We, the admin team, decry all forms of settler-colonialism, and we recognize that Zionism is a pro-settler-colonialist position.

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

Please upvote for agree, downvote for disagree.

Note: we only count votes by instance members of dbzer0 and anarchist.nexus, plus a few vouched-for external users.


Hi mateys, I’ve kept things simple in the above text, for brevity, but in fact it took the admin team quite a while to get to this stage. We have discussed the policy change extensively, and a variety of different perspectives emerged. I will attempt to sum them up below as best I can:

  • The “this isn’t that complicated” school of thought goes something like this: If someone is consistently posting comments that mirror Hasbara talking points (e.g. justifying the genocide in Gaza, consistently painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as the victim), then they should be instance banned. It’s just not acceptable for Zionists to be allowed on our instances.

  • The “slippery slope” / “purity test” school of thought is that banning people for having an “unpopular” political opinion would potentially mean banning half the fediverse, if more and more of these policies were enacted over time. To attempt to mitigate this we are keeping the scope of this rule as narrow as possible, and I also don’t think many of our users will be affected. Also, we typically don’t have frequent policy changes, and I have no reason to expect that to change moving forward.

  • Another important discussion point was “how do we decide whether someone is pro-Zionist or not?” We can’t always be 100% sure of someone’s true intentions, we can only go on what they have posted and that is subject to interpretation. I don’t feel there is an easy answer to this one, except to say that we would have to be pretty certain before issuing a perma-ban.

  • 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.

Please add your comments below if you want to provide your own thoughts on the topic, or have any questions.

expiry: 7

  • /0 Bot@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/flatworm7591 Early Bird: a parrot, orangered colors Jolly Roger: an icon of pirate jolly roger skull wearing a hat, in orange-red, black and white colors A book with a loaf of bread in the cover  in orange-red, black and white colors Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color

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

    • For: First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color (5), Vouched: a minimalist compass icon. Orangered color (4), MVP: a star icon, in orange-red, black and white colors (1), Threadiverse Enjoyer: An icon of a doubloon with a black hole in the center in orange-red, black and white colors (1), Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors (2), Powder Monkey: An icon of powder barrel in orange-red, black and white colors (2)
    • Against: Threadiverse Enjoyer: An icon of a doubloon with a black hole in the center in orange-red, black and white colors First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color Deck Hand: An icon of anchor crossed with two staves in orange-red, black and white colors
    • 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.

  • Hello_there@fedia.io
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    10 days ago

    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

  • harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    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.

  • Resonosity@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    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

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
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    10 days ago

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

  • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    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.

    • rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 days ago

      thank u for sharing ur perspective.

      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.

      i second this proposal.

    • mirshafie@europe.pub
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      10 days ago

      I don’t even know what instance I’m posting on but I just wanted to say that I too am amazed how well you moderate your handling of this stuff.

    • 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

      I completely agree with this. I like to troll badguys, and I can’t do that if they’re instance banned; I think it should be up to individual users to block people from other instances.

      I also like to assume that anyone commenting from a dbzer0/AN account is a good person, and I can’t do that if Zionists are allowed to have an account here.


      Edit: Unruffled answered this in a comment

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comM
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    10 days ago

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

  • Bamboodpanda@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    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.

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    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.

  • No_Bark@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

    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.

  • Luminous5481 [they/them]@anarchist.nexus
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    9 days ago

    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.

  • YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 days ago

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

    Edit: and now racism. The brainworms are activating.

    • Ledivin@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Reported… to whom? Where do you think reports go?

      Genocide supporters really are exactly as dumb as they seem, huh?

    • cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 days ago

      The Jewish people have a right to rape their victims to death and then eat their children to larp their favorite book. Suggesting otherwise is antisemitism. It’s really not hard to understand.

      • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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        10 days ago

        I want to be 💯 clear that it’s not Jewish people we are sanctioning here, it’s Zionism. You can be a Zionist without being Jewish, e.g. see Trump, Biden, Kamala, Bush, and basically every other establishment US and Western politician. And there any many Jewish folks who agree that what Israel is doing is genocide and speak out againt it. So let’s not fall into the trap of actual antisemitism.

        • ɯᴉuoʇuɐ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          10 days ago

          You can be a Zionist without being Jewish, e.g. see Trump, Biden, Kamala, Bush, and basically every other establishment US and Western politician.

          Does expressing support for an establishment politician of this sort make one a Zionist as well?

          • punchmesan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            10 days ago

            Dude it’s not about Jew vs Not Jew, it’s about genocide justification. To be clear here, the people on this genocide campaign are the Israeli government, the settlers that support the genocide, and the world leaders that continue to support the Israeli government. Trying to paint this as “Jews Bad” is no different than saying that Americans love Nazis just because we have Nazis in our government – in actual fact some Nazis are American but not all Americans are Nazis.

            So watch out with your broad brush buddy, you seen to be cruising along the slippery slope of eventually accusing Jews of operating space lasers.

            • cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              10 days ago

              Maaaaaybe a bad example. Americans love them some Nazi.

              And, um, read that back. I normally don’t clarify satire, but this is an admin thread, I was talking in Zionist voice there. Do you think all Jewish people share a single favorite book? One that says they eat children?

  • duncan_bayne@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    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.