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[Vote] Should we defederate from maga.place? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/agora@sh.itjust.works
541 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A bit over a month ago, a user posted in !main@sh.itjust.works to propose defederating from maga.place. That post was followed by a discussion in !agora@sh.itjust.works a week ago, which seems to have gained some traction. In response, we're going to hold a vote on the matter. Voting will be open for one week, through Friday, November 7.

The Agora discussion post is here:
https://sh.itjust.works/post/48420886

Only sh.itjust.works accounts created prior to today (October 31) may cast a vote.

Vote by commenting either yes/aye/oui or nay/no/non.

Any further discussion should happen in the Agora post linked above.

Additional Context/Discussions

Similar discussion at lemmy.ca: https://sh.itjust.works/post/46502305

Other fediverse instances are also defederating: https://sh.itjust.works/post/48111431

The instance's page at Fediseer: https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/maga.place

VOTE RESULT

yes/aye/oui: 363
nay/no/non: 43

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago* (9 children)

Ok I guess agree to disagree, when 81% of Republicans trust antivax foundation founder Fauci, who says Tylenol and vaccines cause autism, that tells me the propaganda is winning. Maybe not the ONLY cause of vaccine rates going down, but when the head of the FDA is antivaxxer who has 81% support of maga, that means something.

Idk what politics sub you're looking at, politics@lemmy.world is not locked and is the biggest politics sub on lemmy. I'm fine with being politically biased (saying biden is bad for the country) but not with literal fake news (someone misreading a study saying it proves climate change is fake)

Yes your point is exactly right, and I block subs that do that. If there were an entire INSTANCE that firehosed bad information and/or banned people for discussing and was hateful, I would want to defederate from them (as I voted for when this instance voted to defederate from hexbear!)

The problem is this is not an instance that just has misinformation. The entire MAGA movement is based on misinformation. To support someone who removes all protections for climate change, wants to save the economy by giving tax breaks to billionaires, says law and order while breaking the constitution nonstop... it's just a propaganda based movement. If they want to come actually discuss something, then they can ask a legitimate question in another community (and people need to stop being nasty to them if it's a real question), but I don't want to help them spread propaganda and hate just in the hopes that one person might change their mind (they won't, trump still has about 90% approval rating from MAGA).

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    antivax foundation founder Fauci

    I think you mean RFK Jr? Fauci was and probably still is very much in favor of vaccines.

    Tylenol and vaccines cause autism

    If you trust two doctors and they give different medical advice, and you only accept one as accurate, does that mean you stop trusting the first doctor? No. People can be wrong sometimes, so it's fine.

    RFK Jr isn't even a doctor, he was a lawyer turned politician. I think it's reasonable to trust that he's doing his best even when he misinterprets medical studies, especially when he's under the gun to get an answer by a specific date (he said he'd "solve" autism by September, and that announcement was made at the end of September).

    To be clear, I don't trust RFK Jr or Trump, I'm merely providing what I think is a reasonable explanation of the survey results. I think it's logically reasonable to trust your local doctor for your personal medical needs, and also trust RFK Jr for setting nationwide policy, even if he's wrong sometimes on specifics.

    Idk what politics sub you’re looking at, politics@lemmy.world is not locked

    !politics@sh.itjust.works. That's the instance we're on, and without any further information, that's what I'm going to assume since this discussion is about sh.itjust.works policy.

    Here are some sources that I find sketchy on !politics@lemmy.world:

    That's just from the first page or two of results. A "mostly factual" post here and there is probably fine, but having several posts in the first page or two is concerning. Maybe mods remove even worse posts, idk, I don't sub there.

    And honestly, this is fine, because generally speaking, the mods seem to do a good job removing the worst of it.

    We don't know if maga.place will be run that way, or if they'll be a firehose of misinformation.

    The entire MAGA movement is based on misinformation.

    I don't know if that's actually fair. The MAGA movement is large, and a lot of them are frustrated with the current administration that's the face of the MAGA movement, so there's more division than cohesion IMO. The only thing they seem to agree on is "owning the libs," but they get mad when there's collateral damage to themselves.

    That said, we don't know where on the spectrum of "MAGA" this instance is. Maybe they just picked the name because they thought it would be funny to "own the libs," or maybe they're actually a psyop. Until we know, I don't think we should defederate.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (7 children)

    Ok but my point is they give the same credence to rfk's opinion on something as their doctor. That is literal insanity that could only happen through propaganda. Not ONE thing he has said has been legitimate or factual. https://www.health.com/rfkjr-beef-tallow-seed-oils-8744688 There are about 100 more examples like this https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/28/rfk-cdc-director-susan-monarez-fired/ Cdc leaders and experts say rfk is going to damage public health https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/09/rfk-jr-cdc-panel-vaccines.html There are z e r o legitimate studies that support vaccine skepticism, yet here he is. The fact that he said he'd solve autism is also literally insane! It's a complete misunderstanding of what autism is, again, based on propaganda. It's not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and the "epidemic" of autism as he says is people actually being diagnosed. Which people would know if not for the propaganda telling them otherwise.

    I'm using the biggest politics community on lemmy because that should give an idea of politics posts the general leftist makes, as compared to the average MAGA post.

    The friendlyaetheist post was reporting what happened, so I don't know why you'd even mention it. It lists the sources it uses as it says them, credibility is irrelevant.

    I'm not sure why you're smuggling in the implication that those sites aren't undeniably 100% factual? If I say "trump flounders after his tarrifs hurt the economy" this is 100% factual reporting, with biased language. I would not complain if the maga posts said "Biden flounders over war in ukraine." But they don't. They verifiably lie. Thedailybeast is CLOSE, but still nowhere near the level of the maga posts. And interesting you bring that up as the biased source, because under every slightly unfactual post from the daily beast the first comment is always stop posting this biased trash!

    We have evidence that 1/5 posts are misinformation. The others were "person x says y about person z." If ANYONE in my life 1/5 things they said was propaganda meant to fool me, I would tell everyone I knew to stay away, he's trying to trick you. I also didn't verify the quotes, and I didn't count things like "former CIA director loses his cool about hunter Biden laptop" which is a dogwhistle that this is a real controversy and shows democrats are corrupt and trying to hide it. On the second page right now, you have:

    CIA director loses his cool (dogwhistle, tries to make you believe hunter Biden laptop is important to distract from trumps constant crimes)

    2 normal posts

    2nd amendment pros outweigh the cons - contains lots of verifiably false information about how carrying guns prevents crime.

    1 biased but factual post

    Gen z candidate storms out of interview after being shown clip of her menacing federal officers - discrediting the younger generation, discrediting people who oppose ICE, you could argue this but I can ask any MAGA person I know and they will say everything I just did

    4 normal ish posts

    1 post on how people flee socialist countries, implying it's because they're socialist (arguable if its misinfo)

    Kamala harris snaps at... no she did not. At no point in the text does it have one quote where she is responding aggressively or angrily.

    1 normal post

    1 post implying Biden overused executive powers, to signal trump doing it is fair play.

    So in 1 page you have 7 normal posts, 1 hateful "owned the libs" post, 2 arguably misinformation posts, and 2 blatant disinformation posts. If I gave you the option of that as your homepage, would you say that's positive or negative? Even take out the other stuff, if I gave you a homepage of 10 normal posts and 2 blatant disinformation posts, and you didn't know which was which, would you find that acceptable? What about for your friends and family?

    84% of MAGA still supports Trump. The only way you could still support trump is based on misinformation, full stop. Hate the democrats sure you can do that, but not SUPPORTING trump, saying he's doing a good job on the economy on health, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do that factually.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (6 children)

    this is 100% factual reporting, with biased language

    Bias is different than factuality. I linked Media Bias Fact Check, which has a credibility score.

    Bias has its own issues, since a biased source is less likely to post info that goes against the narrative, and likely to focus on things that support the narrative. IMO, a good community will have a mixture of high credibility sources from multiple biases.

    2nd amendment pros outweigh the cons - contains lots of verifiably false information about how carrying guns prevents crime.

    That's obviously an opinion piece, and there's no clear consensus on the studies.

    Most studies against permissive gun laws look at "gun violence" statistics, which includes suicides, and suicides are often opportunistic, so more guns available means suicidal people will use guns more often. Studies in favor of permissive 2A laws point to incidents where an armed citizen stops a crime or cherry picks areas and date ranges, and obviously you'll have more armed citizens with permissive laws. In short, the body of research Is inconclusive.

    The link in question was to a specific "guns" community, where only one user posted, and they aren't even a user on that instance. So pointing to this as an example of misinformation is iffy.

    Kamala harris snaps at…

    That's typical clickbait, I've seen plenty of similar nonsense on the politics community on Lemmy world.

    1 post implying Biden overused executive powers, to signal trump doing it is fair play.

    He did though. So did Trump 1.0, Obama, and Bush. It's a problem, and each time we have a change in the White House, the new admin uses it as an excuse to escalate.

    If I gave you the option of that as your homepage, would you say that’s positive or negative?

    I'm not a conservative, nor am I a user on that instance, so it's an irrelevant question. Nobody on sh.itjust.works will have that as their homepage unless they join only those communities, and we'll only see that content in all if someone here subs to them.

    The communities there are clearly labeled with their bias. The two main ones you pointed out are Conservative and Guns, so you SKG should expect to see slanted posts in each.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (5 children)

    You are downplaying "verifiably false information" as bias. I don't care your political leaning, you are not allowed to post undeniable lies. I don't think it's possible to convince you based on general instances of misinformation so I will just look at 1 page of misinfo from maga.place. If you can find anywhere near this level of blatant disinformation or hatred in 10 pages of c/politics, I will agree it's unfair to defederate.

    https://maga.place/post/28015 Trump with his 2 democratic opponents as trash bags. Quality content that we need. What did I learn from this post other than Republicans good democrats bad

    https://maga.place/post/28008 HAHA LOL SOCIALIST POLICIES ARE TERRIBLE!! (spreading propaganda that they themselves saw)

    https://www.breakingthenews.net/news/details/65119109 No sources anywhere, just trust them

    https://maga.place/post/26968 Posting a quote from the CEO of fox news knockoff Newsmax, not misinformation just a meaningless post quoting a far right commentator. Who gets paid more to have this opinion.

    https://maga.place/post/26971 Hmm tucker Carlson is the leader of modern day Hitler youth. Because he is critical of Israel. Interesting thing to post! I also like hearing how people who think Israel should be criticized as the Hitler youth!

    https://maga.place/post/27153 More misinfo, implying he got booted for his comments and not because trumps fcc head threatened to take action if he was not fired, also says "for his incendiary comments" when his quote, as he said himself, meant "they are trying to make it seem like it was a leftist and not a rightist, whether it's true or not." You can argue the 2nd point, 1st is blatant misinformation.

    This is not even 1 page. If I saw any of this trash in my feed I would instantly block the whole community. 6/14 posts were either extremely biased trash with no information, or literally just false. Go ahead and find me anywhere close to that ratio of blatant garbage on ANY lemmy community (besides the already defederated tankie instances). Find me even 1 thing in 10 pages that is so clearly false or hateful or divisive. And keep in mind these are their N E W S sources doing this, not some random person.

    Side note, I saw a post I thought was actually really high quality from maga.place, but I realized while reading it I really can't trust any facts in it because most of the things posted there are just false or misrepresented, so it's not unlikely what I'm reading now is too. I have almost never had that feeling in c/politics, and when I do I look at the comments and people call it out (and say to stop posting it unlike the MAGA instance)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    https://maga.place/post/28015 Trump with his 2 democratic opponents as trash bags. Quality content that we need. What did I learn from this post other than Republicans good democrats bad

    Not disinformation, it's merely political speech.

    https://maga.place/post/28008 HAHA LOL SOCIALIST POLICIES ARE TERRIBLE!! (spreading propaganda that they themselves saw)

    Not disinformation, it's merely political speech.

    https://www.breakingthenews.net/news/details/65119109 No sources anywhere, just trust them

    Seems to be pretty reputable. The article is three sentences, so it's not really something I'd expect sources on.

    Here's a Reuters article that says the same thing.

    https://maga.place/post/26968 Posting a quote from the CEO of fox news knockoff Newsmax, not misinformation just a meaningless post quoting a far right commentator. Who gets paid more to have this opinion.

    Sure, I've seen plenty of meaningless posts across Lemmy. /c/conservative does not appear to be a news community, just a space for conservatives to hang out. So it's similar to something like Occupy Democrats.

    https://maga.place/post/26971 Hmm tucker Carlson is the leader of modern day Hitler youth. Because he is critical of Israel. Interesting thing to post! I also like hearing how people who think Israel should be criticized as the Hitler youth!

    This is a quote from a conservative about another conservative. Makes sense.

    https://maga.place/post/27153 More misinfo

    I agree with you on this one. NYPost is awful, and the Jimmy Kimmel situation had a bunch of misinformation all around. Trump admin claimed he was dropped due to his comments, others claim it was due to credible FCC threats. I don't think there's enough evidence to say it constitutes jawboning, but some lawyers think there is, so IDK. If ABC was truly concerned about retribution, why would they reinstate Kimmel?

    Regardless, it's an awful source.

    /c/politics is reasonably well moderated, check out the modlog.

    Maga.place doesn't have the same quality rules, so who knows what their standards are going to be. The Modlog is a mess from stuff from other instances, and it seems like the mods don't really do anything.

    But I also don't know if reports were made. I don't see any real harassment going on, so IDK, maybe their mods are just AFK. That happens fairly often in smaller communities.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    The first two are examples of negativity/brainrot and divisiveness. If those were in isolation I wouldn't complain, but it's just adding to the list of bad posts.

    I'm not arguing the veracity of the claims on that site, but if you look at all their articles they NEVER list sources. Why link this over anything else? Compare that to the Time article https://time.com/7329777/trump-xi-meeting-korea-us-china-trade-deal-tariffs-takeaways/ Sources everywhere and it's better fuller information. Again not misinformation, but it's a garbage website with no sources and no context.

    As an aside, we may wonder why they didn't post the Time article instead? Hmm....

    Ok sure, but you're comparing instances that are not very popular to something that is the identity of that instance i.e. being a conservative. Either way at best it's preaching to the choir or ragebait depending on your leaning, so just not a good post.

    The quote is not only about the conservatives. He is saying those who support tucker Carlson for criticizing Israel are the Hitler youth. Go watch the video the guy basically says people who support hamas and criticize Israel are evil. I don't want to see this hateful garbage why are they posting it? It's not even relevant to politics it's just some random guy spreading hate. I can criticize Israel and agree with tucker Carlson on that point, he didn't even say anything about hamas but just criticizing Israel = antisemite and nazi like wtf...

    Wut the fcc head literally said "if he's not dealt with there will be consequences" that is about as explicit of a threat as you can get, am I misunderstanding something? Trump admin lying doesn't make it any less obvious why it happened.

    Sure if the instance mods remove all the misinfo and hatred, I'm all for an actual debate on immigration, universal healthcare etc. But right now there is less than 0 value on that instance. Those posts were not funny, they were not informative, they were not thought provoking. Every post that wasn't garbage was just a less informative source or something some right wing person said (besides the 5ish posts about green party and how 2 party is bad, legitimately good posts). That mixed with a healthy dose of misinformation (not bias, pure undeniable falsehoods and misrepresentation) makes me not want to ever see a single post from it. Maybe they will change in the future and we refederate, I wouldn't oppose that. But right now it's just not good. You said it yourself nypost is garbage, go look how many posts are from there and imagine some random lemmy user reading it not knowing it's garbage.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    negativity/brainrot and divisiveness

    If you want to go down that direction, I can point to a half-dozen or more communities that allow those types of posts, just in the other direction.

    Why link this over anything else?

    It has the right headline for the message they want to discuss in their community.

    Look at the sketchy articles I've linked, or sketchy articles in explicitly biased communities on this instance and others federated with it, and that's the exact same trend. People link things because the headline says what they'd like to discuss.

    How many people in !occupydemocrats@sh.itjust.works looks into the sources from stuff they post? What about !politicalmemes@lemmy.world? They're remarkably similar to how !conservative@maga.place works, accuracy of reporting takes a backseat to headlines.

    Compare that to the Time article https://time.com/7329777/trump-xi-meeting-korea-us-china-trade-deal-tariffs-takeaways/ Sources everywhere and it’s better fuller information

    Sure, and that's the type of source I'd expect in a news or politics community. It's not what I'd expect in a "liberals" or "conservatives" community.

    Preaching to the choir is the point.

    people who support hamas and criticize Israel are evil

    I actually kind of agree here. I support Palestinians, I don't support Hamas. I also criticize Israel.

    Supporting terrorist groups is evil.

    I can criticize Israel and agree with tucker Carlson on that point, he didn’t even say anything about hamas but just criticizing Israel = antisemite and nazi like wtf…

    I agree, and that would be something I'd report a post over, and maybe report a user, not defederate from an instance.

    “if he’s not dealt with there will be consequences” that is about as explicit of a threat as you can get, am I misunderstanding something?

    Maybe? Without a lawsuit where evidence is compiled, I just don't think we have enough evidence to say what actually happened and what the understanding actually was.

    Sure if the instance mods remove all the misinfo and hatred, I’m all for an actual debate on immigration, universal healthcare etc. But right now there is less than 0 value on that instance.

    Whether there's value for you is irrelevant. You can easily just not look at their content, or even block the instance if you want to make sure you don't see their content. We have solutions for that.

    We have zero evidence that the mods aren't responsive. Literally nobody has posted anything to that effect, nor any evidence that their users are causing problems. So why should we defederate? Because we don't like their speech? That's about as closed minded and anti-free speech as I can think of. So many want to shut out the instance merely because of their domain name, as in, they don't want to have that discussion whatsoever.

    Maybe they will change in the future and we refederate

    That never happens. Why would anyone look at their instance if we're defederated from them? There's zero chance that we'd actually get around to considering it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Sure let's check the sub I have never seen a single post from. Oh I can block the community there we go. Oh 15 different misinfo posts from 15 different maga.place communities, I guess I just have to block every single community. (i.e. block the instance). The difference is you can FIND those communities. I am seeing MAINLY these kinds of terrible posts on maga.place.

    Here's some undeniable misinfo posts from the NEWS community usanews https://maga.place/post/13207 https://maga.place/post/13643 Yes the shadowy antifa organization just like the shadowy blm organization. I've gone to these protests, I'm still waiting to get in contact with the antifa leaders and get my paycheck.

    Also yes, you can find brainrot/divisiveness, but very rarely actual hatred, unless it's a trans person saying "wow this administration quite literally took away my rights!" Or someone saying "I will actually die if they take away my healthcare." This is not the same as "they hurt the economy and had stupid policies, let's call them garbage." Again I am not saying you WILL NOT FIND THIS ON THE LEFT. but it is a FIREHOSE vs a faucet. One of conservatives favorite shows fox news just repeats hatred towards democrats 24/7, and that is what they are used to.

    Alright let's compare to c/politicalmemes then

    Mamdani didn't just beat cuomo, he beat the establishment

    The cruelty is the point (Republicans voting against snap, holding snap recipients hostage. Arguable that this is legitimately just true because it makes their bargaining better, but I could give you this one)

    Post about the epstein files (nonpartisan even Republicans want it)

    Everyone has lost their minds (nonpartisan)

    Joke about how trump can't read (I could argue hes proven this but ill give this to you)

    Image of mamdani turning away from autocracy to democracy, with an angry trump. Biased but just a standard political cartoon

    Joke about fox news saying liberals are losing by winning

    Post about someone saying Mike Johnson won't open the government because he doesn't want to release the epstein files

    Post about disabled rights being human rights

    So 1 post about trump not being able to read, and 1 post about how the Republicans who are voting to not fund snap actually WANT people to not have snap. The rest are nonpartisan or positive messages all around. I felt better reading c/politicalmemes because among the brainrot there were positive messages and nonpartisan "hey guys this sure is crazy." Waiting for the post on c/conservative where they say "hey guys protect your legal Mexican neighbor from ICE, there's been a lot of false deportations." Again I am not arguing that it DOESN'T happen, but maga.place is 50% EXTREMELY biased, hateful, or misinformation. Not comparable to 8/10 posts on a VERY heavily leftist site being apolitical, and the other 2 having a grain of truth if hyperbolic.

    From: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/after-jimmy-kimmels-show-was-suspended-a-key-question-is-does-the-fcc-have-the-power-to-regulate-speech

    "I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct to take actions, frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Carr likened Kimmel’s comment to “news distortion,” which is against FCC’s rules for broadcasters.

    And then a couple hours later he is suspended. I guess it's possible the FCC threatened to take action against people hosting Kimmel. Then, independently with no influence from the threat of their broadcast license being revoked, they removed Jimmy Kimmel. That is one possibility.

    Ok sure I would agree. I would also say they are misinformed, so I would not use hateful language against my fellow Americans, saying they are the Hitler youth. I do not want someone who is misinformed to be CALLED Hitler youth because it will PROVABLY make it harder to change their mind and cause more divisiveness. Literally less than 0 reason to post it.

    I am not saying they have 0 value for me. I'm saying objectively they have less than 0 value since many of their posts are hateful and divisive, or straight up misinformation. Someone being around misinformation and hatred makes them a more hateful person who also spreads that misinformation. I would block the instance regardless, but I don't want the average joe thinking "hm maybe these guys have a point, I never see anyone discussing these (completely discredited) studies about climate change! They must be too radically leftist to do so." and then start hanging out in conservative communities. This is literally how many people get radicalized, is through propaganda and fake news.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Again I am not arguing that it DOESN’T happen, but maga.place is 50% EXTREMELY biased, hateful, or misinformation. Not comparable to 8/10 posts on a VERY heavily leftist site being apolitical, and the other 2 having a grain of truth if hyperbolic.

    I could point out more blatant examples, such as lemmygrad, or many communities on Lemmy.ml. Often the post itself isn't as blatant, but the top comments certainly are, and the moderation backs it up.

    The main difference is that Fox News is more popular. The same misinformation and aggressive rhetoric exists elsewhere, it just doesn't have the same funding or reach as Fox News.

    What's funny is that other fox-named news orgs (local fox stations) tend to be among the best wrt accuracy and lack of rhetoric. In my area (Utah), the local fox station is way better than the large, independent, conservative station and news org (KSL and Deseret News, both owned by the dominant church here). They're unaffiliated with Fox News, but many get them confused.

    And then a couple hours later he is suspended. I guess it’s possible the FCC threatened to take action against people hosting Kimmel

    I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. ABC stations were involved in a merger which was close to the edge of violating antitrust. Determining whether it does or not could take a long time in the courts, which could cause complications when negotiating contracts and whatnot. Kimmel's remarks implied that Republicans were to blame, which could be considered a violation of certain agreements for OTA transmission. Again, that would take a long time to sort out in the courts.

    Maybe what the FCC said amounted to intimidation. Maybe ABC was looking for an excuse. Idk.

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