- cross-posted to:
- bloc@anarchist.nexus
- cross-posted to:
- bloc@anarchist.nexus
This is a FAF defederation vote for !multiverse.soulism.net. Note that I have tried to summarize views both for and against this proposal, rather than pushing a particular view. Please feel free to comment if you want to contribute your own thoughts and experiences.
The reason for this vote is that admins have been getting a lot of reports about Grail and Their instance from our users lately, but tbh I am not sure whether the reports warrant a ban or not. While most cases are more clear-cut, I wanted some more admin & community feedback on this one.
For context, the soulism instance is (for all practical purposes) a personal instance run by infamous fediverse “personality”, Grail. Grail is suspected to be a recent alt of DroneRights aka HardlightCereal aka Exocrinous aka Dragon Rider aka Drag.
Grail, the current incarnation, is (imo) a liberal progressive masquerading as a leftist (a self-described “Anarcho-Antireal theorist” whatever the fuck that is). And I really don’t think this qualifies as a “No true Scotsman” situation where it’s arguable either way - it’s immediately obvious from reading Their comment history.
I don’t really want to rehash the extensive history of this user and Their alts in detail here, however I’m pretty sure long-term Lemmy users will be aware of at least some of these previous alt accounts, which have been almost universally banned. I’ll try my best to summarize the issues below.
The case for defederation
Here’s some recent examples/summaries of why the user is so problematic:
- Concise summary of past trolling behavior:
. - Recent YPTB post: Banned for Nuttin’
- Recent example of Grail’s electoralism and criticism of c/flipanarchy rules, including a claim that pugjesus isn’t a turbolib 😂 https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63720883
- More blue MAGA electoralism demonstrating that the user is about as “leftist” as Joe Biden
Recent examples of hating on / agitating against our instance:
The case against defederation
- Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
- While some folks (including myself at the time, unfortunately) took the “DroneRights” account as an attempt to troll transgender folk with the “my gender is an attack helicopter” line, it could also have been a genuine attempt to advocate for xenogenders. There’s no way to know 100% for sure what Their intentions truly were, but on reflection and with the benefit of time, I think it could be reasonably argued They should have been given the benefit of the doubt on that topic.
- Just because this user seems to have a grudge against our instance and bad-jackets anyone to their left as politically “right wing” doesn’t mean we should ban them. They are still entitled to express their opinion.
- Given Grail’s unique personality, is there anywhere else They would potentially fit in other than the Fediverse? Maybe we should cut Them some slack and just let users block Them individually.
Warning
Please do not attempt to re-litigate the topic of xenogenders in this post. Such comments will be removed as off-topic. As an instance, our policy is to respect personal pronouns, whatever they are. This is not a referendum on the validity of xenogenders. The topic of the post is clear - whether or not we should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance. If you want to bring your own experiences into the comments that is fine, but please keep them pertinent to whether or not we should defederate from this instance / user on the basis of Their problematic behaviours, not on the basis of Their identity or pronouns.
Instructions
The proposal is:
We should defederate from the multiverse.soulism.net instance due to an extensive history of trolling by the main admin’s alts, and due to the admin being openly hostile to our instance.
Please upvote this post to vote for defederation. Downvote to remain federated. This proposal will require a 2/3 majority to pass.
P.S., Please be sure to use Grail’s preferred pronouns of “capitalised They/Them”, so we don’t have to remove comments for misgendering.
Edit: This will include banning Grail’s alts as well, for clarity.
You must log in or # to comment.
Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591
This is a simple majority vote. The current tally is as follows:
- For: (3),
(7), 
(1), 
(1) - Against:
- Local Community: +0.1
- Outsider sentiment: Positive
- Total: +10.1
- Percentage: 86.00%
This vote will complete in 2.53 hours
This is a simple majority vote
@db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com is this just a display error? the proposal says it needs 2/3 though we’re also past that
The bot tracks the current votes, not the entire userbase’s votes. Right now it would pass if votes stayed the same until the vote is done, but we give people more time to vote so it is too early to tell rn.
What do you mean? The voting isn’t done
I mean like the post says it needs a 2/3 majority while the bot says it only needs a simple majority to pass
The bot just doesn’t have a setting for it. But the defed is not automated anyway.
- For:
Hm, while this vote is technically passing, I have a concern about quorum. Do we really want to enforce a defederation with only 7 votes?Edit : wait lemme check the bot didn’t die instead
Edit2: nevermind the bot bugged out
Good pickup, dbo. The numbers look a lot more solid now.
Also, dbzer0 should probably be concerned by Flatworm changing the proposal after several days of voting, which they said they were gonna do in this comment
Ah unruffled said, this ain’t the supreme court. We don’t fall for loophole. If people think they should allow your alts they can bring it up
Whose alts?
deleted by creator
It’s not misgendering to use impersonal pronouns in a sentence, Grail. Db0 wasn’t even referring to You.
As an outsider, I find it weird that this instance warrants defederation when there’s a lot of similar content/stances/trolls on mainstream “liberal” instances like lemmy.world, piefed.world etc. IMO community-wide bans would be more appropriate
lemmy.world and piefed.world might be getting the chopping block in the near future. Go check out the drama in !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com it’s crazy.
This is sort of unrelated, but I really hate how the world “electoralism” gets thrown around lately, when most of the accusations are pretty far off the mark, and seem to come back around as being generally anti-democracy and edgy. I think a lot of people here genuinely do not understand the concept.
It’s particularly upsetting when it’s being used as a primary argument in favor of defederation over one person’s alleged behavior and in this case - ideas. I have always had a soft spot for db0 but some of the recent meta seems like distractions at best
It’s by no means the primary argument. The individual is a relentless troll and drama farmer who just happens to be cosplaying as an anarchist at the moment. The constant campaigning for the democrats was just just the icing on the cake.
You are right I think to say that people don’t seem to understand our policy on electoralism. It’s not so much that we don’t allow any expression of electoralism, it’s that be don’t allow people to shame or condescend to those of our users who are anti-electoralism. That’s an important distinction. Many leftists choose to vote third party, or to abstain, or to hold their nose and vote for the dems but not go on about it. And that’s perfectly fine. All of the above. That’s democracy in action.
last i checked electoralism is not in the instance rules, there is no policy about it.
no, it’s in some community rules
so, ban Them from those communities? why are we discussing a defederation from this instance when one user broke some community rule?
Because the user is also the admin of the instance, and it’s likely a lot of the users are just alts.
it’s likely a lot of the users are just alts.
please tell me this is more than conjecture.
is there at least one other user of that instance who is a known troll?
anything at all that suggests this is true, like an account “Grail2@multiverse.whatever.com”?
if not, then we might as well adopt the policy to defederate from any instance who has an admin that broke any community rule anywhere before, on the same basis.
I agree, I don’t really care about voting all that much and would rather spend My time talking about how to do direct action. “You should vote against fascism” is bloody obvious and should be 1% of the conversation in anarchist circles. But dbzer0 users always want to talk about voting, always want to talk about the Democrats. I can’t even remember the last conversation I had about direct action or civil disobedience on this instance.
These dbzer0 people are so obsessed with electoralism, I’m sick of it. We might have to have our own vote about defederating dbzer0 for being too obsessed with electoralism.
I think this vote is kinda weird, because there’s nothing in the actual proposal about banning Me as a user, it’s all about the instance. So I would still be able to post to dbzer0 from My .world account, and I wouldn’t be breaking any rules. If this vote passes, it will only affect the other users on MULTIVERSE.
So a bunch of people who are new to the fediverse don’t see as much anarchist content, and y’all don’t get any benefit from that. I don’t see how the cost/benefit maths out.
We’ll ban Your alts as well, thanks for the reminder. And yes, it’s unfortunate.
That’s not in the proposal though. You can’t change an instance governance proposal after people have already voted. That’s not democracy.
Sorry matey, fuck around and find out I guess.
okay, what the fuck?
This ain’t the supreme court. If I see a loophole, I close the loophole. For a defederation to be effective it will be necessary to ban alts as well.
oh right, could u update the post to reflect this change? thanks
Done 👍
ok fair enough ig
I want to just state, They do not argue in good faith, They’re a known bad actor. I had an interaction with Them and “someone” I believe was on of Their alts recently that turned into election blaming and straw man arguments. From what I have read and seen on here about Them, They’re bad faith in Their actions.
The fact that a blocked user can reply to someone is very unfortunate. I will add the lead up to the bad encounter was also Them pretending to be conservative, convince me of Their conservative nature, then turning around and throwing out Their manifesto. If that’s not working in bad faith I do not know what else is.
some people use words differently than u. this is usually not a big deal if u can still communicate ur actual beliefs to each other. i went and found that interaction u describe, and it just sounds like They consider it conservative to keep positive cultural values which are very much against what thatcher and reagan advocated. someone having a different opinion than u does not mean they argue in bad faith.
If I come at you pretending to be one thing, then show I’m not really that, I’m just trying to get a rise out of you, that’s bad faith, period.
You were arguing accelerationist ideology and saying Trump’s presidency is good for people of colour because it’ll somehow cause a communist revolution. I was talking practical revolution-building and easing the burden of the people so we can focus on overthrowing the two party system.
for the record, i found this interaction, and this seems to be a largely correct description. one comment was kinda accelerationist-y and they also argued trump now was no worse than what the dems wouldve done (for ppl on food stamps).
unfortunately lemmys ui is kinda ass so very long threads become impossible to read tho, so i could only read a large part of it.they seemed very upset at Ur use of the word conservative to refer to positive values, which i think is understandable, but still not a sign of U being bad faith (i assume the You should be capitalized? idk sory).
EDIT: turns out i actually had read all of it, my lemmy app just sucks
Yes, capitalised U please and thank you very much.
I can understand why someone would be upset at My flippancy with the word conservative. For My part I was frustrated at being asked a question whose premises I fundamentally disagreed with. I couldn’t come up with any honest answer to the question “when is conservatism acceptable” in that context, where it was obviously being loaded with meaning to imply that 1: the Dems are conservatives and 2: I am materially supporting conservative ideology by saying to vote for them. The question was laden with so much bullshit, I couldn’t find any way to pick an honest nugget out of the shit with which to have a good faith conversation. So I flipped the script and threw the bullshit pile in the compost by going on a wild tangent about Indigenous conservatism, which ostensibly answered the question but gave the other person nothing that they wanted.
That’s My attitude on these sorts of things - if you won’t put in a basic level of good faith to ask Me questions that I can honestly answer, I’m not gonna answer those questions in good faith. There was no way for Me to answer that question with both good faith and honesty. I had to pick one. I chose honesty over good faith. I got frustrated and went “random bullshit go” over the alternative.
TL;DR: Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers
Defederate, no question.
The case against defederation
Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
I don’t necessarily agree with this stance. Being neurodivergent is not an excuse to 1) be a raging asshole, and 2) flippantly throw baseless accusations around.
To quote a podcaster I enjoy: “Mental health isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility”
If They have enough mental capacity to spin up their own Lemmy instance, then They absolutely have enough mental capacity to understand that being an asshole is…well…a dick move. If one’s neurodivergence is so severe that one cannot withhold themselves from being an asshole, then they cannot be expected to participate in otherwise civil discourse in a reasonable manner and should be removed. They have sufficiently shown that They are incapable of this without frequent intervention.
+1 for defederation.
what evidence have u seen of Grail being a raging asshole flippantly throwing baseless accusations around?
i am genuinely asking, have u read the post here thoroughly and come to that conclusion, or are u trusting the judgement of the ppl involved and feel no need to confirm it urself?
Accusing people of hurting others. Which They’ve done both by Their electoralism and also comparing usage of AI to enslaving and killing animals (as if AI models are sentient). These are both significant forms of bad-jacketing that aren’t tolerated in our community.
thanks for responding. the electoralism thing i can understand (altho defederation doesnt seem like a very measured response to me, especially when its not even an instance rule, but only on c/flippanarchy).
the example i found of the AI slavery situation read like a respectful disagreement to me (and is a stance that seems consistent with Their general anti-realist stance) and not like bad-jacketing, which as i understand it, calls into question the good faith of the other party and is generally disingenuous, trying to get members excommunicated for being state actors/fascists/etc.
- Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
It is an insult to every neurodivergent person who has their shit together, if you tolerate this sort of behavior just because they are “different”.
No tolerance for the intolerant. Defederate.
Flatwork7591: thank you very much for this very informative post and giving us the possibility to be heard.
As a trans and neurodivergent person myself I agree. Community standards need to be upheld, and people who are unsafe or harmful need to be removed.
what is your definition of intolerant here? I’ve seen some atrocious takes (multiple in this post tbh) but nothing I would consider truly intolerant…
(i promise this isn’t sealioning, I’m sure I haven’t seen the worst of it)
The major problem with lemmy is all the obnoxiously irritating people driving away the relatively ordinary ones.
as is tradition in lefty and lefty adjacent spaces.
some of the time we have to take it on the chin and act more welcoming to newcomers.
others we have to dedicate some energy to explaining why and how we got like this, and that their complacency needs challenged.
personally, it seems like right now we have more on the threadiverse of the former and less of the latter
-
If someone is annoying/frustrating and trolling you, then they are also causing those same disturbances to others such as your users. It is why I ban trolls that are negatively affecting others and do not align with dbzer0. Granted, most of my bans are bots. Grail was annoying for sure and I stopped replying to this user because I didn’t want to get banned after seeing others mixing up the capitals. Yes, I struggled at first before realizing blahaj was right about this.
Once Grail started comparing veganism with AI, I felt the troll became more obvious, too obvious. The suffering and deaths of real animals is not comparable to so called ‘AI slavery’. This ‘AI’ is just a LLM spitting random auto-complete with no consciousness. I don’t ask that our users become vegan, but to troll vegans and parrot antiveganism is just trolling leftists for no real reason (the hex was based yet again). I don’t lose sleep over banning these trolls, YDM imo.
I’m not sure if drag is Grail, I know drone rights was also PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES, but I could not tell for certain that Grail is drone rights (although they shared similarities for sure just like the other 2 you also listed). I also remember MindTraveler, what a fun (/s) person who was always angrily telling off people that Grail didn’t like.
Grail is neurodivergent (trans and NPD afaik), so we should be willing to make some accommodations for Their behaviour
Lame copout. They troll and know what They’re doing.
Edited for grammar and info
Grail is nowhere near as annoying as Drag imho. However generally I really dislike sockjacketing people without solid evidence, like this. OTOH I do understand that trolls need to be dealt with summarily so avoid more damage to the communities. I just feel we don’t need to try to connect them to previous trolls to do so.
I’m going to abstain from this one as I am not particularly bothered either way.
However generally I really dislike sockjacketing people without solid evidence, like this.
I feel the same way, and seeing it happen in the body of a governance post is disheartening. I have had serious qualms about most of the recent governance posts, and about the direction that some of the admin team seem determined to steer the ship.
I think it would be inaccurate to characterize it as the instance catering to the wrong voices. However, I am starting to accept that the climate has changed and might no longer be right for me. I believe there are many others who feel similarly.
I have long been of the opinion that the administration of any instance based around the core tenets that dbzer0 still claims should be undergo voluntary, regular rotation. Absent that, the situation is primed for the entrenchment of power and establishment of de facto hierarchies. This is true for both the admin team becoming accustomed to holding a certain level of authority, and for the userbase growing comfortable and complacent with a shift in the admin role from “caretaker” to “leader”.
I question whether I am ignoring clear signals in favor of hope.
We don’t need rotations when we got admin recalls tbh. If people feel like the admins are doing a bad job they can always ask any of them to step down. Unfortunately there’s nowhere near enough people who want to be admins to handle rotations
I’m willing to step up and do 3 months as a dbzer0 admin, if you want.
If you decide that dbzer0 isn’t for you, you’ll be welcome at MULTIVERSE, which is also an anarchist instance.
I may just accept that invitation.
i havent, to my knowledge, heard of or interacted with Them before, so i really made sure to read this whole post thoroughly and then i checked out some of Their posts too.
i genuinely see no direct evidence of trolling or behaviour id call ban-worthy. theres some comments i disagree with on an intellectual level, but theyre still written in a respectful tone and are nothing that would cause anyone any harm either.
i have limited time, so i think if u wanted Them banned, u shouldve done a better job collecting information as imo this is wayy too little (on top of this ofc that theres no evidence of the other accounts even being Their alts).
as to the claim that They left blahaj,
beehivebeehaw, etc, accusing them of transphobia… honestly i can believe Them since otherkin/xenogender transphobia can come from anyone at this moment in time, and ive very frequently seen it come from other trans ppl.anyway TL;DR i fail to see reasons for a ban of this instance
EDIT: after having spent some more time looking into this (ive read the discussion here and also more of Their comments and some of Their medium articles) i still havent found evidence of the things Theyre accused of doing? and after having read Their article on anarcho-antirealism, the start of this post reads like the author of it didnt even bother looking into it before judging it as not-real-anarchism.
i am above all, very confused now as to how ppl keep calling this person a troll but dont even put a fucking screenshot up of a genuine troll comment of Theirs.
EDIT 2: (apparently i have nothing better to do with my life today) excuse my tone, but why the fuck are there FOUR SCREENSHOTS OF GRAIL SPEAKING BADLY ABOUT DB0 AS IF THATS GROUNDS FOR A FUCKING BAN??? i am incredibly confused! what does this have to do with anything?? am i not capable of grasping this or what??
the only reason for ban ive seen is Them arguing the “vote for the lesser evil”-argument, which apparently counts as electoralism? i understood electoralism as the idea that electoral politics should be the focus of political action, but maybe others disagree on this definition? but even then, wtf do these comments “agitating against our instance” have to do with anything? thats not against the rules, is it? it just gives it a “look, this person we want to ban is also ugly and unlikeable”-vibe that makes it seem like ur trying to manipulate ppl in a certain direction. not saying that its intentional, but thats the only way i can read it right now and others have also criticized it here before.
i am at my wits end. if anyone can explain this shit to me, id be very grateful. id much rather be wrong. i dont want this instance to become a shithole that bans and defederates ppl based on fuck all evidence. again, excuse the tone, i dont mean to offend anyone, im just kinda angry and confused rn.
as to the claim that They left blahaj, beehive, etc, accusing them of transphobia… honestly i can believe Them since otherkin/xenogender transphobia can come from anyone at this moment in time, and ive very frequently seen it come from other trans ppl.
I’ve actually had some very positive experiences on Blahaj with swift action on bigotry, both intentional and accidental/casual. There are of course users and opinions I disagree with, but on the stuff important to the whole of the instance, the positive action is there. Ada is firmly pro-xenogender and pro-neopronoun. And Blahaj hosts the forumverse’s only dedicated Otherkin community.
Not sure what’s meant by beehive. I think the people on Beehaw are really nice!
the start of this post reads like the author of it didnt even bother looking into it before judging it as not-real-anarchism.
Yeah… When I have been critical of aspects of dbzer0 in the past, this is often the uniting theme. I still appreciate all that this instance has done for the anarchist community, but I think there’s a bit of work to be done around premature judgements of those who disagree with the mainstream opinions. I believe that these problems are surmountable with a bit of effort, and that we have plenty of good possible futures ahead of us.
I blocked that whole instance shortly after the “Banned for Nuttin’” post in YPTB last week. defederating from anarchist comms because of not liking the content, listing the reason as “authoritarianism”, then complaining when that mod issues a reciprocal ban is some pretty shitty behavior. but then, so is the constant badjacketing and insistence that only one kind of anarchism is the “right” one. I vote for FOR defederating.
I’d like to clarify that MULTIVERSE has not defederated quokk.au or blocked !mop@quokk.au. In fact, I was recently unbanned from mop.
No opinion on this question given it’s none of my business, but I love seeing these governance posts in action. I really admire the system you all have here and appreciate how level-headed they always seem to be rather than the lynch mob discussions like these have the potential to be
I agree with this. Really appreciate the community in these topics but I’ve never come across this user (and also don’t care) so it’s no use for me to vote on this.
Thanks a lot, that’s great feedback.
personally i find they can be a bit groupthink-like though… not as in expression of dissent is socially suppressed, but as in expressed dissent on lynchmob topics is not objectively evaluated.
like in the replies to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/63525728/24345496, an unfortunately quite emotional comment that does argue against some evidence—replies saying that the person they’re replying to should die—the users who had already voted before the comment either 1. argue such replies have no problem since the person they’re replying to are bad; or 2. repeat the claims said evidence were used to back up without presenting their own evidence.
