So, Karen, just so you understand the consequences of your actions:

Because you reported this post (mastodon.energy/@AngelaScholde…) by @joynewacc for an erroneously autocompleted hashtag (#doctor -> #doctorWho), a mastodon.social moderator *deleted her post*.

Yes, read that again: the post of a Palestinian, suffering through genocide in Gaza and trying to share her experience – someone who is, moreover, a founding team member of Gaza Verified (gaza-verified.org/team/) – was *deleted* for a stupid hashtag that some white Karen in the West got distressed about.

This is so fucking wrong in so many ways that I don’t know where to begin.

I want to know:

1. Is it mastodon.social policy to just go ahead and delete the posts of its members or was this a moderator acting out of spite against a Palestinian? (Or is everyone on mastodon.social at risk of having their posts deleted if moderators don’t agree with the hashtags they use?)

2. If this is not mastodon.social policy, I’d like to know what action will be taken regarding this moderation action and the moderator responsible and what will change internally to ensure that something like this doesn’t happen again.

Israel is already doing their best to erase Palestinians. The least we can do is to not help them by literally deleting the posts of Palestinians on the fediverse. Thank goodness hashtags weren’t a thing in the days of Anne Frank because clearly some of you would have burned her diary had she used the wrong one by mistake.

3. Can we all, please, have some fucking basic decency and maintain perspective when dealing with people suffering through genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid? It’s a pretty low bar for humanity.

And, whatever you do, do not be this Karen.

Check your bloody privilege.

And fuck your hashtag.

We’re talking about human lives here.

CC @staff

#Gaza #Palestine #mastodon #fediverse #moderation #mastodonSocial #genocide #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #settlerColonialism

“As a Jewish Australian who spent considerable time in Israel, I noticed, decades ago, something unsettling: a hardening of emotional life and a gradual erosion of empathy toward anyone outside the Zionist frame.

This presents itself clearly, especially among the young: a bluntness in moral language, a comfort with power and a way of speaking about others that feels stripped of hesitation. This is not hidden. It is not marginal. It is part of Israeli culture as it is actually lived. You hear it in ordinary conversations, in how people describe daily encounters, in the absence of pause where you might expect reflection. It is not performed for outsiders. It is internal, habitual and widely shared across Israeli society.

People sometimes call it ‘psychopathy’. That’s not quite right. It’s something more systemic than that — and more confronting for precisely that reason, because it is produced openly, not accidentally. The instinct to pathologise it comes from discomfort, from the sense that something is off. But the more accurate way to understand it is not as deviation, but as outcome — the outcome of a specific social and ideological structure.
What is taking shape is a set of conditions that reshape how young people in Israel see others, how they use power and what they come to experience as normal. These conditions are not hidden. They are visible, repeatable and embedded in everyday Israeli life.”

independentaustralia.net/polit…

#israel #settlerColonialism #ethnicCleansing #apartheid #genocide