First off before we get into this I want to make clear that I’m not just throwing shade at the specific instance involved, and I’d also like to avoid focusing on the specific content of thread. I think this is a larger issue that warrants an open discussion, this could have happened with any other instance on a wide variety of thread topics.
Context:
- [email protected] created this thread asking for people to resist Tucker Carlson being allowed into Canada - https://lemmy.ca/post/12683277
- A user on a very large instance reported the thread with the reason “Inciting Illegal Behavior”
- This report was seen and cleared by lemmy.ca admins, as it didn’t violate any rules and definitely wasn’t inciting any illegal behavior
- The external admins removed the post based on the report
- Sworkgeek was DM’ed by automod to let him know, otherwise he would have no idea the largest lemmy user base can’t see his thread
- Swordgeek asked about cross-instance removals here - https://lemmy.ca/post/12724897
- Swordgeek asked about appeals for the removal here - https://lemmy.ca/post/12789496
There’s more discussion around this in the threads linked above, they’re worth a quick read.
TLDR: swordgeek made a post asking for political action and someone reported it with a fake reason, and an admin on a large instance removed the post. This removal would only impact their users, giving a largwe lemmy user base a selectively censored view of the lemmy.ca community.
It concerns me greatly that a lemmy instance can act as a censor and push the biases of their admins, on users who are completely unaware it’s happening. It also concerns me that a user could manipulate other users, if admins aren’t looking closely at the reports they get and just blindly remove things.
IMHO instance admins should not be moderating communities, that is the job of the community mods. Admins should only be involved in urgent + serious reports that are for things like CSAM, dox’ing, death threats, etc. All other reports should be left up to the moderators of the community to deal with.
If an instance wants to block a specific community or defederate then by all means, but instances selectively censoring content in a non-visible way? No thanks.
Can we have some sort of group policy that major instance admins should restrict their moderation activities, to significant rule violations?
I don’t like posts being removed like this.
But, it’s their servers / instances and it’s their rules, precesses and ways of working. They owe you nothing.
If you don’t like what they are doing, move to another instance. That’s the beauty of a federated system.
I don’t need to move to another instance, I help run lemmy.ca. I don’t like that external users may be seeing a censored version of our / other peoples communities, and I think the community as a whole should be aware of this so they can discuss if they are ok with it.
That’s just how federation works though. Other admins don’t have to put up with content on their servers just because it was federated to them. I own my server, I can remove whatever content I want from there - whether people like it or not.
Frankly, I don’t care at all if people don’t like that or that I’m not showing a true version of a community. It’s my server, my door the feds kick down if something slips through. Other people want a “truer” experience? Great, they are welcome to host their own servers and do what the please, and accept more risk themselves.
Valid. I’ll just have to accept that.
Have you spoken to the admins at lemmy.world to get an understanding of what’s going on?
I’m looking for more of a conversation with the community here on what we want to see from the Fediverse.
I don’t think this is a lemmy.world specific issue at all, and I don’t think they meant any harm by removing the thread. They were just being good admins and trying to stay on top of reports.
That’s not what all your posts suggest.
You said above you don’t like that users of lemmy.world are having their posts removed and that a censored view is being shown.
Your original posts mentions the instance by name and you say over and over in multiple comments that you don’t like what the admins are doing.
So if you don’t think they meant any harm, why have you just shit all over them since you posted this.
You come across as a self entitled douche who wants to tell people what to do with their instances because you’re unhappy about a single post being removed. In comment after comment.
How about you ask the admins what happened here and determine if there’s an actual problem rather than shitting on them in public? That would be the right and respectful thing to do.
I’m sorry that’s how you interpreted my post, as I did not want to imply this was an issue specific to lemmy.world or mean it as an attack upon them.
I’ve edited my post to not name the instance and try to make it more clear about my concerns for the fediverse as a whole, rather than their admin activities.
I’m not entirely sure why you have an issue with how another entity displays public content.
If they don’t want to show something, why should they be forced to?
Likewise if you don’t want to federate with a platform that does things like that… don’t federate with them.
Why does everyone get so upset about how other communities moderate themselves? This situation in particular has zero impact on you as you do not use their instance.
This is the early days of the Fediverse still, and we should shape into what we want it to be. It’s deceitful, as there’s no clear indicator that you’re seeing a selective view.
What a large instance deleted every post that was pro-Palestine? How many non-politically active users would actually notice? Do you see how that can be used to manipulate a user base?
This is the same stuff that people rage at FB or Twitter about.
Then I would find an instance that caters to my needs or spin up my own.
This is the solution to the stuff that people rage at FB or Twitter about. It’s literally the defining feature of the software.
If you want something with a more unilateral approach to moderation there’s Reddit, FB, and Twitter.