fiat_lux ⛓️‍💥

Moved to @fiat_lux@lemmy.zip (04-2026)

  • 4 Posts
  • 64 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • There’s a lot to unpack here. For the sake of convenience, I’m going to assume that what Luminous said was a legitimate call for violence and was therefore not complying with the Lemmy.world code of conduct.

    If we assume that, then the Lemmy.world terms say that they can:

    • remove the content and ask a user not to do it again, and/or,
    • (if it’s a second time) suspend the account temporarily, and/or,
    • restrict or banish the community, and/or,
    • remove all of that user’s content, and/or,
    • permanently ban the user.

    I have no idea how many of those had already happened, I’m going to assume for convenience again that some of it did. The site bylaws also say that for community bans and content removal:

    • Bans “should only be used as a last resort for hostile users OR for users that are known bad faith actors.”
    • “Any community user ban CAN and SHOULD have a clearly documented reason pointing to explicit rules broken.”
    • “any content that they DO remove, they should ideally be able to cite the community rules that were broken.”

    I note that all of Luminous’ content was removed, and while the “Our Rights” section says this can happen, it somewhat contrasts with the guidelines for documenting content removal. But there’s still nothing in any of this that suggests defederating from the entire instance is warranted or an appropriate course of action. If community bans are considered a last resort, then it seems logical that defederating has at the bare minimum the same threshold of seriousness.

    Let’s assume for convenience again that the comments from one admin can be sufficient cause for defederation, and its absence from the ToS is an oversight. If that’s the case, then the bylaws and prior defederation examples (eg. lemmygrad) suggest that this should be adequately explained. But that didn’t happen, and it’s not clear whether the other admins were involved in the decision.

    Even if all of the above reactions to Luminous’ comment were justified and proper, the actions afterwards by lemmy.world admins / mods don’t inspire my confidence. I can see there has been:

    • This refederation announcement, only posted as a regular post (I found it yesterday by chance). It only briefly outlines the events leading up to this.
    • One user in this thread has been temporarily community banned for “Spam, harassment” after three removed posts in the thread, which doesn’t seem like spam quantity. Two of those posts cite the reason “this isn’t about jordanlund”, yet further down in the thread, an admin is litigating the jordanlund situation. Other far more off topic content is in this thread, so if that is a concern, it’s not clear why the other comments remain.
    • A few users have been permanently(?) banned from the instance with the reasons “troll” or “calling FHF members nazis”. It’s unclear whether the removed comments or user histories rose to the level of needing an instance ban.
    • Multiple other users have been temporarily banned from this community for reasons spanning from “uncivil” to “disinformation”, to “sealioning and harassment”. Many of the removed comments from those users did not seem to meet those descriptions either.
    • Many other removed comments from non-banned users, with varying levels of clear rules broken.
    • One moderator indicating the defederation mostly only targets several “loud” people and the instance size is only 165 people, which undercuts both the reasoning for why defederation was necessary and the justification for including 150 users as collateral (along with anyone who may have wanted to interact with them). Several people can be dealt with using individual bans, and that quantity are unlikely to be negatively impacting lemmy.world at scale.
    • No response from the only person further up the leadership ladder for whether / how Lemmy.world admin are evaluating the original decisions, governance process for defederation, or the bus factor and risks of one person being site admin and top moderator and infra simultaneously. Not even a “I’m alive and considering the issue” acknowledgement, unless done behind the cover of the lwadmin account.
    • Lots of little bits of engagement otherwise from Lemmy.world admin or mods with various tangents in the thread.

    Very little here seems to align with the by laws and expectations for proportionate community moderator conduct.

    The situation looks to me like it has been poorly handled, and there is no sign of any compromise or admission that any of the events that up to now could have been handled differently, or a process for how it might be handled in the future. I just don’t see much in the way of community building or good will, but I do see the same patterns that have inspired other lemmy.world drama over the years.

    If one admin’s comments or actions aren’t sufficient for justifying defederation, then it’s unclear why dbzer0 is being considered for defederation at all. But, if one admin’s comments or actions are sufficient justification, then the situation in this thread opens the door for other instances to defederate from Lemmy.world.


  • The Nazi symbol laws were one of the ones that came to mind. Strangely, that’s not even consistent among European countries - Austria and Germany will strictly enforce swastika display (although they may provide exceptions for limited artistic and educational use?). But as far as I can tell, it’s legal in Denmark, Italy and possibly Finland. I suspect that legal status would not be so clear if actively being used to promote hate, understandably.

    The laws of my region I’m largely familiar with, so I’m not too concerned about abiding by those. But I noticed many instances have in their Terms of Service or Code of Conduct that the user is responsible for ensuring their content complies with the instance’s regional laws - that’s what sparked my curiosity. Other instances like lemmy.world have an oddly unbounded position like “Do not post illegal content of any type”, but I assume is implicitly scoped to their “governing laws” section which lists Netherlands, Germany and Finland - and I’m unsure which would take precedence if there were conflicting laws.

    Edit: Another part of the curiosity came from the recent stories about the US taking Reddit to court to compel turnover of information about the person who criticized ICE.






  • I started making more noise after my neighbors clearly did not realize that the quiet they enjoyed from my apartment was out of deliberate consideration on my part, and not a mutual experience. I started with normal sounds like coughing or laughing or playing some music, but after that didn’t work, I started to make noises they would be embarrassed to ask me about. It somewhat worked at reducing their noise levels. I knew they heard me because they stopped making eye contact. But they were also awful people so that was fine with me.

    Thankfully they moved and I now have a quiet neighbor who gets to enjoy my silence. Occasionally they’ll get a little noise from me to remind them that the wall between my bedroom and their main room is very thin, but I haven’t had to escalate it like with the last people, for which I am grateful. My other neighbors are a very quiet elderly couple and I love them, but our shared wall is substantially thicker, which is partly why I love them.


  • OP specifically mentioned smiting and wrath, which is often considered violent and destructive anger, so I interpreted the question to include acting based on emotion. If we assume that this is about the Abrahamic religions, we’ve got some examples to consider where God may not have acted proportionally or appropriately.

    That’s where the paradox kicks in. Can God feel anger so strong he cannot control his actions? If God is omnipotent and therefore capable of acting appropriately despite emotions, or, because of omnipotence he is capable of not having those emotions at all, then why the carnage?

    One example could be the Noahic Covenant, where it was somehow necessary to kill all animals (except two of each species) because of disappointment in human wickedness. Another might be the Ten Plagues of Egypt and ensuing Deuteronomy Covenant where the punishment for one person’s disobedience requires the punishment of others, including children, future wives and livestock. It doesn’t seem at all clear why all the creeping things that creepeth upon the Earth had it coming, when omnipotence allows for simply fixing the problem.



  • Plenty of them seem to have just memory-holed it. I check on the posts of one very random extreme right winger occasionally, and I’m guessing she didn’t like his post because she’s posted twice as much today as she usually does. But it’s all just her normal talking points: A Bible verse, Mamdani’s rent control will hurt poor people, election fraud “pass the save act” reminders, and Obama/Biden/communists open borders child trafficker conspiracies. It’s like she’s trying to drown out the the information she doesn’t want to hear.

    They’re very effectively siloed off in their social media echo chambers, this is why that 33% support number doesn’t move. In my opinion, the number of articles about “they’re finally outraged” just lulls people into a false sense of security and obscures actual developments.




  • A republished Reuters piece with no indication they’re a “content partner” of Reuters. This is either plagiarism or a propaganda campaign.

    So I’m going to repost my comment on the other link too:

    Khamenei’s face was disfigured in the attack on the supreme leader’s compound in central Tehran and he suffered a significant injury to one or both legs, all three sources said… The 56-year-old is nonetheless recovering from his wounds and remains mentally sharp… He is taking part in meetings with senior officials via audio conferencing and is engaged in decision-making on major issues including the war and negotiations ‌with Washington…

    Ok.

    The question of whether Khamenei’s health allows him to run state affairs…

    You just said he was already working. What question? How would 6 week old facial and leg injuries prevent him from running state affairs?

    Writing an article about how Iranian society is responding to largely invisible leadership is fine, but that’s only very briefly mentioned at the end of the article. The rest of the article is a whole lot of words to only say “we don’t know much about him”.

    This is just ableist JAQing off.





  • It seems they may have agreed, but there’s disagreement to how far the scope extends. It’s not clear what the actual contents of the agreement were, but Pakistan, which mediated the deal, said the two-week pause in fighting did extend to Lebanon. Iran has previously included that as a term in talks, but hasn’t confirmed if they kept it this time. But they likely did, I don’t see why Pakistan would lie about that either.

    Israel, unsurprisingly, says the ceasefire does not extend to Lebanon, and has not stopped attacking Lebanon. In fact, they just launched the largest attack on Lebanon in decades. It also sounds like an oil refinery in Iran was hit after the US ceasefire announcement, but there are no details of who hit it yet.



  • I fell down a wild rabbit hole.

    • Dev Forty Five LLC was created 2 weeks ago and lists Ty Nielson as the registered agent
    • Ty Nielson is listed and at some point was described on LinkedIn as the Head of Engineering at Gemini (not the Google product) with location in St George, UT. Gemini lists an office in Ogden, UT on linkedin.
    • His employment history says he started as a software engineer, but he may not be the head of engineering. I’m unsure if he lives in Utah at all. He did ask how to do authentication in a React Native app properly in stack overflow 7 months ago. Not a great sign.
    • Gemini is a product of Blue Rocket, inc. and the primary address for both companies is listed as a thinkspace in Redmond, WA.
    • Blue Rocket Inc. also has an office in Ogden Utah and one in West Palm Beach, Florida according to its linkedin - but withdrew their business registration in FL years ago
    • A previous (?) head of product for Gemini and/or Blue Rocket is/was Ryan Petty, who was part of a Federal Commission on School Safety roundtable at the White House with Trump, and DeSantis made him the Chair of the Florida State Board of Education
    • Jason Kap owns Blue Rocket inc. and was put on the board of Claritev last year, which is now a defendant in an antitrust lawsuit for conspiring with major health insurers to fix prices. The DoJ is currently siding against Claritev
    • Jason Kap used to work at Microsoft, MS is also in Redmond WA.
    • Kap may live or still have properties in Redmond WA, Belmont MA, Ogden Utah, and possibly others - through shell companies technically owned by his family, such as Player 85 LLC, for which he is an authorised agent
    • Kap may have been an LDS bishop in Redmond during a case where the LDS leadership was accused of covering up child molestation by a former Microsoft employee, Buckland Darrell, who was sentenced again a few weeks ago
    • According to floodlit there were victims in both Hartman Park Ward, Redmond and Sammamish Valley Washington.
    • The registered agent listed for Blue Rocket and Gemini in WA is Kap’s wife, with a Redmond WA address matching the charity “Sammamish Trails Youth”.

    I don’t think I’ll continue on. There’s clearly a lot going on here and it is not looking good. Edit: I lied. But this is the end for me:

    • Ryan Petty is currently the Chief Product Officer at XSponse
    • Xsponse “is a comprehensive AI security ecosystem committed to enhancing detection, alerting, and mass notification.” It lists a Florida virtual office as it address but it’s registered in Delaware via Corporation Service Company.
    • Corporation Service Company, specialises in being a DE address for companies to claim DE tax residency, and as separate services will act as an ICANN registrar, manage and deploy TLDs and do monitoring and enforcement as “brand protection”. Amongst many other things they do.

    Not good.