If I understand it right, the moderator of the mastodon.world instance has blocked several posts by Hasnain Kazim, as Kazim reported yesterday on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/661473263/posts/10163657720033264/
Kazim is a quite famous and successful book author in Germany and something between left, conservative and liberal. He was journalist for the most important German weekly news magazine Spiegel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasnain_Kazim?wprov=sfla1
Canceling his posts is stupid and certainly completely exaggerated. To me from the external perspective it seems that the moderator is abusing his power. He is damaging free and respectful discussion. Furthermore, when a famous person like Kazim reports those experiences to his broad audience, who do not understand the functioning of the fediverse, the moderator also damages Mastodon in general significantly, it seems to me.
What do you think about this case ?
This post says who he is and that he got banned from mastodon.world, but it does not say what he posted there before getting banned.
The .world network is not known, in general for having unconventional rules or heavy-handed moderation. Without more information, I have to assume he posted something that would get him banned a lot of other places too.
It’s right there:
A post of him was deleted where he reported that a majority of arabic language comments in international media were celebrating the attack in Berlin on a Pride event, and were also celebrating the guy who weaponized his car. He says that this is a big, massive problem in that post.
He then just posted “The mods have deleted my previous comment, is that for real?” while citing the same comment again - this is what got him banned.
[email protected] material.
So he posted misinformation that attacked arabic speakers, and the post got taken down?
I don’t see the problem.
He described what he saw posted in comment sections of international news sites. I don’t think that this was misinformation, that ugly behavior surfaces every time Pride events get attacked.
Imagine if we judged entire nationalities by YouTube comments.
If we weren’t using English as default,that would actually be a pretty accurate method to see at least clusters of nationalities
True shit, whether it’s arabic, english, or something else; shit heels will clap when gay people die.
It’s not misinformation if it is true but you don’t like the implications. You can argue that it is not valid to draw conclusions about the attitudes of people in the world based only on those people (or bots) leaving comments on news articles. But it’s not misinformation to say that’s what you saw or that it concerns you if it is actually true.
And if my grandmother had wheels she could be a bike.
Just curious if you’ve surveyed comments in Arabic in international media articles to determine their sentiment or you just know it can’t be true that they celebrated murders.
And have you compared any such statements to comments made on any news website in English in the US? Because you get a shitload of stupid stuff there that has little bearing on anything whatsoever.
You don’t see the problem? That’s the problem.
Feel free to prove “misinformation” though. I assume you must have the logs, share them here to prove misinformation.
Yeah I’d be curious about context, too.
If someone gets banned from an instance, they are free to move their account to a new instance and still keep their followers.
Someone doesn’t just get to break instance rules just because they are a successful author. Attitudes need to change, if you approach the fediverse like corporate social media, you are doing it wrong.
What’s his excuse going to be once he gets muted on bluesky?
Also, what does “banning” even mean? Lemmings I find love to abuse terminology so that a one-hour time-out period gets referred to as a “ban” (tbf this was inherited from Reddit, no matter how much we’d like to leave the old ways behind, they do tend to cling stubbornly).
But I don’t know how Mastodon uses those words - is he even truly “banned” or merely “banned” for like an hour while the moderator spent that time researching the situation?
The word ban does not imply any duration on its own.
It’s in the bottom right of the screenshot that shows his complaint:
Deepl translation:
That’s his version of events that he’s showing to his audience. People who get banned from things often share a harmless-looking excerpt when that’s not really what got them banned.
It would be good to have the whole context before reaching a conclusion.
He has made the same original post on Bluesky as well. So you can probably see the other posts he has made.
I don’t see anything in the Bluesky posts I would expect to get moderated on a .world server. Odd.
He posts mainly on Facebook, and copies some posts to bluesky and (up to now) to Mastodon, to support big tech alternatives. Also on FB you will not find anything that you “would expect to get moderated on a .world server”. He is very balanced and respectful (but also very clear) in his posts on complicated topics, as I must grant him, even if I do not always agree with him. It is a significant loss for the fediverse to lose a German top author. Fediverse needs those accounts to attract normal users.
Everything he says is his version of events, everything you say is your version of events, everything I say is my version of events. So… you never, ever need to say that. WE KNOW
Ist halt ne wirklich dumme Verkürzung der Tatsachen, und wenn man sich so die Mehrheit der Kommentare in deutschsprachigen Onlinezeitungen anschaut dann könnte man auch denken die AfD hat 90% Zustimmung.
Ich vermute mal der mastodon.world Moderator hatte keine Ahnung wer dieser Typ ist (ich hatte auch noch nie von dem gehöhrt), aber hat dauernd (vermutlich nicht ganz unbegründete) Beschwerden wegen Islamophobie bekommen.
Edit: ups, sorry, I mistook this for a German speaking com.
It’s just a really stupid oversimplification of the facts, and if you look at the majority of the comments in German-language online newspapers, you might even think the AfD has a 90% approval rating.
I’m guessing the mastodon.world moderator had no idea who this guy is (I never heard of him either), but kept receiving complaints (presumably not entirely unfounded) about Islamophobia.
Yes, at this point comments online don’t mean all that much. Could be someone with an LLM or a small segment of very loud people with a lot of spare time.
The individual comment itself doesn’t seem particularly bannable. But a pattern of islamophobia could be. Which may be the larger issue.
Ja bin ich dabei, ich kenn den Spiegel seit >30 Jahren inzwischen und hab noch nie von dem Typen gehört.
https://www.spiegel.de/impressum/autor-4dd37b50-0001-0003-0000-000000002702
Thanks. The selection of texts makes it clear that he has slowly moved from being a serious journalist to a pundit that publishes mostly opinion pieces that cater to conservative and latently racist audience and are likely also attempts at rage baiting left-liberals. Basically an opportunist exploiting the “also show the other side” bias of liberal media like the Spiegel and I would not be overly surprised if his next move is to support the far-right (the AfD is very open to opportunists with migration history or LG(BT), like Alice Weidel).
I think “allen Ernstes” is more accurately translated “in all seriousness”, not “actually”; so: “the moderator here, in all seriousness, deleted…”.