I find this morally reprehensible. I have always spoken against defederazation when others have mentioned it. This is too much. Apologies if this upsets anyone.
Palestinians are human beings and have a right to life.
Edit: I have been persuaded by some thoughtful replies. I will block them from my view. I no longer support making the decision for others. Thanks all.
I would go beyond this. I would say that any instance that makes a habit of policing its users’ statements to make sure they conform to some kind of politics and don’t offend whatever type of powerful grouping should get fucked.
To me, the fact that an extraordinarily obedient-in-advance reading of German law requires them to do this isn’t really relevant. The chance that the admins will get in significant trouble for it is minimal. If this is their bar for standing up for the rights and the survival of others, fuck 'em. It’s not my freedom or money at stake, so that’s easy for me to say, but I’m in the US, you could make a strong argument that being an anti-Trump pain in the ass on the internet could carry a significant risk in the future depending on how things go down. At a certain point, you have to decide what you stand for, and if your government isn’t on board for it, then oh well and let’s see.
Also: As much as I agree in particular with the disgusting nature of censoring anything pro Palestinian for obvious “bro aren’t you worried about going to hell” type of reasons, I actually don’t think anyone should be “required” to have any certain position on Palestine to participate on Lemmy. I think it’s fine if people disagree and talk about it. I think the critical thing is the admins policing what opinions people can express. If you’re going to be on Lemmy and you want to help people communicate, deliberately distorting the conversation to make it comfortable for the powerful people needs to get all the way the fuck out.
I have no particular standing to call for SDF to do anything in particular, I’m just saying my opinion. It’s maybe a little incongruous to go all the way to defederation, when there are instances that are just as shameless about censoring speech that is just as blatant an issue of “right and wrong” as the Palestine issue is. I feel like taking a step back and talking about the nature of the network and what we want to have and whether you as an instance owner have the right to police “your” users in this way. In my view, you don’t, but most people seem to feel that you do. It’s an issue that goes way beyond feddit.org and maybe should get some more thought as opposed to one-off decisions.
I don’t run SDF. I’m just an enduser. Thanks for taking the time to write a thoughtful reply.
Oh, I didn’t mean you specifically, I didn’t realize it came across that way. Just that in general a lot of mods / instance owners seem to feel like communications on their server are “theirs,” to mold to be the way they want them to be.
There’s a responsibility you hold to the users of your system to keep the bullshit out. (And everyone’s definition of “bullshit” will be slightly different, which is why it gets tricky.) But roughly speaking, you need to be doing what your users want you to do, and your users need to be showing respect for your system and wishes and the social contract from their end. As soon as either side of that contract breaks down, it’s bad. And specifically in this case, there are instance owners who feel that it’s their job to make sure the opinions expressed on their server are in line with their own, and fuck the users if they don’t agree, because the users aren’t in charge.
This is very very wrong. My whole feeling on that, is why I felt the need to write up this whole mini-essay about it. As black-and-white right and wrong of an issue as Palestine is, I feel like it’s a bad precedent to set to say that the issue of which opinion is the “right” one and the feddit admins being on the other side has any bearing on this. It doesn’t. Simply the fact that they want to delete certain opinions is already enough for them to be in the wrong, in my opinion.