Beehaw is defederated from lemmygrad.ml because it’s an abusive instance full of hateful, vitriolic trolls. lemmygrad.ml resolves to the same IP as lemmy.ml. The creator and head admin of that particular instance is a neofascist who has previously been banned from online communitues, most notably r/socialism on reddit, because he posted Nazi propaganda there. You don’t have to take my word for it, you can actually read him bitching about it to his nazbol pals. Warning: the link is full of disturbing content, including denial of genocide.
I want to be clear that I’m not making anything up about this admin, I’m not saying anynhing that can’t be verified. For example, I’ve heard that he demanded to be unbanned from r/socialism by telling their mod mail that putting Uyghurs in concentration camps doesn’t count as cultural genocide because they’re extremists, but I can’t verify that. I can verify that he tried to back up his argument that There Is No Uyghur Genocide by using articles from globalresearch.ca, a “publication” best known for Holocaust Denial.
I can also verify his vociferous defense of the LaRouche movement and his refusal to repudiate endorsing their rhetoric. For those of you who don’t know what LaRouchists like Dessalines believe in, here’s a sample:
Soros is one of the what in medieval days were called Hoffjuden, the “Court Jews,” who were deployed by the aristocratic families. The most important of such “Jews who are not Jews.” are the Rothchilds, who launched Soros’s career. They are the members of the Club of the Isles and retainers of the British royal family. This has been true since Amschel Rothschild sold the British Hessian troops to fight against George Washington during the American Revolution. Soros is American only in his passport."
tl;dr lemmy.ml is run by a neofascist nazbol who is in bed with anti-semitists and genocide deniers. He uses lemmy.ml as a vector to let lemmgrad.ml gain legitimacy, and he endorses their bigoted views. We need to defederate permanently or our talk about being a safe space for marginalized people is just talk.
we’ve already established we’re aware of the dumb-fuck takes expressed by the Lemmy devs, and we’ve known about them since we got here. we disagree with them. but our concerns when weighing whether to defederate are generally going to be more nuanced than “we disagree with the admins and their dumb-fuck takes”. that is not a particularly serious litmus test, and we’re definitely not going to apply it here. demanding things of us is also not a good way to make them happen–as a rule of thumb: do not do this.
as for practical considerations: we have not had problems with lemmy.ml, we have not had problems with lemmy.ml users making this instance unsafe or hard to moderate, they don’t have open registrations, and they filter the users they take well and in a way we think is actually pretty good. most of your points here are, furthermore, comically hyperbolic–and frankly if you believe them with this degree of absoluteness i’m not sure why you even feel comfortable using Lemmy as a platform.
My understanding is that the problem with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works was that their hateful vitriol was spreading over here too. While that particular admin’s politics are reprehensible, I’m not sure that justifies defederating from them.
We need to defederate permanently or our talk about being a safe space for marginalized people is just talk.
That’s a bit uncharitable, don’t you think? Maybe this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as you make it seem?
My understanding is that the problem with lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works was that their hateful vitriol was spreading over here too. While that particular admin’s politics are reprehensible, I’m not sure that justifies defederating from them.
That’s a bit uncharitable, don’t you think?
So is Holocaust denial.
Maybe this issue isn’t quite as clear cut as you make it seem?
It is as clear as pure water. Only weird free speech absolutists would insist on staying federated with an instance that was designed to stay as a lifeline for a den of subversive hate speech.
Although this admin obviously sounds awful, the lemmy.ml rules somewhat overlap with ours and considering that lemmy.ml is the largest instance (36000 members, about 3 times beehaw) i think we would need more serious reasons for defederation to be worth it. If we defederate from every instance we risk making beehaw somewhat unusable, and that would mean there wont be safespaces anywhere near to this level.
Does that really matter? The admins of Beehaw have made it clear that they would rather take a principled approach than make concessions in the name of growth. They’ve said so explicitly.
One admins views on an other instance have marginal (if any at all) effects on what they can cause here. I would leave it up to beehaw admins to decide whether lemmy.ml causes enough hassle with moderation that its worth it to make this safe space unappealing content wise to people who probably need it.
Honestly this is too extreme the problems werent with the instances themselfs it was that a lot of users from over there were overwhelming the moderators and admins and something had to be done in the end the defed was chosen because it is the only option currently provided by lemmy if you look into the comments you can see that the admins dont want to push the big red defed button but thats the only option they have this issue isnt black and white
From the Beehaw sidebar:
As a news aggregator and a social media outlet, with a focus on being a safe and accepting space, we strive to create a positive social impact. We will, also, help to connect underprivileged and minority individuals with education and civic participation by promoting a healthier online experience.
Yeah I know that guy is a Nazi and all, but it’s not really a big deal. We’re not gonna uncouple from his community. You’ll probably be fine.
Am I the only one seeing an issue here? You can’t provide a safe place for marginaziled people and then also sit down to dinner with a Nazi out of convenience. It’s mutually exclusive.
