrist nonsense. The first priority is to put a stop to the current ongoing genocide. It's not to pause at the edge of the battlefield to tell everyone how bad or good both sides are. That's just theatrical bullshit. That's not taking a stand against genocide, that's pretending to so that people will listen to you when you have nothing of value to say.
It would be nice if people would just do what you think is right. But back in the real world, you have to look at different perspectives and find a solution. Maybe military or economic pressure against iseal is the only way they'll pay attention. But some of them probably feel the same about stopping Hamas. There are certainly some evil people in the world, but most people lash out and attack based on some perception of fear. If we can't find some sort of compromise, we have to go with might is right, and that likely won't end nicely.
That's a propagandist's way of saying "if you're getting bullied, don't fight back or observers might think you're the bad guy". Sometimes violent reprisal is the normal, correct response to someone else's behavior. I choose to find less violent responses regardless, but I would never demand someone else live by that standard. Sometimes someone is gonna have to use might because someone else is living by Might Makes Right and violent reprisal is literally the one and only thing that will make them stop victimizing others.
"I don't get why people say I support Israel when I don't criticize them, don't call out the genocide, and always play devils advocate for imperialist countries."
Centrism at its core.
Sure you can believe that if you insist. And as a result you can drive away potential allies. Seems pretty stupid to me, but what do I know?
Centrists aren't allies to any cause. They sit on the fence while murder happens and go "well maybe there's two sides to this story, I'm sure that person had a reason to stab them."
I personally wouldn't like to work with someone who has no convictions but defending the status quo that they could change but are too lazy to think or act.
It's important to look for the reasons, the perspectives and try to understand the different sides. That doesn't mean one can't have convictions and support one side over another when push comes to shove. A good compromise is usually when all sides are equally pissed off. If you don't recognize that, then you are doomed to fight to the death (one side or the other). Sometimes that's the only way, but it's better to look for reasonable alternatives. Murder is a pretty solid red line, but the problem is that we can go back for weeks, years, decades and find excuses to murder because of murders, and that never stops. In the current situation with Isreal, there is no valid defense of Isreal's actions. But imagine if the Palestinians somehow got the upper hand militarily - would they have the right to murder Jewish civilians? I'm sure there's enough hate that it would happen. Who would you support then?
No.
Right, but humans being humans, we know that would happen. So would you then have sympathy for that to any degree?
Yeah, murder is bad. That's why I'm against it. Sorry that's difficult for you to understand.
If you need allies for the cause, then you need people who would be allies to the actual cause, and not to the watered down version you present to get more allies. In that case you would be driving away the allies you actually want because they don't want to stand with a limp centrist.
But what actually is 'the cause'? The peace and prosperity for Palestinians as well as Jews? Or is your cause revenge and murder? I will join you for the first, but not the second.
The cause is to put an end to genocide as a thing that humans keep doing to each other. To stop it when it happens and work toward a future where it doesn't happen again. It's not about Jews or Palestinians, who's right or wrong in general or at any given moment.
That's great and I certainly back that cause. I think many people lose sight of it tho.
The Lemmy experiment is over. was fun while it lasted