I saw that a post was made in !main@sh.itjust.works about defederation about a month ago, an admin commented to make a post here to discuss defederation, but the post was never made.

https://maga.place/ is very obviously a small community with no real substance to it, but I saw an antivax post to !science_memes@mander.xyz and was surprised it still exists.

Anyways I don’t really have a lot to say but uh, I recently hit a full year on this great instance 😊 (old account @TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works)

  • matlag@sh.itjust.works
    81·
    5 days ago

    Defederate!

    Being “MAGA” is not associated with conservatism, it’s claiming your support for a openly fascist president at war with his a part of his own people. MAGA is not a political view, it’s an aggregate of hate against pretty much all minorities: immigrants, LGBTQ, muslims,…

    Here I’m going to point:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini’s_law It takes much more energy to prove an “alternative fact” as wrong than to dump it in a post.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance If you tolerate the intolerant, you enable intolerance.

    Don’t we have minorities on this instance? Are we really advocating for a constructive dialogue between groups of people who just want to exist and people who wish these other groups could be exterminated?

  • CancerMancer@sh.itjust.works
    5·
    7 days ago

    Let MAGAs read and engage with reasonable content as long as possible so long as they aren’t dickheads. You never know when someone will say something that makes them rethink their position.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      6 days ago

      Yup, my mind was changed around the time I found Reddit and was exposed to new ideas. Before that point, I considered myself conservative because I thought they actually wanted smaller government, but then I found I’m closer to libertarian, specifically Penn Jillette’s flavor, and found communities on Reddit to that extent. Since then, I’ve probably voted more Democrat than Republican in my red state, at least for contested offices.

      We need more discussion across political lines, not less.

      • harmbugler@piefed.socialEnglish
        1·
        5 days ago

        If they are coming in good faith, willing to discuss and empathise, engagement is good and everyone can learn from each other. If it’s in bad faith, then block or mock.

          • matlag@sh.itjust.works
            12·
            2 days ago

            You know, for a lot of us, the title MAGA is just as good as Fascist.

            They could have called themselves “conservatives”, “right-wingers” etc. But they chose “MAGA”, the fascist’s branch of the GOP.

            I don’t need to engage with them to figure anything more than I would engage a nazi.place or fascist.place.

          • Jax@sh.itjust.works
            11·
            4 days ago

            I can go ahead and shut you all down now, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that this instance is a Russian propaganda outlet.

            Others have explained in more detail above. Nothing that comes from this instance is in good faith.

            • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
              11·
              4 days ago

              I can go ahead and shut you all down now, there’s plenty of evidence suggesting that this instance is a Russian propaganda outlet.

              Others have explained in more detail above. Nothing that comes from this instance is in good faith.

              Are you about this comment where they’re claiming the admin self identifies as Russian?

              I don’t think that’s sufficient. Not all Russians work for or even agree with the Russian government, and a lot of Russians live outside of Russia. I grew up in the PNW and there were a lot of Russians in my school. That IP address seems to be in the US, so there’s a decent chance the admin lives in the US.

              If them claiming to be Russian is enough to label them a Russian propagandist, I guess the Japanese internment program was justifiable too.

  • Tuukka R@piefed.eeEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Come on, isn’t maga.place a Russian information operation? It’s not founded by MAGA people, but by a foreign power whose goal is to pose as MAGAts in order to expand the gap within USA’s population.

    • Banana@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      5 days ago

      I’ve literally never gone on that instance and have blocked it for obvious reasons, but I’m curious where you got this information from. Like how do you know this, or is it speculation? Or is this a joke that went over my head?

      • Tuukka R@piefed.eeEnglish
        4·
        5 days ago

        Well, its admin is Russian and joined Lemmy around when the Russia was cranking up its troll efforts in 2023. Or, here he at least claims that he is Russian: https://lemmy.world/post/76070 .

        Also, the letter “Z” is used in the Russia in the same meaning as the swastika was used in Nazi Germany. No Russian would call himself “ArtemZ” in year 2023 without meaning that he is proud of Putin. And if you are a big fan of MAGA-ism, why do you choose a nickname that promotes Putin instead of one that promotes Trump?

        You can also just read what he has been writing with his previous accounts. And how he first was talking good about the Russia and then bad. Depending on what he figured would work best for MAGAts.

  • meep_launcher@sh.itjust.works
    65·
    5 days ago

    Personally I think that we deserve the respect to make our own decisions on this issue. Defederation should be reserved for situations where actual laws are broken that would jeopardize the existence of this instance or even Lemmy as a whole.

    As a former mod on a larger subreddit and then a mod on a decent lemmy community, and now a sad mod trying to pick up the pieces (RIP lemm.ee), I’ve seen how hate can be pervasive in most every sphere. If we start locking things down because we want a hate free Internet, well… We won’t have much of an Internet anymore.

    My modding style was always the “let 'em cook” method. Unless doxxing, impersonation of a mod, spam, bots, and the like are happening, the community would dogpile the user, and frankly as a bystander seeing coherent arguments against hate was more convincing than just censoring it all together.

  • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    293·
    8 days ago

    I’m reminded of a story about a bartender, who immediately kicked out a Nazi simply for entering the establishment. The Nazi wasn’t causing any trouble. But the rational was that once you start allowing Nazis in “because they’re nice”, they’ll start inviting their friends, who might not be so nice. Now your bar is a Nazi bar, and they become much harder to kick out because “you already let us in, why do you have a problem now?”

    Nazis (and fascists in general) use the same tricks as narcissistic people, by holding you to your words because you believe in words. They don’t, so they happily trample all over you once you let your guard down.

    Nazism, by definition, is hateful and violent ideology. Maga is following in their footsteps. They have no place in this world.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
      31·
      6 days ago

      That’s a really poor analogy here though. Here’s one that I think is better:

      • instance = country
      • community = bar
      • federation = visa agreements

      Communities can block individual users that are undesirable without the instance getting involved. That’s the Nazi bar example, and it’s totally reasonable for communities to have strict moderation for who they let in.

      Instances should only get involved if admins from another instance refuse to take action against their users who cause issues. And an instance can block another with minimal drama, it’s like border security not accepting visas from that country any more. Until we have evidence that an instance isn’t capable of enforcing rules on its users, there’s no reason to ban them.

      • Lka1988@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        61·
        6 days ago

        Well that’s why we’re voting, isn’t it? This isn’t the admins making a decision to defederate, it’s the users.

        And jesus fucking christ the amount of FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

        • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
          33·
          6 days ago

          Yes, and that’s why I’m making my case for not defederating. I don’t like their content, and honestly wouldn’t be sad to see them go, but I’m against defederation decisions being made based on political views, and that seems to be what’s happening here.

          FUD going on over this is more enough to show that it should be defederated.

          Weird, I came to the opposite conclusion. Here’s the process I followed:

          1. Saw the post in main asking if we should defederate, and I pointed them here
          2. Saw voting thread pinned and saw only yes votes
          3. Looked at the post body and the linked posts and saw zero evidence posted
          4. Looked at the actual instance and saw a bunch of conservative talking points and very little discussion or votes; total users were 26 or so, and they pretty much only had a conservative community

          The negative impact to users seemed exceedingly small, since they didn’t even have engagement on their own posts, and I haven’t seen anyone discussing issues with the few users they have.

          So why defederate? This seems like a bunch of people virtue signaling over pretty much nothing, mostly based on the domain (WTF?), and somewhat based on conservative views.

          I think we should stay federated on principle to remind people that civility has value. We don’t want to be like Lemmy.ml that bans people over content critical to the CCP or Russia, and how is defederating from this instance any different?

          Maybe we need to defederate later if their instance causes issues, but then we’d be absolutely justified.

  • emmy67@lemmy.world
    274·
    16 days ago

    They should be defederated.

    Their hateful ideas should have no place here.

  • Sunoc@sh.itjust.works
    182·
    17 days ago

    The post on Science Memes got downvoted into oblivion, which is funny.

    But yeah, we should probably defed these pos.

  • Icytrees@sh.itjust.works
    161·
    7 days ago

    Why should users of this instance spend their leisure time with people who not only want to take away their rights, but label themselves as such? A label that tags their user name regardless of what they’re saying.

    Why should we, as users of this instance, ever allow someone who visibly declares their support for hateful politics, to engage with the most vulnerable among us in the first place?

    MAGA policies are killing women. I’m a woman. I see someone calling themselves MAGA and I see someone who supports stripping away my autonomy and letting me die.

    Everyone can join as many instances as they want if they believe defederating from hate speech enthusiasts is creating an echo chamber.

    • Banana@sh.itjust.works
      41·
      5 days ago

      Completely agreed. Also history would dictate that giving literal nazis a space/platform with which they can influence people is a bad fuckin idea. We don’t owe them tolerance and they should be censored because they are a cult and don’t intend on good faith discussion.

      Call me radical, I’ll say hang loose 🤙

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      513·
      8 days ago

      And keep your own echo-chamber? I’m very disappointed in this community… I haven’t come across any posts from that community but their front page looks no worse than news@lemmy.ml just with a different slant. They don’t even have any comments so the community must be tiny.

      • Galactose@sopuli.xyz
        53·
        8 days ago

        Lemmy.ml is still 10 times better than the misanthropic filth, MAGA will spill. The term you’re looking for is Discourse Hygiene