The Lemmy Club is currently suffering from “The Nazi Bar” problem. All of their top communities are run by three right-wingers as illustrated below.
The Lemmy Club instance admin doesn’t seem to want to ban them, for the reasons mentioned below:
This vote is on whether or not we should defederate from this instance until they address their Nazi Bar problem.
Upvote = for defederation. Downvote = against defederation.
Edit: As others have mentioned, happy to treat this a only a temporary measure until the problem is resolved.
Edit 2: The Lemmy Club admin has said they will implement a rule against right wing communities, and has taken action on some problematic posts and users (see original comments below).
I’m willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to the admin here, as they have responded in good faith:
If you implement those changes then I’d be willing to withdraw the defederation proposal and consider the problem resolved.
If I have to choose between this user and federation with db0 I would side with db0.
However I must comment frankly that moving immediately to defederation over a thread in which the subject - @[email protected] - has never been the subject of db0 moderation action (with over 4k combined comments and posts over 6 months) in some attempt to strongarm me into action is, at minimum, distasteful.
Trust me, I’m a card carrying Communist party member. I do not care for conservative views at all. But I did not create The Lemmy Club to be a partisan instance - but a general instance to replace reddit. I do of course have limits, however in reviewing the posting history of @[email protected] I do not find anything worthy of banning. I do not like some of the sources they post. But they also post non-conservative stories and sources as well and generally conduct themselves in a reasonable manner in all posts and comments. They do not appear to me to be some wild-MAGA idiot, although they do seem to be conservative. They post unfavorable things about Trump fairly often. The fact that it has come to this is to me, a bit bizarre.
Thanks for having this open to outside comments, though.
The problem is all your top communities are run by these right wing guys. I know you probably don’t want to have to trawl through every post, and neither do I. But shit attracts flies.
You should be made aware, for example, that the user who posted this https://thelemmy.club/post/23635160 and this https://thelemmy.club/post/23387257 in “Right Wing Videos” is a literal neo-nazi (see his Mastadon post profile here: https://friends.ravergram.club/@Bernard). I’m sure if we dig around some more there will be many more examples.
Unfortunately we can see where things are headed because we already had to deal with instances like exploding heads. I think that, while the mods themselves seem well behaved enough to not get reported, they are effectively acting as cover for the more unsavoury characters that right wing instances invariably attract.
Unless you want to spend all your time checking those communities, I just think you’re better off without them. You are right that jumping straight to a defed vote is a bit harsh maybe, but I think if we just blocked the communities then there would be no real pressure on you to take any further action, and personally I think it would be better for the fediverse to not have right wing content platformed.
Okay now see this stuff is actionable, Forgive me for not noticing this earlier, I did not know about these documentaries by name, and being that they were zero point, zero comment posts with no reports I had not seen it. The (non Lemmy Club) user that posted them has been banned with content removed. Additionally after some investigation site user Marathon started posting some stuff of that sort recently. Also banned them for apparently being a ban-evasion account and using their alts for vote manipulation. The communities that they moderated have been removed.
I would much prefer a report over a post like this one to fix these kind of issues. If they’re posts like these were - essentially zero interaction posts that go nowhere - it’s possible I may miss them.
I think I will have to make a new rule against “right wing” communities. I don’t think I have the capacity to moderate them due to my own viewpoint, and I can’t be hands off without risking them devolving. I won’t be banning the previously mentioned user, but I will remove their communities that are conservative-themed and not allow them to moderate in such a way to only allow such sources.
I think this will address the issue.
Honestly, that all sounds quite reasonable to me, and seems like a good faith response to my original complaint. Thank you for responding in the way you did.
If you implement those changes then I’d be willing to withdraw the defederation proposal and consider the problem resolved.
I appreciate this. And if you ever feel that I start to become a problem please DM me, I’m not afraid to move instances so as not to harm an instance’s reputation, I have done so in the past.
After some consideration I don’t think - as sole admin - with such a difference in ideology, I can effectively moderate conservative communities on The Lemmy Club. I will have to remove communities like “Right Wing Videos” and others. Although I haven’t seen anything that rises to the level of “neo-nazi” from you, I have seen some of it posted to communities of yours by others, and so I can’t be hands-off either. I also have gotten and seen too many comments that our community list is off-putting to be comfortable with it. Thanks for being understanding and level-headed.
Edit: after more thought, my final wording on the rule is this:
“Users or communities that, in the view of the admin team, jeopardize the good standing of The Lemmy Club with other instances may be removed.”
It is more vague than I’d like. But allows me the flexibility to take action when needed without devolving into arguments about what’s “too right wing” if I had explicitly banned right wing comms, and applicable to more situations.