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.

  • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 month ago

    So Grail had an argument in other instances and was apparently an ass, maybe a crybully, has a pragmatical approach to elections, and thinks dbzer0 is either turning tankie or rightwing (who cares? “agitating against our instance” lol I think you are taking lemmy too serious)… and… what else? I mean, the post doesn’t suggest spamming, stalking and hateful attacks… what were the reports even about? Being annoying? Why these users are calling the cops instead of just blocking the person they find annoying? This post-social media behavior always amazes me…
    I’m not voting because I’m indifferent to the matter, but I find it funny because I just came from a post that user is asking a community to ban content and here they are the one that might get banned lol

    • Mystic Mushroom [Ze/Zir]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 month ago

      If a person is violating instance rules they get banned, if that person hosts their own server they get banned and their server gets blocked. No one would be having these reservations if it was any other old troll. Electoralism isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules, bad-jacketing isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules. These are things other people get banned from dbzer0 for, and server owners aren’t any different except that they have the ability to spawn infinite accounts or clear their bans (when someone gets instance banned on their home instance, and then unbanned from their home instance it deletes all remote bans).

      That’s why defederation is on the table.

      • chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Have They actually done that though, spawned new accounts in order to ban evade? To me this stuff seems like it would make it appropriate to prevent Them posting on communities where it is a violation of the instance rules, but going too far to prevent everyone on the instance from seeing or interacting with Their posts elsewhere, especially since it removes the opportunity for argument. If the latter is the only way to enforce the former, fine, but that would depend on whether They are unwilling to respect Their ban.

      • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        The evidence presented in this post (written for the uninitiated, thus presumably the best evidence) does not include Them doing electoralism in communities that ban electoralism. I also dislike the use here of the term “bad-jacketing” when our instance ban defines it as saying someone’s a cop while here it’s just saying someone’s a fascist, which our instance rules does not ban, and so the same thing I mentioned about electoralism applies.

          • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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            1 month ago

            “Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing,” “fed-jacketing,” or “snitch-jacketing”) is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant, fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent evidence.

            See https://anarchist-archive.org/library/en/anonymous-not-liking-someone-doesnt-mean-theyre-a-cop-on-bad-jacketing for a more thorough description. That bad-jacketing rule has been linked as part of the golden rules for years.

            It’s basically just a shitty thing to do. Having said that, the important part is the evidence. If there is evidence someone is being fascist then there’s no problem with making the claim. What is problematic is when there is no evidence, or the evidence is to the contrary.

          • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 month ago

            are you saying that bad-jacketing someone of being a fascist (but not a cop) is also banned by our instance’s rules?

              • Aatube@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                1 month ago

                I am very concerned if the rules of this anarchist instance are changing without awareness, announcement, or other transparency.

                Edit: It turns out I’d missed the line in the definition I linked to including fascism. (Still a little unsure how we can confidently apply this part of the rule, because I wouldn’t want us calling tankies and US libs right-wing; and pro-Zionists fascists; to be deemed of “flimsy evidence” by other instances, and the reason I’m an anarchist is I doubt the ability of the ruling hierarchy to always make the right decisions in important areas like open discourse, but) My bad.

                • Pretty sure it’s been that way since before I was here. I think it’s always been that way, I can’t see why it would be okay to accuse others of being fascists, pedophiles, antisemites, or anything else disgusting like that without evidence just to discredit or shut them up. That’s definitely against the spirit of this place.

                  @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com Could you clarify? Was this a change to the rules or has it always been that bad-jacketing was something more than accusing people of being a cop?

            • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 month ago

              Okay as someone who wasn’t even familiar with the term until I saw you both discussing it… Do you mind explaining it more to me? Is it just labeling someone something out of distrust of their words/opinion? (Just a guess based off the context clues from this discussion, I may be way off)

      • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 month ago

        Electoralism isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules

        It is? I didn’t see it on the rules list, but more importantly, is Grail doing that on THIS instance? The picture there was from lemmy.world - if the view of elections is something to be banned from here, I guess you are going to have to defederate from every single non-anarchist instance as well, because they are full of users that either like some political party or believe in lesser-evil.

        bad-jacketing isn’t annoying, it is against our community rules

        Is this about calling someone here a tankie? Wait… you all really caring about that?

        • Mystic Mushroom [Ze/Zir]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 month ago

          Grail literally came into our instance !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com and started spouting Electoralist apologia in multiple threads. It’s clearly visible in Their modlog and some comments are still up in YPTB.

          I guess you are going to have to defederate from every single non-anarchist instance as well

          Nice false dilemma, this is only a discussion because Grail is the admin of Their own server. If another server owner was doing this we’d be having the same discussion. If some idiot on Lemmy.world wad doing it we wouldn’t, they’d just get site banned. Thanks for letting everyone know you never had any intention of participating in good faith discussion.