Feddit.org admins have responded to the recent controversy about the pro-Israel censorship on !europe@feddit.org and elsewhere on their instance. I thought I'd repost it here for greater visibility (since it's posted in a mainly German language comm). Also, there's a fair bit of comment removal going on in there, and the contents are not being shown in the modlog, so it's a bit hard to tell what's being removed and how it's affecting the discussion.

TLDR: They stand fully behind the mods of !europe@feddit.org and their actions (Edit: Because the law, or at least the way the law is being enforced, says they have to)

!Europe@feddit.org mods have also spoken up: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12550375 (https://feddit.org/post/12550375). Their stance seems to be "We live in Germany, and we don't want the cops breaking down our door. Here's some examples". And that's totally reasonable, I get that and if I lived under that law I'd be behaving the same way. The question then is, should the biggest europe-centric comm be hosted and modded in such a way that criticism about one of Europe's most powerful nations isn't allowed?

Alternative Europe-centric comm, if you're looking for something censorship-free: !europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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You can find their post here: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12529640 (https://feddit.org/post/12529640)

Previous post about their behaviour: https://lemsha.re/sh.itjust.works/post/37918115 (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37918115)

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@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com, let me know if this is outside the boundaries of this comm and I'll move it elsewhere. I'm mainly posting here as a follow up to the previous post.

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Quote of their post follows:

Hello everyone,

in the last few days there have been some accusations against the moderators of !europe@feddit.org as well as against our admin team of being Nazis or Zionists, mainly because of the way of dealing with criticism of Israel.

We explicitly reject these accusations and will not tolerate such accusations. In particular, people who accuse others in this way without any concrete objective reason are not welcome on feddit.org. This is already covered by our rule of respectful interaction.

First of all, we would like to remind you that the use of feddit.org must be compliant with the rights and regulations of the DACH region. This is explicitly mentioned in our instance rules, and includes Germany (D), Austria (A) and Switzerland (CH). The infrastructure of feddit.org is maintained by the Fediverse Foundation, a non-profit association in Austria. Our Admin team, which takes care of the instance wide moderation, organization and supporting infrastructure operations, is based in Germany. Since we primarily target the German speaking coutries, we also try to comply with laws and regulations of Switzerland.

Even if we do not have to actively search for violations of the law, it is necessary to intervene after becoming aware of them. This includes, for example when moderators or admins receive messages about posts or comments, but also when such content is discovered by chance when browsing Lemmy.

https://www.wko.at/internetrecht/providerhaftung

In the case of “hosting”, the service provider has limited liability if the provider

• has no actual knowledge of specific unlawful activities or content and is not aware of any facts or circumstances with regard to claims for damages from which the unlawful activity or content is obvious, and
• as soon as it obtains this knowledge or awareness, takes swift action to block access to the illegal content or to remove it.

Relevant criminal offenses include the following:

Legal instruments against the dissemination of anti-Semitic statements or statements condoning terrorist acts of the German Parliament (German)

spoiler excerpt, unofficial translation

Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.

• From 2.1.1 Criminal condoning of criminal acts

According to Section 140 No. 2 StGB, anyone who publicly condones certain types of unlawful acts listed in Sections 140, 138 and 126 StGB in a manner that is likely to disturb the public peace is liable to prosecution. Such related offenses include murder (§ 211 StGB), manslaughter (§ 212 StGB), genocide (§ 6 VStGB), crimes against humanity (§ 7 VStGB), war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 VStGB) and aggression (§ 13 VStGB), but also various offenses directed against sexual self-determination or personal freedom...”

• From 2.1.2 Incitement to hatred

Pursuant to Section 130(1) StGB, anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb the public peace, 1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious or ethnic group, against parts of the population or against an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population, incites violence or arbitrary measures or 2. attacks the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming a designated group, parts of the population or an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population"(...)”1. distributes or makes available to the public any content (Section 11(3)) or offers, provides or makes available to a person under the age of eighteen any content (Section 11(3)) that a) incites violence or arbitrary measures against persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a), or c) attacks the human dignity of persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a) by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming them, or 2. produces, obtains, supplies, keeps in stock, offers, advertisements or undertakes to import or export content referred to in number 1 letters a to c (§ 11 paragraph 3) in order to use it in the sense of number 1 or to enable another person to make such use of it.”

• From 2.1.3 Incitement to hatred related to crimes under international law

"As of December 2022, the new criminal offense of incitement to hatred related to a crime under international law was introduced in Section 130 (5) StGB. According to this, it is a criminal offense to publicly condone an act of the type specified in Sections 6 to 12 of the German Criminal Code against one of the majorities of persons specified in Section 130 (1) No. 1 of the German Criminal Code in a manner that is likely to incite hatred or violence against such a majority of persons and to disturb public peace...”

• From 2.1.4 Formation and support of terrorist organizations

Pursuant to Section 129a(1) StGB, “(1) Whoever establishes an association (Section 129(2)) whose purposes or whose activities are directed towards 1. murder (§ 211) or manslaughter (§ 212) or genocide (§ 6 of the International Criminal Code) or crimes against humanity (§ 7 of the International Criminal Code) or war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or § 12 of the International Criminal Code) or 2. offenses against personal freedom in the cases of § 239a or § 239b (...), or whoever participates in such an association as a member ”

• From 2.1.5 Disseminating propaganda material of terrorist organizations and using their emblems

“Finally, it is also a punishable offense to disseminate propaganda material of terrorist organizations and to use their emblems (Sections 86, 86a StGB).”

:::

Section 130 Incitement of masses

excerpt, unofficial translation

Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.

(3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the child indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of Crimes against International Law in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or a fine.

(4) Whoever publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner which violates the dignity of the victims by approving, glorifying or justifying National Socialist tyranny and arbitrary rule incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine.

Some further links, mostly in German:

• Public approval or condoning of criminal offenses (Germany)
• Hate and Incitement in Criminal Law (Germany)
• Guidelines for the Prosecution of Antisemitic Crimes
• Working definition of antisemitism
• https://www.bundeskanzleramt.gv.at/kampagne-gegen-antisemitismus/fragen-und-antworten/antisemitismus-im-internet-moegliche-rechtliche-konsequenzen/moegliche-strafrechtliche-folgen.html (Austria)

In this instance, we fully support the moderators of !europe@feddit.org to potentially remove too much rather than too little in case of legal uncertainties.

One of the triggers for the current debate is this post, which followed the removal of a comment comparing National Socialism with the current situation in Israel, which can be considered a trivialization of National Socialism. Such statements can, among other things, lead to imprisonment. Among other things, the post claimed that the removal had a Zionist motive, an accusation that should always be supported by appropriate evidence and prior to which it should be ruled out that there are alternative explanations.

We will not be removing every comment that goes even remotely in this direction, but we reserve the right to permanently ban users from feddit.org who make unfounded accusations, such as labeling our instance, admins, moderators, or other users as Nazis or Zionists, without substantial supporting arguments. This is especially the case when this is recurring behavior and not an isolated incident.

This includes content such as this post by @Deceptichum@quokk.au, who was banned from our instance shortly before that post due to multiple incitements of violence and terrorism. This person also seems to be the admin of the instance quokk.au, or at least to have good relations to the admin, since we received a censure on Fediseer from quokk.au around the same time, in which we are being accused of being Zionists and Nazis, and @Deceptichum@quokk.au has suggested [to defederate quokk.au from us].

If this censure by quokk.au is not withdrawn in a timely manner, we will defederate quokk.au from our side for these unsubstantiated and untrue accusations. quokk.au is a relatively small instance with only a few local users, which tried to build an alternative news community that is not on one of the “big” instances. Unfortunately, this community also seems to be a poor alternative if this is how their admin typically acts.

:::

Title says it all. In combination with the recent post about somebody getting banned from the same comm, there's a trend starting to emerge.

Edit: Sad but unsurprising that this immediately got downvoted by a German user

Edit 2: Looks like this was just one of many such posts that got locked without any reason given. Notice a pattern in the topics locked?

Don't think I've even commented in half of them, let alone recently.

So the Admin most likely had to see my comments elsewhere on Lemmy (probably on the other thread in here), and decide to ban me from 3 communities they don't even mod.

Edit: A look at their mod log explains it, I posted this on Ye Power Trippin' Bastards.

Apparently feddit.org thinks it's okay to police different instances and servers, and to randomly ban users for abusing a genocide denier.

Edit2: It may only be showing 3 due to Lemmy shenanigans.

Their Rule 4:

No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, islamophobia, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism. We follow German law; don’t question the statehood of Israel.

Europe@feddit.org removed my comment for de-tangling the conflation of antisemitism and anti-zionism. A dangerous conflation that is genuinely antisemitic and fuels antisemitic hate as it conflates the actions of Israel and Zionism to all Jewish people and Judaism.

This prioritization of the German definition, the adopted IHRA definition, is promoting antisemtitism and is diametrically opposed to the 'No antisemitism' aspect of the rule. The definition has been condemned by the writer of the definition, a multitude of human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), B’Tselem, Peace Now, and Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), and over 120 leading scholars of anti-semitism.

Germany Is Trying to Combat Antisemitism. Experts Warn a New Resolution May Do the Opposite

Fifteen Israeli nongovernmental organizations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, B'Tselem and Peace Now, issued an open letter in September stating their concern that the resolution, especially the IHRA definition, could be weaponized to "silence public dissent."

This could also affect Jewish voices speaking out for Palestinian rights and opposing the occupation, they added. "Paradoxically, the resolution may therefore undermine, not protect, the diversity of Jewish life in Germany," the letter argued.

• https://archive.is/iyARK

Rights groups urge UN not to adopt IHRA anti-Semitism definition

"The IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,” the letter said.

US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Israeli rights group B’Tselem, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) were among the signatories

The letter is the latest attempt by human rights advocates to urge the UN not to adopt the IHRA definition. In November, more than 120 scholars called on the world body to reject the definition, due to its “divisive and polarising” effect.

• https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/3/128-scholars-ask-un-not-to-adopt-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism

128 scholars ask UN not to adopt IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

In a statement published on Thursday, the 128 scholars, who include leading Jewish academics at Israeli, European, United Kingdom and United States universities, said the definition has been “hijacked” to protect the Israeli government from international criticism

• https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/3/128-scholars-ask-un-not-to-adopt-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism

Why the man who drafted the IHRA definition condemns its use

The drafter of what later became popularly known as the EUMC or IHRA definition of antisemitism,including its associated examples, was the U.S. attorney Kenneth S. Stern. However, in written evidence submitted to the US Congress last year, Stern charged that his original definition had been used for an entirely different purpose to that for which it had been designed. According to Stern it had originally been designed as a ”working definition” for the purpose of trying to standardise data collection about the incidence of antisemitic hate crime in different countries. It had never been intended that it be used as legal or regulatory device to curb academic or political free speech. Yet that is how it has now come to be used. In the same document Stern specifically condemns as inappropriate the use of the definition for such purposes, mentioning in particular the curbing of free speech in UK universities, and referencing Manchester and Bristol universities as examples. Here is what he writes:

The EUMC “working definition” was recently adopted in the United Kingdom, and applied to campus. An “Israel Apartheid Week” event was cancelled as violating the definition. A Holocaust survivor was required to change the title of a campus talk, and the university [Manchester] mandated it be recorded, after an Israeli diplomat [ambassador Regev] complained that the title violated the definition.[See here]. Perhaps most egregious, an off-campus group citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor (who received her PhD from Columbia) for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. The university [Bristol] then conducted the inquiry. And while it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like. [square brackets added – GW]

• https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/why-the-man-who-drafted-the-ihra-definition-condemns-its-use/

Literally explained how the two things I said make sense together and he banned me for "not manning up to lying"

...Ironically in doing so, he did not man up about his falsehood, which is that I said contradictory things.

I came to a post on this community where a user said that a certain community was zionist. But their comment was really long and I wasn't sure if it had been removed for that or something else. So I wanted to test it myself.

I went to that community and posted something that's only offensive to zionists. My post was pro-jewish and anti-zionist, so there was no way to confuse it as meaning something else. I wanted to see what would happen. Either it would get removed for zionist reasons, get removed for other reasons, or stay up. That would answer my question. It got removed because the mod said they felt rage baited. That answered my question. I linked the post and the modlog here as evidence, to share my findings. Now everyone knows for sure whether that community is zionist.

What I wasn't expecting is Ada's response. She said in the modlogs she also felt the post was rage bait. I didn't see that coming because I didn't think Ada was a zionist. I thought she would be fine with seeing zionists get angry, because they get angry over the most mild things.

Is Ada supporting zionism?

[the subreddit, not lemmy, btw]
the words were not the n-word… see below….

racial slurs here

“coon” and “koongaroo”

if it wasn’t written by people claiming to be black, it would be indistinguishable from standard racism….
my money is on, fake as fuck and modded by actual white racists.
anyways, permanent ban, no explanation, no response to questions about the ban.
i had my doubts before, but now i’m sure.

I honestly can't tell if this one is just lemmy.world's moderation being shit as usual, or if the fact that the stories getting removed are Russian is actually relevant.

Here are two stories of mine that have been removed from !nottheonion@lemmy.world for being "not onion-y":

• Trump says Russia has shown willingness for peace by not taking over all of Ukraine, calls it 'pretty big concession'
• Moscow hit by massive drone raid for second night ahead of Putin’s Victory Day parade

Stories that are fine, on the other hand?

• "Can ChatGPT experience joy or suffering? Does Gemini deserve human rights?" our tech columnist asks. "Many A.I. experts I know would say no, not yet, not even close. But I was intrigued."
• 'Trump 2028' apparel on sale at the Trump Organization's online store
• Trump tariffs: US president says foreign movies to be hit with 100% levies

I sort of suspect that what's going on here is a combination of genuine stupidity on the part of the users (having trouble making the leap between "Victory Day" and "Moscow hit by massive drone raid"), plus passivity on the part of the mods (one possibility is that it got reported because of salty pro-Russian people, which the objectively not-oniony stories did not, and the mod just blindly obeys whatever reports say).

Regardless. Moderation on lemmy.world is a pile.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29035971

Posting here for preservation's sake

Image in removed comment was the attached Palpatine image. Curious to see if the same admin mod would remove these screenshots if I crosspost them to !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com , which they also admin and mod. Would I get a fair trial there or will my dissenting and others’ be silenced?

You can’t say you’re against disinfo if you’re knowing and intentionally promulgating it and abetting its usage. They also didn’t even remove the Reddit watermark.

This is why I don’t assign identities unto myself, because you criticize one action done wrong by leaders of an ideology or movement and bam! you’re shut out of it completely. They’ve lost the aid of an ally and progress is impeded by being shorted a participant trying to correct the course.

CONTEXT: in r/autism there is a rule that prohibits autismspeaks propaganda to be shared. That's because autismspeaks is a literal eugenics organization that only cares to eradicate autistic people and find a "cure" to autism (which is an anti-scientific take as you can't cure autism and it's been known for a long time to be just a different kind of brain structure)

ok now that we got that out of the way here's the story:

I had a little identity crisis about my diagnosis (lvl 1 autism) and vented about it expressing my anxiety on the topic, and then a user replied inferring that i was self-diagnosed and sent some articles showing the raads-r (the test i took with my specialized psychologist) not being accurate: one of these studies was funded by autismspeaks (which is not allowed by the rules of the same server) so I told the mods about it. These are the logs

So then seeing i was going nowhere I posted my account of the story, and got my post taken down by mods, posted the logs, and they took it down. I don't have logs of my further conversations with the mods, but in one message they said "if we let propaganda on, we're in the wrong, if we suppress discussion we are in the wrong" not even acknowledging the gravity of the situation. Then i made this post calling out the mods for not doing their job, it got taken down, posted a screenshot of it again, took that down and banned me.

they took down my post under the guise of "continuing arguments that has been resolved" which was not at all resolved bc the link to the autismspeaks funded paper was still there and they didn't take action towards the user who posted that. They only did that bc my posts made them look bad, as letting a eugenics organization against autistic people have their propaganda posted on a half a million users subreddit from all over the world is something reprehensible in an autism community which is supposed to be a welcoming space for autistic people. To reddit mods it's always about the powertrip and even in a community that should be welcoming to autistic people they are not willing to take a stance and make people abide by the rules.

I know, lemmy.ml is kind of cheating. I just thought this was a little interesting.

Also, almost all of the upvotes for my comment came from lemmy.ml. I think as time goes on, the narrative is getting punctured despite these guys' best efforts.

Post for context: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/32833874/19336416

That community has apparently had similar bans in the past, and neither the community nor the server mention their rules anywhere I can find. I also messaged the mod to ask for a link to the rules, their reply was "You need to complete your sentences otherwise you’re going to get a ban."

Not sure if the mod just didn't like the content of my comment and made up a nonpolitical reason, or if their modding is really that arbitrary.

So I posted to !nottheonion@lemmy.world:

Trump says Russia has shown willingness for peace by not taking over all of Ukraine, calls it 'pretty big concession'

Seems like a pretty good fit. It was the number 2 post for the day.

However, it was removed for being "Not Onion-y". What the fuck?

For one, yes, it is onion-y. For two, looking over the posts that are up there now, stuff that is "not onion-y" is more or less the majority of what's in the posts. The new number two story which replaced the one of mine that was removed was “Can ChatGPT experience joy or suffering? Does Gemini deserve human rights?” our tech columnist asks. “Many A.I. experts I know would say no, not yet, not even close. But I was intrigued.”, for example.

I wouldn't really care about the unreasonable removal of my article. Sometimes people just do bad moderation. Except:

1. Someone had come into the comments under my "not onion-y" post to do an unusually incompetent attempt at claiming the Ukraine war was all NATO's fault, and was getting unanimously roasted for it. Almost all of the comments were just laughing at this one guy, reiterating that Russia is in fact at fault in the war, and talking about the problem of Russian propaganda on Lemmy.
2. I have noticed before that almost every single one of the really bafflingly bad lemmy.world moderation decisions is in some way or other in service of propaganda.

Make of all of that what you will.

Edit: Made more concise

There's a post about it.

That post explicitly says it's not a place for debate or participation from users of other instances.

I'd like to respect that but I think events like this need debate and discussion because it helps to develop and evolve the culture of lemmy and the fediverse in general.

The post says:

This post is "FYI only" for blahaj lemmy members. It is not a debate, and is not intended for non blahaj lemmy users to weigh in and offer opinions.

I recently received reports of a feddit.uk user espousing transphobia. Specifically, this was a feddit.uk user refusing to use the word cis, repeating the "adult human female" dog whistle, and claiming that trans women are not women. I approached a member of the feddit.uk admin team and raised my concerns and sought clarification of their stance on posts like this, where the transphobia is mostly dogwhistles, and "civil disagreement" on the validity of trans folk.

I was told by the feddit.uk admin that their preferred response is this kind of transphobia is to "sort it out through discussion and voting". However, the comments in question are currently more upvoted than downvoted, and little "sorting out" has occurred. The posts remain in place.

At this point, the admin stopped responding to my messages despite being active elsewhere on lemmy. When it became clear they were ignoring my messages and had no intention of removing the posts in question, I made the decision to defederate the instance.

I know some folk agree with the feddit.uk admins approach of pushback through discussion and voting, but this instance is not designed to be that kind of space. Blahaj lemmy is meant to be a place where we can avoid the rampant transphobia universally visible on nearly every other social media platform, and where we can exist without needing to debate our right to do so.

DISCLAIMER: this is not my content that was removed, I just came across it in the modlog and found it to be absurd. If it’s not allowed, I totally understand.

Reason removed was because it’s unrelated.

Unrelated…..

The guy was illegally deported without due process. And yet for some reason, suggesting so is somehow “unrelated” to a meme that is trying to say that because he is affiliated (no charges were ever filed against him for gang-related activity) with a gang, he is by default, guilty.

What’s ironic, is that the entire point of the meme is that the bullshit about him being in MS-13 is unrelated to the fact that people want accountability for this administration illegally deporting a man without due process.

This mod has definitely chosen the correct name.

And even taken into consideration that the instance is essentially a troll haven for wayward 4Chan refugees, they should still have to adhere to the rules of common sense.

before i made an account, i reached out to the chief admin of lemmy.dbzer0.com

i was recently banned during a discussion on the validity of a claim regarding the consensus about the safety of a vegan diet:

and, if you bother to go find that discussion, you'll find that, in fact, my interlocutor did become incivil. i did report that. and somehow, my discussion and the subsequent report were the basis of a ban.

it was less than 2 hours. it's almost not worth discussing.

but given my pre-application discussion, i felt strongly that my conduct is within the bounds of the acceptable use of the instance. so if my conduct is not within the acceptable use, that means i basically cant use my account(s) as i planned and under the terms which i agreed.

db0 has said he doesn't want to be the benevolent dictator for life, and has specifically both recused himself from ruling on my conduct and encouraged me to post here and in !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com (though i'm still holding off on that for now).

so, did i deserve it? power tripping bastard? what do you think?

I thought this silly. Banned for violating rule 1 (sexism, descrimination, etc). Literally laughing irl right now since my post was specifically antidiscrimination.

no idea lol

I thought FUD was a cryptobro term.

So I stopped using a community do to a post seemingly being removed. Feedback on things is not great for what im working from now and im not good with using the modlog link areas and such. Now I had someone relate to me to post on this about that but im like. Nah seems like a drama thing. Thing is I have got 404's what I assume is removed links and they seem like relatively legit posts. One was from stamets saying why he is leaving on casual conversation and I know that user is pretty legit so it seems like his and the others I have seen is based on mods not liking the content. So im writing here just to find out if other folks are seeing this. I mean we are the federation so can just move on to some other place. I may just now block communities that have a bs removal as I don't want to associate with whoever is doing the bs mods. What do people think?

Adding some as I think I have issues getting to the point. My end questions are:

If people have seen heavier handed mod activity in like lets say the past month?

What people do about it?

The post in question, if interested:

Also, I don't know how to see which mod/admin banned me, so if you know how to in the modlog, definitely let me know.

Banned for 7 days, so I'm not super mad or anything - I just thought it was funny.

Honestly I don't blame them - I'd be embarrassed about people finding out my community was on .ml too.

I made a post about the Europeans who are being deported from Germany for being anti-genocide. https://lemmy.ml/post/28407953

A user repeated the now many times debunked lie that these victims facing deportation were "violent racist rioters". Blatant German propaganda, made up to smear opposition to the genocide in Palestine. Which Germany supplies 30% of the weapons for.

After calling them, and a few other users out for repeating the same lie, the moderators banned me.

Deleted