Feddit.org officially announces they will ban criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian posts and comments.

feddit.org Regarding Mid-East-related Comments on !europe - feddit.org

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 ...

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

The sentence "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free"
Comparing Israel to the Nazis
Calls to end Zionism
Calling for the dissolution of Israel

And much more. The full original post can be found here, or

Slop. @hexbear.net

New Lemmy Drama: "Feddit.org officially announces they will ban criticism of Israel and pro-Palestinian posts and comments."

feddit.org /post/12550375

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Genuine freak shit. Maybe wait until the government bothers you, don't preempt them
- Says the person not at risk of early moring police raids of their home including months long confiscation of all their communication devices and costly legal proceedings to get them back.
  
  I'm a communist trans woman with guns who helps house people for free in the USA. I've had ICE and police show up to my doorstep before. For some reason, I doubt a bunch of cishet white nerd guys in Germany are about to have as many problems as I do for hosting anti israel content on a small social site.
  
  Incredible work, comrade. 🫡
  
  You are an amazing person, but I find it funny how in the US even the communists have guns.
  
  Communists have always been pro-gun, you can't have a revolution without them. Things get more nuanced within Socialism, once the revolution has broadly succeeded, but an armed working class in Capitalism is harder to oppress.
  
  Great, more power to you, but you do realize that this is still quite a different situation? What you are doing is not illegal (for now at least) and you have some control over the risks you personally take.
  Hosting a space for others but still being legally responsible for what they do in that space has different requirements. You would probably also ask people you host to not set up a meth lab in your place.
  
  What I'm doing is illegal in my jurisdiction, ICE showed up for a reason. The law can eat my ass no one should be homeless
  
  Fine, I don't know your situation, but there is still the difference that you chose to take that personal risk intentionally, while the feddit.org admins did not.
  
  Unforced error really, there's a lot of secure hosting providers that take anonymous payments. Could easily say you transferred domain control to someone else to avoid liability when the law passed. They're doing this because they have no convictions and are lazy at best, at worst they support Israel.
  
  Not really.
  You can't become anonymous and retain site ownership. The site would've needed to be shut down and a new, somehow completely unrelated site would have to be started.
  Besides, even if that were done you bet your ass a random German lawyer would immediately sue the new site for violating Impressumspflicht. That's one quick way to get the police investigating your site. Your OPSEC better be close to "hosting an illegal streaming site" level.
  Even German forums about piracy would rather have an impress and remove illegal content than remain anonymous and evade police - see tarnkappe.info.
  
  I'd argue every small social site should run on the principal that they will be prosecuted like an illegal streaming site. You can divest yourself of liability and doxing with basic opsec.
  An example: host on 1984.hosting and pay with mined or donated Monero. Only access the site through a computer specifically for that purpose, and only with Tor / Tor Browser and a Linux distro such as Qubes, Tails, or less suspiciously, Fedora Atomic. Memorize credentials if possible, if not encrypt them on drive with a strong password via a keepassxc databases. If you are hosting the site properly, you can transfer the site podman/docker container and url with databases and info intact with no effort. Make sure the computer for managing site management stuff wipes itself on every shutdown sans credential info, has secureboot, and an encrypted drive. As an admin account, only access the site through base Mullvad Browser with a VPN (ideally Mullvad) or Tor Browser on a computer of your choosing.
  You can easily say the site is no longer yours and your payment information will reflect this. This has been done before. Germany can ban the site but it'll be easily discoverable through other fediverse servers, Tor, and VPNs. They would have to ban anything that uses acitivitypub, and again, even in that scenario you can use a VPN or Tor or self host a vps with the instructions above to access it normally anyways.
  
  Simultaneously, you lose all rights to the site and risk a hostile takeover with no possible recourse.
  It's also significantly more effort to retain this level of anonymity from a state actor. I don't even think there's a single Lemmy instance which follows all those steps.
  The thing is, as of right now German censorship doesn't warrant this. Yes, it sucks you cannot freely speak about Israel. But frankly, since it only requires you to adjust your wording minimally without changing the message ("Israel should be destroyed" => "I support a one state solution where everyone in current-day Israel and Palestine can live freely, similar to how South Africa abolished apartheid.") it's really not worth it.
  Should Germany turn fascist and ban all opposition, it is too late for feddit.org and their moderators anyways. If Germany doesn't, feddit will be fine like this and reduce the strictness of these rules as German sentiment towards Israel slowly worsens over the coming years.
  
  Hostile takeover? Not if you don't share credentials. The passwords and so on should be random and encrypted.
  And yes, if Germany is going to execute you for potentially hosting a small social site that occasionally could criticize Israel you've got bigger problems and should choose to fight or flee.
  
  ~ Average german defense for their complicity in the 1940s.
  
  You would have turned in Anne Frank.
  
  Right, people arguing to not expose others to the risk of police raids are "asckually Nazis". You realize how absurd that is? Anne Frank was found during a police raid...
  
  Are you fr? Are the feddit admins (appropriate as fuck name) hosting Palestinian refugees in their server locations, now?
  Eur*s and their guilt tripping for shit they caused in the first place I stg
  
  "Look it's the law, disobeying the law is bad, I must obey the law and report my local ~~Jews~~ pro-Palestine thought crime."
  
  The irony of all the armchair warriors here is too thick 🤦 Go get yourself squatted and possibly arrested, that will for sure help the Palestinians that are facing a genocide /s
  
  Better than supporting laws that censor support for people. Some solarpunk you are.
  
  A Solarpunk with better opsec, yes. Maybe you should learn a bit about that yourself.
  
  The OPSEC of "censor discussion"? That's not the OPSEC or solarpunk I'm familar with.
  
  You need to look up the definition of censorship, because you are apparently ignorant or brainwashed by some freeze peach people on the topic.
  Asking people not to post stuff on a public forum that could endanger themselves and the operators of the forum is good opsec practise, as is removing such posts that are made regardless of that.
  
  "I think Israel is commiting genocide in Palestine."
  Is this personal info that must be scrubbed?
  
  No, that is perfectly in line with what is explicitly allowed on feddit.org.
  
  I dare you to post it and not get banned.
  From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
  
  Yeah, it would only be against the rules to say that genocide should be stopped
  
  Apparently not.
  
  I am not one of the admins effected by this, but I know better than to expose others to such risks over stupid arguments on a public internet forum.
  But apparently that is too much to expect here 🙄
  
  I have a hard time believing you care about opsec if you think rotating across accounts is a bannable offense.
  
  That wasn't me, but in specific cases where multiple accounts are used for ban evasion or similar stuff that can be justified from a moderation perspective.
  And if you do such a bad job that it is easy to guess your sockpuppet accounts then that is really a failure in opsec on your side 😅
  
  And if you do such a bad job that it is easy to guess your sockpuppet accounts then that is really a failure in opsec on your side
  Wouldn't be opsec at all if I kept more than one account active at a time or expressed the same views and opinions. You'd probably not have a risk of german prosecution if you and your moderators made use of a similar practice - which is why it's funny that you gave yourself that attribute
  
  Good opsec includes not endangering other people that might have less good opsec. I am personally not at risk because I don't live in Germany.
  
  Lmao wow that's so punk
  If we limited our speech to what was legally permissible we wouldn't need opsec to begin with, genius.
  "The safest way to use dissenting speech is to not" lol
  
  I'm a devops engineer and host quite a few things. Running a point to point VPN is fucking simple for anyone capable of running Lemmy.
  Your argument is transparently stupid to anyone with even an ounce of technical capabilities.
  
  Ok great, than explain it to us, because apparently you have no idea about the actual situation Mr. "DevOps Engineer"... (a joke of a job title for actual security professionals). /s
  
  You're as competent a security professional as your beloved Rhodesian military was at fighting.
  I also literally did tell you how in the comment above. Setup a point to point VPN and set the remote endpoint address in DNS for the URL. Make sure the remote endpoint is not in German jurisdiction.
  Someone that was actually competent (not you) would know how to do that.

450 comments