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
Made some time at work, don't tell my boss...
Think of lemmy instances as countries: when you visit a country/instance you're expected to abide by their local rules, whatever they may be. And when users from other countries/instances interact with Australia/aussie.zone they're expected to behave in line with our rules.
Not agreeing with the population of a country/instance doesn't mean you can't visit it. If/When you visit, you can't expect them to adhere to your rules at home... or to apply their own rules consistently.. just like the real world.
Defederation of an instance will only be done when:
Legal- the instance is generating content that may raise legal concerns for Aussie Zone. For example porn.
Technical- the instance is generating content that may cause performance/security issues for Aussie Zone. For example large volumes of automated traffic or malicious traffic.
Trolls- an instance whose users predominantly interact in bad faith with communities outside of their instance.
I don't believe lemmy.ml meets any of these, their "quirky" politics are largely self contained on their own communities from what I've seen. If they're crashing aussie.zone communities and posting outside of our rules, please report them.
To address some comments in this thread (paraphrasing):
we should defederate instances with bad admins or admins heavily moderating alternative views to their own
So far as their actions do not trigger any of the defederation criteria noted above, they can do as they see fit (even if it does make hypocritical dickheads).
no incentive to create alternative communities
If there is no incentive, then it can't be a large enough issue to enough users.
pro-authoritarian bias
Given how simple it is for a user to block an instance for themself, I'd rather allow our users had the option to decide this for themselves. Some prefer to engage with people from an alternate perspective, for those that don't they can block the instance.
TLDR
Not defederating lemmy.ml at this point in time, if their user behaviour outside of their instance changes in future my stance may change too.
it seems "defederate" has become the new default move whenever people encounter users that, well, Exist While Having Different Opinions To Them.
The only defensible one I've seen was hexbear because they're full on batshit "this has gotta be a russian psyop" insane and intent on abusing everyone else.
So supporting terrorist organisations isn’t against australian law? Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation and advocating for them is therefore banned under australian law.
On ML they remove any sort of nuance or anyone saying that Hamas is not perfect. Obviously I think the IDF is more to blame than Hamas, but ML moderators remove any sort of content that says that Hamas (to a lesser extent than the IDF) leads to great suffering of the palestinian people. And it’s full of people explicitly supporting Hamas.
Hi! I go to pro-Palestine/Lebanon/etc. protests on the weekends here (among other things) and can confirm for you that publicly declaring approval of designated national enemies is not illegal. It would be pretty absurd for a liberal democracy like Australia to do so. Please don't invent laws to pressure our admins.
Hey. I’ve gone to pro-palestine protests too. It’s illegal to support a terrorist organisation, not to support Palestine/Lebanon etc. those are two different things, cheers.
Just because I suppport the Palestinian people and their liberation does not mean I support Hamas. What’s illegal though is to publicly support one of these organisations. The law is tricky but basically either pushing for terrorist acts, or displaying designated terrorist symbolism, or provide support to a terrorist organisation. This all can be found here:
https://www.ag.gov.au/national-security/australias-counter-terrorism-laws
Yes, they're two different things. I brought it up because there are plenty of people there too who are openly in defense of Hamas and Hezbollah, even handing out pamphlets in support of them. The only real legal suppression I'm aware of is over people flying Hezbollah flags in the past month (the symbolism you mention).
Which are not particularly relevant to the situation of aussie.zone federating with lemmy.ml. Them writing posts which side with Hamas or Hezbollah isn't violating those laws.
IANAL but believe the test of "support"ing a terrorist organisation has a higher threshold than moderating a forum and silencing critics of such organisations.
Either way..
a. you're not an aussie.zone user, so your commentary here in this thread is not required.
b. your comment history shows an axe to grind against lemmy.ml, it may be warranted... but again it is not relevant to this thread.