Hello everyfur <3!
For those of you unaware, Lemmy.World has a significant problem with a pro-Zionist, pro-Israel admin team. As one of the largest instances, they have a lot of weight to throw around, and they are acting extremely unprofessionally and counter to the ideals of the Fediverse by defederating with AN/db0 - which are broadly very well behaved and active instances.
More details are available in the OP. You can check this summary by Stamets, or sort the comments by Top, and check the top comments for the receipts of this recent issue.
As a pretty active, long standing member of this instance, I am calling for and advocating for Pawb.Social to join this action in standing against power-hungry instance admins acting according to their personal whims and vendettas, by agreeing to join in by pledging to defederate with Lemmy.world if the admin team refuses to back down from this behavior.
I would like to suggest that this is put to some kind of vote/referendum of Pawb users to decide how to approach this issue.
Thank you for reading! :3
Original post follows, cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67858553
🏴☠️ 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 !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com, and quokk.au will be holding their own vote.
🏴☠️ Solidarity forever, and fair winds to the Flotilla!
After discussing with the team internally (admins & mods), we’ve come to a few points:
tl;dr We call on Lemmy.World to be fully transparent and explain their actions to the whole community, and we’re setting more concrete policies for our own moderation actions going forward.
——
While we won’t be formally joining the boycott of Lemmy.World, for reasons I’ll go into in due course, we do call on them to be transparent with the community and act in good faith in regards to whom of their staff came to the decision, why they felt a non-directed comment is worthy of banishing an entire instance, and what they’ll be doing going forward to course correct.
Defederation should not be a bludgeon to be waved around. Individual users commentary (admin or not) should never be the sole, snap reason that an instance is defederated due to the potential for irreversible damage to federation (loss of posts, comments, users, etc.) and the subsequent impact on users.
There’s a way to handle problematic users who say things you don’t like, but they’re allowed to say: Block, and move on. Rash defederation instead demonstrates behavior akin to schoolyard bickering, not that of an admin, a custodian, operating a service for the good of their users.
If allegations are true, LW has some cleaning up to do with their moderation policies, especially not using abusive tactics to hide or manipulate the Mod Log.
On moderation policies, we have an internal document that explains our federation policies with other instances. We’ll be making this public in due course, but here’s a snippet from it that we’ve been using since Day 1:
At this time, while we have distain for how LW handled things and for their actions (if the allegations are true), we will not use defederation as a weapon as we believe it irresponsible and an avenue for subjective defederation actions in the future.
Also, if the subtext is not clear: It is childish behavior to wield your admin powers as a bludgeon, and to use your admin tools for a personal grudge instead of blocking an offending user. “Go kill yourself” or anything akin is not a reason to defederate an instance, that’s overkill and I’m fucking disappointed, but when anyone can become a “fediverse admin” that’s the shit situation we’re in.
How can we fix LW and large instances being a problem we have to even care about?
Move. Leave those instances. Make communities elsewhere. Be the change you want to see.
There are no rules to who or what communities can be made here, other than I won’t platform hate, harassment, or abuse of any kind.