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.
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 16.58 minutes
Happy to see this vote succeed.
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?
Yours idiot.
Edit: Wait I forgot, They can’t see my comments because They blocked me from Their server… Oh well 🤷♀️
It’s not misgendering to use impersonal pronouns in a sentence, Grail. Db0 wasn’t even referring to You.
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.
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.
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
- 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)
Edit: due to this discussion here I am changing my vote to a yes
I have to veto this one. I honestly feel users can handle it. Especially since this seems to pertain to a single user. Defederation to me is absolutely last ditch absolutely no hope left measure and I don’t feel this calls for it yet. I still see that user engaging in good faith and normal activities outside of politics comms so they seem to just be a lib.
The specific examples show a pattern that’s not stopping, across multiple instances. Now they have their own server this is our only method to deal with them.
They are also the only contributor from their instance
That kind of reinforces my point. They made themselves terribly easy to block. And I have to question even though we dont do this often, is this really the solution? Wall ourselves off and leave them to their devices? I’m not so sure. I could agree with either solution but as it stands currently it is super easy to block their instance and move on without defederation, and defederation is extremely serious. We don’t want to create a bunch of little islands in the fediverse (I know this specific instance would not cause this, but over time defederation has the potential to do so).
But they aren’t easy to block. We rely on that instance owner to respect the protocol’s semantics. They aren’t respecting separate instances rules enough to not be banned, and there’s no reason to believe they will maintain their same account to allow themselves to be blocked.
If they weren’t over 99% of that instances activity I might be convinced.
Maybe Lemmy doesn’t have this and I have been on anarchist.nexus for far longer than I thought.
Oh neat.
Hmmm
Yeah I guess thats a piefed only thing. My bad. I am unsure about my vote now
Something else to consider, if someone gets banned on their home instance and then unbanned, the unban deletes all bans on remote servers. An instance admin can unban themselves from other lemmy instances due to being able to access their own server with the ability to ban and unban.
@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com I think that’s an important consideration here. Grail could do something ban worthy here, then unban Themselves because They feel like it and we wouldn’t know until Their posts started showing up here again, and they can repeat the process as much as we ban them. Defederation is the only way to actually stop that, and it’s part of why it’s customary to defederate a self-hosted instance when banning the person in charge of it.
Yup
I mostly remember the controversy from the Exocrinus days and I am in support of defed. Cant believe this is getting hashed again.
Neurodivergence set aside, They are a terrible troll that never, ever argued in good faith on any topic I saw Them engage with, and was just a huge pain in the ass of normal users and mods alike. Use of a single-user instance without registration limits for the owner opens the door for infinite alt accounts that cannot be realistically banned or controlled using normal mod tools, without filtering the entire instance. And that seems to be the entire purpose of this new instance- ban evasion.
Also, as a neurodivergent myself, trying to lean on being different does NOT absolve a user of the consequences resulting from being a unrequited asshole trying to stir shit up. I’ll respect Their pronouns for sure, but I’m still going to call Them a dick when They are being a dick. I understand needing to be diplomatic, Unruffled, but try not to carry too much water for the trolls.
last paragraph is super based. people deserve basic respect even if they are a dick, and also deserve to be called a dick if they are being a dick.
that said, I think your main argument is kinda a slippery slope fallacy. that’s to say I think if we do end up having a flood of bad actors from this instance, we should poll this again with that as the reason why. i don’t think defed because “They have the opportunity to flood bad actors” is reasonable, personally.
Is it really a slippery slope when its a slowly repeating pattern from a known bad actor?
being as I haven’t seen any evidence that these are all the same person, very yes.
pretending for a moment that we’re certain these are all the same person (I think it’s likely) still yes. i see a young ND Trans person trying to find the identity that suits them much more than I see a malicious troll committing ban evasion, but maybe that’s more me projecting than it is Them.
i think a vote if They end up doing that with “They are unbanning Themself” would easily pass, I don’t think we need to do it preemptively
Use of a single-user instance without registration limits for the owner opens the door for infinite alt accounts that cannot be realistically banned or controlled using normal mod tools, without filtering the entire instance. And that seems to be the entire purpose of this new instance- ban evasion.
what are u basing that claim on? what exactly suggests ban evasion? two of Their alleged alts were banned 2-3 years ago, and the last one isnt even banned on db0 right now from what i can tell (was also last active a month ago).
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.
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.
My experience with Grail was that They publicly expressed intent to brigade mine and similar communities as well as encouraged others to do the same and then decided to troll me in my DMs after I banned Them for it. I’ve also noticed they consistently promote electoralism and also engage in some really bad faith arguments and accusations, like conflating usage of AI with enslaving animals, which is pretty gross.
Since they’re the only admin on Their instance I say defederate, we would defederate if some other random troll was hosting their instance and violating our rules. It shouldn’t be different if a person is a troll who is also trans or neurodivergent, I say that as someone who is trans-NonBinary and neurodivergent myself.
-
well that is a much worse accusation than anything in the main post, do you have receipts of it?
no worries if you don’t want to make them, but if substantiated that might be enough to convince me to defed
I looked through my private messages and only found one of the DMs, it’s possible the others were deleted:
DM Trolling
I’m having trouble locating the comment where Grail advocated for downvote brigading, if I can locate it I will update my comment. I don’t think it was removed because it would’ve shown in Their modlog.
That’s a yes from me. I would prefer some concrete evidence linking these accounts to confirm ban evasion, but that would require some collaboration between instance admins to basically dox the person.
The general antagonistic nature, purity testing, lack of demonstrating any principles of anarchism tell me that this person is out to do just what they are doing, and whatever sort of reports that have been sent will keep being sent.
We owe new users some sort of safety in the community. If we expect everyone to be fully informed and capable of discerning bad actors from ignorant ones, that’s not fair to them.
One person’s neurodivergence is also not an excuse to distress others. Allowing that robs other people who may also be vulnerable from feeling safe, and gives the first person power over these other people.
So wait, people are saying yes without even knowing if the accounts are linked at all? What is the point of federation if we are going to defederate instances without evidence.
Especially since it was voted if one instance of the floatilla bans an instance the rest would have to as well I thought.
Seems dangerous
Not really. There’s grail’s existing post history, you go judge yourself on the comments that are there.
The link in the original post just says can’t find this user when I click on it. Maybe they just defederated from dbzer0, not sure. If so I guess that solves your worries
If so I guess that solves your worries
For now, until this blows over and they quietly re-fed w/ db0, no? Then, we’re right back here again.
Of course, I’ve yet to hear if they can simply start a new instance when their current one gets banned, and unban themselves again. 🤢
Side question: How the fuck is this method even still an option for instance founders at this point?
Yeah they could just rename their instance and come from another IP address. The only way you would get around that would be whitelisting instances instead of blacklisting them. Which overall would greatly hurt the growth and purpose of federation (in my personal opinion, others would disagree I’m sure).
Sorry to use the trope of comparing to email, but it would be the same thing as you banning an email domain, and them creating a different one. Your filters don’t know to block them. Hosting an instance from a dedicated IP that isn’t identifying their home residence would be the preferred method for most I would assume.
Of course, I’ve yet to hear if they can simply start a new instance when their current one gets banned, and unban themselves again. 🤢
They could but they would be easily defederated again, and domains cost money so it would be a long game that They would ultimately lose.
Still accessible for me, might be something else
Strange, I had to open them from another instance to find their history. Let me try from here again.
Edit: Must have been a jerboa thing. If I copied the link to Opera it worked fine, but within jerboa no good.
On one hand, yeah they can be really annoying.
On the other, all they’re pretty much doing is talking about their voodoo reality shit (which often can be really funny) and politics in a way that’s not too different from .world’ers.
I did interact with this user directly and while my experience with them was negative, completely disappearing them for a wrong kind of LARP that’s already prevalent in other instances and sometimes being annoying seems way too extreme.
I have a soft spot for both dragonfucker and Grail, so I’m biased. Idk about the other alts or what drama I’ve missed from them, but I haven’t seen any evidence presented for these being the same user anyway.
I’m lowkey a bit of an antirealist myself, and I have to say Grail seems extremely consistent with Their belief system. Others see bad faith baiting, but I often see two people talking past one another. Have y’all checked out Their Medium articles and soulism website? I’ve read both thoroughly, and this all tracks and has remained consistent for a long time.
Yes, I agree that They’re hardly an anarchist in the sense that most of us appreciate politically, I just don’t think that’s trolling but rather disagreeing (for the most part- obviously there’s been drama).
I support starting with relevant community bans where rules are violated, and escalating as needed. The anti-AI sentiment might be a dealbreaker, but if They care that much They should just defed on Their end
Appreciate your comments Gary, and I was trying to channel you in the against section :p
Soulism is a troll internet meme ideology FFS…
That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who genuinely believe in it anyway. I’m not a soulist myself, but I am an anarchist and a bit of an antirealist, and that’s almost what soulism is- just those two things combined
You should read My history of soulism article. The word comes from a meme ideology, but there were anarcho-antirealists before the meme, and there are people who turned the meme into a cromulent ideology. Those two groups are now one and the same. Again, the full story is on My blog.
Thanks, I have already read “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”. :p
Edit: (to disprove anything you were ever going to say)
/hj
23·10 days agoSoulism is real and valid whether you like it or not.
