this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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(Not American here)
While i agree fediverse is then solution and i don't use bluesky, i don't see the issue is recognizing ICE as verified.
After all ice is a government agency of the USA whether you like it or not, and should be verified if there is a procedure to do so.
No i don't like ice and i do not condone what they do, but that doesn't change the above statement.
You know that the problem isn’t that they’re verifying the gestapo, it’s that they’re platforming and subsequently legitimising them.
Eh. I don't use bsky, and think most current ICE staff should be imprisoned for terrorism for the rest of their lives, but I don't want any communications services to decide which entities should and shouldn't be verified. That's how you end up with power-tripping mods, propaganda bubbles, and censorship (exactly what fascists are doing with X, fb, tiktok, etc).
The goal should be an open protocol where users/orgs can sign messages cryptographically (like PGP) and every other user can decide which users, feeds, or algos they subscribe to without censorship. Like, if I subscribe to my friends and family, or friends of friends, I don't want any form of moderation between them and me, but the freedom to sub to moderated topics is also necessary for public feeds/comms.
On one hand I see your point. On t'other, we've tried complete neutrality and it failed, maybe it's time for a communications platform where we hold people to a standard?
Who's we? You think you or I get to decide what will be censored and silenced?
Unless the protocol is 100% open source, decentralised, user controlled by default, and resistant to unwanted censorship and propaganda, the oligarchs and corporations will ALWAYS be able to seize control and use it against us.
If you genuinely think the solution is yet another billionaire controlled closed for-profit platform, propaganda-promoting algos, and a bunch of bootlicking gatekeepers to censor and moderate it — that can be sold, transferred, and monetised in any way, to anyone, at any time — whelp, the world must be an absolute enigma to you.
We haven't, really. Our "complete neutrality" is infested with troll farms, where people are employed to make hundreds of accounts to spread propaganda.
I'm thinking the answer is to implement a huge barrier for troll farms, but a small speed bump for real people.
It could be oauth with Steam or your cell provider, where you can make an account if you've spent over $250 with them. Actual credit history would work. You can combine these and allow any of them, which might let one person make 3-4 accounts, maybe, but that's still limited enough to make things difficult for troll farms.
There is an issue where billionaires that want to influence us have absolutely absurd resources, and maybe paying $1000 per account isn't enough of a barrier for them. But at least it gives us a chance for the bans to stick significantly more than they do now.
Nah balls to that. This is simple paradox of tolerance shit, anti-social ideology doesn't get a platform in the marketplace of ideas.
So you want a Nazi bar. Ok.
That's a nice strawman you've built for yourself. What's their name?
BlueSky
Wake up. Ice, being government, it's already legitimized enough in real life.
What difference would it make in the social media. Better if they are out in the open in social media instead, at least they get responsible for what they post, officially.
Apparently you slept through a fascist dictator rising to power by manipulating desperate people, specifically on social media.
Like the white house, department of homeland security, and others before them, the account will get no traction and be ignored. It is currently working really well on bluesky.
When they mandate visibility a la Twitter, that is the problem. But they don't.
Apparently you slept through the part where mainstream social media did try to censor, ban, and deplatform that dictator's supporters, and it backfired.
I mean, Twitter literally banned Donald Trump, and he just started his own Twitter clone. Mainstream social media banned COVID disinformation and now we have an anti-vaxxer running the US Department of Health. Probably hundreds of thousands of people got deplatformed for claiming the 2020 elections were stolen, and more people now believe Trump won in 2020 then they did in 2021.
Biden pressured big social media to censor ideas he didn't want spreading. The ideas spread anyway. All Biden did was show he was afraid of those ideas and make his enemies look like martyrs.
I really can't think of a better example of how "deplatforming Nazis" doesn't work than the last five years of American history.
I see what you're saying and you make a good point honestly.
You could make that argument about them being allowed to have an account at all, but simply marking that account in such a way that informs the userbase that it's not a troll/parody account or something, but the actual organization?
That doesn't "platform" them, they're already on the platform at the time this happened. And confirming that something asserted to be true, is in fact true, is a good thing.
If ICE tried to verify their account on Lemmy it would be permabanned instantly
The nature of FOSS allows anyone to use free software like Lemmy and Mastodon. ICE could therefore join by making their own instance or joining a friendly one but it'd be defederated by most others.
The great thing about fediverse is that everyone gets a voice and we can choose who to listen to.
Truth Social is running Mastodon under the hood. But nobody considers it a part of the fediverse, because even if it had federation turned on it would instantly be defederated by 99% of instances.
I'm sure there are nazi lemmy instances out there, but they are all defederated from the lemmyverse. This is the correct approach, decentralized platforms are somehow doing a better job at this then the de-facto centralized bsky.
As is GAB
Might depend what instance. They wouldn't try to verify on db0 because yes, they would be banned instantly with prejudice. They would probably just hop on Lemmy.world or something.
Furthermore, it would be better if the US Government just put up their own instance. Let each instance decide whether or not to federate with them, and let users decide if they want to follow them or not.
I don't ban anyone or any instance in my own instance, so no they cannot be "parammanned" from Lemmy. That's not how it works and why i like Lemmy and its principles.
Find out how long your Lemmy instance stays federated with the rest of the big instances once you start hosting Nazis
You don't get it: I am and will remain the only user of my instance...
Do you even now how Lemmy works? Did I say I was going to let ICE people create users on my instance? I only said I don't defederate any instance.
If you turned off registration then you are not allowing ICE on your platform so problem solved?
I wonder if that is acutally better though, or just as problematic in the other direction
It is a lot better. If you let Nazis join your platform, your platform is now a Nazi bar. Ban them, don't let them spread their propaganda.
They still can't post shit against the general instance rules. So they'd have to be very careful of get the nuisance of getting their posts constantly removed, and eventually banned. No need to make individual distinctions when the general rules already work.
Nazis are quite good at bending or evading rules to further their agenda. They will push the boundaries of what's acceptable by using creative allegories or dogwhistles. Moderators are supposed to moderate assuming goodwill from participants, this should not be the case here because ICE is not operating in good faith; a good mod will know to just ban self-identified nazis straight away. Even if the mods are hesitant to ban without any activity, me thinks a job ad to join the modern Gestapo (which is already in ICE's profile) should be grounds for a ban.
Probbly not at the mgtow Lemmy instance.