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
Eh, I disagree. I don’t want to defederate from any instance except blatantly illegal ones or immoral ones.
The admins of an instance being dickheads doesn’t make every user of that instance a dickhead. And if you go around defederating every instance you don’t agree with a minority on, we’re gonna end up with no friends at all. It will also drive people away from becoming Lamingtons if they see defederation drama going on - why join any instance if you may end up on a deserted island?
Side note: here’s a nice bit of light reading on tolerating intolerance. And not tolerating tolerance. And vice versa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
Right, which is exactly why they should be defederated. They don’t even follow their own rules and go out of their way to be arseholes to everyone, as long as they perceive it to be something that pushes their agenda.
… being the very small minority?
They being the authoritarians.
You’re suggesting defederating the 5th largest Lemmy instance (~52k users, ~2.2k active) over the actions of a single digit number of people. I think you also suggested defederating hexbear (the next biggest at ~27k users, ~1.8k active) in the past.
Lemmy aint big enough to be wiping out majority shares when you don’t like how a very small number of people act.
The admins of the instance. It’s ridiculous to pretend the behaviour of the admins of an instance shouldn’t be a serious consideration in the question of how to treat with that instance.
The thousands of users necessarily affected are far more important than up to five admins being hypocrites and jerks when it comes to specific political topics.
Ultimately I think aussie.zone users should be the most serious consideration, and as admin Nath said, users here who disapprove can easily block their admins or their instance at will.