First off... I just wanted to again say thank you to everyone who responded to the help post that I recently made. The outpouring of support was genuinely kind of insane and I never expected it. I'm going to make a different post elsewhere on that but like... I cannot thank you enough.
But for the post itself, this is in reference to this post that I made on September 17th about Jordan Lund's behavior as a lead moderator on Lemmy.World. His behavior beyond the realm of questionable and into active hostility and misinformation. A user commented on that post and @'d Ruud, the head admin of Lemmy.World.
Which, you know, totally fair and valid. Who would want that person reflecting the instance? Especially when a term was used about the Canadian government that Jordan wasn't aware of and instead of asking for clarification, or doing a simple google, he just banned Canadians and doubled down repeatedly. But in that same thread, another Admin clarified they had talked to Jordan about this specific thing and told him it was unacceptable.
Yet 3 and a half hours later, Jordan reaffirms his stance and insists that his half-baked understanding of Canadian politics is correct. For the comment and then an immediate explanation of how he is both an idiot and a liar, check here.
This all happened nearly 10 days ago. The head Admin saying that he publicly doesn't want Jordan to be the face of the instance, another Admin saying his behavior is unacceptable. What has happened? From a public perspective? Effectively nothing. The only thing that has changed is Jordan is down two communities under his moderation belt. One of those was a dead community that was never used and the other was the Community Spotlight team.
Now there's a thousand reasons to dislike Jordans behavior but as a Canadian? His stubborn refusal of acceptance that he doesn't know a thing and stubborn refusal to even acknowledge when someone has proven him wrong has pushed me over the edge. As far as I'm concerned, the United States declared war on Canada when it threatened to use economic force to coerce us into becoming a part of that country. So the idea of an American in control of World News who seems to subscribe to this type of American Exceptionalism? Or at least is too narcissistic to admit fault? I can't stomach it.
But for the Admins to publicly say that they've told him his behavior is unacceptable but then refuse to enforce that? Even when Jordan is flaunting it in the exact same thread and ignoring everything the admins said? Either no one ever talked to Jordan to say that it was unacceptable or someone did talk to Jordan but he just doesn't care. Evidently neither do the admins to enforce their own position on the matter. It has been nearly 10 days and if anything is being done then the movement is a breakneck glacial pace.
I can't in good conscience ever give another second of traffic to Lemmy.World. I moved over from Startrek.Website because of a particular person way back when. One admin on the team who was a friend of mine and had encouraged me to join there when I was looking for another instance. He doesn't even have any involvement in LW anymore and neither do pretty much anyone that I originally knew from the team. It isn't the same site that I started on. Maybe I never paid enough attention when signing up to make a better and more informed decision, who knows.
What I do know is I've moved to Dbzer0. Db0 has been offering a spot on the instance for over a year at this point and after careful consideration of a variety of instances... Dbzer0 is also the one that I would probably fit best with. So if there's anyone out there who hates me and had @Stamets@lemmy.world blocked, here's your cue to block this account now too. Because with a new account comes a very small number of posts. That @Stamets@lemmy.world is #44 on the amount of posts made by any Lemmy account.
I've got some catching up to do.
To all my friends on the LW team, I love you and support you. To the admins who had a say in this? I'm just deeply disappointed. I've seen the speed moved on certain things. A week and a half when y'all admitted you were talking about him before I even made that post? Come on.
Before I respond to the specific points you raised, I want to respond to the general vibes of it. Because genuinely, aside from the specific bits aimed personally at me (which mostly seem made out of ignorance), I liked it. I'll take this comment as equivalent to the apology, because it's at least a decent shot at an explanation for your actions I was asking for. I suspect that if you and I were to meet and discuss politics IRL, we'd get along pretty well. I hate tankies, but outside of Lemmy I rarely give them any thought. Zionists are a far bigger issue. Not least because my own government aids Israel's genocide, and because the immediate intensity of that genocide is so much greater than anything China is doing. I am far more concerned with what Israel is doing to Palestinians right now than anything China is doing...with the exception that because I have some very good friends from Taiwan, every bit of news about China's actions around Taiwan are concerning, even if so far it has not amounted to anything concrete.
I would not label myself an anarchist per se, but I lean that way. I'm strongly in favour of decision-making being devolved to be made by more local communities, empowered to feel genuine ownership over decisions. I don't know quite how you balance that with NIMBY instincts, but hopefully being included in a genuinely deliberative process would reduce alienation and help lead to more thoughtful, less reactive NIMBY-style opinions. And more and more over recent years I have become disillusioned by the very top-down approach that is common in many representative democracies.
The very existence of billionaires is anathema to healthy society, but they're a natural product of the capitalist economic system. And therefore the capitalist economic system is anathema to healthy society.
and
Did you see the comment that started my thread? All I did was politely point out that according to the already expressed beliefs of the OP, they were already acknowledging the Uyghur genocide in all but name. That is, they expressed that they believe human rights abuses with the aim of erasing a culture were happening (an act that is per se tantamount to genocide, under the original definition of the term), even though they were reticent to use the G word itself. It was, I thought, a fairly amicable conversation between people who basically agree on the facts, if not the conclusions you should draw from those facts.
Then the actual tankie jumped into it to talk genocide denialist bullshit. This isn't "frothing at the mouth over tankies simply for existing". It isn't me "bringing that shit into every single interaction". It's me criticising tankies for expressing some of the worst examples of their beliefs when they were the ones who brought the conversation to you. And a few other tankies also joined in the fun. One of whom seems to have gotten away scott-free with a comment that adds literally nothing to the conversation by saying just one word: "dumb". The toxic derailing behaviour was not from me, it was from tankies. But I can understand the error; it was a complicated thread, there was a lot going on. It's understandable for a mod to lose track of every single comment's context.
But as I said, fundamentally, this comment of yours has gone a long way towards reassuring me of your intent.
You are right that some of what I said and doesn't apply to you in particular, but was more of a general sentiment about what I felt was going on in the post and in general lately. Having read the thread again more closely I can see that I probably read you a bit wrong. So I will say sorry for making some bad faith assumptions.
I'm glad we could clear the air. There's been a bit of a disinfo campaign being waged against our instance lately by a few trolls with an axe to grind, so that probably colored my reaction a little. Every other political thread seems to end with people yelling "tankie" or "fascist" to each other like it's ever gonna achieve anything. No war but class war has got to be the best way forward. Personally I'm done with leftist infighting for now. Marxists aren't the real threat anyway.
Thanks for being level headed about this