I’m making this post directly in response to the extremist moderation in this thread, though I came very close a little while ago to a similar post because of moderation here

Comments that have been removed on the grounds of “No bigotry” include:

There are no good guys in that conflict. Only innocent civilians.

Maybe provide examples? I see nothing that would prevent me from saying that with a straight face.

Gee, I don’t know, I vaguely recall a (perhaps minor) news item happening on the 7th, something about a music festival? I may be misremembering though, since this very impartial news site has no mention of it whatsoever.

It’s a terrorist organization vs terrorist state. The only good guys are the civilians dying on both sides.

Everyone who opposes genocide, colonialism, and terrorism are the good guys, so neither Israel or Hamas. But Hamas is not Palestine/Palestinians, the same way that Israel/Zionism is not Jewish/Judaism; no matter how much Israel, Hamas, the media, or military industrial complex tries to conflate them all. IMO Israel is more to blame than Hamas as they should know better given a) their history of persecution b) their significantly greater wealth and education, and c) their demographics — more than half of all Palestinians are technically children, below 18.

I don’t know what could possibly be less “bigotry” than that last statement. Now, I side pretty much 100% with Palestine in the Palestinian genocide being committed by Israel, but it’s not even remotely bigoted to suggest that maybe the killing of civilians, even if done in the name of a good cause, does not make the killers “the good guys” (even if they are “the better guys of the two bad guys”).

And in the other thread, they removed comments like:

That’s pathetic. That’s a pathetic misunderstanding of geopolitics and the nature of modern intelligence infrastructure. You’re still in the mindset of “Having SIGINT = bad guys”. As if places like Russia, and North Korea would just be magical kingdoms of freedom and accountability if they just didn’t have signals intelligence! That’s stupid. What differentiates the west (much like what differentiates good media sources from bad) - is accountability, and oversight. Anyways I’ll let you get back to your petty fears and misunderstanding the basic lay of the informational and geopolitical landscapes. Maybe if Trump magically wins the election Glenn Greenwald will spend Trump’s time in office attacking the Democrats and defending Trump and Russia again. I’m sure you’d enjoy that. The crypto-rightwing are just like that. Aren’t you. Semi-pro-authoritarians who don’t understand what causes freedom, and think it’s something about being a soldier of fortune for a foreign state, or something that comes from “the barrel of a gun”. Idiots believing they’re freedom fighters popping some imaginary info-bubble. You don’t know how lucky you are, or how good you have it, or why… That’s your problem, and your weakness.

which were critical of authoritarian states in a mildly impolite way for being violations of their “Be respectful” rule. Meanwhile they failed to remove (and in fact, the comments came directly from an admin) comments that are far more directly disrespectful to their interlocutor, like:

This is wrong on so many levels 😂 If you’re this propagandized, then I’m sure you don’t know what actually happened in and around Tiananmen Square, which by the way is not even censored in China like we’re always told.

Followed by a gish gallop of links.

And

Okay, stay confidently incorrect in the Five Eyes corporate media bubble then 👍

“I’m in this photo and I don’t like it.”

and the especially pathetic disrespectful comment consisting of nothing but:

The admins of that instance are pretty blatantly disregarding their own rules in order to push their agenda. If that shouldn’t be grounds for defederation, I don’t know what should.

edit: accidentally left a link out earlier

  • NathA
    201·
    2 months ago

    Feeling a bit conscious of the fact that I’m at work right now, and too busy to give this the diplomatic response it deserves. The short answer to this question is that we don’t generally defederate anyone for anything they say/do inside their own instance. We do however happily support you in blocking them for yourself. Click on your username in the top-right, go to Settings and then Blocks. Under the Instance section, search for lemmy.ml and make sure you click on their name in the drop-down like this:


    Do this and you will no longer see lemmy.ml content.

    Disclosure: I subscribe to that community - and while I’m aware that the locals of lemmy.ml have quirky political leanings, that particular community is frequented by a lot of non-local members. Also, that post was always going to attract hardliners from all sides, wherever that question was asked.

    • ZagorathOPEnglish
      134·
      2 months ago

      I think the point touched on by @[email protected] below is one of the best ones. Being federated with ML, like Hexbear and Lemmygrad (only the last of which we have defederated already) innately exposes our users to some of the worst the site has to offer in terms of pro-authoritarian bias.

      Ask anyone who got over the technical hurdles and questions like “what’s that? Why should I use it? How do I make an account?” and started using Lemmy, but then left and stopped engaging why they did so. One of the top two reasons (the other being the amount of content) is probably about the amount of tanky bias and the poor behaviour of tankies. For example, this is one of the most recent posts on the subreddit for Lemmy wherein the same admin I was complaining about above doxed a user who disagreed with them.

      If we want Lemmy to grow and be a good place for our users and prospective users, we need to, as @trk said, not tolerate the intolerance which is the default position on ML.

      • Seagoon_
        4·
        2 months ago

        Tolerance is not a right, it’s an agreement .

        When someone breaks the agreement they are no longer party to the agreement and are ousted.

      • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
        112·
        2 months ago

        some of the worst the site has to offer in terms of pro-authoritarian bias

        Pro authoritarian bias is when you’re against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and when you criticise the two-party system in the US. Cry me a river, lib

        • ZagorathOP
          4·
          2 months ago

          Hahaha. Tell me you didn’t read the thread without telling me you didn’t read the thread.

          • Seagoon_
            22·
            2 months ago

            Both of you go away, I don’t want to see this crap arguing here.

        • eurekaEnglish
          3·
          2 months ago

          Don’t be an ignorant troll, comrade. That’s clearly not what they were talking about.

    • ZagorathOPEnglish
      91·
      2 months ago

      Also, that post was always going to attract hardliners from all sides

      The problem isn’t the existence of hardliners. It’s the clear ignoring of their own rules removing perfectly good comments that disagree with their line, while the admins themselves and people who agree with their view can get away with anything.