A bit over a month ago, a user posted in [email protected] to propose defederating from maga.place. That post was followed by a discussion in [email protected] a week ago, which seems to have gained some traction. In response, we’re going to hold a vote on the matter. Voting will be open for one week, through Friday, November 7.
The Agora discussion post is here:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/48420886
Only sh.itjust.works accounts created prior to today (October 31) may cast a vote.
Vote by commenting either yes/aye/oui or nay/no/non.
Any further discussion should happen in the Agora post linked above.
Additional Context/Discussions
Similar discussion at lemmy.ca: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46502305
Other fediverse instances are also defederating: https://sh.itjust.works/post/48111431
The instance’s page at Fediseer: https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/maga.place
VOTE RESULT
yes/aye/oui: 363
nay/no/non: 43
The big names we defederated from in the past violated some or all of the rules above, such as hexbear and explodingheads.
@[email protected]
Apologies for pinging you, you made a lot of arguments for why we should give MAGA movement member the benefit of the doubt. Those argument don’t align with reality in my opinion.
IMO, this is how we get echo chambers. I understand wanting a safe space, but that should be something community moderation should provide, not instance-level defederation.
To be clear, I disagree with the MAGA movement on pretty much everything. I used to consider myself Republican back when I thought Republicans actually want smaller, fiscally responsible government, and I didn’t join the Dems because they never seemed to prioritize civil liberties (e.g. gay marriage became legal by court decision, not statute, much like Roe V Wade).
I left largely due to conversations and content online (mix of Reddit and YouTube), and that wouldn’t be possible if popular social media sites cut out chunks of the conversion. In fact, I very much disagree with the aggressive stance YouTube took WRT COVID misinformation, not because I think misinformation is acceptable, but because it shut out anyone who was critical of the government’s policies. I want to live in a society that values differences in opinion and is okay with that being uncomfortable.
There’s a balance to be struck here, and I think that balance point is whether we can work with the admins of an instance to remove problematic content and users. I haven’t seen anyone saying that’s an issue, the arguments all revolve around the domain name and sometimes posts in communities that are obviously biased.
We defederate Hexbear not because they’re tankies, but because their admins refused to take action against trolling. IMO, that should be the standard.
I see, so on-site behaviour.
Is there any situation where MAGA as a movement more broadly can be qualified as causing harm (I get the impression that you don’t believe that’s the case currently)?
Or is it more that we shouldn’t treat a random MAGA supporter as intending to do harm?
I’ve lived in both russia and the US for multiple years. We left russia as soon our situation allowed us to. We were constantly harassed by police and had to deal with pretty harsh racism (even though our papers were in order and we all speak fluent russian and understand the interpersonal culture very well).
The US has become just like russia with security services harassing non-whites, beating people and jailing people even if their documents are in order (and even jailing and deporting citizens!). My mother is in shock that this is happening in the US (she hasn’t lived there, but she has visited many times and has been to multiple cities) and it’s becoming like russia.
In this context, why is it wrong to treat MAGA and its supporters as causing harm? Or do you disagree with the framing of the above paragraph?
Then there is the international context; promotion of corruption, promotion of far right parties (including criminals and open racists).
Why shouldn’t that qualify as causing harm?
One could argue that the rank and file MAGA supporters don’t know about this or didn’t intend to cause harm. But my answer would be that alleged intent or lack of knowledge is not important. It’s outcomes that count.
Mind you, this is not meant as a gotcha. I have friends of 15-20 years that I am still very close with from both sides of the US political aisle (i.e. one group supports Trump, albeit with exceptions on some issues).
I’ve had people on Lemmy call me a bad person for continuing to be close with the group that supports Trump. To which I replied that they are not bad people, they are not fascists or nazis or whatever (it would make no sense considering my mixed ethnic background) and they will come about.
So there is a measure of nuance to my perspective. I will add that MAGA is not the same thing as conservative in the broader context. The fact that most people who call themselves conservatives in the US are supporters of the MAGA movement speaks more about the US than conservatism in general.
Conduct should be the only measure we use for deciding whether to federate. And not even just conduct of their users, but conduct of their admins and mods. If their users are consistently causing problems, but their admins and mods are consistently banning them, then we should stay federated because we can work with them. The moment we can’t work with them is when we defederate.
Maybe that’s the case right now, IDK, I haven’t seen evidence either way, just people disagreeing with what little content they have and the domain name they used. I’m against this petition because it and the comments seem to day we should defederate purely based on political ideology.
You’ll need to expound on this a bit. What exactly does this say about America? All this shows, IMO, is that people are tribalistic (what country isn’t?) and don’t trust the establishment (who does?).
If you ask conservatives if they agree with the way Trump is going about things, they’ll likely say no, buy he has the right objectives in mind. They don’t like how ICE is acting, but they do want illegal immigrants to leave and only return through legal means. They don’t like that Trump is unilaterally setting trade policy, but they do want to see manufacturing jobs return and for the US to have a dominant trade position. They don’t want the government to be shut down, but they seem to believe that Republicans actually want to cut spending. All “MAGA” means in their eyes is ths slogan Trump uses to pursue policies that will make their lives better.
I personally disagree both with Trump’s priorities and the way he goes about them, but that doesn’t mean I think his supporters should be shut out of the conservation. I believe the opposite, in fact. I want to talk to Trump supporters to understand what they think and why, and to have the opportunity to show how that doesn’t match what Trump says and does. I used to be registered Republican and left when it became clear that they never do what I want (smaller, fiscally responsible government) and prioritize what I don’t want (e.g. anti-immigration). I didn’t join the Democratic Party for the same reason, they prioritized big government spending initiatives instead of expanding personal freedoms; we still don’t have legalized gay marriage, we’re relying on a court decision just like Roe V Wade…
No, the difference is we still have the freedom to criticize the government and we actually have free and fair elections. So whatever you don’t like about the US can change. The downside is it probably won’t because you need to break through the tribalism to get people to agree on anything.
Russia became the way it is because of authoritarianism (Putin wanted control), the US became the way it is due to fear. The first can’t be solved with conversation, the latter can.
How can we solve the problems in our democracies if we shut down conservation between tribes?
Thank for taking the time to reply. I too am interested in understanding perspective on this issue because I have American friends in both political camps (centre-right and far-right).
I see your logic and I think your arguments have weight and are done in good faith. That being said the gulf in our perspectives and experiences is simply too far apart, where it may almost seem like we are talking about different things (and we are from different sides of the planet).
I don’t see why I or other any SJW member should be subject to bad faith, corporate spam. I am not interested in “demagogue destroys [political opponent]”, "[political opponent] is a member of Al-Qaeda] or “[US Oligarch says some a propaganda]”. All found in the first two pages of maga.place. What is this point of this?
I do not believe in “safe spaces” or “echo chambers”. The latter in particular is a loaded, polemical term that means nothing. You can very much be open to new experiences and perspective without wanting malicious goons shitting up a forum that you use. There is a beautiful irony that US conservatives claim to oppose echo chambers when they are the biggest enablers of this concept. Is it unreasonable to claims that almost all US conservatives oppose real regulation of social media (other than to dictate and force their own interpretation of moderation policies on others) to address harmful engagement algorithms?
Just recently Facebook was found to have earned $16.5 B in 2024 from commissions on fraud and scams. Am I acting in bad faith by stating that most conservatives in the US would oppose true action (not words) against FB’s leadership and those who implemented this policy? Real action; prison, asset seizure, breakup of criminal organizations.
I don’t believe in American polemics about “big government spending”. First of all, fiscal policy is a pretty complicated thing, “I want lower taxes no matter what” is not a serious policy proposal (and that is the sole prerogative of US conservatism). Legitimate reform approaches (even more technocratic proposals) are rejected outright by US conservatives. Secondly, there is the moral imperative. US is a very a rich country and is more than capable of providing healthcare for all, not to mention there are economic reasons why such a system allows for more efficiency (purchasing economies, remove of massive insurance company and healthcare administration bureaucracy). My friend works in healthcare in the US, from my discussions with him it seems clear (to me), that the current US healthcare system is simply a local scheme for corruption and criminality. Third, from the research I did, US conservatives are more than happy to be the beneficiaries of government spending (e.g. farming, certain conservative states/regions de facto existing on government initiatives).
For me, it’s not good enough to say “I don’t like what ICE is doing, but I will tolerate their actions because I want to remove illegal immigrants”. Security services beating people up, arbitrarily arresting people and deporting citizens is unacceptable. Excuses don’t count. When you ignore such things, you get russia.
Russia became the way it is because the people were willing to tolerate putin because they thought he was doing the right thing. I lived in russia in the 90s, you could criticize the government and there was some hilarious satirical shows (sometimes very high quality subtle satire). There partially free elections. They lost it all that because they thought putin was doing the right thing.
I also disagree that the US has fully free elections. There are parts of the country where people aren’t allowed to vote (and US conservatives largely support this). The approach to districting is also clearly malicious and strongly suggests US conservatives oppose real democracy (districting is just one example, there are many others).
When I mentioned the distinction between the conservative movement in general (on a global scale) and US conservatives I was referring to the above points. You can be a conservative in other countries and not support security services setting up check points for non-whites, beating up people and deporting your own citizens.
It is also the height of arrogance to think it is impossible for a political movement to be fundamentally flawed and lacking in any real positives. There are more than enough political movements in world history (both left and right) that have been completely discredited. To believe this is impossible in the US is how you get putin and your country turning into russia.
I have no issues with conservative perspectives, you need a balance to keep both sides honest, but that doesn’t mean I must believe an American political movement cannot be rotten to the core by the virtue of being American. And that’s why I think it is legitimate to preemptively ban oligarch propaganda and borderline degenerate spam “demagogue destroys [political opponent]” from what I consider to be a fundamentally malicious movement.
Apologies for the rather negative tone, but this is my perspective.
Then don’t sub to their communities, or even block the whole instance.
I think it’s pretty clearly defined. Here’s the Wikipedia definition, which fits my understanding perfectly:
It’s the equivalent of what Trump does by surrounding himself with yes-men and eliminating dissent. It’s what happens on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml when moderation decisions are made to ban people critical of China or Russia, or sympathetic to western liberalism.
I personally am proactive about avoiding echo chambers. I consider myself libertarian, I live in a conservative area, and I spend a lot of time on liberal Lemmy, all so I get exposure to a diverse set of ideas. I watch and listen to liberal, conservative, and libertarian media I consider high quality, so I don’t silo myself into one way of looking at things.
I want social media to reflect my ideals, which means every idea is subject to challenge by providing good information and reasoned arguments. So, when there’s a suggestion that an instance be defederated, I default to “no” and must be convinced of ill intent before changing that to a “yes”. Differing ideals does not automatically mean they have ill intent, even if vocal people in the media with those ideals have ill intent.
Projection is a well known trait of narcissists, and has very little to do with political bias (source, conclusion: “Overall, we find those on the left and right are equally narcissistic. However, liberals and conservatives differ in which dimensions drive their narcissism”).
No, that’s an opinion.
However, I think both liberals and conservatives in power oppose “real action” (arrests and whatnot) because they want power. In essence, they get more political capital by slapping companies like Meta on the wrist instead of actually holding them accountable.
If a side opposes one group more than the other side, that’s because they think it’ll harm the other side more than their side. It’s rarely about doing the right thing, it’s about doing the thing that makes them look good and their opponents look bad.
Hence why we have protests, lawsuits, and media coverage. In Russia, you won’t get far doing any of those things. People know what’s going on with ICE because of those freedoms, we don’t really know what’s going on in Russia or with the Uyghurs in China because they don’t have the same freedoms.
The day the opposition to ICE stops is when we’ve become similar to Russia.
Trump has negative political support (approval is below 50%), he isn’t like Putin.
That’s just not true, do you have a source?
To vote, you need to be a citizen and register to vote before the deadline. The deadlines are clearly posted, and the process is very easy (just fill out a form and either mail it or drop it off). You only need to register once, and you’re good for life, though you’ll need to update registration if you move (at least for mail voting or between states, not sure about within states for in-person voting, I’ve never voted in person). The stages I have lived in all do registration online as well, so it’s trivial to do on a work break or something. There are even non-profits who go around to help people sign up.
There are problems, such as not every state allows mail voting (which helps for busy people, e.g. those who work multiple jobs) and no day off to vote, but the voting registration process is simple and accessible.
Gerrymandering isn’t unique to conservative, liberals do it too. It’s a problem nationwide, not just in red states. Both parties like the status quo, otherwise we’d see legislative action.
And you can be a liberal in the US or elsewhere and support it. The TSA was expanded under Obama, and Obama could have ended it entirely and returned security to airports and airlines. But he didn’t. Why? Both parties like having more power.
I 100% agree. The book It Can’t Happen Here is about exactly that, fascism happening in the US.
The closest we got was actually a Democrat: FDR. He famously broke the pattern of serving two terms and won four terms, and is the reason we have the 22nd amendment limiting presidents to 2 terms. He also incarcerated ~120k people in the Japanese internment camps, about 2/3 of which were US citizens. That’s far worse than the handful of US citizens ICE has wrongly arrested (most of which were quickly releases).
I’m not saying this to imply Trump is less bad (IMO, he’s worse in many ways), but to demonstrate that we’ve been close to fascism before from the opposite direction, so it could totally happen here.
Thanks for the honest perspective.
I too agree that propaganda should be eliminated, but that should go through the community/instance it’s on. So the proper process is:
AFAIK, we skipped all of those steps and went straight to 4.