Feddit.org admins have responded to the recent controversy about the pro-Israel censorship on !europe@feddit.org and elsewhere on their instance. I thought I’d repost it here for greater visibility (since it’s posted in a mainly German language comm). Also, there’s a fair bit of comment removal going on in there, and the contents are not being shown in the modlog, so it’s a bit hard to tell what’s being removed and how it’s affecting the discussion.

TLDR: They stand fully behind the mods of !europe@feddit.org and their actions (Edit: Because the law, or at least the way the law is being enforced, says they have to)

!Europe@feddit.org mods have also spoken up: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12550375 (https://feddit.org/post/12550375). Their stance seems to be “We live in Germany, and we don’t want the cops breaking down our door. Here’s some examples”. And that’s totally reasonable, I get that and if I lived under that law I’d be behaving the same way. The question then is, should the biggest europe-centric comm be hosted and modded in such a way that criticism about one of Europe’s most powerful nations isn’t allowed?

Alternative Europe-centric comm, if you’re looking for something censorship-free: !europe@lemmy.dbzer0.com

You can find their post here: https://lemsha.re/feddit.org/post/12529640 (https://feddit.org/post/12529640)

Previous post about their behaviour: https://lemsha.re/sh.itjust.works/post/37918115 (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37918115)

@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com, let me know if this is outside the boundaries of this comm and I’ll move it elsewhere. I’m mainly posting here as a follow up to the previous post.

Quote of their post follows:

Hello everyone,

in the last few days there have been some accusations against the moderators of !europe@feddit.org as well as against our admin team of being Nazis or Zionists, mainly because of the way of dealing with criticism of Israel.

We explicitly reject these accusations and will not tolerate such accusations. In particular, people who accuse others in this way without any concrete objective reason are not welcome on feddit.org. This is already covered by our rule of respectful interaction.

First of all, we would like to remind you that the use of feddit.org must be compliant with the rights and regulations of the DACH region. This is explicitly mentioned in our instance rules, and includes Germany (D), Austria (A) and Switzerland (CH). The infrastructure of feddit.org is maintained by the Fediverse Foundation, a non-profit association in Austria. Our Admin team, which takes care of the instance wide moderation, organization and supporting infrastructure operations, is based in Germany. Since we primarily target the German speaking coutries, we also try to comply with laws and regulations of Switzerland.

Even if we do not have to actively search for violations of the law, it is necessary to intervene after becoming aware of them. This includes, for example when moderators or admins receive messages about posts or comments, but also when such content is discovered by chance when browsing Lemmy.

https://www.wko.at/internetrecht/providerhaftung

In the case of “hosting”, the service provider has limited liability if the provider

  • has no actual knowledge of specific unlawful activities or content and is not aware of any facts or circumstances with regard to claims for damages from which the unlawful activity or content is obvious, and
  • as soon as it obtains this knowledge or awareness, takes swift action to block access to the illegal content or to remove it.

Relevant criminal offenses include the following:

Legal instruments against the dissemination of anti-Semitic statements or statements condoning terrorist acts of the German Parliament (German)

excerpt, unofficial translation

Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.

  • From 2.1.1 Criminal condoning of criminal acts

According to Section 140 No. 2 StGB, anyone who publicly condones certain types of unlawful acts listed in Sections 140, 138 and 126 StGB in a manner that is likely to disturb the public peace is liable to prosecution. Such related offenses include murder (§ 211 StGB), manslaughter (§ 212 StGB), genocide (§ 6 VStGB), crimes against humanity (§ 7 VStGB), war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12 VStGB) and aggression (§ 13 VStGB), but also various offenses directed against sexual self-determination or personal freedom…”

  • From 2.1.2 Incitement to hatred

Pursuant to Section 130(1) StGB, anyone who, in a manner likely to disturb the public peace, 1. incites hatred against a national, racial, religious or ethnic group, against parts of the population or against an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population, incites violence or arbitrary measures or 2. attacks the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming a designated group, parts of the population or an individual because of their membership of a designated group or part of the population"(…)”1. distributes or makes available to the public any content (Section 11(3)) or offers, provides or makes available to a person under the age of eighteen any content (Section 11(3)) that a) incites violence or arbitrary measures against persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a), or c) attacks the human dignity of persons or groups of persons referred to in letter a) by insulting, maliciously denigrating or defaming them, or 2. produces, obtains, supplies, keeps in stock, offers, advertisements or undertakes to import or export content referred to in number 1 letters a to c (§ 11 paragraph 3) in order to use it in the sense of number 1 or to enable another person to make such use of it.”

  • From 2.1.3 Incitement to hatred related to crimes under international law

"As of December 2022, the new criminal offense of incitement to hatred related to a crime under international law was introduced in Section 130 (5) StGB. According to this, it is a criminal offense to publicly condone an act of the type specified in Sections 6 to 12 of the German Criminal Code against one of the majorities of persons specified in Section 130 (1) No. 1 of the German Criminal Code in a manner that is likely to incite hatred or violence against such a majority of persons and to disturb public peace…”

  • From 2.1.4 Formation and support of terrorist organizations

Pursuant to Section 129a(1) StGB, “(1) Whoever establishes an association (Section 129(2)) whose purposes or whose activities are directed towards 1. murder (§ 211) or manslaughter (§ 212) or genocide (§ 6 of the International Criminal Code) or crimes against humanity (§ 7 of the International Criminal Code) or war crimes (§§ 8, 9, 10, 11 or § 12 of the International Criminal Code) or 2. offenses against personal freedom in the cases of § 239a or § 239b (…), or whoever participates in such an association as a member ”

  • From 2.1.5 Disseminating propaganda material of terrorist organizations and using their emblems

“Finally, it is also a punishable offense to disseminate propaganda material of terrorist organizations and to use their emblems (Sections 86, 86a StGB).”

Section 130 Incitement of masses

excerpt, unofficial translation

Translated through deepl.com. May not be fully accurate from a legal perspective.

(3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or downplays an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the child indicated in section 6 (1) of the Code of Crimes against International Law in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years or a fine.

(4) Whoever publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner which violates the dignity of the victims by approving, glorifying or justifying National Socialist tyranny and arbitrary rule incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine.

Some further links, mostly in German:

In this instance, we fully support the moderators of !europe@feddit.org to potentially remove too much rather than too little in case of legal uncertainties.

One of the triggers for the current debate is this post, which followed the removal of a comment comparing National Socialism with the current situation in Israel, which can be considered a trivialization of National Socialism. Such statements can, among other things, lead to imprisonment. Among other things, the post claimed that the removal had a Zionist motive, an accusation that should always be supported by appropriate evidence and prior to which it should be ruled out that there are alternative explanations.

We will not be removing every comment that goes even remotely in this direction, but we reserve the right to permanently ban users from feddit.org who make unfounded accusations, such as labeling our instance, admins, moderators, or other users as Nazis or Zionists, without substantial supporting arguments. This is especially the case when this is recurring behavior and not an isolated incident.

This includes content such as this post by @Deceptichum@quokk.au, who was banned from our instance shortly before that post due to multiple incitements of violence and terrorism. This person also seems to be the admin of the instance quokk.au, or at least to have good relations to the admin, since we received a censure on Fediseer from quokk.au around the same time, in which we are being accused of being Zionists and Nazis, and @Deceptichum@quokk.au has suggested [to defederate quokk.au from us].

If this censure by quokk.au is not withdrawn in a timely manner, we will defederate quokk.au from our side for these unsubstantiated and untrue accusations. quokk.au is a relatively small instance with only a few local users, which tried to build an alternative news community that is not on one of the “big” instances. Unfortunately, this community also seems to be a poor alternative if this is how their admin typically acts.

:::

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
    31·
    1 month ago

    I’m going to let this up, since it might affect future posts in YPTB. But I think we need some sort of [tag] to assign to these posts to make them easily findable in the comm. It can’t be [meta] since that should be about comm-internals. Any ideas?

  • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
    227·
    1 month ago

    an accusation that should always be supported by appropriate evidence and prior to which it should be ruled out that there are alternative explanations.

    where is the evidence that the law was broken. I guess not

    we fully support the moderators of europe@feddit.org icon Europe to potentially remove too much rather than too little in case of legal uncertainties.

    So they concede they censored it after all… Actual post for readers to review:

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/80186c3d-fad5-4003-b2be-fe3dd34701d0.png

    So at least we now know that zionist censorship will be permitted on the server. People can make up their own minds on this.

    This includes content such as this post by @Deceptichum@quokk.au avatar Deceptichum , who was banned from our instance shortly before that post due to multiple incitements of violence and terrorism.

    Red herring to distract from the original censorship issue and root cause of this entire drama.

    As predicated, this response was done in bad faith to either cover up clown behavior ie unified front type thing for an org or because they are in fact Zionist enablers. We really can’t tell as of now.

    TLDR. Citation of the laws does not mean that the law was violated. They conceded original comment was censored. This is the same shit that happened with lemmy.world and luigi…

    another regime front propaganda server detected: feddit.org

    I don’t support de-federation since i don’t support unnecessary censorship but these people will need to be monitored, with time it will become obvious if they are in fact Zionist

    For purposes of disclosure: i had a ran in with them last year and coped a ban for calling out German oligarchy as being nazi nepo baby heavy. pretext for censorship was “tone”

    • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      132·
      1 month ago

      Unheard of even!

      Maybe we can ask the ADL if Palestine has humans worthy of life next. Surely we’ll get a the default and sane answer of “What? Yes of course.”

  • flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    83·
    1 month ago

    No one who has been paying attention is surprised.

    As I’ve said in the last however many posts people made to YPTB about feddit- yes, you guys have been breaking the rules. But these rules are fucked, so that is a good thing!

    Do the unlawful thing in a space where the laws are wrong and immoral and unjust! Why is this so hard to understand? Get banned by assholes! Wear that shit with pride! Call a nazi a nazi to their face! Anyone protecting nazis is a bastard! Scream that genocide is real! Getting banned from an online space isn’t even a slap on the wrist. It’s so barely inconvenient, it’s literally the least you can do!

  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
    239·
    1 month ago

    Oh so they aren’t Nazis and Zionists, they’re just poor little cowards who so scared they support Nazis and Zionists.

  • Omega@discuss.online
    141·
    1 month ago

    Just because they speak German doesn’t mean their servers have to be hosted in Germany

    I rather see a fundraising effort and a temporary lock on Comms related to politics just to fix this.

    They doubled down, so I don’t expect this happening, I just hope it is shunned and defederated, just like Lemmy was meant to be used.

  • surprised pikachu@feddit.orgEnglish
    145·
    1 month ago

    Also, there’s a fair bit of comment removal going on in there, and the contents are not being shown in the modlog, so it’s a bit hard to tell what’s being removed and how it’s affecting the discussion.

    this is unfortunately how lemmy currently works when it comes to instance bans. we would have to manually remove every single comment of those accounts separately for them to show up in modlog. if you look at the ages of the accounts and the names being used it should already be clear that those are all just troll accounts. if you’ve run across “anti yank” accounts in the past, these seem to be operated by the same person, with their only purpose being to troll by trying to stir up more shit on current drama (they seem to always be aware of the latest drama on lemmy) and frequently call americans and german genociders, not even being consistent in their own arguments.

    you can see some of the original contents here:

    spoiler




    these are all sockpuppet accounts with the same agenda of making lemmy a less desirable place.

    • grue@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 month ago

      you can see some of the original contents here:

      Thanks, that’s been more useful than anything else in helping me figure out which side to support.

      Spoiler: it’s not yours.

      Removing comments saying things like “just create a secular state that respects people’s right” should’ve been your “are we the baddies?” realization moment.

  • adry@piefed.socialEnglish
    1319·
    1 month ago

    It saddens me that people are just looking at the ‘overview’ (2-3 reports by 1-2 users, here at YTPB, all in a few days) instead of doing their own research. This announcement right here, includes a disingenuous ‘tldr’ that seems to now be pointing fingers to the instance admins on feddit.org (like, extending the accusations that fell upon c/europe moderation team).

    followed the original community (!europe@feddit.org now has a fork under this instance), and I couldn’t say they’re zionists, nazis or anti-semites. Those who are doing it, stretching these concepts, do it with an agenda (either theirs or ‘given’)…

    • FelixCress@lemmy.world
      72·
      1 month ago

      seems to now be pointing fingers to the instance admins on feddit.org

      You mean people who failed to remove the mods in question and instead doubled down on their ridiculous stance?

    • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
      176·
      1 month ago

      That’s funny, seeing as I purposefully kept my post neutral in tone. The TLDR is almost directly lifted from their own statement: “In this instance, we fully support the moderators of !europe@feddit.org”. I made no claims or insinuations one way or another, it’s weird how you’re being so defensive right off the bat. My purpose for this post was to spark discussion, not condemnation.

      • surprised pikachu@feddit.orgEnglish
        118·
        1 month ago

        the problem is that your tldr does not take any of the explanation into account, while the previous posts were actively accusing the moderators and admins of being zionists and not understanding the reason for removal was instead the trivialization of national socialism.

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
          101·
          1 month ago

          The previous post which I linked, did not make any accusations beyond stating there was a trend to the posts being locked (which there obviously was). The comments were, but I assume if you’ve read all the comments in this comm in the past few days you’ve had ample opportunity to make up your own mind and the TLDR isn’t going to influence that.

          Nothing in the announcement is really a surprise, or unexpected. I disagree with the extent of the mod actions, and I feel reasonably certain some mods are using it as cover for pushing their own opinions. I also understand how the legal threat binds the behaviour of the admins. I will say that those who think this legal restriction on speech and discussion is a good thing are deluded.

            • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
              131·
              1 month ago

              That’s… not the previous post I linked.

              Am I correct in saying that the announcement essentially boils down to ‘We support the mods, and don’t think they (or we) have done anything wrong. Here’s why.’?

              • surprised pikachu@feddit.org
                314·
                1 month ago

                I admit I didn’t follow the link, but given the context I think it’s only fair to start with the first current post on this topic, as that’s one of several that contains accusations of zionism.

                considering your update, it would still be reasonable to explicitly include the trivialization of national socialism as the original issue, because even though there are certain laws that we might not agree with, at least I fully agree that it shouldn’t be acceptable to trivialize national socialism.

                • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.worksOP
                  101·
                  1 month ago

                  At some point, the TLDR stops being a TLDR if you pack every point into it. That also brings up the discussion of what is considered trivialization of national socialism, etc.

          • Count042@lemmy.mlEnglish
            71·
            1 month ago

            This doesn’t account for the locking of posts made about the current genocide with 0-1 comments.

  • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    171·
    1 month ago

    I saw this the other day and in that time I immediately deleted my account on Feddit.org. I’m not going to associate myself with this server if they are going to uphold and support Zionism. I don’t care if it is for German law or not. Also their whining and complaining about defederation is laughable and makes them seem more petty than lemmy.ml, who didn’t whine and complain and threaten counter defederation when they got blocked by any of these other servers.
    This is a historic moment because it’s the first time that a server I’ve joined has ended up becoming one of the few servers I actively work to embargo however I feasibly can.

  • FelixCress@lemmy.world
    205·
    1 month ago

    Dear admins of feddit,

    Instead of suspending overeager mod and apologising, you have doubled down.

    If you are afraid of “police knocking to your door” (which is moronic by the way), what about removing these cretinous mods and migrating the community to another instance? I suggest the one you mention in your post.

  • Jessica@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    418·
    1 month ago

    I blocked their instance. I did comment on that post, and the replies weren’t worth responding to. They can argue the granular details of what Zionism is, and is not—I don’t care. I could be factually incorrect in my replies (I am human and capable of error) but I still stand by them. At the end of the day, it’s not worth the time and effort to engage any further with them.

    I’m going to get back to the leftist memes and shitposts, just as god intended.

    I still stand firmly with the people of Palestine, and hope to be able to support them further from here on out. I don’t have any extra money to donate, nor do I have the time to be able to go out and protest (I work 3rd shift and have to sleep during the day). But I will try my best to do more.

    The Palestinians deserve for their voices to be heard loud and wide. Fuck Israel, free Palestine.

  • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    131·
    1 month ago

    So… because it’s hosted in Germany… it’s functionally illegal to criticize the (Israeli) government? The irony of that is painful.

    • neons@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      310·
      1 month ago

      No. You’re allowed to croticize it obviously. Whoever told you that ridiculous lie is lying to you. Don’t let yourself be fooled.

      I’ll even prove it to you: Nettanyahu is an authoritarian that flirts with fascism. I am worried by the complete diaregard for palestinian life and the war crimes in the region.

      All completely legal

      What you’re not allowed to do is say israel doesn’t have a right to exist or say that the actions of the israeli government are representative of jews in general. Because that’s not criticism, that’s anti-semitism.

        • neons@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          18·
          1 month ago

          Posting the popular opinion while adding nothing to thw discussion

          Dang, I thought we left Karmafarming behind on Reddit

        • neons@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          110·
          1 month ago

          If you don’t know what dofferentiates nazism from fascism in general, you’re allowed to just not answer at all

          • FelixCress@lemmy.world
            51·
            1 month ago

            If you don’t know what dofferentiates nazism from fascism in general, you’re allowed to just not answer at all

            I do know sweetie, unlike yourself. You are allowed to not answer.

              • rumimevlevi@lemmings.world
                1·
                1 month ago

                Police beating anti Zionist ultra orthodox and discriminate against Ethiopian jews . Bombing the Israelis hostages. Say that Hitler didn’t want to kill jews claiming it was the mufti who fooled him

              • FelixCress@lemmy.world
                91·
                1 month ago

                Firstly, it is a “Jew” - capital letter as it is a name of nationality.

                Secondly number of Jews are antisemitic and some people are even making an argument that Zionist movement is antisemitic, although this is not what I referred to - see below.

                Thirdly, Nazis believe that certain races are inferior. Nazis remain nazis, only their targets change. Now nazis believe that Palestinians (and Arabs in general, apart from Saudis of course) are inferior.

                • neons@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  19·
                  1 month ago

                  Firstly, it is a “Jew” - capital letter as it is a name of nationality.

                  I’m asking you to elaborate on that one. Because the way I read this, you’re just blatantly anti-semitic.

                  Secondly number of Jews are antisemitic and some are even making an argument that Zionist movement is antisemitic, although this is not what I referred to - see below.

                  Number of jews is antisemitic? Do you know what antisemitism is? It’s pseudoscience for jewhate. the same as racism.

                  Thirdly, Nazis believe that certain races are inferior. Nazis remain nazis, only their targets change. Now nazis believe that Palestinians (and Arabs in general, apart from Saudis of course) are inferior.

                  Nazism is a specific form of fascism as it was lived and propagated by hitlers Nazi-Regimd during WW2 (shocker). A key pillar of Nazism is antisemitism.

                  Nazism is literally just hitler-flavoured fascism.

                  If you don’t follow hitlers flavour, you’re a normal fascist (which is just as vad as nazism btw)

      • Ganbat@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        6·
        1 month ago

        Careful, the Feddit admins will ban you for saying that kind of thing because it goes against German laws against antisemitism.

        Sarcasm is dead.

        Edit: I actually completely missed the most ironic element of your comment the first time.

        What you’re not allowed to do is say […] that the actions of the israeli government are representative of jews in general.

        You mean… like Feddit admins are doing… which they say is to comply with German law…? Use context, homie.