Feddit.org announced today that they are changing their rules to match German law despite their server not being hosted in Germany.
Feddit.org now bans
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The sentence “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”
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Comparing Israel to the Nazis
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Calls to end Zionism
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Calling for the dissolution of Israel
And much more. The full original post can be found here, or
Click here for full text of original post:
Hi.
In the past few days, discontent regarding mod decisions in this community has been brewing, particularly when it comes to comments on Palestine, Israel, and Israeli politics and actions. There are also misunderstandings regarding mod intention and German law. We hope to clear that up with this post.
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. Speaking of, our server admins have also posted a write-up on the same topic.
And with that, let’s go:
In Germany, antisemitism is specifically sanctioned in German criminal law, both for speech and as a motivation for other criminal behavior. In addition, Germany seeks to protect the Jewish state of Israel (the so-called “Reason of State” introduced in 2008) and thus verges toward protecting Zionism as well. Certain criticism of Israel/Israelis is also categorized as “Israel-related antisemitism”.
Since criminal law is involved, enforcement can mean things like police raids and device confiscations. After such police action, it does not really matter if it was appropriate or if cases are dropped or never charged: The damage is done. All told, it’s not that fun.
There is also no point in engaging in discussions about the veracity of statements that could get us into legal trouble. In addition, we believe that you can express most opinions without breaking rules.
If your comment contains the following, it will be removed from this community:
- 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.
- Equating Israeli actions and (historical) Nazism.
- The slogan “from the river…”
- Endorsement of or justifications for Hamas or Hezbollah, or slogans or graphics positively referring to these organizations. These are considered terrorist organizations in Germany.
- … and obviously: Any of the common antisemitic tropes or calls to violence against Jews or Israelis
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”.
If your comment is removed nonetheless, these are not the reason. I’d also like to stress that this community was never a free-speech-absolutist zone: It is a (usually lightly) moderated community. There may also be times when bans go too far. In such cases, please DM the @EuroMod@feddit.org account (which all mods have access to).
To help you understand why, I'll leave an assortment of sources here (translations via DeepL).
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Berlin in mid-May [2024] around 6 o’clock in the morning. A loud, continuous “banging” against the apartment door wakes student Alina T. from her sleep. […] When her husband opens the door, several LKA officers, two employees of the district office and the SEK “storm” past him into the apartment. Puzzled, he looks at the search warrant. […] The background to this was a Facebook entry in the student’s profile: "From the river […]
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In November 2023, the Federal Ministry of the Interior and for Home Affairs also issued a prohibition order against Hamas.[60] According to the order, “the slogan ‘From the River to the Sea’ (in German or other languages)” is a distinguishing mark of Hamas[61]. […] the current legal situation [regarding “Denial of Israel’s right to exist”] is - contrary to what the statements of the Federal Ministry of Justice suggest[63] - anything but clear. Whether incitements to eliminate the State of Israel are prosecuted depends on the respective legal opinion and the prosecution will of the respective public prosecutor’s office.
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Press release from the previous government:
In this context, Section 111 StGB, which covers public incitement to commit crimes, may also be relevant. Incitement to extinguish Israel’s existence by force may be punishable under this provision. The same applies to calls to publicly display the Hamas flag. If Hamas attacks are publicly cheered and celebrated, this may also be punishable. This means that people who cheer on Hamas’s actions or publicly express their sympathy with the attacks may constitute the criminal offence of “approval of criminal acts” under Section 140 of the German Criminal Code (StGB).
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In connection with the controversial Palestine Congress in Berlin, the German authorities have also imposed an entry ban on former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. “In order to prevent antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda at the event”, several entry bans have been issued, the news agency AFP learned from security sources on Sunday. One of these concerned Varoufakis. (Notably, Varoufakis would have spoken about one-state solutions …)
federal reverse (on behalf of the mods of !europe)
While the servers of feddit.org [http://feddit.org/] are in Austria, most of the mods of this community as well as admins of this server live in Germany. [emphasis added]
In other words, the admins and mods can be held criminally liable for ‘anti-semitic’ speech on feddit.org because of where the admins and mods live.
If someone that lived in an area where child pornography was legal, and they posted child porn on feddit.org, the mods/admins would have the same legal obligation to remove that content. You can’t hide behind claiming that the servers are in another jurisdiction, when you control them.
You don’t have to like it, but that’s the way the law goes in Germany. It doesn’t even mean that the mods and admins agree with the law, but they can’t necessarily say what their real feelings are, because that could be taken as anti-semitism as well.
EDIT: This is why freedom of speech is important, y’all.
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.
It’s wild how lies and propaganda spread in real time.
So they’re joining the Nazis. They can fuck off and die.
weren’t the na*is litterally against that group of people?
no they supported israel since they promised to help with “the jewish question” by resettling them.
The nazis hate jews and israel took advantage of that to get more bodies to settle their frontier. Notably they even helped the nazis circumvent a boycott going on at the time to achieve this.
No, Christians were against the Jews. The nazis just took advantage of that hate. If you think that the nazis somehow had legitimate complaints against Jews or that those complaints were required to be in anyway accurate, then you have completely misunderstood the history of the last 100 years.
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 doubt Lemmy has any major effect on public option at large. Reddit never did when they supported Ron Paul and Bernie Sanders, at the height of its user count/activity.
But I don’t doubt that Lemmy enables echo chambers and filter bubbles that enable people to brush aside any criticism of their favorite politician or nation-state as The Good Guys.
Lemmy is the most ML oriented community I’ve been in… Well, it literally has been created by ML
Oh for sure, I don’t doubt that.
But I don’t think Lemmy has any impact beyond maybe one person somewhere changing their opinion on a company.
I don’t think you get banned for upvoting Luigi here yet
thank you
Unsurprising, still disappointing.
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?
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.
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)
Oh shit, the (White) Power Rankings heating up as feddit takes up an unexpected lead against stormfront.world
sounds like grounds for defederation. protecting fascism is fascism.
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
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
has boy boy made a video on Xinjiang I can watch yet?
Wanna take bets .world won’t defederate Feddit because muh freeze peach?
That peter griffin chart where freeze peach is for the whites
Freeze peach is when you advocate for murder of brown people, otherwise it’s white genocide to not advocate for murder.
betting 100 dollars (not going to you of course) that feddit will remain federated for .world, sh.itjust.works and my home instance, discuss.online
Damn, I could use that 100 buckazoids 😔
I posted several threads asking for that and got REAMED.
The devs are tankies, the largest instances indirectly support fascism (and the tankies), and the biggest European instance is explicitly choosing to support neonazis.
Lemmy is dead.
Wtf is this, this is like coptulating to nazis back in the day, shame on them
What capitulation lmao. Can’t capitulate to yourself.
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”.
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… 🤡
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.
German Guilt Pride is a hell of a drug. Hiding behind ‘laws’ to justify this is also very on brand.
Guilt Pride
Thank you for this term.
