Elia Ayoub (he/him)Nov 22, 2024

I’m being told that the largest Mastodon instance - mastodon.social - is now hiding my profile.

One person telling me it’s because of German obsession with making up antisemitism where there is none.

Anyone who knows my work knows that I platform critical Jewish voices. My MA thesis was on Yiddish & Hebrew, I do memory studies which incl Holocaust studies, and I am co-producing a Jewish podcast by three radical Jews. I’m also a writer for 972mag.

So what’s up Mastodon? Am I too Arab for you?

Show threadElia Ayoub (he/him)Nov 22, 2024

Does anyone know how we can get a concrete reasons given by the Mastodon.social mods? I want them decent and brave enough to simply state the why.

And if they dare say antisemitism they can expect a very long essay about how weaponising antisemitism has been one of the main tools used by the far right to make threaten both Arab/Muslims and Jews.

And I will demand an apology.

Show threadJon
@ayoub very sorry that this. has happened to you. I'm Jewish, and experienced at moderation; I took a quick look at your profile and didn't see anything that would warrant your account being silenced, which appears to be what mastodon.social has done.

Here's Eugen Rochko's comment I’ve never seen any misinformation from you, and "Holocaust inversion" is very often used as a weaponized false charge of antisemitism.*

In terms of getting answers, and potentially reversing the decision, Rochko is the owner and CEO of Mastodon gGmbH, which runs mastodon.social (as well as holding the trademarks and copyright of the code). He has reversed moderation mistakes in the past ... very honestly I don't know how likely it is but here's my reply to him.


* I know you know this, but for anybody else reading this post ...

Many Jews -- including me! -- agree with the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which was developed by a group of scholars in the fields of Holocaust history, Jewish studies, and Middle East studies, and clearly states that "even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases". However, other Jews disagree, and this is a contentious issue within Jewish communities. All that being said, it's not clear that's what's going on in this specific case; Rochko's comment was about their general policy, and on a quick look I didn't actually see anything in Elia's recent posts that really matches this description.
Jon (@[email protected])

@[email protected] This is likely to be a very high profile incident so I think it's really critical for you to look into the specifics of this moderation decision. I'm Jewish, and have done a lot of moderation work related to antisemitism, and when I took a quick look at @[email protected]'s profile I didn't see anything that would be grounds for silencing. So please consider reversing this -- or at the very least it's critical to be transparent about the specific posts that led to this.

Indieweb.Social
Nov 22, 2024 at 3:56pmWeb