Context:

The article in question was well sourced, factually accurate, and written by a well-renowned author and journalist whose work appears elsewhere too, regardless of which outlet published it.

Nonetheless, Jordan Lund is once again blindly trusting a pro-zionist conservative outlet masquerading as a bias and fact checker that nothing from anywhere that criticizes the fascist apartheid regime can be reliable 🤦

Link to Modlog

Hi all, thank you for reading my post. modlod link

In the 196 sub an OP was asking for advice on how to change their friends opinions which they disapprove of, because they were trying to warn them off of 'the tankie triad' and their friend didn't have any issues with what they were seeing and was in fact subscribed to a number of instance already.

Clocks got banned first after suggesting that the OP try to be a genuine friend and try to find some common cause in real life rather than alienating people over abstract geopolitical factionalism:

[> The original post feels like bait, but here is an authentic response.

Maybe genuinely be their friend instead of alienating them based on political flavoring. Perhaps you can be better working together to help others in your locality or communities than squandering over geopolitical matters. Swallow your frustrations, being annoyed is a part of being in a community. You can move on. ](https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/modlog?commentId=13347091)

I raised the issue that censoring earnest advice as 'tankie apologia' and preemtively writing off any common cause/ isolating people is no way to win people over either as friends or comrades.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if 'genuinely be their friend' is 'tankie apologia' to be censored, I'm not sure you're going to be very successful convincing anyone of anything in the real world.

I then got banned for this one, for continuing to find 'the tankie triad' extremely silly:

yeah that's the context, I was just laughing because:

1. only Lemmy users with an axe to grind call them that
2. it sounds really silly, like they're a nemesis to dr venture.
3. I'm supposed to be the melodramatic one yet every day I get one-upped 😔

link

screenshot:

I'm not here to tell them how to run their comm, my position is that this is way more draconian than anything I've run into in any of 'the tankie triad'. The same groups of people loudly complaining about censorship on 'tankie' run instances don't seem to have a problem enforcing vague/arbitrary vibes based censorship in their spaces.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39616364?scrollToComments=true

https://lemmy.world/u/[email protected]

https://lemmy.world/modlog/?userId=1957570

Underage, you will be unbanned when you turn 18 (happy birthday in advance)

These comment removals don't appear on the modlog but the likely culprit comment is

"It fucking matters that the lemmy main code contributors are Tankie scum. The less power they exert over the whole, the better."

At a 3 to 2 score, but also includes such heinous comments as

"You can just browse lemmy in a mobile browser like waterfox just fine...

Why would anybody want to install unnecessary third party apps? That sounds awful."

and

"I havent used many instances but I've never used one which didn't have a mobile site."

The Modlog does mention the ban with the following reason:

Mods

• https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/u/will_steal_your_username

Actions

• Removed posters comments
• Banned posters from community

Mod log

1. Original comment that was deleted with reason of "Tankie apologia".
2. When another user comments has suspicions of mods actions, Mod replies with this.
3. Poster replies in exasperation explaining perspective, rationale, and offline experiences. Comment gets deleted and purged.

Explanation

The original comment I made was stating that alienation of someone by frustrating their political beliefs is not a way to convince them of anything.

That being their genuine friend goes a long way in helping someone rather then attacking them.

That together they both can work together for a better future.

That you can be annoyed, but that should be swallowed because that is what it means to be part of a community.

You will always be annoyed one way or another in a community, that is the beauty of a community, that there are different people that may annoy you slightly, but working together to still be a community.

The moderator disagrees with this, viewing it as "tankie apologia".

When I replied, explaining why I made my post and my background, My post was removed and I was banned from the community.

Thank you @[email protected] for reminding me on this missing context: https://lemmy.ml/comment/17251624

In my reply post, I wrote that "advocating for war on any country is not political flavoring".

That cannot be swallowed, and one should not befriend such a person without sufficient care for ones own wellbeing.

I had wrote explicitly thinking of people who suport Russia against Ukraine, Israel over Palestine, and Assadists etc.

My purged comment also states that "people seeking to punish / attack LGBTQIA+ people is not political flavoring".

I whole heartingly believe trans rights are human rights.

Free HRT and gender affirming care for all!

To remove an otherwise popular comment advocating for support what I feel are healthy behaviors, then name call someone as a "authoritarian" and a "tankie apologist" is disingenuous and corrupt to me.

Remedy

Personally I would like my comments restored so at least others see a different way of looking at things. I have no qualms with remaining banned.

Perhaps I should have not commented in reply to the mod, but they had already removed my post and I had little to lose.

Otherwise, I am very tired of this on the internet, I am tired of tribalism and the lack of empathy in this world.

What do you all think, should I have even made my original comment if I already knew it would be fruitless?

I'll just post my initial comment in the entirety since what happens is entirely predicted by my first comment.

The topic was trans athletes and, like with any hot button political issues, there are rigidly defined 'sides' that come with a list of things that you must profess.

These things are simply declared as not being open to discussion and if you challenge that declaration, ye power trippin' bastards rear their ugly head. This dogma is unhealthy in any community and the people who enforce it through social pressure, cyber bullying and mod powers are actively harmful.

As to demonstrate my point I continued with the conversation, responding in good faith to the people who attempted a conversation, right up until I was mass banned (which only took a few hours).

The first comment is here if you want to see the entire conversation or think I'm hiding some secret transphobic rants in my comment history: https://lemmy.world/comment/15496985

The Initial Comment

This is an issue that exposes some of the more dogmatic people in the movement.

It is as if there is a list of positions that you’re required to believe and if you disagree with any one of them you’re labeled a heretic (transphobic, in this case).

Sports and the fairness of competition is a complex issue even when you’re just talking about cisgender competitors:

Can a person use performance enhancing drugs to train and then get clean enough to test positive for a competition? It seems unfair, to me, for the other competitors if this is the case.

It isn’t an unfair statement to say that the physical performance of cisgender men is higher than that of cisgender women. This is why we have separate competitions for men and women.

The issue isn’t as simple as a choice between “Transgender people should be free, without question, to compete in any competition” or “Transgender people should not be allowed to compete as their gender”

Framing it in such a black and white manner is harmful behavior, no matter which position you take.

We need to understand how people’s bodies are affected and what advantages of disadvantages are obtained and then base the rule changes on objective data and not appeals to emotion or ideological bullying.

Fabricated Pretexts

The last thing I said on the topic (bold added), as there were already commenters insinuating that I'm secretly a transphobe rather than engaging in discussion, was:

Obviously the people arguing that trans people should never compete are ignorant, I’m not supporting that position. From the point of view of fairness in competition there has to be an objective answer that’s backed by objective tests.

Simply declaring that trans people are beyond reproach and that any attempts to quantify biological advantage are unfairly discriminatory and anyone asking these questions is a bigot isn’t helpful.

I include this because included in the reasons for the bans is: "Transphobia attempting to make excuses for trans exclusion from sports." This is completely misrepresenting what I said and what I believe in order to create a pretext for a ban.

And the power trippin' bastards come in with the sweeping community bans ([email protected], really?): https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=2&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=12926811

Conclusion

This kind of thinking is harmful to any community.

Labeling disagreement as bigotry is nonsense. Refusing to engage on a topic and using filters and bans to hide from people who don't perfectly align with your ideas is not how you make allies or educate people.

The people that do this are responsible for creating the impression that your communities are hostile and made up of extremists. Attacking allies because they don't fall in line without question is a blunder.

People with moderator powers should be held to a higher standard of responsibility and fabricating reasons for bans and mislabeling people as bigots is the ultimate abdication of that responsibility. These people are not interested in helping a community thrive, they simply want to be the ones with the power to strike out at people that they want to hurt regardless of the damage that it causes.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk (except you, [email protected], I pray you never learn how to exit vim)

Modlog: https://feddit.org/modlog/242334

Tl,dr: got a 3 day banned for pointing new joiners to [email protected] , a more active version of [email protected]

Context

[email protected] was established to promote European products and services. It got popular recently due to the US decision of potentially dropping support to Ukraine. It had a diverse team of moderators, and was getting some activity.

A feddit.org user (potentially unaware of the existence of the first community) decided to create [email protected]

They deleted their Lemmy account after, but promoted a new moderator before leaving.

This moderator created a post to vote about keeping the feddit.org community, or consolidating with the feddit.uk one: https://feddit.org/post/8679890

That vote itself is kind of debatable, as the only option to vote for the consolidation was to downvote, which is not enabled on instances like Blahaj or Reddthat. Also people tend to upvote more than downvote, so the votes expressed may not reflect the actual opinion of the community, but anyway.

Usually, I don't really care that much about consolidation, there has been a lot of parallel communities for a while, like

• [email protected] and [email protected]
• [email protected] and [email protected]
• [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

It's not that big of a deal usually, but this case is a big different due to the BuyFromEU movement.

BuyfromEU movement and Lemmy new joiners

https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/ is getting quite large recently, even getting some press coverage. There are a few posts promoting Lemmy over there, with more or less success.

What happens then is that people join Lemmy, just look for "buyfromeu" and find the feddit.org community, while the feddit.uk is actually much more active. Some stats:

feddit.org:

• 1.04K users / day
• 2.34K users / week
• 3.02K users / month
• 3.02K users / 6 months
• 1.9K subscribers
• 125 Posts
• 1.34K Comments

feddit.uk:

• 3.79K users / day
• 8.11K users / week
• 8.86K users / month
• 8.92K users / 6 months
• 2.7K subscribers
• 354 Posts
• 5.58K Comments

The main issue with this is that as the usually is kind of active, they think that the feddit.org community is the main community on the topic, while the feddit.uk is much more active. So I started to check for new joiners account, and if they hadn't posted or commented on the feddit.uk community, I would point them to it, with comments like

Welcome here!

A few pointers for you:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]

The sidebar also lists a few complementary communities to this one, such as [email protected] or [email protected]

Apparently this seems enough to give a temporary ban. The mod team is also quite expressive about the "consolidation cannot be discussed stance" https://feddit.org/post/8905532

Just to add some more context, those are the type of comments I give to every new joiners. Some recent examples

• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196236
• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196078
• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/17196020

Now, a last section about why I'm personally in favor of consolidating.

Federation and decentralization is about spreading power and responsibilities, not splitting a small user base between different places

Some people argue that consolidating communities goes against the spirit of federation and decentralization. However, for people posting content, there is a consensus that our small user base can only sustain so many communities. Splintering the discussion between places is detrimental to the whole platform. Example of recent consolidations:

• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39499941
• https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/31158164

In the buyfromEU / buyEuropean case, we see people asking recommendations on the same topics on the two communities, while they might have seen a post from the other one is there was only one: https://feddit.org/post/8925080/5204057

Note that there are cases when new communities need to emerge due to power tripping mods. But here, the feddit.uk mods and admins have been good, no such issue to be reported.

Also, quite a few communities are "the main ones", without any parallel community

• [email protected]
• [email protected]
• [email protected]

Choice overload and decision fatigue are a thing

Too many options hurts users’ decision-making ability. How they feel about the experience as a whole can be significantly impacted as a result.

https://lawsofux.com/choice-overload/

Isn't one for European Union and the other for the whole Europe?

The text what to expect says, that we are focusing on the EU, but if other befriended countries slip through we are not enforcing rules. We called it a soft limit, so pepole tend to limit themselves, rather than mods jumping each post.

https://feddit.org/comment/5211878

Due to the inherited name, buyFromEU we would like to soft limit the discussion to the European Union countries. We are tempted to read this as EU + friendly countries as long as this is within reason.

https://feddit.org/post/8545702

Wouldn't consolidating lose people?

An example of successful consolidation/migration: https://lemmy.world/c/football

Shouldn't people see the other community from the sidebar?

Sidebars aren't usually visible on a lot of apps, on Voyager for instance people have to actively look for it:

https://vger.app/search/lemm.ee/c/[email protected]

Why is this case different from other parallel communities?

Due to the growth of the /r/BuyFromEU sub (now at 148000 subscribers), some posts promoting Lemmy are appearing every few days: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7vkrg/the_european_hosted_reddit_alternative_lemmee_is/

As you can see, the main comment is about community split across instances. The commenter was incorrect about the working of federation, but us being unable to provide one community for the discussions to happen isn't putting Lemmy in a good light as a viable Reddit alternative.

This particular mod is ChucklestheClown who is well known to remove comments that they can’t refute or to protect their buddies.

I thought conservatives were about freedom of speech not censoring people with nitpicky interpretations of the rules.

Banned last night and all my comments removed for calling out a Zionist troll who FREQUENTLY posts comments trashing Palestinians and celebrating death in the name of Israel.

But I'm the one that gets banned for Checks Notes "Rule 3: No Nazis, QAnon or similar"

What a circus, mods did ZERO due diligence before banning and the Zionists comment remains!

So, one of these 4 is a certified Power Tripping Bastard

*Edit: NOT TO MENTION the frequency with which I am in the Ukraine comm in support of Ukraine and correcting false comments and shit, THE KIND OF SHIT A MOD IS FOR.

Edit 2 I will concede that maybe I posted in haste. I was seeing red for a moment there because how the fuck is a user like that still just out and about commenting.

I would just like anyone who reads this to start being more aware of WHO you are interacting with on Lemmy and be more mindful of the scum around here that have popped up more and more as reddit migrants come in. We should NOT be "tolerant" of these people, they can go fuck off to X and Meta and their other fascy platforms.

I really have no idea why I was banned from those two communities specifically. I don't think I've interacted with any of them (apart from reading/voting) for weeks. It's not an instance ban.

If there is a better place to post this, please tell me.

EDIT:

I posted a link that was falsely flagged as malicious, have been unbanned! See comments for more details!

What makes this worse is the obvious disrespect from Cowbee of my request to disengage. I made it very clear I didn't want to argue. These communities have absolutely no standards of behaviour for members of the in-group. Which is exactly why I don't engage with them in these communities.

Well, also the fact that I hate being constantly called a liberal for not repeating Capitalist Putin's latest botfarm talking point. Talking to these people is an exercise in keeping my calm while I am constantly insulted. No thank you.

Apparently posting pictures of Nazis being punched in the face on r/pics is ok, but saying this Nazi loving pos should be punched in the face isn't... Apparently that is encouraging violence, and is a problem, but showing violence isn't promoting it and isn't a problem...

Cool 7 day ban, I just won't be going back.

I'm gonna get real with you folks, we've had way too many of these posts recently. I've been reflecting on this topic a lot the past few days. For me personally, I couldn't care less about my gender identity. But just because that's true for me, doesn't make that true for everyone.

The beauty of the fediverse is that if you don't like the way a particular instance or community is moderated you can simply choose another to hang out on, or create your own.

Blajah has made it pretty clear by now they will ban anyone who argues against the validity of xenogenders, in order to create a safe space for those folks. That's fair enough imo.

Safe spaces should be respected, and Blajah's admins/mods do not deserve abuse for creating and maintaining those spaces.

I can completely understand why Blajah users don't want to have to constantly argue with external users about the validity of their chosen identities. Bans are one way Blajah has decided to manage that problem so that their users can experience lemmy in relative peace and safety. While it is a blunt tool and I have my reservations about preemptive bans, there are not many other options for @[email protected], other than defederation from most instances. That would be a terrible outcome for the fediverse as a whole.

In order to help Blajah to maintain their safe space, I would like to propose, if @[email protected] agrees and community sentiment is positive:

• that we no longer accept posts about this topic in this community; and ~~- we also remove previous posts on this topic from the community.~~

That's all folks, have at 'er.

Edit: thanks for all your feedback and comments. I think it's clear that the vast majority of people are fed up with this topic coming up repeatedly.

Summarizing the feedback, I'd say most folks would prefer to retain previous posts for the sake of posterity, and to serve as an example of why we don't want anymore of these posts. I'm happy to take that on board. For those folks saying I'm a PTB for intervening in this way, I'll just remind you that I haven't made any arbitrary mod decisions, and I've consulted with db0 and the community as a whole before taking any mod actions.

I think the way to move forward with this is to acknowledge that there's a bunch of queer and straight people who have a problem with xenogenders. Personally, I think that's a valid perspective and shouldn't sanctioned on our instance. But for Blajah, they've drawn a line in the sand over this and that's ok too. Our instance won't be blocking anyone over their opinions on the topic, especially in this community where free discussion is necessary and encouraged. But safe spaces should be respected.

A lot of folks mentioned I should more more specific about the "no more posts about Blajah's mod policies" rather than making it a sweeping and overly broad statement. I think that's good feedback. I will amend this to "No more posts in this community about the validity or otherwise of neopronouns, xenogenders, and bans originating from Blajah about gatekeeping or transphobia. This is in recognition of Blajah's safe space policy. You are of course free to discuss those topics outside of this community.

Note that this decision isn't about ideological gatekeeping, its about reducing the workload for our own mods and admins in trying to moderate this community, and to avoid iterating over the same old topics again and again.

Blajah isn't getting a "free pass" over YPTB posts - if you feel they are power tripping over other issues then feel free to make a post here. But if it's a post questioning the validity of xenogenders or about Blajah bans for gatekeeping then that will no longer be allowed here. Those folks deserve a safe space on Lemmy, even if it's not a mainstream opinion.

For those folks who feel aggrieved about being accused of "transphobia" or "gatekeeping" over their views on this topic, I completely understand just how hurtful it can be to be unfairly (imo) accused in this way. I've been in the same position, and I also found it difficult to deal with. I want those folks to know that our instance does not require you to support xenogenders in order to participate in our instance. However we do require that you use preferred pronouns whenever they are specified. That's been a longstanding instance policy on dbzer0.

Thank everyone for your feedback.

Was banned on a totally different instance and community despite never commenting in the community.

I suspect I was banned for questioning the narrative in this thread yesterday:

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/be066e3c-b1ae-416c-bc71-248d3056c6ed.jpeg?thumbnail=1500&format=webp

I am a trans person and have no issue with trans people expressing who they are. The mods and admins of blahaj frequently use Gatekeeping as a false umbrella ban for any user they want to get rid of. This is also discussed in yesterday's thread by some users.

The owners of that 196 space have proven they are unable to let sleeping dogs lie and are hellbent on tearing down all other instances in a tribal war, and have decided to start lurking in other spaces and preemptively banning people like reddit mods.

This is not fair moderation practices, it's a petty tit for tat because abuse in their community was called out yesterday.

There's no removed comments. I looked through my profile cause like sometimes I just be saying shit so I was okay maybe. But I can't find any comments on that community. Just the old 196.

Idk if this is where to post this but I just wanted to rant. It's my first time ever being banned so it felt ouch.

Apparently I don't have the mods account it's just verified on the app. Seems like mods on certain comms just make up whatever placeholder reasoning when you don't break the rules. I thought you had to blame the victim to victim blame and my post didn't blame anyone for anything.

So, I made a comment on the 'two goobers' community of lemm.ee, moderated by Bubs.

I gave a rather cynical, but nonetheless accurate imo description of a particular comic, explaining that it showed an overly lovey dubby relationship that was likely doomed to failure.

Made some more comments explaining my reasoning, ended up getting into some arguments as two users seemed genuinely sceptical, and one of them very defensive, about the idea that CPTSD is usually caused by abusive narcissists when it isn't caused by ongoing, severe material deprivation, such as being very poor, homeless, or living in a war zone.

As of time of writing this, my first comment was the most popular in the thread, something like 45 up, 5 down, and I have been banned from the community, almost the entire comment chain has been nuked, no explanation has been seemingly given for the deletion of any comments, unless my view or understanding of modlogs is somehow borked, though I am apparently banned (indefinitely?) for Rule 1: No Abusive Language.

I can maybe see how a few of the latter comments could veer into being interpreted as 'abusive language'.

Maybe.

... But the entire comment chain?

The two I was arguing with used language about the same level of 'abusive' as myself.

They don't appear to be banned though, just had their comments removed.

... I ... don't really care about being banned from an apparent hugbox community that has a single mod, but just from a point of ... attempting some kind of professionalism, maybe Bubs could have just deleted the specific comments they found to be 'abusive', sent all involved a clarifying DM about that, not just jump straight to a ban?

I dunno.

I hereby submit this to the tribunal for public commentary.

Here's the link to lemm.ee's modlog

EDIT: It looks like a whole bunch of at least my removed comments are not even showing up in the modlog.

I... don't know if thats because of some technical issue?

I had a bit of a tit for tat with both Ocultoconoclast and Count Regal Inkwell, and you can see their removed comments in the mod log, but my one for one responses are not even showing up as removed in the lemm.ee modlog, though they are all removed/'deleted by moderator' when I go through my own comment history.

https://lemmy.world/comment/15319695

I'm guessing they did this because my comment didn't have the correct positive vibes for them on their post when they're the moderator.

It's funny because 196 and almost all of its derivatives are rightfully anti-tankie because tankies promote centrism and conservatism directly harmful to trans and gay rights.

Also offensive: pointing out that English speakers do not use the word "American" to refer to people from Latin America. The term in our language is universally used to refer to people from the country America.