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
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.