Every major social media is censoring anti-israel or pro-Palestine content. This may be a good opportunity to convince Arabs to move over to lemmy, where only we control the content moderation.
For the record, the lemmy won’t be Palestine only. I just think it’ll be the reason people will move over.
The reason I ask for others to help me is:
- help advertise to other Arabs to bring them over
- someone to register the stuff in their name. Unfortunately, I am an immigrant in a country and have been interrogated by them before (on bogus grounds). While what I’m doing is not illegal, they have their eyes on me and I am paranoid they’ll give me trouble again regardless. I can take care of the technology side of the hosting and the initial costs (hopefully donations cover the rest). Since it will be on your name, moderation and the like will be your decision, but I will just want to make sure initially that we are on a similar page.
I can’t stop you, or even blame you for wanting this.
But in they long run, I think this kind of voluntary isolation is only going to keep the hatred escalating, or just simmering, at best. I say this with absolutely no stake in either party.
I think you misunderstand my intentions. An Arabic lemmy instance is not aimed at isolation. People will be able to ineract with us without issue, and we will interact with them (federation will be open). The only purpose is to have a space where we are free of corporate censorship, and a space where you (whether an Arab or not) will find many other arabs, rather than most of the internet that is English-speaking, and most of the remainder speaking a west european language.
If anything, this would de-isolate Arabs. The primary Arabic speaking spaces on the internet are networks of friends on Facebook, isolated from the rest of the world. At least this way you can find us, and see that we are normal human beings (as unfortunately some racists in the western world are surprised to find that out) and you can talk with us.
The small existing Arab spaces that are accessible to the outside world is cringy, unserious, terminally online memers that ruin our image and do not represent us. Probably many of them are 4chan-ers
I still think that would effectively imply isolation (at least, moreso than not doing it). What you’re describing to me still has a lot of characteristics of an echo chamber. And by spending time on that instance, in those communities, you’ll be spending less time on “generic” instances and communities. In doing so, those instances will, in turn, also become less diverse and more echo-ey.
Again, I understand your reasoning (except for the corporate censorship, there is none on Lemmy AFAIK), but I do think it’s a step in the wrong direction.
Small correction, it’s https://jlai.lu/.
Also, where did you find the invite to that Discord? It doesn’t seem to be related to the instance
Also, where did you find the invite to that Discord? It doesn’t seem to be related to the instance
Did you respond to the right person?
Yes, I was asking about the link in your message for jlailu.
The Discord you linked doesn’t seem related to the instance
Oooh, I had no idea https://jlailu.fr linked to a discord! It really was just supposed to be jlai.lu :D No idea who owns the domain but it just redirects you to discord for /r/rance . Must be some jokester.
No, it’s because the proposal for this new instance stems from the Israel/Palestine conflict - it’s literally the opening sentence. Whether they’re pro one or the other is irrelevant to me.
It’s not. I think you misread what I said, and I already explained to you that it isn’t. It’s to have an Internet space for Arabs. My mention of the Palestinian cause is using it to motivate people to move over to Lemmy, in light of the censorship against Arabs.
This is not meant to be an anti Israel lemmy. It is an Arab lemmy.
Would you be against a Ukrainian lemmy server too?
If it’s an Ukrainian anti-Russia server, yes. And for that matter, I’d also be against a Russian anti-Ukrainia lemmy server. Are you starting to see the pattern?
Then I think you’re misinterpreting OP’s post. They don’t want to create a “pro Palestinian server”, they want an Arabic server. They mention Palestine because of the timeframe: more active Arabic speakers –> possibly more active Arabic lemmy users. Hence my question about Ukraine.
I don’t think it is harmful to give people the option to spaces primarily speaking about local matters and concerns, and primarily occupied by local people. It does not take away the other spaces.
We are already in an age where it is almost impossible to undo globalization, and nothing I do will prevent those who frequent mixed and international spaces (or more accurately Western dominated spaces) from doing this. It is only giving them a place that didn’t exist before for content they couldn’t post or read elsewhere.
Most of the world already has this. I don’t think Arabs having it will be harmful.
I am not convinced, but hope to be mistaken.
Peace be with you.
Just create the server dude. There are a bunch of instances related to specific languages, games, TV shows, countries, regions, what have you. It’ll show up at https://join-lemmy.org/instances and Arabic speakers should be able to find it. You can then promote it on other social media. You can also suggest it on other social media if you don’t believe you can be an admin :)
Good luck!
An Arabic Lemmy instance sounds like a great idea. There actually used to be one but it seems discontinued. Be aware that Lemmy doesnt currently support RTL text, but people are working on it and 0.19 will at least bring partial support.
Yeah I was familiar with that one and spoke with the creator. Unfortunately they had trouble with adoption because r/Arabs refused to let them advertise. They also were not federated.
I suppose lack of RTL support would be show stopping, so I’d have to wait for that first. Thanks for the hard work!
That would be interesting to see. There is already !palestine@lemmygrad.ml, maybe you can cross-post there too?
Just wondering, do you feel current lemmy instances are censoring pro-palestinian content?
Of course it’s always fine to start your own too.
No, not at all.
What I think is lacking is an Arabic-speaking space and Arab-related discussions.
I would try some community (on reddit?) of arabs living in countries where there is free speech (the democracy index might help with that) If someone is in a arab country and the instance they host publishes content that is against it’s government serious harm can come to them.
For obvious reasons many arabs would be hesitant to host a server that is a breeding ground for dissent, even im western countries if their name is on it.
As for advertising you could try r/ask middle east, i personally frequent r/egypt, also Facebook.
With that said if you get an arabic speaking server up and running i would definitely be down for that
The main issue I see is that there may not be enough people on lemmy that speak Arabic well enough to moderate and have the technical capability to host a server.
I think it’s a cool idea, but I probably won’t put something in my name that I can’t effectively moderate myself, and I’m guessing many others have the same opinion. This is especially true when there are crackdowns elsewhere, because bad actors will go wherever they are tolerated.
Good luck though! And my heart goes out to everyone on both sides of the conflict.
You can register things with an anonymous domain registrar. There are privacy registrars that are available.
