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

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
    1234·
    4 months ago

    To clarify, this is not a vote to defederate. This a call to instance admins to pledge for a mutual protection pact.

    • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      121·
      4 months ago

      NGL, I kinda want us to defederate.

      I’ve started to reply a few times trying to dig into what Zionism exactly means and all that. The truth is, the nuances of what is happening over there is a bit beyond my understanding. I thought it was wrong when the Germans were rounding up and gassing Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. And I think it’s wrong that the Jews are now committing genocide against the Palestinians. The difference is, the world sided against genocide almost 100 years ago… but most of the world seems to be siding with genocide now. I don’t get it.

      Here’s what I do know: Lemmy and the Fediverse is fucking awesome. I even kind of like how shit places like Truth Social and Lemmy.world can exist… I do not believe in an echo chamber. That said, if someone is toxic, I think it is fine to cut them out. I think the problem if we do not defederate is, we justify the actions of the people who are fighting to make Lemmy.world the only instance people care about. I browse /all, which means I see all the comms on all the instances. And it seems like there are two kinds of Lemmings who create posts: those who cross-post across Lemmy.world, and those who cross-post across multiple instances. I like the latter a lot more, because if we do defederate from Lemmy.world, then we’ll still get content. The former group bugs me because I feel like interacting with them at all supports Lemmy.world, and if they’re siding with genocide, against human rights, I do not want to be a part of that.

      Since the drama with Lemmy.world has began, I’ve seen that a lot of the communities I enjoy following are actually on Lemmy.world. But I don’t want to support them. I make long, thoughtful posts and I feel we need more of that on Lemmy. I don’t want to contribute to people I’m politically and/or ethically opposed to the actions of. I would rather dbzer0 or other flotilla involved or flotilla aligned instances had those same comms and discussions, and that my energy would be better spent there.

      Even though I may be among the least political dbzer0 user, I’m here because I looked at the instances and said “hey, I don’t really dig everything dbzer0 is about, but they seem to support free speech, and I’m here for that.” I looked at Lemmy.world too, but it just seemed too… I dunno. Too much like Reddit? Too… corporate? I like that it’s big and it brings new Lemmings in, but I don’t like the lack of diversity of opinion over there. Reddit was such an echo chamber, and while its opinions shifted, it was always a bit of a problem. I’d rather be welcomed on an instance I don’t fully agree with because it supports freedom of speech (to a point, obviously; we’re never free from consequences) than walk on eggshells on Lemmy.world.

      I also have a PieFed account on an instance that is wholly apolitical, so I don’t think it will defederate from anyone or be defederated by anyone… except maybe the porn one? But no great loss there, IMO.

      …yeah, I think this is the one I post.

    • BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      51·
      4 months ago

      Will this end up splitting the fediverse into islands, if the protection pact gets activated?

      What about sending all the fediverse admins to a bar where they can talk it out while drinking beer.

      • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        no, there will still be instances people can join that cross federate. but the reality is LW is a cess pit of shit moderation by people who think advocating for a genocide is perfectly fine while suppressing the voice of people who advocate stopping a genocide, unfortunately they’re sitting on first mover advantage and got a lot of users from the initial migrations.

        the fallout from this will be world getting isolated and better moderated communities cropping up to fill in the gaps.

        • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
          301·
          4 months ago

          This reminds me of when Beehaw de-federated from lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works and the lemmy.world users acted like Beehaw’s administrators were dictating for Beehaw’s users what they could venture out and see rather than what had happened: open signups had allowed a greater number of trolls into Beehaw’s space than they could reasonably deal with.

          The longer the threadiverse experiment goes on the more it seems to me like Beehaw’s admin team knew the problem they were seeing the instant they saw it, and have been proven right in their approach to dealing with it. My Beehaw account used to be my main account (really should update my profiles at this point to reflect that this is my main one and the beehaw one is for when I’m too fuckin’ sick of how many assholes abound on the threadiverse). It’s a really good instance and I have a huge amount of respect for that admin team.

          IDK… There seems to be an instance culture with .world that:

          1. The threadiverse is the entire fediverse
          2. The fediverse started in April of 2023 rather than in December 2012
          3. The fediverse is exactly like email and blocking domains should only be done based on spam (the irony of this one given the Beehaw situation…)
          4. Infinite growth is good, therefor being on the biggest instance is good
          5. Any disagreements with these axioms is a troll
          • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
            191·
            4 months ago

            The fediverse is exactly like email and blocking domains should only be done based on spam

            I don’t think this one is true. They pre-emptively defederated hexbear early on and they defederated anarchist.nexus due to one mod not even interacting with them.

            • The D Quuuuuill@slrpnk.netEnglish
              101·
              4 months ago

              yeah i think the admins have a better understanding but it seems like the users have a different idea of what the fediverse is than i do. you’re right that my wording doesn’t quite capture concept i’m trying to capture though.

              maybe it’s something more like “the only justifiable instance defederation is the one we engage in”

        • w3ird_sloth@lemmy.world
          59·
          4 months ago

          Randomly join an instance. Now just an ignorant ‘worlder’. But I wasn’t like those other ‘worlders’. I pledged myself to a greater cause. I crossed the deserts seeking those gilded forums talked about in stories. Even now, if you look out on a clear night, you can see my wandering star.

  • Aspis@lemy.lol
    772·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    722·
    4 months ago

    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

    • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      376·
      4 months ago

      Until the LW admins do something much more stupid, I strongly vote Nay. If they do, I’m happy to respond accordingly.

      I think you misread the proposal. The proposal is to pledge to boycott (aka defederate from) Lemmy World if (and only if) they decide to defederate one or all of our instances. We aren’t planning to defederate from them pre-emptively.

      It’s basically a call for unity amongst the middle and smaller sized instances, to ensure there are negative consequences for LW if they go through with it.

      • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        1·
        4 months ago

        I thought every post here has a vote element to it, so my reading comprehension failed me there. My bad.

        My point is that an immediate defederation feels extreme to me at this point in time. I like the idea of our instances doing things together to make (let’s say) a stupid defederation of one of them have more consequences, but in this specific case I wouldn’t prefer this specific decision. I’m saying I don’t think we should defederate from LW ourselves unless something much more egregious happens than has already happened.

    • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      212·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
        205·
        4 months ago

        I think you misread the proposal. The proposal is to pledge to boycott (aka defederate from) Lemmy World if (and only if) they decide to defederate one or all of our instances. We aren’t planning to defederate from them pre-emptively.

        It’s basically a call for unity amongst the middle and smaller sized instances, to ensure there are negative consequences for LW if they go through with it.

        • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          77·
          4 months ago

          Yeah I get it. I still vote no, defederation should be a total last resort and if world is being shitty with any of these other instances they sure aren’t gonna care about the rest. But that’s just my opinion, I don’t run db0.

            • rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              56·
              4 months ago

              actually, only those who pay the admins take a part, the others serve as a tie-breaker at best, unless i missed a memo*. this post in particular is only directed at instance admins tho.

              EDIT: *users can also get vouched for by those eligible, and get voting rights that way

    • TheThunderWolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      172·
      4 months ago

      Until the LW admins do something much more stupid, I strongly vote Nay. If they do, I’m happy to respond accordingly.

      that’s literally an Aye, i think you misread/misinterpreted the proposal

    • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      122·
      4 months ago

      is this person genuinely in favor of me being murdered, or is this person simply German?

      oh god my sides he-laughed

      deutschland verrecke germany-cool

      Good write up though thank you very valuable to read

    • activistPnk@slrpnk.net
      21·
      4 months ago

      Until the LW admins do something much more stupid, I strongly vote Nay. If they do, I’m happy to respond accordingly.

      LW joined Cloudflare’s centralised walled-garden. Then they abused that bandwith to grow without restraint to be the biggest concentration of network-effect-exploitation in the fedi by orders of magnitude beyond multiple standard deviations above the avg size. Power mongers with absurdely disproportionate influence and control. This alone is cause to ditch LW. It’s like a Facebook within the fedi trying to masquerade as “decentralised”.

  • CosmicTurtle0 [he/him]@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    506·
    4 months ago

    .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.

  • gsdsam@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    403·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      292·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      112·
      4 months ago

      We are not voting for a preemptive defederation. This whole proposal is only for if they decide to defederate from us first, which they are currently considering.

      • gsdsam@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        4 months ago

        Yeah I understood it was not a vote on pre-emptive defederation, I guess to be clearer in my position: I expected that one FAF instance should/would always respond accordingly to any negative actions against another FAF instance, especially when that action is based on reactionary politics like zionism. Otherwise, what’s the point in the FAF?

  • Sarah Valentine (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    346·
    4 months ago

    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.

  • anar@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    292·
    4 months ago

    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

    • stickly@lemmy.world
      181·
      4 months ago

      That’s basically every instance except for kinda this one and maybe one other. At the end of the day they run the server and are legally liable for the content so that’s just how it is. If you have an instance with open signups you’d be crazy to leave admin questions to unvetted actors

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      314·
      4 months ago

      Honestly this will be the death of the flotilla. If .world cared they would defederate dbzer0 at this point and we would float into an echo chamber of hatred. If people can’t take a centrist disagreeing with them, they are weak, foolish, people who cant put a word behind their thoughts. .world isn’t the far right, they aren’t the far left, they are every standard person who will join Lemmy/PieFed in the future. If we want a bubble where discussion dies, that’s fine, but this sounds like stupidity to me

  • No_Bark@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    273·
    4 months ago

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

    • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialEnglish
      352·
      4 months ago

      You can read all about it here!

      TL;DR: lemmy.world zionist admin got banned from anarchist.nexus for pro-Zionist stance, took someone’s display name as a personal death threat, and single-handedly defederated LW from AN without conferring with the rest of the LW team or announcing it properly

      • HrabiaVulpes@lemmy.world
        227·
        4 months ago

        Okay, as someone slowly starting to lean into anti-samitism with each new article on Israel I think I will hide myself in lemmy.europe for now then.

        • bricker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          491·
          4 months ago

          Yeah, no that’s not what this is… You can be against Zionism and be Jewish. Zionism and the Israeli government are the problem. Not all Jewish people. Don’t be antisemitic.

        • bearboiblake [he/him]@pawb.socialEnglish
          313·
          4 months ago

          I don’t know how serious you’re being, but please remember that there are plenty of Jewish people who are also anti-Zionist and anti-Israel, don’t let some bad, loud voices persuade you otherwise <3

  • CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.comdeleted by creatorEnglish
    221·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • mrdown@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      203·
      4 months ago

      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

    • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      11·
      4 months ago

      Please remember that this whole proposal is only for if they decide to defederate from us first. In that case, it would trigger the “blockade” which is (hopefully) a group of instances defederating from lemmy world in protest, en masse, until such time as the issues are resolved. All it is about really, is asking for mutual aid from other instances to ensure Lemmy World can’t act with impunity with regard to defederations. It’s purely a defensive measure. Does that make more sense?

      Kaplan basically threatened us all with defederation after a “review”, because they felt it would be “pointless” to only ban one of our instances (AN). All we want from LW is for them to put it to a community vote, instead of hiding their discussions in Discord servers etc, and leaving it solely in the hands of the current leadership team. Can anyone imagine Mr Kaplan and Jordan Lund doing any amount of self reflection, or coming back with a more moderate and reasonable take?

      As things currently stand, LW is run top-down, with no accountability or transparency around policy decisions, poor (and slow) decision making on important issues, and an almost complete lack of community involvement in the running of the instance. It’s basically run like Reddit, but with federation. They also consistently double down on bad admin decisions instead of doing some reflection, and so naturally, we are concerned that after a week or two of seemingly doing nothing, they will announce the end of their “review”, decide they did nothing wrong (again), and proceed with the threatened defederation.

      • CrackedLinuxISO@lemmy.dbzer0.comdeleted by creatorEnglish
        10·
        4 months ago

        Thanks for explaining. I appreciate that this is a proactive plan of action with clear goals and trigger events.

        I vote aye.

  • charokol@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    4 months ago

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

    • balsoft@lemmy.ml
      104·
      4 months ago

      Don’t worry, switching instances is quite easy here, and you can keep all your communities and subscriptions. If things go south I can recommend lemmy.zip and lemy.lol as general-purpose instances, hexbear.net and lemmy.ml as communist/socialist instances, and lemmy.dbzer0.com and anarchist.nexus as anarchist instances.