Feddit.org officially announces they will ban criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian posts and comments.

Palestinians, remember the following: you can resist your occupation but ONLY on the occupiers terms.
For the rest of us, remember the following: you can protest genocide, but ONLY on the genocider's terms.

...equal rights for all people, Jewish in particular.
Lol
- A bit more context for that quote:
  calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular.
  The "one state" in the one-state solution is Israel, which currently views itself as an occupying power, and has Jewish Supremacy enshrined in her basic law (essentially constitution). Jews are not the group that is at risk in this scenario.
  
  Yeah but have you thought about Israeli Jews though, shitlord?!
- All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others - George Orwell, Animal Farm
- People are saying 1984 but Animal Farm is where it's at

Defederate. Let them be murderous genocide apologists on their own.

Germany tried to create laws to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust. It's a laudable effort but they're failing at it.
The problem is that they were so specific about preventing "The Holocaust" that they ignored many other kinds of bigotry and racism. They thought that if they forbid a few key phrases and symbols, hatred would wither on the vine. Instead they just cleared the way for other aspects of racism to flourish.
- Germany created laws to weaponize the Holocaust so they could commit another one.
  
  That's their result, not their intent

I wonder if "Jews and non-Jews can't live together, and thus Jews must be exiled to Israel" will be allowed...

And another instance gets blocked

Man, seeing Germany side with genocide once again was fucking not on my bingo card.
I don't imagine things will get better under the new right-wing government either.
- Comments will not be removed for the following:
  Denouncing genocide.
  Denouncing Israeli war crimes.
  Criticizing Zionism as an ideology or political movement.
  Referring to the current Israeli government as “criminal,” “expansionist,” or “far-right”.
  How is that siding with genocide?
  
  Users can engage in regulated quantities of vague and pointless criticism of the ongoing genocide, as a treat.
  
  Feddit.org now bans
  The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
  Comparing Israel to the Nazis
  Calls to end Zionism
  Calling for the dissolution of Israel
  
  They ban supporting or advocating actually stopping the genocide
  
  Are you claiming that the German government is running that instance?

I did not leave reddit to come to a fucked down version of political censorship. fuck you and begone. I'm blocking their instance
- THATS how we vote.
- How do I do this from an app like Boost?
  
  Don't know if it'll be much help but on my app (thunder) you go to the instance, press the little (i) and then block community. It will probably be something similar on most apps.

Tbh, I can understand it. There have been police raids kicking in doors of families with small children at 5 in the morning for having a Facebook post saying "from the ... to the ..." (I am also in Germany...). The police went through all of the families belongings and took all web-connected electronics.
The situation is really rough here in Germany.
- Let me guess, nobody batted an eyelid when Netanyahu used the phrase to assert Jewish supremacist sovereignty "West of the Jordan". Like you can say from the river to the sea as long as your extremist statement has the opposite of the proscribed polarity.
  
  "From the river to the sea" but its the Likud.
- Lets not validate the intimidation tactics of the g*rman police. From the river to the sea.
  
  Yeah, you have to chose your battle. You can have your life and the future of your children get ruined only once.
  
  They're validating the policy of the instance on the basis of the police tactics potentially being used against them, not the tactics themselves
- Do you have a source about that incident? Reminds me of a dude arrested in russia for holding a blank piece of paper.
  
  Here is the first entry für a google search. But it happened several times. Many people, probably several thousands by now, have been arrested and/or sued for saying or writing this phrase.
  https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/gesellschaft/antisemitismus-216.html
  Sorry, it is in German.
  Mind that SEK stands for Special Task Force. Those guys come in full armour, masked and armed with full auto weapons.
  And yeah, that is what the mods and adminis of feddit are afraid of.

- thank you

Wtf is feddit
- Some Lemmy instances call themselves by a different name. But Feddit.org is just a Lemmy server with a different name. It does make it very confusing for newcomers.

So they're basically declaring themselves a fascist instance. I mean calling for end of Zionism is calling for an end of a fascist ideal, therefore that instance is declaring itself a fascist organization. Simple. Yeah no one should be Federated with this place.

So basically just knockoff reddit then?
- It says it in the name. Reddit but for and by the feds.
- That and .world every time someone suggests that genocide is bad.
  
  both are regime fronts on fedi.
  It amazing to see how organic opinion is against them and without centralized social media they can't suppress this sentiment.
  Makes you wonder how often public opinions get subverted by these regime whore shills.
- I don’t think you get banned for upvoting Luigi here yet
  
  Yet.

So they’re joining the Nazis. They can fuck off and die.
- Sometimes joining the bad side is the only way not to die. I wish you strength to do the right thing (and a family in a far away safe place) when you're in such situation.
  
  I promise you, the feddit mods are not going to die if they don't ban criticism of Israel. Seriously, have some perspective.

sounds like grounds for defederation. protecting fascism is fascism.
- If that was the grounds, everyone would defed all ml shit.
  
  there's already calls for that. as someone who's been banned from ml comms, i think this surpasses even ml's usual bs though.
  
  Sorry bud, but fascism is a capitalist tendency, not a Marxist one. They are literally opposite ends of the political spectrum.
- I find it more disgusting than .ml and even hexbear, Chinese Human rights violations lean towards cultural genocide, Israel is killing, starving, dislocating and destroying their culture, ethnicity, community and land, it is as bad as it can get, any defence of Israel is disgusting for me, and criticism of Palestine on that front is very ill timed in that manner, you can't worry about 'terrorism' when the alternative is extermination
  
  Wanna take bets .world won't defederate Feddit because muh freeze peach?
  
  CuLtUrAl GeNoCiDe
  Go to xiaohongshu right now and look at all the uyghurs sharing their music, food, language, stories, spreading their culture freely on a predominantly chinese app!
  Whole ass street festivals in the main streets going on in xinjiang of uyghurs celebrating community
  easiest fake news to dispel but god forbid (redd/lemm)itors step out of their bubble

well, fuck feddit.org then. Any place thats too busy fellating genocide deserves to be abandoned and blocked. If they think they matter, they are wrong.

Unsurprising, still disappointing.

I don't blame the mods as they have little say in the matter but it's sad to see never the less.
- I do. The feddit.org mods choose to collaborate instead of doing the right thing and either shutting it down, transferring the users to another instance, or finding mods who are not on german soil. They choose to run a censorship machine. They should not have if they have any integrity.
  
  Yeah, I get what you're saying. Is transferring users a real possibility?

It's wild how lies and propaganda spread in real time.

German Guilt Pride is a hell of a drug. Hiding behind 'laws' to justify this is also very on brand.
https://youtu.be/Vy2ju_qPtuM
- Guilt Pride
  Thank you for this term.

Oh shit, the (White) Power Rankings heating up as feddit takes up an unexpected lead against stormfront.world

ive got temp banned from there for mentioning europe engages in colonialism.
havent participated a lot in there since.
- Caught a perma ban there for calling german oligarchs being heavy on Nazi nepo babies
  That server has censorship that's more clown than lemmy.world.
  German regime front on Lemmy... Lol
  People should vote with their feet.
  These clowns should not host pan EU communities, let them circle jerk Zionism in an echo chamber 🤡

- Wenn die d*utschen so geil auf ein israelischen ethnostaat sind sollten sie gefälligst ihr eigenes Land abtreten. Stalins einziger Fehler war in Berlin innezuhalten.

Such a pain you can't block an entite instance (at least not that I've found on Sync) and have to block the individual communities one by one. I blocked the ones with over 500 subscribers and i suppose the others will get blocked as they show up in my Everything feed.
There's no way i want to be a part of German genocide whitewashing.
- Sounds like you need to use a different app then. Cuz I'm pretty sure you can block instances on most other ones. I use connect and I blocked a number of instances.
- you should be able to do that from the web interface, and it will apply to any apps because your server does the filtering.
  fyi, some are already blocking lemmy.ml too. I'm not yet sure if I want to go that far, but I'm getting tired of their china apologism. and this community is also on ml, soo..
  
  China apologism 😂 fucking hell I swear most of y'all would slot right in during jim crow or the yellow peril. If white society says you're an animal it's up to PoC to prove we're not (and if we do it's apologia)

Wtf is this, this is like capitulatiing to nazis back in the day, shame on them
- What capitulation lmao. Can't capitulate to yourself.

Ex-nazis choosing to support neo-nazis. Maybe they lost the ex, is Germany OK?
- Is it any shock when actual members of the Nazi party and SS were kept around to help rebuild West Germany?
  We should have just dealt with the problem instantly. Hindsight is 20/20 but fascists deserve no breaks.
- Why are only Germans ex-nazi and Italians not ex-fascist? Y'all seem to enjoy your pizza
  
  I always check if my pizza is fascist before eating
  
  I didn't realise thinking Italy is fascist is mutually exclusive with enjoying pizza. I guess that means I'm not allowed to eat sauerkraut anymore?
  
  It's almost as if this thread isn't about Italy, Italians, or Italian law 🤔 super weird of me to focus on the topic presented, I know
  
  Germany is supplying 30% of the weapons used in the Gaza genocide.

Oof, cringe.

Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular
This part floored me. As if it wasnt Israel that was currently denying equal rights to Palestinians and not the other way around... this is just the zionist version of 'all lives matter' bullshit.
- But have you thought but the guy doing the genocide asshole?!?!
  
  How dare we ignore the trauma of those committing violent oppression?!

When you're so anti-Nazi that you loop around and become pro Reverse-Nazi.
- Western Germany never de-Nazified, the Nazis teamed up with the Zionists even when the Nazis were in power. They left the Nazis as they were effective anti-Communists, and the West collectively felt that was a worthwhile trade. Germany pays lip service to combatting fighting the Nazis, but keeps the underlying fascism the West in general has.
- What lack of theory does to a mfer.

Death to Germany
- The country or the inhabitants?
  
  Germany is a country. Germans are its inhabitants.

What's interesting is that I got blatantly being called a nazi by those particular mods. I reported to admins and nothing happened.
So obviously there's a double filter here about "not tolerating accusations of nazism".
I just left, blocked !europe@feddit.org and became very wary of feddit.org administration. So this doesn't take me as much as a surprise as I have already seen issues with both that community and an admin team that's clearly not objective when talking about that community admins.

Calling for the dissolution of Israel, or calling for a one-state solution without specifying equal rights for all people; Jewish in particular. Calling for a destruction, annihilation, an end of all Zionism or the like.
Zionism means colonialism not just in practice, but from its very inception:
- And yet every self-declared pro-Zionist I've talked to says Zionism is just the right of the state of Israel to exist, and so being anti-Zionist is being for the destruction of the state, and being for the destruction of the state is being for the death or dispossession of every person in the state.
  I think the German state is probably more inclined to interpret discussion of Zionism the way the pro-Zionists I've spoken to have describe the term.
  I think the historical description in the text that you link is accurate, but if you're trying to argue that Germans should be able to critique Zionism however they want because of that, it's like literally getting into an argument about the literal meaning of literally with people who use literally to mean figuratively, but instead of a random teenager or twee linguistic descriptivist, you are arguing with the state.
- Who got the oldest artifacts in Palestine? Doesn't seem colonizing if you have one of the earliest histories somewhere, right? That's why Russia has a right to reclaim Ukraine /s
  
  Do Greeks get Constantinople, Marseille and Syracuse back?
  
  Who has the oldest artifacts in the Americas? Or Australia?
  
  Serious mental gymnastics lol
- Yes, and you are free to critizise Zionism for that on Feddit.org. The legal problem is not that, but that the German authorities don't play word games and tend to equate Zionism/Israel/Jews as a shortcut and leave it to courts to decide later if that was justified or not.
  
  Oh I see. Which is why the admins/mods of Feddit.org are also publicly coming out criticizing the German government for this crackdown on nuanced speech, right? Right?
  
  but that the German authorities don’t play word games and tend to equate Zionism/Israel/Jews
  Sounds like they very much do play word games then.
  
  They clearly state in one of the rules that I just linked, that calling for an end to zionism is a bannable offense.
  The german state is full of witch-hunters and its people have learned nothing.

Time to defederate Feddit.org.
To bad. They weren't that bad, IME. But denying criticism of a state actively carrying out a globally recognized genocide... that's a strict rule I've adopted.
If midwest.social won't defederate, I'll have to block the whole instance.
- The post literally says that you can critizise that 🤦
  Please understand that there can be some nuance on the topic and that people in Germany are understandably extra careful on the topic.
  
  Claiming that the genocide, apartheid, and colonialism perpetrated by Israel is in any way complex or nuanced is such a disgustingly smug way of revealing you haven't spent even a moment thinking the situation through, or reading up on the history. Gross.
  
  Germans should listen to Namibians a bit more. You don't get to play favourites with your genocide victims.
  
  So hand over the instance moderation to people in a different jurisdiction, or shut it down entirely. Don't comply with this bullshit.
  
  germans "just following orders" again?
  
  Nah they’re just wimps

Germany has a very binary view on class supremacism. It's not supremacism is good vs bad. It's a pendulum of who is above criticism. Russophobic nazi supremacism still kosher though.
- Russophobic nazi supremacism still kosher though.
  I've noticed that pro-Israel Germans are usually not that much against Russia.
  
  Not from what I've seen at all. The people who insist on calling Palestinians (and any Arab people who oppose Zionism) "terrorists" are often the same people frothing at the mouth about how we have to smash the Russian "orcs." Granted, this isn't limited only to Germans, but I've definitely seen it specifically from them as well.
- Trust a dronie to start whining about Russia and "tankies" in a thread about the genocide of Gaza.
  
  Yep if you have Russian blood in you you're guilty of all crimes of its government, even if you're against Putin.
  It's so cool and not at all xenophobic.

They could have made a symmetrical ban.
- I agree with this, in that I think it avoids the issue of appearing to side with one or the other — I think it's more neutral.
  
  Suppressing any discussion of genocide is the goal though so they still win under this fact pattern
  Remember, Israel just wants to kill of Palestine if peace while western regime ehores praise them for their hard work.
  It is really annoying when the shitposters won't stfu about the genocide, mate!

That's enough for me to block my first instance! Fucking Nazis.
- did the same and it's the first time i've used lemmy's blocklist; i hope there aren't more in the future
- How do you do that?

Fucking Germany

While the servers of feddit.org are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany... Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations.
Lol, they're trying to pretend that the cops will kick down their doors if someone says "free Palestine" on a server they're mods of.
- I live in Germany, and it's a totally realistic scenario, especially in Bavaria. They seize computers to intimidate digital activists all the time for way less serious topics.
  
  Have they ever raided someone just for being the admin on a social media site?
- You’re not keeping up with the news from Germany then I take it.
  
  I know that they're repressing opposition to Israel, but I have not heard of them arresting someone just for being a moderator on a website that doesn't follow German law.
- So if that's not the case, that does mean Germany is not fascist? Or are they fascist and is their policy justified?

Wow, real mask off moment, though they were using the "German law" pretext for a while now.
- For a server hosted in Austria 🤡

Cool, I'll add them to my ban list.
- Better yet I am trying to get them to add me to their ban list
- Didn't blaja already defed them?
  
  Nah, that was feddit.uk

Yikes. 😬

Genuine freak shit. Maybe wait until the government bothers you, don't preempt them
- Says the person not at risk of early moring police raids of their home including months long confiscation of all their communication devices and costly legal proceedings to get them back.
  
  "Look it's the law, disobeying the law is bad, I must obey the law and report my local ~~Jews~~ pro-Palestine thought crime."
  
  I'm a communist trans woman with guns who helps house people for free in the USA. I've had ICE and police show up to my doorstep before. For some reason, I doubt a bunch of cishet white nerd guys in Germany are about to have as many problems as I do for hosting anti israel content on a small social site.
  
  ~ Average german defense for their complicity in the 1940s.
  
  You would have turned in Anne Frank.

The write-up they link is also insightful. Notably, they "explicitly reject these accusations" of being Zionists and insist it's a legal precaution required by their countries.
I've bought servers for hosting some small communities and I sometimes thought maybe I was paranoid for retaining anonymity and carefully picking the country and company to allow muh freedoms as far as speech goes, but it's interesting seeing .world and feddit pull out the "just following legislation" card (which is understandable, given that staff imprisonment is obviously bad for their community, but also irresponsible and complicit to simply accept the situation instead of resolving it, and because this is an internet community there are safe ways to resolve it).
- Then they should be ranting about how terrible the law is, not defending it.
  
  How much ranting do you think they will be able to do from inside a jail cell?
- Feddit.org was not started as an law-skirting activist space with specific op-sec requirements.
  My impression when talking with the admins is that they are quite sympethatic to such efforts, but simply ask that to be done somewhere else where it is safer for everyone involved.

- Read the comments and see who's catching bans. It's one thing to be made to comply by force, it's another to be celebrating that you're now gonna be censoring anti Zionists
  
  I can't see who is catching a ban for what comment, because the comments have been censored. Q.E.D.
  ...Much like I have been for pointing out how the law functions. So, that's cool, I guess.
  FWIW, a number of states int he US have passed anti-BDS laws; it should be blatantly illegal under 1A to prevent institutions from boycotting Israel, and yet, so far, those laws haven't been seriously challenged.
- Did you really just uses CSAM for this analogy?!
  Y'all are fucking unhinged 🤡
  
  If both CSAM and criticism of the state of Israel are illegal in Germany, then the admins and mods are legally obligated to remove both. Their feelings and beliefs are not relevant to their legal obligation.
  I don't see how you are incapable of understanding this.

They're going to stand behind the German law on this? smdh
- Germans and being complicit because they are "just following laws/orders". Name a better duo.

I am curious about the reactions in the thread linked in the OP, but I can't access it. I don't know if the thread is deleted either since I can't access even the server.
Are they temporarily down?
EDIT:
False alarm. I was able to access it after some struggle. I don't know why I can't access it in my desktop but I was able to access it via mobile. At any rate, it's a problem on my end.
Reading the linked post, I'm glad to note that it seems to me that the consensus is largely against the change. Even the few comments from those in the instance is pretty much against it.

How do I ban an entire instance
- Assuming you're using the default Lemmy UI, there's a block settings menu in your account settings page. It's worth exploring, there's some good options to play around with.

1984

A post about white people doing white people things and banning anyone not in full support of genocide, and even the criticism has to be half about China this and China that.
Y'all are exactly the type of idiot who sets up the conditions for these ghouls to do another genocide to then go on your merry way to act like the monsters are they before you spread blood libel against somebody else.
Fuck y'all. Read the fucking room and examine yourself for once.
- Sorry? I guess?

I am not reading that. Can we get some more non political instances and communities?
- It’s talking about the tolerance paradox and Zionism won.
  
  Does that need a wall of text larger than my screen though? Or at least use paragraphs

Better than what the headline seems though.
The description reads almost like malicious compliance.
Still. There are people advocating for similar measures against statements not as normal as the listed.
I hope these people can see how their wishes being fulfilled might lead to similar regrettable results. It's better not to walk the preceding steps.
One set of basics a decent human being should always remember - "I am not wise, I am not righteous, and I don't know what is right and what is wrong, I can only try not to multiply evil and to avoid lying to myself and others, and when I make a decision, I know it'll harm people".
- Banning calls for dissolution of a genocidal Apartheid is not "malicious compliance".
  They are even banning calls to end Zionism which is comparable to banning calls to end Nazism.
  Of course this comparison could not be made on Feddit.org because they ban comparisons of Zionism to Nazis.
- The comments section is a circle jerk full of chuds going "it's about time somevody stood up for poor Israel, only here and world isn't Hamas"
  I'd call it a psyop but Eur*peans have proven to be this ghoulish across their entire history so
  
  I wish this was a psyop but germans have some weird mental gymnastics that result in them cornering themselves into these weird positions
  Another one is their relationship with Russia.... 🤡

Oh man. Come on Lemmy.
Maybe read the post again and put yourself in the shoes of the admins and mods who do live in Germany.
Each of you personally has your own views on the Israel / Palestine genocide, and that's absolutely fine.
However, very few of you risk personal criminal prosecution in support of Palestine. The people involved in hosting a lemmy instance are volunteers, who probably didn't sign up for that kind of risk.
Also, the very nature of federation means that feddit can restrict this content on their servers confident in the knowledge that other servers can host this content in a jurisdiction that doesn't have the same risks.
- My country is literally arbitrarily detaining and deporting/imprisoning people for advocating for a free Palestine. I still go to protests.
  Free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
  
  Sure, but you realise that it's unreasonable to expect others to take those risks though right?
- What's next? Put yourself in the shoes of the soldiers who're "just following orders" by firing upon unarmed people ?
  Also, the genocide is immoral, inhumane, and needs to stop. I don't know any other personal view that can be "absolutely fine"
  
  slippery slope fallacy
  
  Well, I guess you could put yourself in the shoes of soldiers if that floats your boat but it's obviously not analogous to lemmy admins.
  As I said, foregoing the personal risk doesn't harm Palestinians in any way. You're free to bemoan genocide on pretty much any other instance.
- Maybe read the post again and put yourself in the shoes of the admins and mods who do live in Germany.
  Man sucks to be them. Oh well, better preemptively censor all words because its illegal! Don't stand for what's right!
  Why are you on an anarchist instance if you are for states limiting speech?
  
  So uh, letting people like lemmy admins do what they want with their own instance is a fairly foundational concept of anarchism.
- Maybe read the post again and put yourself in the shoes of the admins and mods who do live in Germany.
- If I was one of the admins who lived in Germany, I would just step down; not capitulating to genocidal fascists is more important than getting to run my own little digital fiefdom.