Note: Judging by the comments, a lot of people are obviously not reading the post and are instead assuming we are calling for defederation of lemmy.world. That is not the case, and in fact the opposite is true. LW already temporarily defederated anarchist.nexus once, and the evidence suggests Mr Kaplan is now pushing for full defederation of all the FAF instances. We are trying to build a coalition of instances that will agree to defederate from lemmy.world IF Kaplan goes ahead with the defederation. Apologies if you weren't aware of the context.

🏴‍☠️ Hoist the Black Flag: Pledge to Boycott Lemmy World!

... if Lemmy World dares to defederate from any ship in the Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla - https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, https://anarchist.nexus/, and https://quokk.au/.

Mateys, we can’t let a mega‑instance captain bully the rest of the fleet just because their ship’s bigger. If Lemmy World tries to throw the FAF overboard, we’re calling for a show of solidarity: a fediverse blockade of Lemmy World in response, until the landlubbers see reason (i.e., there is an acceptable change in their leadership and/or this policy).

This is about mutual aid, not mutiny - standing together so no single admin gets to rule the seas unchallenged. A united armada of smaller instances can absolutely blunt Lemmy World’s outsized influence (and, let’s be honest, their ego).

☠️ A word to the captains: before hoisting colours or locking in a course, we ask ye to let your crew have their say. Run a poll, open the deck for discussion, and listen to the voices aboard your vessel. These seas belong to all of us, and decisions that shape our fediverse should be made together, not from the captain’s quarters alone.

If other captains be keen to chart this course with us, drop anchor and make the pledge public in the comments. The more hands on deck, the harder it is to sink any one of us. Let us know if you are holding a vote!

dbzer0 and AN members can vote on this pledge in !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com, and quokk.au will be holding their own vote.

🏴‍☠️ Solidarity forever, and fair winds to the Flotilla!

governance type: sense check

Easiest aye ever

🫡

Lemy.lol has a new administration team. We stand with Dbzer0 against Lemmy.world's flagrant abuses of power. Their admins have forgotten the purpose of defederation. To see it used as a cudgell against a single user they feel distasteful, not to mention not having any evidence to back up their claims, is a gross offense to the Fediverse as a whole.

That's awesome news!

Yo ho!

aye

Yarr

Uhh sure, why not.

What is the practical definition of this blockade? I'm assuming that because the word "defederate" only appears once, in the context of Lemmy.world's actions, that this blockade is separate from defederation. If so, what does it actually mean? If this is actually a vote for defederation, I think that it should be more clear in the post.

Someone posted Pro-Putin propaganda in their progressive politics community and not only was it not deleted, but my comment telling the OP to go fuck themselves for it was deleted. Added the whole instance to my block list.

I made a very similar post to this on the LW Announcement post, but this has since been slightly edited and fleshed out. But... for those unaware...

A user by the name of Luminous was an admin on Anarchist.nexus. They banned MrKaplan from a community for 'posting zionist apologia.' Luminous also had 'Murder all Zionists' as their display name. MrKaplan took this as a personal death threat. Instead of speaking with any other admin from Anarchist.nexus and reporting the behavior, MrKaplan instantly defederated from Anarchist.nexus. In the next couple of days, Kaplan messaged other users/admins of Lemmy about the defederation and suggested defederation to others as well.

After being posted in the Piefed general chat, PugJesus pushed back against the defederation.

The conversation moves elsewhere.

So, I messaged Kaplan. Conversation goes on and one thing is made clear, that Kaplan did not reach out to any of the Admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus until after defederation had occured.

LWAdmins made an announcement post discussing the defederation but the post was not featured unlike all other recent posts made by the LWAdmin account, which felt underhanded. To make matters worse, Serinus (a moderator with admin level abilities), proceeded to step into the conversation and start removing offending posts for reasons listing anything from "We've heard your opinion" to "Misinformation" when screenshots proved otherwise. I say he has Admin level access because @Goferking0@ttrpg.network was banned from the Instance by an Automod I (and Jordan Lund) previously had access to. It sort of sidesteps the Modlog by not logging who actually did the removal, which I'm not a huge fan of, but this was also admitted by Serinus in a comment where he said he was the one who banned them. This being the same Serinus who said this of defederating with Anarchist.nexus:

Kaplan later doubled down in the LemmyWorld Discord Server, after the conversation I had with them in which they admitted having exactly zero evidence for this stance other than it "feeling odd", by stating:

Ruud, the head admin of Lemmy.world, has had no feedback on this position. The only natural conclusion one can come to is that the LW Admin team (of which Serinus now seems to be a part of as he speaks for the admins in the admin community and has admin tools) are not just fully willing to act based off of knee-jerk reactions, but aren't capable of communicating with other admins on issues that they may have with their instance. Or that they only will confer with you if your instance has enough users for them to consider a valid one.

Now, they have refederated with Anarchist.nexus since this situation but they haven't backed down from the threat of defederation. This is much like every other major problematic issue that has been brought up in the past with Lemmy.world. Their admin team drags their feet for an absurd amount of time, despite rolling in reports about moderator abuse or whatever else, and then expects people to act with pre-cog abilities without them informing you of their problems with your instance. Also seem to be willing to police how good your reasoning is on how you feel about the situation to judge whether or not it's appropriate to defederate.

To paraphrase what Kaplan said in one of those screenshots, it is not my intention to control who can or can’t be on admin teams on another instance but I do expect other instances to understand that an individual admin’s actions reflect their instance as a whole. Something Ruud seems to not care about and something that Kaplan belives does not apply to themself. Overall, the primary response by the LW Admin team has been to frame AN and Dbzer0 as either a small instance that “only has 165 users” or "only 71 monthly users" or a “vocal minority with an agenda”. For 20,000 users.

How long before its your instance on the chopping block for not telling them exactly what they want to hear? How many of your users will be silenced by Lemmy.world for a perceived sleight against them?

What Luminous did was idiotic and troll-esque. But what Kaplan is doing is considerably worse.

I don't think I have to state where I stand on this.

Excited about that but it's curious to say that with https://lemy.lol/u/cm0002 as the other admin

.world admins are a "both sides are the same" instance and will equate the atrocities of one side with the resistance of the other. I find myself constantly checking to see which instance I'm on before commenting. I didn't even realize I have been banned on certain .world communities for my comments and nothing of value was lost.

Lemmy (the platform) of today is very different than that from even a year ago. Many parallel community on alternate instances exist, albeit with varying levels of activity. While most people may start on .world, I'd be interested to know how many stay there.

I'm supportive of this action and would encourage.

What a massive waste of energy. The fediverse is small enough, can you guys not try to discuss politely about your differences of opinions without any ego-powered threats and hot-headed reactions?

Unfortunately, Kaplan refused to even attempt to do so and instantly resorted to defederation. No attempt was made at reaching out to the admins of Dbzer0 or Anarchist.nexus before the initial defederation. Now, despite the offending admin being gone, Lemmy.world is still threatening to defederate from Dbzer0 with no fact-based justification.

If you would like to file a complaint about this situation, it will have to be with the admins of Lemmy.world.

Aye.

Lol, I haven't posted to a LW comm in a LONG time, even my .ml crossposting campaign I've been able to avoid posting to LW comms and find an alt to both LW and .ml

Yeah if I remember correctly it was around about the same time when I left Lemmy.world over the Jordan Lund situation and seeing glacial movement from admins over abuse of power reports. Funny. It's important you do things without them being reported on for Lemmy.world but you have to report shit for months to get an admin to even consider looking at stepping in.

You can win battles, but never the war. Power always corrupts. Eventually, one will be stronger, then much stronger, and as they get stronger, they become more corrupt (Reddit). The only solution, apart from headge trimming, also a temporary solution, but more cathartic and maybe longer lasting, is to leave for a different option (Lemmy), and then the cycle repeats. And, in the end, the warriors die, and then a bigger cycle repeats. Cycles within cycles, we repeat the same circles, generation after generation, millennia after millennia.

More power to you, but if you get it, it will corrupt you, too. No one is immune. Power always corrupts.

I stand in solidarity.

So zionists are free to kill palestinian kids but get offended if someone says something about them? For people who advocate killing inocent people they are such big cry babies. Death to all nazis, including the nazionists

A blockade would be a big group of instances defederating from lemmy.world to isolate them as opposed to one or two instances deciding to defederate with no coordination

“I have no idea what’s going on but it sounds very real and important” - Me, who just signed up a few days ago

We tried, there is no negotiating with LW until they understand we wont be pushed around. If and when they start respecting us this will end, consider this extended negotiation.

Down with reaction, down with capital, down with the state, may the shitlibs who laugh at us behind closed doors know the true power of the instances they consider insignificant.

So do nothing then?

I mean sure, if this is going to come up again then yeah just defed FAF from .world. But all of this is a bit LARPy... Let's not make it more dramatic than it needs to be, if zionists are doing their thing then just break the link (ban, defed, mute, whatever) with them and move on, all the fanfare about standing up to their bullying etc. is silly and a bit embarassing when contrasted with the actual oppression Palestinian folks are facing.

Being against genocidal supermasist ideologies is not an opinion it is a objective moral stand

Yea, the whole we're gonna dump and wash our hands of our admin responsibilities off to our mod team to handle was just unacceptable and unprofessional.

And now this new shit show just solidifies it

that's different for them tho. palestinians don't pay for hasbara. 😂

I get the frustration tho. I'm no Zionist, but I get accused of it and regularly get banned on different subs just for discussing things from a centrist pov. It's ruining Lemmy and if we need to split to have open discourse in one place and some isolated echo chambers, so be it.

Aye. Luminous did NOTHING WRONG. Infinite death to and forever!

"Centrist" in American terms.

Which in World terms means "so far to the Right that they actively support Genocide of non-whites as long as its done abroad".

So I will say this. I got annoyed with cm002 reposting stuff from smaller instances. I blocked world but it blocks both the users and the communities. If blocking were seperate I might have kept it going on just the communities. I do think its important the software allows blocking like that because the users just picked a convenient instance but if an instance gets to big I can see totally wanting to block out the "default" communities.

They banned MrKaplan from a community for posting zionist apologia.

Can you link to the post please? This is important. I've heard a lot of accusations that they were zionist, but I'm still searching for proof.

Sorry for being unclear. That was the reason that Luminous gave in the modlog. I have no idea/input on that personally, especially when Luminous isn't an admin anymore.

The issue is, they're the largest instance on the fediverse. Their users aren't the issue. The staff are. They think they have the authority to control Lemmy at large because they control the most users.

The fediverse is strong because no one having control of it protects it from people like this. People need to know what's going on, and an attempt needs to be made to ensure the staff there doesn't have the power to control the fediverse, or it'll become the same as Reddit. The users of Lemmy.world should be informed and given the chance to leave, which the staff there doesn't seem to be keen om doing.

I'm always team fuck Lemmy.world. if I wanted garbage ass reddit takes, I'd just got to reddit.

Aye for cooperation with AN, nay on proactive decisions.

I feel like everything from the beginning was a completely unnecessary drama. The biggest instance should have more mods and proper communication between them to balance them out, without jumps to defeding at the drop of the hat. That's something everyone on LW should ask for, and other instances can encourage.

At the same time I feel like mirroring their unserious behavior is not a proper way around that, and it's only right if they defed someone from flotilia. Unless that happens, they should be alone in that unhealthy way, for it to be their own public disgrace. We should shoe that we are up to communication if they stop being irrational.

As someone who has completely replaced Reddit with Lemmy cold turkey since the blackouts, LW is still absolutely massive and federating with them has made me feel much less detached from the ebb and flow of online culture even if it’s filtered through the self-selection bias of people who would actually sign up for Lemmy.

I think this entire fiasco is pissy, utterly unnecessary posturing by their admin. But my bar for whether someone is a full blooded apologist for crimes or just deeply socialized into accepting them is this litmus test: is this person genuinely in favor of me being murdered, or is this person simply German?

I am personally affected by the rapacious ideology that is Zionism. I cannot currently access my familial hometown, even though it’s north of the Litani, it’s unsafe. I am almost certainly in the Palantir repository of “fighting age” males. So I’m not just happy to ignore a distant problem. I don’t want to dox myself but I am a former emergency healthcare volunteer and had to be called in during that Wednesday two weeks ago to help with triaging all the injured. They were all civilians, many who who looked and talked like me, who spoke my exact dialect. I have personally lost four acquaintances in this war, all decent people, all civilians. Some of the beggar kids who I walk past on the street every day are also dead and I fucking cried looking at a cinder block where one of them used to sit. A building I lived next to as a student, three buildings down, in a safe fucking area in the middle of the city, got fucking erased. This is very real to me. I have witnessed a lot of human suffering on that Wednesday, about as much as during the entire hell pandemic + explosion summer.

My opinion is not more important because of my experience but I have had ample reason to examine who I’m willing to talk to and who I’m willing to avoid. Back on Reddit I would openly speak about this very sensitive subject in big threads, intentionally choosing more measured wording, and I would get a lot of positive responses from people who seemed to really not know the situation. Granted this was before the mask off phase of that place.

I think our instances, and Hexbear for that measure, are exemplary on this issue. Nobody is born deserving to be murdered. I also think wider, more conservalib users from the wider Lemmy ecosystem getting to see us unapologetically call crimes crimes, and genocide fans getting downvoted by everyone, including fellow users of their own instances, is very important. This is not an abstract political idea, this is a fucking excellent litmus test. Many of the cooler users eventually migrate to our instance, I think that’s awesome. I think being so willing to federate with mostly everyone above room temperature decency is important, let them see our politics, let them be mad that they have to confront horrible ideologies they have been born into. And if they voice support for this murderous ideology, or any other genocidal belief, in our communities, then our rules are clear. Let them feel confrontation.

That said there is one annoying Zionist user on our own instance constantly pissing in our nice community pool. This person has crossed the German line.

I don’t think we saw that with LW yet. I think nothing I’ve seen so far from their admins crosses the “Is this person evil or just fucking German?” line, specifically. The broader LW userbase is on the libby side but they are broadly well meaning and can learn and be valuable allies and friends. And the large volume of posts provides plenty of opportunity to have good conversations. I have a lot of goodwill for Hexbear, despite also not loving some of what is considered mainstream on there (although I understand it. Critical support is important. Ask ne how I fucking know. I still have a town for a reason.). But Hexbear is very insular. It’s the same 200 users most of the time. A lot of the discussion there is pretty good, and frankly CTH is probably the funniest community anywhere on Lemmy. Some of the most concise and accurate English-language writing on political currents in the Levant I’ve ever seen is on Hexbear. But I think our role as an instance is different. I like that we federate with both. I like that a lot actually. I don’t have one account for shitposts, one for memes, one for saluting the blahaj flag, and one for hanging out with the MLs. This is everything I liked about Reddit back in 2011 and better. As it stands, dbzer0 is the LW of the flotilla. Does that make sense? That might be unpleasant for some people, but I think that’s a strength. The gate is wide fucking open. Solidarity to me also means getting people on board. Genocidal ideologies hurt the people they’re sold to as well, they impoverish the world we share.

Until the LW admins do something much more stupid, I strongly vote Nay. If they do, I’m happy to respond accordingly. But I don’t think it’s hit that point, I hope it doesn’t. I think this is a good initiative but that it’s being deployed too preemptively. I hope this comment isn’t too all over the place, but I really have a lot of thoughts whenever defederation or Zionist Bar problems pop up.

I do think we should try mediating first if they block our sister instances, and only defederate if they become worse about this whole thing.

Sorry decent people of Germany. Not all Germans etc etc

You get called a Zionist because you always take Israels side and have outright said on numerous occasions that you don't believe Gaza should be defined as a genocide.

Centrism is a privilege best enjoyed in a world at peace. As things are, the world is full of violence and victimization. If you can't stand up and say that shit is wrong then you're not a centrist, you're a coward.

Incredible

This is a great take, and thank you for posting it.

I don't have much else to add to this beyond I agree on all counts, and vote nay to defederating in all but the most extreme circumstances. User level controls for filtering/blocking exist for anyone that feels differently.

Users on lemmy.world are mostly sound but they are a very undemocratic instance where an admin has oversized power and can act on a whim without consulting its users.

Hm to think of it they are quite an analogue for USA

"I don't get why people say I support Israel when I don't criticize them, don't call out the genocide, and always play devils advocate for imperialist countries."

Centrism at its core.

try to discuss politely about your differences of opinions without any ego-powered threats and hot-headed reactions?

Literally what .world did first. Kaplan got offended at a username of one person, defederated, took days to come up with an excuse, and then the admin team banned anyone calling them out.

They're the issue, not us.

It took yous all long enough after their anti-vegan bullshit to realise that maybe they had garbage values and a problem with admin overreach.