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Comment on We should defederate lemmy.ml

Made some time at work, don’t tell my boss…

Think of lemmy instances as countries: when you visit a country/instance you’re expected to abide by their local rules, whatever they may be. And when users from other countries/instances interact with Australia/aussie.zone they’re expected to behave in line with our rules.

Not agreeing with the population of a country/instance doesn’t mean you can’t visit it. If/When you visit, you can’t expect them to adhere to your rules at home… or to apply their own rules consistently… just like the real world.

Defederation of an instance will only be done when:

**Legal **- the instance is generating content that may raise legal concerns for Aussie Zone. For example porn.

**Technical **- the instance is generating content that may cause performance/security issues for Aussie Zone. For example large volumes of automated traffic or malicious traffic.

**Trolls **- an instance whose users predominantly interact in bad faith with communities outside of their instance.

I don’t believe lemmy.ml meets either of these, their “quirky” politics are largely self contained on their own communities from what I’ve seen. If they’re crashing aussie.zone communities and posting outside of our rules, please report them.

To address some comments in this thread (paraphrasing):

we should defederate instances with bad admins or admins heavily moderating alternative views to their own

So far as their actions do not trigger any of the defederation criteria noted above, they can do as they see fit.

no incentive to create alternative communities
If there is no incentive, then it can’t be a large enough issue to enough users.

pro-authoritarian bias
Given how simple it is for a user to block an instance for themself, I’d rather allow our users had the option to decide this for themselves. Some prefer to engage with people from an alternate perspective, for those that don’t they can block the instance.

TLDR

Not defederating lemmy.ml at this point in time, if their user behaviour outside of their instance changes in future my stance may change too.

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FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So supporting terrorist organisations isn’t against australian law?

They remove any sort of nuance or anyone saying that Hamas is not perfect.

Obviously I think the IDF is more to blame than Hamas, but ML moderators remove any sort of content that says that Hamas (to a lesser extent than the IDF) leads to great suffering of the palestinian people.

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- lodion@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  IANAL but believe the test of "support"ing a terrorist organisation has a higher threshold moderating a forum and silencing critics of such organisations.
  
  Either way…
  a. you’re not an aussie.zone user, so your commentary here in this thread is not required.
  b. your comment history shows an axe to grind against lemmy.ml, it may be warranted… but again it is not relevant to this thread.
  
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- eureka@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  So supporting terrorist organisations isn’t against australian law? Hamas is designated as a terrorist organisation and advocating for them is therefore banned under australian law.
  
  Hi! I go to pro-Palestine/Lebanon/etc. protests on the weekends here (among other things) and can confirm for you that publicly declaring approval of designated national enemies is not illegal. It would be pretty absurd for a liberal democracy like Australia to do so. Please don’t invent laws to pressure our admins.
  
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  - FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hey. I’ve gone to pro-palestine protests too. It’s illegal to support a terrorist organisation, not to support Palestine/Lebanon etc. those are two different things, cheers.
    
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    eureka@aussie.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    It’s illegal to support a terrorist organisation, not to support Palestine/Lebanon etc. those are two different things, cheers.
    
    Yes, they’re two different things. I brought it up because there are plenty of people there too who are openly in defense of Hamas and Hezbollah, even handing out pamphlets in support of them. The only real legal suppression I’m aware of is over people flying Hezbollah flags in the past month (the symbolism you mention).
    
    The law is tricky but basically either pushing for terrorist acts, or displaying designated terrorist symbolism, or provide support to a terrorist organisation.
    
    Which are not particularly relevant to the situation of aussie.zone federating with lemmy.ml. Them writing posts which side with Hamas or Hezbollah isn’t violating those laws.
    
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    Anticorp@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Pro Palestine is not the same thing as pro Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization that would gladly perpetrate genocide against Israel if they could, and wants Israel and the Jews to cease to exist.
    
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Taleya@aussie.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
it seems “defederate” has become the new default move whenever people encounter users that, well, Exist While Having Different Opinions To Them.

The only defensible one I’ve seen was hexbear because they’re full on batshit “this has gotta be a russian psyop” insane and intent on abusing everyone else.

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