I agree, and intend to block them on my account, but I am disconcerted with their readiness to censor based on personal bias and feel that their doing so is a critical matter that should not go unignored.

Even wirh defederation as the extreme, I brought it for discussion to make clear how critical I feel it is for the fediverse to acknowledge it’s weakness to influence by bad actors embedding themselves in positions of social trust.

I’m not familiar with the context of that accusation, besides having seen the meme.

The context for the accusation I am bringing is that they allowed disinformation while swiftly censoring an opposing view that presented factual information to correct the context of a party’s argument.

As I’m sure could be gathered, this relates to a diatribe I wrote, which I am by no means proud of and even less proud to bring as an issue-- I am an asshole, I most often comment when I take issue with something, and I use what little energy I have for online discussions and debates to try and make my contributions as constructive as they are critical while attempting to remain civil (which is admittedly a challenge when I have reason to believe the other party is bringing bad faith to the ring).

This is not a personal vendetta, though I know nothing I can say would sway the inferences made based on the social habits of my persona. This thread is birthed out of a real concern that there is a party acting in bad faith to censor and manipulate online discourse that is going largely unchallenged.

Had I seen a removed comment in such a hot-button comment thread from some random user, I would immediately assume they were out of line. Had I bothered to read through the removed comment and found that they were able to counter the initial argument with accurate information, even in an exceedingly nasty tone, my opinion would be that it was censorship as there are better ways to address such issues than removing the comment and instituting a ban.

At the end of the day, this may be an entire nothing burger, but I am still exercising my right to protest what I have all reason to believe is a deliberate attempt to censor accurate and relevant information in favor of obvious misinformation. Because while I could care less about how or when social media dies, I care deeply about the fruitful efforts of certain bad actors to skew public perception and further a social divide for their own gain.

I reserve the vile habit of referring to people/personas as “it” only for a certain type of individual who attacks others based on identity whilst using identity politics as their personal shield.

This behavior is irregardless of their purported identity or orientation, beliefs-- it is me signalling staunch refusal to engage in any form of identity nuance when I have only ever seen them use identity in bad faith.

I can recall only two personas I go out of my way to refer to in this manner-- I can’t promise that I wouldn’t refer to anyone else similarly, but I hope everyday that I may never come across more who earn the distinction.

The modlog is public and you can check exactly what I said that they didn’t like, then make the decision for yourself whether it’s justified.

And yes, my online persona is that of an asshole. I try to not be too unpleasant of one, but I don’t have the energy to sugarcoat anything and unfortunately go a little overboard with the salt.

What’s amazing is they’re not actually wrong in their accusation about Lemmy.ML even though they are a shitty troll of a user. .ML is still a tankie shithole filled with genocide deniers and misinformation.