Ah, fair!

When the rest of us get taxed it’s just how society works. When billionaires get taxed, now it’s a “scheme.”

And nearly twenty years old but still relevant.

You know what I’d probably be doing right now if I was a Palestinian who was 8 at the start of that graph? Not looking to shake hands with my neighbors that’s for sure.

I was hoping the headline meant they pulled out of doing a show in Georgia in solidarity with the cop city protesters. But this is good too.

I already don’t recall but apologies if I ever did slip into that for a moment

No apology needed, if anything I’m the one who gets a little terse sometimes.

that’s some heavier stuff that I am glad you will take time to think about. B/c it is absolutely disrespectful of the admins to the community for them to not follow their own rules

Will do!

also b/c I hope to be able to converse with you again on the Fediverse!:-)

And you as well!

I’m sure we’ll bump into each other again. Whether I’ll still be on this instance or account though? Only time will tell… :)

When was the last time you had an actual talk with a republican in order to understand what he/she thinks?

Every day until the Pandemic. My republican friends now work in a different office than I do. It’s not hard to see the policies and politicians they vote for though, and I can read the handwritten signs in their yards explicitly calling me an idiot, moron, or traitor for having different views than they do. (I see those every day BTW.)

it collapses the Israel-Palestine issue into a winner-take-all situation

I’m just looking at what I’ve spent the past several months witnessing via news reporting and video clips. I’m not debating what the dictionary says about it. (And in any case, dictionaries reflect usage not prescribe it.)

At least we are enjoying this conversation about it all:-).

Well you’ve certainly given me more to think about. I don’t see much more to debate with you, but wanted to reply anyway so it didn’t appear I was leaving in a huff. Have a good rest of your day.

First, thanks for the thoughtful and thorough reply.

I am sorry that this is upsetting to you.

It’s not upsetting to me, it’s just annoying. I strongly support the block early/block often culture that seems to pervade the fediverse, even when that is folks blocking me. I also support the ability to defederate, and strongly support (for example) pre-emptively defederating from threads.

Indeed, such decisions at the user or instance level are potentially messy, but the whole thing just seems self-healing over time to me. There’s an equilibrium that needs to be reached, I think, and I doubt we’re anywhere near it yet. Some instances are going to end up isolated, either by themselves or by others, and some won’t. New instances will spring up, instances will shut down, etc etc. People will move around to find a new instance when needed. It’s all really sloppy and the outcome for any one user or instance isn’t necessarily going to match the outcome for another. That’s freedom to me. And not in some maga “free speech means I get to be a jerk but no one can call me out” way, but in a “we’re all empowered to influence our own experience here” way. People can block, instances can defederate, people can deploy their own instance and make it as open or closed or personal or public as they want to. Hot damn.

And all that is going to create friction and people are going to disagree with each other about how to do it and what the right way is, just like we’re doing here.

But, despite your very reasonable rationalizations for OP, and regardless of their intent, this very subconversation and others are evidence that this isn’t what a discussion about moderation practices looks like. It’s what a discussion about publicly calling someone out with a pejorative term for their beliefs looks like. Expressing that opinion, and defending it when required, is the extent of my involvement or concern. I don’t share the beliefs of OP nor their target. Whether folks want to change how they are discussing the issue or not is up to them. That’s also freedom, in my opinion.

I might migrate instances at some point, I might not, we’ll see how things go, but it’s not going to be because of this post from OP. Folks can run their instances as they see fit. They don’t owe me a platform, nor OP.

And it’s less about the users and more about the kind of lopsided, censorship moderation that happens on .ml

That may be your concern, but it’s not the discusion OP started. That’s the discussion OP claims to have started.

Quoting myself from yesterday:

Subject line: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it’s about smearing the target’s views.

First two sentences: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it’s about smearing the target’s views.

Third sentence: Links to archive.org link that fails to load. (I think they are still under DoS attack) May or may not be about moderation, but nothing OP wrote in the leadup to the link leads me to believe it’s about more than smearing the target’s views.

Then a couple links that sound like they are about discussing moderation.

Then another para smearing the target’s opinions and politics some more.

I feel like those ratios are a bit off if OP is really so bothered about moderation practices.

There’s an awful lot of political views around that aren’t tankie.

Sure, but most of the time you don’t know anything at all about who designs and develops the systems you use. I totally support people going to where they feel comfortable, and I’m a huge believer in defederation as one of the strengths of the fediverse. Block early and block often and all that. OP didn’t spend time on that though, OP spent most of their time on character assassination.

Also, the target of these smears is the main Lemmy dev - not just Lemmy.ml. If OP is so concerned about their influence then OP should move to mbin or something.

This would make a ton of sense if your choice of Lemmy instance were not just that; a choice. It’s not a characteristic innate to your being that you’re born with or something.

Either I don’t understand your objection, or you don’t understand my point. Legitimately it could be either of those. I don’t see what this has to do with most of what I said above.

You can choose to associate with whatever instance you want and swap it up with another account somewhere else if you want at any time (you can prob keep the same username if you want too).

OK, yes… Are you saying I should move my account elsewhere because OP (or some other people) don’t like that my account says .ml at the end? Or because I’m only supposed to have an account on instances where I agree with the political leanings of those who run it?

while a US republican would say a “true patriot” would support a small government that doesn’t restrict the will of all citizens.

I don’t think they say this much anymore since all Republican policies are explicitly about restricting the will of their fellow citizens.

Personally, I feel that referring to Zionism in general as support for Israeli control over the west bank and Gaza

I never used it this way or considered it this way until the past few months. 🤔 Now you’d have a hard time convincing me that it’s not what it means.

Please bear in mind that I’m a lemmy.ml user (though not a tankie, nor marxist, nor even socialist.)

Look at OP. How many lines are about smearing someone for their politics and beliefs (Even the subject line covers ONLY that), and how many are about the need to improve moderation practices at .ml (precious few, not even the subject line).

IMO that’s one reason. The discussion rarely ends up being about moderation practices even when that’s the stated goal. It ends up being about not liking someone’s views.

The other reasons - you can personally block that instance if you choose, but for it to be hidden from EVERYONE on an instance, the admins of the instances need to make that decision. (To defederate.) There are lots of potential reasons not to do so, and I think many of them boil down to not throwing out the baby with the bathwater since there are plenty of users on ml like me who are not tankies and are just having the same discussions we’d have anywhere.

I got a 3 day ban from one single community at .ml within my first couple days here for using the term “whataboutism” - I suspect it was an automod action. I wasn’t really happy about it, but eh? shrug

I have the same answer for folks now that I did when social media was somehow full of US conservatives claiming they could no longer speak their minds on social media. No one is obligated to give me or you or anyone a platform. If Lemmy.ml is that much of a shithole, it will eventually get defederated broadly, and everyone who isn’t a tankie will stop using it.

The occasional thread like this, or someone complaining that my opinion is invalid because I’m an ml user (has happened maybe three times) are the only times I ever think about it really.

terally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin

John Lennon

Vladimir Lenin

Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users?

You can do exactly that. OP wants everyone to do it.

Hey thank you for this, I will read it again in more detail, but appreciate the perspective, both broadly and with regard to this specific post.

This is the only reply I received which has caused me to second guess my stance in the slightest. 🙂

Edit: If I’m going to care about such things at all, is there a left leaning instance you’d recommend? I considered blahaj, but not sure if they welcome allies there or only the queer community.

Subject line: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it’s about smearing the target’s views.

First two sentences: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it’s about smearing the target’s views.

Third sentence: Links to archive.org link that fails to load. (I think they are still under DoS attack) May or may not be about moderation, but nothing OP wrote in the leadup to the link leads me to believe it’s about more than smearing the target’s views.

Then a couple links that sound like they are about discussing moderation.

Then another para smearing the target’s opinions and politics some more.

Yep, OP was really about moderation and censorship, not about a personal attack. /s

What does it lead with? A comment about moderation or a comment about the devs politics and opinions?

(Edit: and the subject line says nothing about moderation)

Nothing wrong with holding a political stance, but they routinely ban people for specious reasons.

OP should have left the politics and personal smears out of it then and opened a discussion about moderation practices. And as OP points out, the person he’s primarily smearing is the main Lemmy dev. What’s the endgame there? Trying to get the main dev thrown off his own project?

And? I’m not a tankie and not a marxist. Hell, I’m not even a socialist. Hell, I identify as a leftist, but I bet lots of folks would tell me I’m nothing of the sort. But I’d rather be on an instance with folks to the left of me than to the right (to the very, very minimal degree that I care about who else is on my instance). I don’t remember why I didn’t sign up for .world, but at the end of the day does it really matter?

The only impact I’ve seen are smear posts like this one, and folks who dismiss opinions if they see a user is from .ml. shrug If that’s as far as folks can look, I’m not interested in talking with them anyway.

I have hexbear blocked in my own settings; if folks want to block .ml that’s no skin off my nose. Ain’t respecting user freedoms great?

Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev,

So I see you are on a Lemmy instance. If we’re going to smear instances based on the politics of their devs, I’d think you wouldn’t want to use ANY Lemmy instance.

I really miss only one thing. /r/PublicFreakout. Cops beating folks? Video would be there. Protests going on anyplace? Video would be there. Magas and Proud Boys up to their bullshit? Video would be there. Etc etc.

I know !publicfreakout@lemmy.world exists, but sorting by “hot” the top post is 22 days ago…