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
If you don’t want it in your feed, why not just block the community?
Because I don’t want other people to be exposed to misinformation and hatred either? I’m not going to pretend people won’t get super downvoted in most communities on lemmy for conservative opinions, and if they want a hugbox where they can repeat misinfo and hatespeech they can go ahead, but I don’t want some random person coming across a (fake) study about climate change being fake and saying “oh huh I guess this issue really does have 2 sides.” It’s just literal propaganda, people can seek it out if they want it but imo you should tear it down if you see it.
Disinformation should be met with good information. If you don’t want to do that, that’s 100% fine, but blocking a community because you think they might spread disinformation isn’t the way.
Now, if they’re routinely posting disinformation and it seems intentional instead of ignorance, then yeah, maybe we should defederate. But to do that, we need multiple examples of it and reports to their mods/admins that go nowhere. So far, I’ve seen exactly none of that, so I don’t think we should defederate, regardless of how much I disagree with their content.
Hey - has that been working?
Have you checked?
Yeah, I think generally it has. How many people are still taking Hydroxychloroquine for COVID? The vast majority believe the 2020 election was legitimate. For something more recent, the vast majority of people don’t agree that Tylenol causes autism. Look at the polls for any wild claim Trump’s admin has made and you’ll find the American public not buying it.
The average American isn’t buying the nonsense the right has spewed under Trump. Look at opinion polls, Trump has been losing what little support he has and is much lower than Biden ever was. Providing good information to combat bad information works.
FORTY PERCENT APPROVE?!
That’s your standard for the success of polite naysaying - a slight dip from the majority buying the world’s worst liar’s reheated horseshit, after he got elected?
And your first example is COVID, a plague which surely killed one hundred thousand more Americans because of right-wing disinformation. Masking alone! Fucking-- enough people bought the lies about the 2020 election that THERE WAS A FAILED COUP, and all the people who participated have been pardoned, because that shit worked.
Thank god we merely tutted and corrected long after people got tricked, instead of actively preventing people from getting tricked in the first place.
The COVID death rate was a bit all over the place. Florida was lower than California and New York, and Texas was between those two. New York and California had much more strict policies than Florida and Texas, yet they had a higher morality rate.
Why? It’s not because masks don’t work when worn properly, it’s because epidemics are complicated. Maybe people in Texas and Florida got more exercise, maybe not wearing masks exposed people to smaller doses sooner so they got natural immunity sooner, or maybe it’s something else entirely.
It’s a complex subject. I like how my state (Utah) handled it:
We had a lot fewer restrictions than most areas, but there were enough to remind people that things weren’t completely normal. And I think it worked well! Utah had among the lowest deaths in the country, partly because of our high percentage of kids and because outdoor recreation stayed open (so people would recreate outside instead of inside with other people).
That wasn’t because people bought the nonsense about the election, at least not directly. The people who showed up to the capitol and fought with the police there weren’t there because they were mad about the voting system, they were there because they wanted to start something, and this was a good enough excuse. They don’t represent the average conservative, these were far right groups looking for an excuse.
Here’s an article about perception of the 2020/election:
That’s something like 60% believe it was fair weeks after the election. That’s pretty low, but I think there’s also a fair amount of less than truthful answers, such as people intentionally misinterpreting the question as whether Trump should’ve won, and of course the people who refuse to say one way or the other.
So it wasn’t like all Republicans thought Biden rigged the election, it’s just a vocal minority who riled up enough of the quiet majority to answer a survey saying it was rigged to make it more than a blip.
The fattest turd in this punchbowl.
Two in five people are convinced of dangerous horseshit, and the best you’ve got is verbosely muttering ‘but it’s not the majority.’
It doesn’t fucking have to be!
There’s two main responses to dealing with someone who believes a conspiracy theory:
The first is exactly what you’d expect from a conspiracy trying to cover something up, whereas the second is more likely to be genuine.
If this instance is preventing the latter, we should defederate, and that’s what happened with the_donald. But if they’re open to good faith discussions and their users and mods are respectful of our rules, we should stay federated. I don’t think we have enough evidence to say which it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
Try fighting that through a calm discussion.
From that article:
With something like Lemmy, I think that means:
What I’m seeing here is:
That’s not the right process. Maybe we should defederate, IDK, but I do know we need evidence of bad action before jumping to defederation, and nothing in this post or the linked posts have any evidence.
Like excluding servers that are unambiguously for shrill propaganda.
The whole fucking place explicitly exists to promote misinformation - they are fascists. Stop sanewashing it by pretending there’s piecemeal issues to escalate and check up on, when every single post is immediately obvious as dangerous nonsense.
Then prove it. If moderation on their end fails to remove problematic content and users, I’ll join you in supporting a ban. But I am unwilling to support a ban based on what I’ve seen, which is basically my second numbered list.
The name of the fucking site is a fascist slogan.
Alright meet this with good information and I’ll argue as a maga person. Vaccines cause autism. Also Tylenol. Also climate change is a hoax and all studies that point to it being real are liberal propaganda. Trans people are also mentally ill and not real. Leftists are extremely violent. Immigrants are violent and taking all our jobs. Immigrants mooch off the system. Guns keep people safe. Sandy hook was a false flag operation. Protestors are paid off by George soros.
I will now repeat this 50 times + 50 other conspiracy theories in the time it takes you to get a source for one of these claims, and once you get a source I will say “that source is liberal” and move on to another 20 conspiracies. This is literal poison for your brain. Whether you consciously realize it or not, hearing something objectively false enough times you start to believe it more.
This doesn’t even mention the hate spread on that sub. Some examples: https://maga.place/c/LiberalLunatics
Dogwhistle that leftists are violent https://maga.place/post/18102
More divisiveness… https://maga.place/post/19232 +500 mentions of “woke liberal gets destroyed!!”
Here is about 20% of the posts from the last 30 days. 1/5 posts are propaganda.
https://maga.place/post/14921 Misinfo, she said “it’s a common lie,” did not dodge the question but did not answer it how they wanted.
https://maga.place/post/13936 Misleading at best, some people donated from abroad but they frame it as he is funded by some Arab investor and thats the only reason he’s winning
https://maga.place/post/13207 misinfo again, all he talks about is fighting against authoritarianism
https://maga.place/post/12023 Hey this one is a perfect example, I wouldn’t know this is fake except I personally got a ballet and know this person just hole punched through the envelope!
https://maga.place/post/10435 More fake news, they interviewed SOME people and implied this represents all of California.
I’m curious if I were spreading constant lies about how it was actually your friends and family that were raping and killing people and ruining America and do not deserve a trial, would you still champion my right not only to say that, but be seen by a wide audience? All you need to do is prove the first 5 lies false, while I make 20 more up.
Btw can you believe the democrats shut down the government?
And what percent of people actually believe that nonsense? Very few! Why? Because we do a reasonably good job educating the public.
There will always be people who believe some crazy conspiracy, but they’re usually very much in the minority.
Posts you linked
There are three posts. Three. And none of them have any votes.
I could find so many examples of the opposite (hurt durr conservatives) on this instance and others and instances federated with it.
No comments and it’s just a picture.
Is this the right post? This is just an article about shoplifting.
This is all pretty typical political mudslinging. If I had a nickel for every piece of misinfo I saw about Trump or Johnson, I’d have a few dollars. The same is true when Democrats are in power.
Yeah, that’s pretty bad, but I would give the benefit of the doubt because it’s easy to assume someone is right online, esp when you don’t live in the area. My state has a similar hole (one, not two), so I always double check nothing is visible. If this was the case, it’s pretty easy to just flip the ballot around…
This is a pretty typical strategy of finding a few people and claiming a trend. It happens on all political sides, and isn’t really indicative of anything other than a crappy source, which Fox News is.
The first, yes, the second, no. You have a right to say whatever you want, I have a right to not listen or platform you. The only time your right to say what you want should be curtailed is if your speech amounts to an actual threat of violence, or a call for violence.
But this has nothing to do with whether we should federate or not. What you showed me is a bunch of conservative talking points and slanted news. There’s plenty of liberal talking points and slanted news posted here and on federated instances, yet I don’t see a call to defederate from those instances.
Yes. Both parties are responsible here. It’s their constitutional duty to pass a budget. Republicans control the House, so it’s more in their court than the Dems, but both have a shared responsibility to pass a budget.
Republicans will likely get the worst of it in the midterms.
If you think very few people believe these conspiracies I’m glad you don’t have to be around maga supporters. https://climate.uchicago.edu/news/2025-poll-americans-views-on-climate-change-and-policy-in-15-charts/ 40% of Republicans think climate change is false. 65% think it’s not human caused. This is PROBABLY false. Most maga STILL think the 2016 election was stolen, despite all the investigations and interviews and recounting.
https://www.kff.org/health-information-trust/poll-trust-in-public-health-agencies-and-vaccines-falls-amid-republican-skepticism/ 30% of Republicans now don’t keep up on vaccinations and that number is increasing. If we are educating people and propaganda isn’t winning, what’s your explanation for this? These aren’t fringe ideas, MAGA is not the republican party from 2012.
About the posts not having many votes… there are very few users on the instance. It’s to show what type of people are posting on it, and the language they use (democrats get their utopia of crime and lawlessness!). The whole instance has maybe 70 posts in total as of now, so those 3 posts are about 5% of all posts. If you want to see what it a large maga community looks like go look at the_donald, it was filled with posts with thousands of upvotes saying “leftist loonies lose again,” “leftists who hate America get what’s coming to them.” Go look on archive.org or just Google the_donald to see what % was pure misinfo. Then they banned people trying to debunk it, because their free speech support is just RP. It’s already documented what these communities turn into. Why do we have to repeat it again?
I’m pointing out that while you can find posts about misinformation on other instances, it’s not 1/5 posts being INARGUABLE misinformation and propaganda. Also msnbc abc etc don’t interview 5 people and then say “California is turning blue,” these aren’t the same level.
I DO call out misinformation when I see it, and most of the time it’s the top comment is someone saying “can we stop lying like the right? I hate this guy too but this is just false.” And the difference is I see that 1/40 posts that it’s inarguably false, not 1/5. Slanted news (trump did something evil) is not the same as making things up (aoc dodges question).
That part about the government is also propaganda, many Republican senators literally left and will not discuss anything, which is… their job. You can argue if they’re right or wrong, but the right is literally not even talking, so how are they going to have a budget?
But I do. I live in a conservative part of a conservative state: Utah (my district goes something like 70-80% for the GOP). Utah conservatives are a bit different than in other states (Trump was dead last in the 2016 primaries), but we still have our fair share of MAGA nuts. I also have some antivax neighbors to round out the bunch. My boss seems to like Trump (though they’re an immigrant and can’t vote).
That’s where I’m coming from.
I think that tracks. Climate change was politicized in the 90s, so it makes sense the opposition wouldn’t buy in until the evidence was overwhelming. That seems to have happened, and now the discussion is about whether people caused it (people in my area seem to say yes) and whether we need to do something about it (many believe scientist estimates are sensationalized).
Here’s an article about local perceptions:
For reference, Utah votes 60-70% Republican.
It’s 26%, vs 17% for the general population. From the article you linked:
I think this is largely due to a lack of trust in the CDC since Fauci’s tenure (mostly stemming from misinterpretations of things he said). I mostly blame sloppy news reporting and government officials misrepresenting actual guidance.
That said, the vast majority of Americans still trust and follow their doctor’s advice, according to the article you cited.
Well yeah, that’s on a community explicitly for conservatives. You see similar headlines in the opposite direction in liberal communities.
And that’s when it became a problem. If that happens here, we should defederate, but until they do anything more than post slanted news, I think we should leave things as they are.
Why do we have to repeat it? Innocent until proven guilty, that’s why.
Sure, the ratio will be much different because those are more popular instances. But those other instances will have much more quantity as well, despite the ratio being smaller.
This instance seems to be a reaction to the majority of Lemmy instances being very leftist. So it makes sense they’d post mostly political stuff for their side, and political stuff tends to be heavily biased and loaded with rhetoric, regardless of side.
Well, MSNBC is slightly more reputable than Fox News, but not by a ton. Fox News is “news entertainment” and is closer to a tabloid than an actual news source.
I’m talking about random leftist rags that get posted here where they pull quotes out of context to make conservatives look even worse (not that they need much help…). I don’t have a list right off because I tend to ignore stuff that’s obviously biased, but I’ll keep an eye out the next time I see one.
Wasn’t that the House? I haven’t been following the shutdown nonsense since it’s all posturing and whatnot. All of my state reps are voting in lockstep with the GOP, so there’s not much I can conceivably do here.
So you’re saying the evidence for climate change is so overwhelming that… the propaganda swapped to saying it’s real but oversensationalized and it’s not much human caused, so there’s no reason to worry. In other words, the propaganda is still winning. We just canceled a huge solar farm and most maga Republicans don’t bat an eye.
Dude wtf are you talking about, they rate their doctors advice as the same as Trump and Dr oz LOL that is not trust in the medical system that is trust in the person they meet personally because everyone is a skeptic until they’re sick, and blind cult loyalty. And evidently if a growing number are vaccinating less, they are clearly NOT following their doctors advice, even if most trust their doctor. And if it was because of fauci you would see the number increase in 2020, not in 2023…
Yes you can find bad faith liberal communities. Do you want me to go on c/politics and see if I can find one post in 10 pages that has a title as idiotic and divisive as almost every post on maga.place talking about democrats or the politicians? Or find a link to NBC where the headline is “idiot trump and his conservative buddies get what they deserved!!!” I VERY rarely see something like that unless it’s a commentor who is upset at something trump did PERSONALLY affecting them or their friends/family.
K I scrolled through about 7 pages, 90% was factual information such as “ice moves into Portland, local governance is worried.” The rest was “Americans worried about xyz trump policy” with polls of Americans. https://sh.itjust.works/post/49051824 The most not factual thing I saw in those 7 pages
True innocent until proven guilty, except they’re supporting someone who is guilty, which they would only believe is doing a great job due to propaganda, which is all they consume and spread… it’s like if I’m in a nazi parade and then I get sent to jail with them and say “Hey! I’m not a nazi I just liked some of the stuff in the parade!”
Dude what cmon go browse c/politics 99% of it is literally normal news, not crazy opinion pieces and propaganda, and the crazy ones nearly always have a comment at the top saying “don’t be like this, downvote this garbage.” You’re comparing “new study says climate change to be fake!” To “trump says he hates people who take snap” and his actual quote is “I’m not a big fan of snap users, no.” These are different universes of misinformation. Them having 1/5 posts be hateful or misinformation is not excused by “well they’re posting a lot about politics so of course they would spread false information.” I can see posts that I don’t think are fair to Republicans and still recognize maga Republicans are absolutely firehosing false information and hatred.
Yeah it was the house I meant the senators are just chilling at home https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/mike-johnson-shutdown-house-republicans-away-rcna238797 Paid public servants btw definitely a both sides issue, holding snap hostage and refusing to discuss like children
The number who trust their doctor is around 84%. The number who are delaying vaccinations changed from 4% to 7%. The most reasonable takeaway is that 7% probably aren’t part of the 84%.
Why?
People didn’t have access to information about Fauci’s claims until well after he made them. There were congressional hearings during his tenure, and another in 2024, so it makes sense for trust to deteriorate between his stepping down and the post-tenure congressional hearing.
That community is locked, so only mods can create posts. That user seems to do a good job of posting high quality sources, but they pretty universally are critical of the current administration, and they’d probably be less critical if a dem was in power. And that’s fine, I think Politics is an example of a well run community.
I don’t keep track of which communities/instances these are from (I mostly sub to communities here and on lemmy.world), but I have had several occasions where I commented on a controversial post (pointing out issues, for example), and it gets removed. I assume that means someone reported it and the mods removed it.
Maga.place is a small instance where most posts don’t have any comments or upvotes, so it’s likely nobody bothered to report problematic content or the mods aren’t very active. That was absolutely a thing when I first joined Lemmy, and it wasn’t grounds for defederation back then, nor should it be now. However, if we cannot work with the mods or admins, that’s absolutely a problem and is grounds for defederation (and we’ve done that due to concerns about CSAM and whatnot).
Removed by mod
Only sh.itjust.works accounts may cast a vote.