I really never noticed this as an issue as much as everyone likes to say. But cool

To be fair the Model S came out in like, 2012, and the 3 on 2017.

I’m confused by your voting system. Did these not count or does that symbol mean they don’t have voting rights?

@bdonvr, admin of The Lemmy Club here. I’d like to provide an update and some comments.

What went wrong:

One prolific user (realcaseyrollins) of my instance has created several communities and is usually one of the only submitters to their own communities. The posts in them generally garner very little interaction but once in a while hit some main feeds and get a few comments. One such post by this user to the (relatively) largest community, /c/[email protected], was a link to a Breitbart article. The content and headline of the article was not particularly objectionable, but as one user pointed out, Breitbart is a terrible news source whose use should be discouraged. The aforemenioned moderator of the community removed the comment citing a rule they had: “Using the Poisoning The Well fallacy to attack sources shared in a post is presently not allowed (this rule may change in the future, and isolated instances will not subject you to a permanent ban)”. This sparked a post to /c/yepowertrippinbastards.

I have previously checked into this user’s post history and comments and although I don’t agree with them politically (or in the way that they moderate), they did not appear to me to be an extreme MAGA/neo-nazi type and was otherwise reasonable in interactions with others, so I did not ban them. I saw it like this - if you don’t like their little news community, use one of the many other communities on the fediverse. Such is the strength of our platform. The one moderated by this user would continue to languish in obscurity.

After some interaction with db0 staff in that thread it was pointed out to me that many of my instance’s “top” communities were right-wing or adjacent to that kind of thing. This is something I was aware of and not at all fond of. I had already been debating removing several before this. The only reason I hadn’t was that all of these communities were essentially dead. The posts in them barely ever got more than 2-3 votes, and comments even rarer still. I was more hoping that some more normal communities would take hold here and just drown them out. We are a very small instance. But seeing my defense of not immediately banning realcaseyrollins and the community list a db0 admin then moved to open this thread.

As realcaseyrollins was the only point of discussion so far, I made a comment saying that the issue presented thus far were not worthy of defederation talk. After some more discussion it was pointed out to me that there were two videos posted to my instance which were very much explicit neo-nazi propaganda. I had not seen these posts because they were made to the very much dead (no more than a dozen posts in it’s six month history) because they garnered basically no votes, no comments, and had not been reported to me until now. I also would not have known by the title of the videos without looking into it further. The posts were made by an outside user.

What I have done to address it.

I do not tolerate nazis or their ilk, nor will I ever. The moment I was made aware of this the two posts were promptly removed and the user banned.

Furthermore I had discovered one user of my instance - @marathon - who had been posting things that weren’t so explicitly awful but trending that way. After careful inspections of their posts and comments I discovered that they were ban evading from other instances and upvoting their own posts with alts. They were also banned and all of their communities were removed.

After further consideration of some of the commentary here by users and admins I decided that I could not be host to any communities that were conservative/right wing. Even if they did not reach the level of neo-nazi. I am very much a leftist. I was never comfortable with these communities but I did not create The Lemmy Club to be a partisan instance. I had not removed them to date because they were small and dead and was hoping they’d amount to nothing rather than having to foray into actively moderating on an ideological basis. Some of that is definitely naivety on my part. In theory I don’t have too much of a problem with communities that aren’t politically aligned with my personal views existing on my instance (to a point, of course). I made The Lemmy Club as a general instance. But I now realize, as sole admin of the site, that I can’t effectively moderate any such community centered around politics that differ from my own to that extent. I can’t be hands off in case it becomes more extremist either. So I have implemented a new site-wide rule: “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.”. This allows me broader, more generic power than a rule explicitly banning “right-wing” communities, and entirely avoids the debate of what constitutes “too right wing” while accomplishing the same thing. After implementing this rule I moved to remove all communities that are themed around these kinds of politics.

In addition, after seeing this thread - and with no prompting from me - realcaseyrollins has decided to voluntarily close /c/[email protected], /c/[email protected], and /c/[email protected].

I hope this addresses any concerns that you might have.

A few comments on the situation.

I started this instance because I was excited by the fediverse and wanted to contribute. I pay, personally, hundreds of dollars a year to run this site and provide space to some users in the fediverse. With the generosity of a few of my users half of my costs are now covered by them. This is something I think both the db0 team and I share, though their operation and contribution to the fediverse have been far larger than mine, which I commend. We are a very small instance. We are not pushing for growth for growths sake. I think with this in mind and the interactions you’ve had with me thus far have shown that I’m a reasonable person who is more than willing to engage in dialogue.

With that said I really am not fond of the way this whole situation came about. I would have very much appreciated a PM or message on Element before taking such a drastic step. I don’t think that this strongarming was at all necessary. I believe such actions should follow an escalation process. The scope of the issue should be taken into account in this as well, as far as actual neo-nazi posts we’re talking about two, to a dead comm, that got no interaction. A quick report and I would have immediately banned the user and removed the posts, and probably have just went ahead and removed the community as well. Or we could’ve continued discussion on /c/yepowertrippinbastards. Not that I have an issue addressing issues publicly, but the title of this thread will make it seem to many users (and let’s face it, we’re mostly ex-redditors here. Most of us read way too much into headlines and don’t read further) that The Lemmy Club is some right-wing instance full of unsavory crap. I mean the governance comm on db0 has only ever had seven total posts and this is one. Gotta be pretty bad right? And that impression will not go away very easy. Just the suggestion that db0 should defederate would signal to most people that the instance is toxic and the problem quite serious and that the admins had probably already attempted dialogue that went nowhere. And that upsets me because that is not the case at all, and does actively harm this small little project that I’ve put in a lot of time and personal effort into. We all want to help build the fediverse. Let’s work together in a constructive manner, that’s all I ask.

Thanks for reading,

@bdonvr, sole admin of thelemmy.club

I didn’t know this from the title and since the posts didn’t get any traction or reports I did not look into it at the time.

The moment I had this info the posts were removed and the (outside) user banned. I don’t tolerate that shit.

I’m writing a longer comment when I get a moment at a keyboard about my removal of the comm as a whole.

Incredible game. If you ever get the chance I 10000% recommend playing it.

It was intentional. It’s a tribute to Apollo

Google gets to control the source code, what additions are added, and what features don’t get into it.

Yes technically some organization could fork it and then maintain a fork themselves. But it’s a huge undertaking that almost nobody has the money to fund. Browsers are free so there’s really not a lot of monetization schemes for browsers.

So nobody as far as I know has really been able to maintain a hard fork of chromium for very long. Remember, every change you make then has to be maintained by you and then you have to keep it up to date with the chromium master tree while also keeping all of your changes compatible. It is a big undertaking almost as big as modern operating systems. Browsers are just too complicated so Google in this position does still have a monopoly that’s very hard to fight.

Almost all browsers other than Safari and Firefox are based on Chromium, which gives Google a ton of control.

Bluey would be much better than what it’d really be:

YouTube Kids on autoplay.

The comms were essentially dead. It’s hard to say anything ‘thrived’ there. The posts in question had zero interaction. Of course it’s concerning it was there at all however these were not “communities” where any kind of discussion happened. 2 people would’ve made a large silent majority of people who were actually browsing in these comms on a weekly basis.

If this had been somewhere where people actually made comments or posted more than a handful of times a month (there were 12 posts and 6 comments in the entire history of the comm) - I’m sure I would have identified and taken action earlier. Additionally, they were both video posts. It’s entirely possible nobody ever clicked on them to watch them and I don’t know these videos by title and did not realize what they were, and without further action to prompt me I did not look further into them.

Of course I will be more vigilant going forward.

These were two posts by a non-user of my instance that had zero points or comments. They had not been reported to me until now and I have promptly banned them and removed their content. I do not now nor have ever tolerated such content.

Although this content has garnered near zero “community” or interaction on my instance I have decided that I cannot effectively moderate nor leave conservative communities be and have therefore removed them.

I hope that this addresses any concerns you or your userbase may have. Please report anything like that you see - it is possible otherwise that I may miss it.

I had not taken action against these posts because they had not been reported and had not garnered enough interest or interaction to have been seen by me organically until now. That is not one of my users but they have been banned.

After further consideration I’ve removed any explicitly conservative comms from my instance as I don’t feel I can effectively moderate them or leave them be.

The user in question has never faced moderation action from db0.

I’ve definitely had to do that with Windows so is it not ready?

Yes of course.

But scrolling through their history I hesitate to throw that label so strongly. Would you ban them? Actually, you haven’t done so despite having the capability. Nor their communities.

I think my problem is more that they’re such a prolific poster on my small instance that it reflects more on my instance. Like if I had a few other communities that were larger than theirs I probably wouldn’t worry about it so much.