GROUNDS FOR #Fediblock OF mastodon.social

nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqduu6v28vcm09l4rf9szfsmerdr8gv4umymf2hhx5x00sp2fkkxpq78jjtc nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqxzmt2d95f7watzyqktl982d7jfe5ptktusv4j20csz8nxxgmhq6qdwg8jv nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqjvas45jznd0fz5hzd6hjsj6n5q7anvh9jv8zpcxnjp7s5t2emnasm50f0e I have done a bit more digging on the PDF links that that account keeps attaching to each single post as if it was the new Torah: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-49238-9

This is mainly the work of Matthias J. Becker, a postdoc researcher at the Center for Research on Antisemitism.

Given the amount of publicity given to that text on that user’s timeline, I have reasonable grounds to believe that they are either the author/editor of that book or someone closely related to them.

The details I’ve grabbed about him and his work are honestly chilling when looked in their entirety:

His research lies within the disciplines of (pragma)linguistics, research on prejudice, and internet studies and focuses on the construction of implicit hate speech.

In his postdoc project, he examines various forms of antisemitic and racist hate speech on British news websites in the context of Brexit.

And his public lecture also includes screenshots taken around social media to build the case for antisemitism.

Note that in those slides you won’t find only traditional caricatures of Jews or shameful Holocaust denial as evidence of antisemitism (it’s definitely right to condemn these as the acts of hate and prejudice that they are).

But also memes that condemn the genocide in Gaza, the unaccountability of Israel guaranteed by the US, or “Stop calling it a conflict, it’s a genocide” images.

Basically that guy is grabbing social media content posted by any users that he considers antisemitic, takes screenshots, and adds them as evidence of antisemitism in his books, lectures and research.

And is trying to blur the boundaries and expand the definition of antisemitism.

So my first crucial question to the staff of mastodon.social is:

Are you aware that there are State-sponsored accounts on your platform that harass your users, publish screenshots of their conversations in their lectures and books, and probably feed their posts to language models without their consent, and without any legal basis, and this has been going on for YEARS? Are you ok with it? Have you at least run internal investigations to justify their operations? Will my posts or Aral’s also go in their corpora of evidence of antisemitism? Can you guarantee that it won’t be the case? Because in the past you have put permanent bans for much less than this. And if you can’t guarantee that then it should probably OTHER INSTANCES TO DEFEDERATE mastodon.social, because of threat it poses to the privacy of their users, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

My second point is more subtle and academic, but it’s even more dangerous than the privacy issue.

And it’s about the gradual extension of the boundaries of antisemitism through pseudo-academism that is not founded in actual academic discourse, but on the random book of a postdoc researcher cited as if it was the apex of scientific consensus in the field.

We all agree that denying the Holocaust, posting apologies of Nazism or depicting Jews as greedy is deeply antisemitic and deserves condemnation.

But what about calling what’s happening in Gaza a genocide?

What about digging the most controversial passages of their sacred texts exploited by far-right rabbis to justify their claims over the whole land and look at them from a modern perspective?

What about questioning the good faith of those behind the Holocaust foundations?

What about putting Israel’s trilemma under their nose and ask them how they are supposed to solve it, and if they they prefer to be a homogeneous ethno-religious State built on Apartheid, or a democracy that either embraces either a two-State solution, or a heterogeneous ethno-religious mix where minorities are properly represented and not discriminated - and that no, keep throwing bombs all around is not an acceptable solution?

What about asking them why they keep expanding their settlements in the West Bank?

What about putting under their nose that commemorating the Holocaust while manufacturing a new one is, at the very least, incoherent?

What about comparing what they are doing to the Arab population today with what other regimes have done to other minorities?

Can we have honest conversations around these themes without our posts ending up in the slides of this guy as evidence of antisemitism whose definition he has manufactured in his own book?

If not, can we have admit that Israel is simply trying to forge an iron dome around itself that makes it immune from any form of scrutiny that any democratic country should be subject to?

Do you, Eugene, or the staff of mastodon.social, agree with such an arbitrary extension of the concept of antisemitism, and to turn your users into guinea pigs for such a non-transparent and unethical research?

We demand answers, and we’ve been waiting for too long.

cc FYI: nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq3emhmgge49zxyu9mhakyk76alhvznqn5pfqgya4w2qzmzvtgx6wq79cu97 nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqqg48cy9nkrm0pkeuz7e9zrzeq2n6lnlwyn30u9zd0xe07g9qvrasnwvlvm nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqxz0swca2zu85w7q50rlzprgqqutnc94gnfelvql0fam6r6prz2jq0ak550