First off before we get into this I want to make clear that I'm not just throwing shade at the specific instance involved, and I'd also like to avoid focusing on the specific content of thread. I think this is a larger issue that warrants an open discussion, this could have happened with any other instance on a wide variety of thread topics.
Context:
- Swordgeek@lemmy.ca created this thread asking for people to resist Tucker Carlson being allowed into Canada - https://lemmy.ca/post/12683277
- A user on a very large instance reported the thread with the reason "Inciting Illegal Behavior"
- This report was seen and cleared by lemmy.ca admins, as it didn't violate any rules and definitely wasn't inciting any illegal behavior
- The external admins removed the post based on the report
- Sworkgeek was DM'ed by automod to let him know, otherwise he would have no idea the largest lemmy user base can't see his thread
- Swordgeek asked about cross-instance removals here - https://lemmy.ca/post/12724897
- Swordgeek asked about appeals for the removal here - https://lemmy.ca/post/12789496
There's more discussion around this in the threads linked above, they're worth a quick read.
TLDR: swordgeek made a post asking for political action and someone reported it with a fake reason, and an admin on a large instance removed the post. This removal would only impact their users, giving a largwe lemmy user base a selectively censored view of the lemmy.ca community.
It concerns me greatly that a lemmy instance can act as a censor and push the biases of their admins, on users who are completely unaware it's happening. It also concerns me that a user could manipulate other users, if admins aren't looking closely at the reports they get and just blindly remove things.
IMHO instance admins should not be moderating communities, that is the job of the community mods. Admins should only be involved in urgent + serious reports that are for things like CSAM, dox'ing, death threats, etc. All other reports should be left up to the moderators of the community to deal with.
If an instance wants to block a specific community or defederate then by all means, but instances selectively censoring content in a non-visible way? No thanks.
Can we have some sort of group policy that major instance admins should restrict their moderation activities, to significant rule violations?
Generally with these kinds of feelings, how would we see things if the roles were reversed? If lemmy.world had communities saying absolutely vile things about Canada or whatever. Or things that would be maybe illegal in Canada.
Would you want lemmy.ca users to be subject to that, because it's on another instance? Or would you rather try to cultivate a positive experience for everyone?
Now obviously these aren't super comparable, I can't quite come up with a 1:1 example. But part of choosing an instance is to align with your values and the content you want to see. There's ultra conservative instances censoring what they see as "liberal crap", and there's ultra liberal instances that also censor what they see as "conservative extremism". I'm sure there are or will be religious instances that censor everything that doesn't strictly align with the gospel.
The problem with rules is even some of the rules we think as pretty obvious universal like respecting eachother falls apart when the group of people enforcing the rules decides the other group is [insert *phobia] and they don't deserve respect because they're [insert unfounded accusations].
Now we're still mostly dealing with fairly free countries. But then you'll also have instances from other more authoritative countries that will also gladly censor a good chunk of lemmy.ca, if not defederate entirely. It just happens that we tend to try to see lemmy.world as relatively neutral instance.
For me that's a feature of the fediverse: it can all mostly coexist and as users and admins we get to choose which particular view on the data we want. If an instance wants to aggressively moderate conflict, good for them. I run my own instance specifically so that I'm not affected by all that crap, and why smaller instances should be encouraged.
It should be well known and agreed to that if you want the full view of a community, the best way is to get it from the original instance. Don't want lemmy.world to skew your view of lemmy.ca? Make a lemmy.ca account.
IMO it would be entirely reasonable for an instance to for example aggressively censor transphobia. You bet there will be a matching instance that censors all LGBTQ+ topics as disturbing deviant conduct dangerous to people.