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?
This is a strength of the federated model. In an ideal world instances are small and a user's values align with those of their instance's admins.
The problem here is that a single instance has grown so large that a decision like this has had such an impact.
That single instance is so large because it meets the needs of many. If people care about this type of censorship, they will leave and it will shrink.