We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.
Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.
Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.
Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.
Hi mateys, I've kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:
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The "this isn't that complicated" school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It's just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.
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The "slippery slope" / "purity test" school of thought is that banning people for having an "unpopular" political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don't think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don't have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.
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Another important discussion point was "how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?" We can't always be 100% sure of someone's true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don't feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.
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The "geopolitics don't matter" school of thought is that trying to be on the "correct" side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don't bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.
Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.
expiry: 7
Dead set against.
To expand on that statement, I wholly agree that certain points of view have no place here or anywhere else for that matter. What I am opposed to is codifying what seems to me to be a weak definition of a term. That is a recipe for creating an oppressive tool that can be used to crush discourse.
Do we not already have ample policy in place to deal with the offensive parties without the need for further rules that are primed for misuse?
Additionally, your opening sentences read as very hierarchical and your initial decision to set a short expiry comes across as an attempt to sneak in a change under the radar.
I personally feel that you should take at least a short break as an admin of the instance.
What discourse that could be misconstrued as pro-Zionist can potentially be lost and how valuable could that lost discourse be?
And then what discourse do bad faith actors get to push through from our misfiring on tolerance, and what are the consequences of that?
Above questions are admittedly rhetorical (or at least I have my own answers already), the ones below are genuine.
How do you reach a conclusion that the admin who posted the governance question should step back for some time, when the phrasing indicates discussion among the admin team and the presentation of multiple (even somewhat mutually-exclusive) points of view?
If we already have tools and policy for dealing with unacceptable content, what about codifying specifics for Zionism enables abuse of our existing tools? The proposal outlines that it aims to be narrowly scoped for that reason. If you consider Zionist content unacceptable, how would you need it defined?
Terminology on lemmy tends to become weaponized and used to dismiss anyone whose opinions aren't perfectly aligned, often leading to the total erosion of the original meaning. My issue does not lie with refusing to tolerate genocide denialism or genocide support, or with removing bad actors; rather, in how we choose to set our guidelines regarding acceptability.
By shifting to a stance of revoking instance privileges based on a label, a standard is set that invites further weaponization of that label and further abstraction of any real meaning it might have held. There's enough of that without creating incentives for more.
In regards to thee first of what you call your genuine questions, I would say I reach the conclusion based on my own observations of behavior, not limited to this one proposition. I did state my reasons as they relate to this particular post.
In regards to the second, I don't call for it to be defined. I advocate applying existing acceptability policy without the need to specify a label. On the subject of abuse, it is far easier to abuse authority when it can be abstracted by a term or label that means demonstrably different things to different people. The need to address content on its own merit, or lack thereof, is one safeguard against such abuses, be they accidental or willful.
Alright, thanks for the reply.
I have to be honest, the call for Flatworm to step back from admin feels weirdly personal and opportunistic in this context. In a way that feels bad for the instance, like a grudge. This is a governance question, about what to do about a specific issue, that evidently has been discussed among the admin team.
I agree with your general perspective about ill-defined labels and the way they facilitate abuse. I'm much less concerned about that possibility from this instance in particular. I can elaborate, but for brevity, it's why I have an account here.
"Our tools/policies are good enough already" doesn't seem like a very strong argument. There's a technologically ~peerless military propaganda machine pointed at the Internet whitewashing ongoing genocide. Our admin team is raising a governance question that sounds to me like "our tools/policies aren't enough - what should we do about it?"
There are zero discussions involving pro Zionism that could be construed as positive and meaningful. Those are simply discussions regarding the propping up of genocide the propping up of the stealing of land and the propping up of hyper militarization.
You are wrong. Doing nothing is taking the zionist side. ITs an implicit vote for the status quo of tolerating zionist propoganda, which they have plainly stated they will wildly ratchet up the funding of. Lemmy and reddit both are being brigaded by marketing agencies and their bots, funded by zionists. The slippery slope lies in taking no action. Removing zionists from the site is the only moral stand to be taken here. Anything else supports oppression and terrorism.
If this is meant as a counterpoint to my stance, it fails at the most basic level: at no point did I suggest that nothing be done. My belief is that we already have the means to remove offending posts and posters. I simply wish to see those existing guidelines applied rather than creating a new set of rules specifically relating to a term that is used like a playground insult almost as often as it is invoked to convey actual meaning.