Hey all — just launched openmic.social, a general-purpose Lemmy instance with a specific mission: open discourse + transparent, restorative moderation.
The pitch is simple — anyone can grab the mic — and the thing that makes us different is what happens when you cross a line:
- No shadowbans, ever. If your post is removed or your account is actioned, you’re told — what happened, which rule, and how to fix it.
- We help before we punish. A heads-up and a path back come before a ban. Bans are the last resort, not the first reflex.
- Moderation in the open. Every call is appealable, publicly, in our
!metacommunity. - Hard lines only: nothing illegal, no targeted harassment, no doxxing, no spam. That’s what keeps the mic open for everyone.
We’re brand new, which means early adopters shape the culture. Come introduce yourself, bring a community that needs a home, or start one — I’ll help you set it up and mod it.
Illegal where? Criticism of Israel is illegal in Germany, for example.
Regarding your "example’: That’s new to me, being a German. in this broad way the statement is wrong, i suppose. ChatGPT confirmed this. there is no law against denying the right of Israel to exist. It is only true that German politics has ever since Second World War felt a historical responsibility to support Israel against antisemitism.
It is illegal in Australia as well, where anti-israel/anti-zionism/anti-genocide has been remarketed as anti-semitism.
Potential 2 year prison sentence for saying ‘from the river to the sea’ in one of the Australian states.
Quit your bullshit.
Fuck Israel. Israel is a fascist state that commits a suicide in Gaza. I am a German in Germany and I just critiziced Israel. I even used bad language. That is not illegal so don’t spread lies if you don’t know shit about the laws a country has.
How do they square that with freedom of speech or like, defenses of fact?
Like how defense of fact is a valid defense against libel laws since the speech at issue was based on known facts or “truth”
There are laws and case law that make criticism of Israel harder than in other places. Post WW2 pro-Nazi and antisemetic speech was basically declared hate speech. Courts have taken a narrow view of what counts as antisemetic. There are in excess of six million reasons for that hard swing in the other direction.
So I would say the long version is this: you can criticize Israel but you need to pay close attention to how you say it. Criticizing the existence of the Jewish state is possible as well but you need to weigh your words even more carefully.
Moderators on an internet forum may take an even narrower approach to avoid any sort of legal trouble. And thus continues a chilling effect.
Freedom of speech is a tricky subject. Post WW2 the US had the influence to export their constitutional values, such as a first amendment, to Japan and West Germany. In both cases they punted. It’s not without some irony when I say opinions on how to establish freedom of speech in a democratic constitution vary.
Removed by mod