/0 Governance

Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591

This is a simple majority vote. The final tally is as follows:

• For: (5), (4), (1), (1), (2), (2)
• Against:
• Local Community: +2.6
• Outsider sentiment: Supportive
• Total: +14.6
• Percentage: 85.00%

This vote has concluded on 2026-01-02 00:56:51 UTC

Reminder that this is a pilot process and results of voting are not set in stone.

Add a clause stating unambiguously that this does not discriminate against people with the Jewish ethnicity or against followers of Judaism. Just the specific policy of Zionism is affected.

Palestinian here, just thanking you for trying to do what you can. <3

Zionism is so innately wrong (and has been for 80 years). Anyone still supporting it up to now is too far gone to be convinced by reading comments by some people online.

I AM NOT A DIV0 USER. DO NOT COUNT MY COMMENT AS A VOTE

I like it. I think it does really limit the scope and maintains a clear focus.

It avoids the religious BS - there are plenty of Zionists who aren't Jewish and plenty of Jews who aren't Zionists.

If you're a Zionist, then you don't beling here; it's the same with Nazis, white supremacists, et aliīs.

Edit: removed an incomplete sentence.

Zionism is giving yourself permission to kill/oppress people who don’t have the same religious beliefs that you do. That’s bullshit.

Unbelievably based. Zionists, like Nazis, shouldn't be platformed.

I will say: on the topic of banning Zionists, I think it would be helpful if someone from db0 or maybe a bot would reply to the comment that caused the ban with the Wikipedia entries for the Nakba, pogroms, and just the entire history of Palestine's enslavement to Israel. Kinda like how YouTube links the Climate Change Wikipedia entry for videos that deal with that topic, or like Twitter community notes.

Free Palestine

Hey, the drones were circling over my fucking Christmas lunch this week. We were cranking up the Bublé to cover the constant buzzing, and the bad/worst part is that the kids seemed used to the sound. The only reason those things were in the air over an area with no militia activity is psychological warfare basically. This was a good 80+ km from the border. People in Santa hats were sticking their heads out of the window and looking up. I struggle to get across how normal we are while discussing what we’re dealing with, and I figure mentioning how it’s affected me filling myself with wine and carving a comically sized bird could help get that across to people who also do this every year, or to who the idea is less foreign than the idea of being constantly surveilled by a hostile expansionist entity. I’m not trying to use my sect to say I’m special and don’t deserve this, I’m just trying to see if it can help bridge a gap to discuss something difficult, to be clear.

That said, my opinion might still come off as a bit too lenient to some of you and I think I should write it out. But I am from and live in Lebanon, and I am directly affected by these crimes.

I’ve got a lot of users (I think literally every single one on German instances lmfao) tagged in my client as “Zionist”. I think most of them just pop into a few threads naturally and make a few reality-denying comments from force of habit. I see them in other places and they fit the typical description of internet dude with opinions on Rust and Linux making interesting comments about random stuff. They’re mostly well-behaved outside of beliefs that are upstream of me being chucked into a concentration camp so the US military’s contractors can make my home a parking lot at an exorbitant cost. When I catch them in a thread about solar panels or something, I’ll even find them making comments that I want to read. Normal people with good insight.

The average person in the West has been fed such a blatantly false narrative that I find myself not blaming a few of the milder opinions. It’s on par for me with progressives talking up and down the potential greatness of the American experiment. I think Zionism is one thing that people can learn about and understand and clearly see that the status quo is not normal or natural or inevitable or even self-sustaining.

This might all be downstream of me moderating the way I have tended to handle this stuff on Reddit, my old online home which I’ve spent well over a decade.

Therefore we propose that should no longer be accepting of any Zionist accounts on our instances.

My opinion is a two sided thing because I don’t know if this means blocking users from other instances from federating, blocking them from posting or voting on our instance’s posts and comments, or blocking them from signing up.

I think blocking them from signup is very reasonable. Probably morally necessary.

I think blocking them as external users, regardless of the extent of it, might be heavy handed if it’s a one-off comment by a normal human being, often German, who has been propagandized since birth that Jews will all immediately die if Arabs aren’t treated like cattle. I think these people can learn. OTOH there are what seems like dedicated Hasbara accounts that have an RSS feed of every post with “Israel” or Palestine and have to respond to every single one with a comment that would immediately get you banned from literally any webpage with a text box if you swapped the words Jewish and Muslim. If we can block those outright nothing will be lost.

What I propose is a three/five strikes system for external users with a relatively gentle warning message with some good links like someone already proposed here. Probably a little thing in German to get the attention of those with Nazi baggage who are completely delusional and intentionally ignoring reality.

Personally if I was the one writing it I’d also include that, as a Westerner, believing that Jewish people may inherently leave the West for a colonial frontier far away from you is literally anti-Semitism if you think about it for 20 seconds. Nothing says ancestral homeland like having to rename towns and treat the local population like inconveniently located bags of blood.

I’m also in favor of extending the window since a lot of people are not going to be online much this time of year. I hope, at least. For their own sake.

Happy New Year everyone; I hope Natenyahu lets me and all of us see the untold horrors that await us in 2026.

Don't see the need to limit the voting to two days, especially during holidays when people are not as online.

It's absolutely worth running the experiment, if nothing else.

I would caution against banning accounts for having a particular stance, as that could be a slippery slope.

Forums have a decades-long running history of banning content, possibly for that reason. Having instance rules that forbid pro-zionist content, propaganda, or news with a zionist spin, makes a lot more sense IMO. From there, it's easy to ban accounts for repeated rules violations, which may be more palatable for both users to report and admins to enforce.

I want to focus on the structure of the proposal rather than on defending Israeli state policy, which I oppose in many respects.

As written, the proposal does not clearly define Zionism so much as treat a particular interpretation of it as self-evident, namely that Zionism is inherently a form of settler colonialism. That is a position many people hold, but it is also a contested one, and the policy depends on that premise without unpacking it.

If the core concern is behavior such as genocide denial, dehumanization of Palestinians, or the repetition of propaganda talking points, those are concrete harms and seem like appropriate moderation targets on their own. Framing the rule around an ideological label instead of specific conduct risks conflating belief, state policy, and online behavior, which are not always the same thing even when they overlap.

I also share some of the concern about how “pro-Zionist” would be determined in practice. When enforcement depends on interpreting intent or identity rather than observable actions, it increases the risk of inconsistency and misclassification, even with good faith moderation.

I am not arguing against taking a clear moral stance in support of Palestinians. I am suggesting that the policy would be stronger, clearer, and easier to defend if it focused explicitly on the behaviors and arguments that cause harm, rather than relying on a broad and disputed definition of Zionism to do that work.

I don't want to share any space, physical or otherwise, with Zionists or their apologists. They add nothing and deserve nothing but the worst.

Kick them the fuck out, thank you.

zionism and anarchism are mutually exclusive idealogies. you cannot believe in solidarity for all mankind and also support an ethnocutural supremacist movement.

I support banning zionists from dbzer0 to match them being banned on Anarchist Nexus.

Question from the peanut gallery: 

Can you clearly define the term "Zionist" in this context? Unlike "Nazi", there is no specific affiliation one can point too. 

Would the comment "Israel as a state should not be dismantled, but reformed" be considered Zionism because it does not support the abolition of the state of Israel? 

What about a comment along the lines of "I think you can't tell Jews they're not allowed to have their own state until you are ready to enforce the same stance on Muslims with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc"

These types of comments support the existence of the state of Israel without directly encouraging harm. And the dictionary definition of Zionism is simply support for the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel

Having a definition of Zionist would probably help?

I think Israel is committing war crimes in Palestine, Netenyahu should be tried by the ICC, and that what is happening in Palestine at present is in fact genocide.

But also, I think Israel should contiue to exist, and should - given the crimes committed against their citizens by Hamas - be entitled to demand that Hamas play no part in governance of a future Palestinian state.

Uncertain whether that counts as a zionist position, or not.

Already reported for antisemitism, can't make this shit up lol

Edit: and now racism. The brainworms are activating.

Ban them all.

The “geopolitics don’t matter” school of thought is that trying to be on the “correct” side of every issue is kind of pointless because nothing that happens in lemmy chat forums will ever make an ounce of difference in the real world. Don’t bother moderating users over political/ideological differences, just let people argue if they want. While I can totally empathize with this sentiment, I can also see the case for taking a clear stance on this topic in accordance with our values and the overwhelming support for the Palestinian cause among our users. Personally, I am advocating in favor of the resolution.

I feel the biggest argument against this take is simply that it's unaccommodating for those who are in the groups being victimized. By allowing that to exist on a platform you are creating an unsafe space for magins.

I'm all for it. Accounts that are actively posting Zionist views are already breaking rule #4 anyway https://wiki.dbzer0.com/divisions-by-zero/the-golden-rules/

That said I can't tell how much of an issue this has been on the dbzer0 instance up to now.. but I wouldn't rule out Lemmy getting hit with pro-zionist bot accounts now or in the future.

Generally support this rule, but I'm a bit wary as a Jew ~~who's been accused of being zionist (I'm not) solely for reminding people that 'globalize the intifada' means calling for a global genocide against Jews and shouldn't be used in support of Palestinians~~ (I was misinformed about the meaning of intifada). A lot of people, especially on the internet, don't seem to understand that not all Jews support zionism/the Israeli government. As long as there's a reasonable attempt to ensure that we're not just promoting anti-semitism (not to be confused with calling out zionist propaganda), I'm for this rule in the same way I support a rule blocking any sort of bigotry.

I've always kinda felt silence is complicity. Seconded.

Zionists = nazis.

And I damn well don't want to become a Zionist bar to abuse the metaphor.

I support:

• banning Zionist DB0 accounts
• banning Zionist users being a nuisance here
• wide admin & mod discretion on what counts as a violation
• clearly disambiguating Zionism from Judaism
• transparency about such bans (maybe even a wall of shame with all known info about each banned acct, were it low effort to implement)

I do not support:

• excessive hand-wringing over potential collateral damage (we do not need to platform ideas that "walk and quack like a duck" - the entire rest of the Internet and meatspace already provide such)
• burdening admin & mod team with significant new ongoing effort
• shaping what DB0 users see and interact with more broadly (e.g. defederation, other decisions based on activity on other instances, etc.)

(Any of that is subject to change over time of course and is only valid for present conditions re: instance leadership quality, communication, etc.)

I think a big part of it is acceptance criteria, and a preference leaning way more towards preventing a permanent ban if there's a reasonable doubt. I think transparent moderation in this type of thing is good in general limiting harmful misinformation, and vote aye.

Zionists. Nazis. Corporationists. Accelerationists.

All are the same shit, and for them, you have my axe, and my willingness to practice axe combat at their necks.

Hopefully congratulations on taking a clear stance and on willing to at least acknowledge that in case of deep questioning one can safely fall back to Rule #0 of the internet ("we'll know it when we see it").

Couldn't agree more, fascists deserve no quarter. Why should we accept and tolerate them here.

And to all the people here whining about "freeze peach" what fuck are you doing on an anarchist leftist Lemmy instance? You do realize that hateful and dangerous speech is one of the things we fight against right? Tolerating it goes against what we stand for.

Devil's advocate: allowing Zionist voices here, also allows members to argue against the points they're making. Better that someone see their talking points discredited in the replies here, than see the exact same talking points go uncontested on reddit, traditional media, etc.

The again, I'm against platforming fascists because they rarely argue in good faith. I am very careful to use the term, but plenty of zionists are actual fascists (especially the terminally online ones you're likely to encounter), so there's a good argument to ban for this reason.

Ultimately I don't care. The whole debate has become so toxic, I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a dried cat turd. Perhaps banning will make things more pleasant.

Deeply mixed. Pileons online happen for stupid reasons, tone and nuance is hard to convey, purity tests are common, and education is often sidelined in favour of berating.

Otoh lemmy is kinda dogshit and riddled with fucking freaks repeating straight up genocide denial. Opposing state backed mass murder is like a baseline requirement for admission into human civilisation so...

fuck zionists, fuck israel free palestine

i tell openly zionist people (in the meat space) to shut the fuck up. people posting zionist crap online like to think they are wearing some kind of mask or shield of anonymity, but that just means to me they need to be told to shut the fuck up HARDER.

ban em, boil em.

Not a part of the instance, but all the above are coherent arguments.

Summing it up in my own words: Zionists advocate genocide. Genocide is bad. Therefore, Zionists shouldn't be tolerated. It's a pretty clear line.

I support banning Zionists.