There was a very recent post requesting a defederation with lemmygrad.ml.
The post was requesting it due to a large amount of anti Israeli posts and celebrations of the deaths of Israeli citizens both military and civilian.
I’ve checked the modlog in hopes of understanding why those actions were taken, but no note was left. I’d like to ask why those actions were taken. Thanks!
Hello @toasteecup@lemmy.world, thank you for sharing your concerns and curiosity with us. We are aware of the type of hateful content you mentioned, and, as always, are doing our best to not keep hateful content on our instance.
We are discussing the request for defederation, but the consensus is that this may not be needed, since the 0.19 Lemmy update is expected to roll out in the upcoming weeks. This update will also enable users to block whole instances, and hopefully, address a big chunk of the issue we seem to be having here.
Regarding your question as to why the poster was banned: they were banned for 1 day, due to the same type of hateful and dehumanising content that would get any other user banned. The defederation request was also posted to several communities by the same user. The ban issued was only for 1 day, because the user was a regular member that would normally be trusted. We are aware they might not have had bad intentions, and needed time to cool off.
I hope these answers were enough to satisfy your question. Take care, and with love.
Thank you for the information that more than satisfies my curiosity. You take care as well!
Won’t the 0.19 changes just allow you to block instances from appearing in your feed? Won’t you still have to interact with the users?
Yeah, I don’t think this should be left to the users to block on their own even if it is available in a future update. Defederation exists as an option specifically for instances like lemmygrad. Ever since I joined Lemmy, everything I’ve seen in the main feed from lemmygrad stands out as extremist. Most of the communities I have blocked come from lemmygrad.
The other side is that federation exists so you’re not tied to an instance if it no longer reflects your values. Why not move since Lemmy.world seems to want to stay federated? Other instances have lemmygrad blocked.
That doesn’t address the broader issue of cultivating an instance culture that tolerates people **celebrating **the literal rape and murder of civilians. Instance defederations aren’t just so that individuals don’t have to deal with other individuals - they’re to prevent the cultivation of a common culture that the defederating instance regards as unacceptable. Like Hexbear trolling. In this case, it is Lemmygrad.ml’s celebration of the rape and murder of civilians.
Like, I can’t emphasize this enough. I’m anti-Israel enough that I regularly get accused of antisemitism. I think Israel is an apartheid regime flirting with fascism and turning Gaza into an open air prison that’s just short of genocide (may not be short of genocide much longer). This is not an issue of “Palestine vs. Israel - normal politics!”, it’s an issue of the celebration of horrific atrocities and what tolerating that in the instance entails. Just like with Hexbear, the answer isn’t “Block the instance” (when the instance block is released). This is an issue of communities.
Mull on the decision, sure, but “Individuals can block” isn’t really addressing what’s core here.