Hey there, Kaplan.

So, this is quite clearly now just a witch hunt by you.

For anyone else who is curious, this is what happened.

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 'Kill 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.

It was then posted about in the Piefed matrix channel. This led to PugJesus, someone who I abhor, actually saying something I agree with.

The conversation moves elsewhere. One bit of input that stands out is this. It will become important in a second.

In basically every situation, Kaplan is told that they're wrong or overreacting but Kaplan cannot see past the 'death threat' to their own mistake.

So, I messaged Kaplan. Conversation goes on and one thing is made clear

Kaplan never spoke with anyone and ran all of this off of an assumption. There was inconsistencies in how the different people felt because they were different people and not one organism. What was individuality instead came off as obliviousness and Kaplan took it personaly. See what I mean by it became important? Kaplan is talking about a 'lack of moderation' over something that Kaplan literally never reported or talked to anyone about and instead just made assumptions over.

@Ruud@lemmy.world, this is what you're backing. You went out of your way to make an instance that wasn't going to be reddit and you went ahead and re-created Spez, an admin who personally takes out their own feelings on anyone that they don't like and is trying to control the narrative of the entirety of the fediverse.

Friendly reminder to everyone. Check back a couple of months ago on this community and look at the post about JordanLund. A moderator who was openly lying to the admins in public but the admins took weeks to decide to do literally nothing. But a single user on another instance meant that MrKaplan was able to defederate it all.

This behavior from Kaplan is, quite literally, the reason that I left lemmy.world.

Don't believe me? Here's the last message I sent Kaplan during the Jordan garbage.

Funny. Jordan requires a ton of deliberation, reasons in the TOS, and you're all 'working on it' but a single user says something you don't like so instant defederation?

Edit: Quick note but every other post on this community has been featured. This one isn't. So you're making an announcement but you're not really announcing it. Any response to this, Kaplan?

Edit 2: Kaplan is just blatantly lying. As demonstrated above, Kaplan has literally zero evidence of this claim other than things "feeling odd".

Edit 3: Serinus joined the thread 15 minutes ago and now a number of my comments are being removed for 'misinformation' despite the comment above proving them to be categorically true.

From what I saw, the 'call to murder' was someone having kill all zionists in their username, and that only makes sense as a real call to violence if we're supposed to take everyone's username seriously and literally. That would be a very weird world to be in, as then we'd have to accept that we're reading posts written by Star Trek characters come to life, inanimate objects, and various bodily fluids. Without evidence of something worth taking more seriously, at best this looks like the admin team doing something silly, and obviously certain groups of Lemmy users will interpret it less charitably and as the LW admin team being pro-genocide. Neither is a good look.

I am confused. If the admin in question is no longer an admin, what's the need for defederation?

the tea is all over yepowertrippinbastards, and i gotta say i agree with the prevailing sentiment. mrkaplan is making a bad move, but its indicative of a pattern of politically based moderation that pervades .world.

This is honestly pathetic. If the admins want to have an argument at least leave everyone else out of it. Defederation should be an absolute last resort not your first port of call when someone disagrees with you

Zionism is bad tho

Okay, but was the person accused a Zionist? If so, why not eject/defederate/ultimatum them instead?

I'd prefer a federation of rabid anti-Zionists than one of Zionists. It's the Nazi bar analogy, because EVERYONE should be against Genocide.

Have you considered raising this with the admin team before defederating?? Or with your userbase?? I don't wanna hear shit about hexbear is aUtHoRiTaRiAaAaAn when they have a vote before defederation instead of just throwing a tantrum and reflexively defederating a whole-ass instance because of personal drama between two admins.

Have you considered not being Zionists

Guess I need to move instances

Just so I get this right, you defederated an entire instance because a singular user has lost it and called for violence?

Lol, The FAF takes weeks of deliberation, and a public vote to defederate feddit.org and we still get shit about being "authoritarians" or "manipulative". L.W. just YOLO defederated an anarchist instance on the flimsiest excuse and...crickets.

We're currently discussing how we will proceed with this situation

Block the mod on your personal list, don't defederate?

So wait you're just defeterating an entire instance just because the arch Zionist of this instance is having a bitch fit? I'd rather just get rid of him. Can we do that instead?

Oh no someone said something controversial on the internet, what ever will we do?

Remember when world nuked the piracy community lol.

Unless that instance is causing brigading, what's the point of banning over a former admin with such a tame username.

Having issues with a genocidal state is one thing, calling for a specific person to be murdered is another.

Can you post the comment where they called for a specific person to be murdered? A link would be great, but even a copy/paste would do well.

Lemmy.world not beating the allegations of harboring Zionists

Honestly a great move from the .world admins to prevent themselves from becoming too big, and I applaud their effort to piss everyone off and make them leave for more community oriented instances lmao

Is there an instance policy that affects dot world?

Or is it just a personal issue against one person?

I would argue that you should just ban THAT PERSON from your instance. Trying to hurt a whole instance and the whole federation concept over one person being rude on internet feels unreasonable.

People said "doesn't matter which instance you land on when you sign in", trying to lure people into the fediverse simplifying the sign in process. But with these kinds of behaviors is a BIG ISSUE which instance do you choose, making you create multiple accounts on a fragmented fediverse, for things that have nothing to do with you.

How many migrations could normal people who just want to have a social media place to have fun endure? One? Two? Three? After that I would guess many people would give up and just move away from the fediverse because they just have to keep making different accounts to interact with the whole place.

Honestly, with comments in this thread being removed by mods and the delays and prevarifications over this defederation, I'm starting to think LW is run by children.

Do better.

We are still discussing this matter, but there is currently no point in keeping anarchist.nexus defederated while lemmy.dbzer0.com is federated

This honestly reads like a threat of escalation more than anything else

It's only ok when Zionists murder other people, not the other way round.

After getting a better look at the background, this seems like a misstep.

Agreed that Luminous was not exhibiting behavior that seemed becoming of an admin (borrowing the terms of the db0 folks, they appear to be a bit of a "shit stirrer") but it doesn't look like there was any direct call to violence towards Kaplan, as this whole debacle seems to imply.

Luminous is no longer an admin, so I don't see why the defederation of anarchist.nexus needs to continue (given that its initial justification is already questionable). The main takeaway is that the admin team of Lemmy.world (or maybe just Kaplan, I don't know who all the admins are) seem to be taking criticism of Zionism personally...which to me sounds easily solved by simply not being Zionists.

So, if the LW team are not Zionists, I don't see why they shouldn't just come out and say so, but then I guess I don't see any other reason why someone would take a "death to Zionists" tagline personally.

I think the admins should get over it. Defederating anyone with opposing views is not helping anyone. I especially don't expect this from World. This is not a real threat and you know it.

wow. how about banning zionists instead?

Viewpoint from the other side of the discussion:

https://threadiverse.link/...

What action will be taken against rogue admins on world?

this is a bit embarrassing

Collective punishment is Zionist shit

Fk yeah! Lemmy drama juice! Hasn't had any in like a day. Premium stuff.

Do you think they'd be calling for that if so many moderators of .world didn't seem to defend and support fascism? What do you think the rest of us think? Cuz I'll give you a hint, being an anti-fascist doesn't mean I think we should have tea with them.

What incentive do I have to remain here if I can't see stuff from other instances?

Seems like petty bullshit. An admin has access to the block button. They could have blocked the user, or the instance. I'm okay with an instance ban for the user but defederation without any input from .world users because of personal grievance feels like a major over step.

Ban the user, sure, since calls to violence in a user name is a bit much. That being said, I think Kaplan should be removed from the admin team, and refederation should occur. Defederation like this and for these reasons is well above what's expected.

Threats of defed against db0 are fucking gross. Clearly, someone is upset their bad behavior keeps getting called out in the ye tripping bastard sub. Do better.

The zionist tactic of censorship in action.

Just so we're all clear - the definition of zionism being used in this context is "someone who supports the existence of Israel as a Jewish state"

I'm thinking that it's quite likely that the .world admin in question would agree with the above sentiment, but would rather not inherit the downstream implications of what it means to define a colonial state by an ethno-religious identity.

Zionists aren't fit to be the local dogcatcher instance admin.

Ash to ash

Dust to dust

The Fediverse is becoming a beautiful example of why the best theories aren’t necessarily working out in practice, when human ego gets involved.

Let’s hope the devs and admins become more mature as their Fediverse grows

I don't think defederation is ever justified outside of technical reasons, like spam or other disruptive activities.

I don't think killing civilians is cool. (Each side feel free to project your biases onto that comment)

I think that there is a large population of people who share the toxic view that social media is a battleground and views people who disagree as enemies to be attacked. These people are often disruptive, toxic assholes. The way to deal with them is to ban them when they pop up.

I think it is extra stupid to stereotype people based on the instance that they signed up for instead of their stated opinions.

And this is the kind lf people who call others snowflakes when they get upset 🤭

You're the ones having a meltdown 😄

jesus. there is no point to drastic moderation at all. 3-day individual bans implemented at the drop of a hat curbs bad behavior. after a year of those no one is 1) still causing problems or 2) even around.

anything more dramatic than this will cause people to exploit the sybil attack vulnerability of activitypub and you will never stop anyone.

There's a lot to unpack here. For the sake of convenience, I'm going to assume that what Luminous said was a legitimate call for violence and was therefore not complying with the Lemmy.world code of conduct.

If we assume that, then the Lemmy.world terms say that they can:

• remove the content and ask a user not to do it again, and/or,
• (if it's a second time) suspend the account temporarily, and/or,
• restrict or banish the community, and/or,
• remove all of that user's content, and/or,
• permanently ban the user.

I have no idea how many of those had already happened, I'm going to assume for convenience again that some of it did. The site bylaws also say that for community bans and content removal:

• Bans "should only be used as a last resort for hostile users OR for users that are known bad faith actors."
• "Any community user ban CAN and SHOULD have a clearly documented reason pointing to explicit rules broken."
• "any content that they DO remove, they should ideally be able to cite the community rules that were broken."

I note that all of Luminous' content was removed, and while the "Our Rights" section says this can happen, it somewhat contrasts with the guidelines for documenting content removal. But there's still nothing in any of this that suggests defederating from the entire instance is warranted or an appropriate course of action. If community bans are considered a last resort, then it seems logical that defederating has at the bare minimum the same threshold of seriousness.

Let's assume for convenience again that the comments from one admin can be sufficient cause for defederation, and its absence from the ToS is an oversight. If that's the case, then the bylaws and prior defederation examples (eg. lemmygrad) suggest that this should be adequately explained. But that didn't happen, and it's not clear whether the other admins were involved in the decision.

Even if all of the above reactions to Luminous' comment were justified and proper, the actions afterwards by lemmy.world admins / mods don't inspire my confidence. I can see there has been:

• This refederation announcement, only posted as a regular post (I found it yesterday by chance). It only briefly outlines the events leading up to this.
• One user in this thread has been temporarily community banned for "Spam, harassment" after three removed posts in the thread, which doesn't seem like spam quantity. Two of those posts cite the reason "this isn't about jordanlund", yet further down in the thread, an admin is litigating the jordanlund situation. Other far more off topic content is in this thread, so if that is a concern, it's not clear why the other comments remain.
• A few users have been permanently(?) banned from the instance with the reasons "troll" or "calling FHF members nazis". It's unclear whether the removed comments or user histories rose to the level of needing an instance ban.
• Multiple other users have been temporarily banned from this community for reasons spanning from "uncivil" to "disinformation", to "sealioning and harassment". Many of the removed comments from those users did not seem to meet those descriptions either.
• Many other removed comments from non-banned users, with varying levels of clear rules broken.
• One moderator indicating the defederation mostly only targets several "loud" people and the instance size is only 165 people, which undercuts both the reasoning for why defederation was necessary and the justification for including 150 users as collateral (along with anyone who may have wanted to interact with them). Several people can be dealt with using individual bans, and that quantity are unlikely to be negatively impacting lemmy.world at scale.
• No response from the only person further up the leadership ladder for whether / how Lemmy.world admin are evaluating the original decisions, governance process for defederation, or the bus factor and risks of one person being site admin and top moderator and infra simultaneously. Not even a "I'm alive and considering the issue" acknowledgement, unless done behind the cover of the lwadmin account.
• Lots of little bits of engagement otherwise from Lemmy.world admin or mods with various tangents in the thread.

Very little here seems to align with the by laws and expectations for proportionate community moderator conduct.

The situation looks to me like it has been poorly handled, and there is no sign of any compromise or admission that any of the events that up to now could have been handled differently, or a process for how it might be handled in the future. I just don't see much in the way of community building or good will, but I do see the same patterns that have inspired other lemmy.world drama over the years.

If one admin's comments or actions aren't sufficient for justifying defederation, then it's unclear why dbzer0 is being considered for defederation at all. But, if one admin's comments or actions are sufficient justification, then the situation in this thread opens the door for other instances to defederate from Lemmy.world.

Huh. They're a login-only instance, so I can't even go see what their ongoing discussions are.

Lmao glad people moved here to a avoid petty reddit drama

We need to take our comms and push them to reddthat, disroot and lazysocial.

axis.world sure does love to censor anyone they disagree with, just like how they preemptively de-federated with hexbear 'as a last resort'.

I don’t follow too much on Lemmy politics, but I don’t like saying anyone should be murdered. Why does that seem so normalized on here? Well to be fair, on the internet in general. Like to even have a discussion of well, you can say it in this case but not in that case. Wtf? We could not encourage it at all? Gives me the ick, seriously.

😗🍿

Anyone know which instances don't defederate anyone? I can handle blocking assholes, Nazis and spammers myself, and I do not like censorship being handled for me. I do not know if my current instance does that.

I hope that db0 doesn’t get defederated.

I would hope we can all remember that we can be pro-Palestine, anti-genocide without being anti-semitic, you can be anti-Hamas without being pro-genocide, you can believe in a state for the Jewish people and also be against the current government of Israel.

We are all on the fediverse for similar reasons, we’ll be a lot more successful trying to see the nuance in people’s views instead making enemies of each other out of righteous indignation. This goes for everyone

You won't find sympathy here

Ya, Kaplan needs to be removed from his admin/mod duties ASAP. He sees lemmy.world has his personal and private property and thinks he can do whatever he wishes. That is not what a community is about.

He is the typical reddit mod that we all hate. That is one of the reasons why we are on lemmy rather than on reddit. And yet, we are letting it happen here again? Fuck no. We need to be on the look out and stop such things as soon as possible, before they become too big to deal with.

I appreciate the openness of the moderation around here

Should have stayed defederated. Anarchist.nexus is a shitshow, just like lemmy.ml and dbzer0

Oh boy, another thread to bolster my blocklist :)

We’re currently discussing how we will proceed with this situation and whether it will affect lemmy.dbzer0.com, which is mostly run by the same admin team, notably excluding the person who used to be on the anarchist.nexus admin team.

If .world doesn't defederate, dbzero never will, because they're only federated to troll...

This is how their admins are still acting:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/67441443/25634912

It's not just this, their main admin bans people just for down voting any of their AI slop they spread over like 20 identical communities.

Anytime there's any kind of division, "divide by zero" will pick the position that will piss off the most people, and just wait for new users to stumble onto their instance.

They're a negative to the fediverse, along with a couple other instances with very low user numbers but a high degree of drama.

As a Jewish person I think you should absolutely consider defederating from those instances. They platform and allow actual antisemitic people. They enable and encourage people calling for the death of Israelis. They are a bad place and no decent instance should associate with them.

Defed and isolate db0 they try to isolate hc for false reasons so let em have it.

Not accepting calls for death of millions is very reasonable.

Zionist simply means the right of the Jewish people to self determination to have a state, where they are the majority and safe from persecution.

The majority of Jews worldwide and millions of others support the continued existence of Israel.

If you support a two state solution, you are a Zionist.

Calling for the death of Zionists is a call for the death of the vast majority of Jews and millions of others people worldwide. This wouldn’t even be a discussion, if it targeted any other group.

The Fediverse has too many bloodthirsty extremists.