Newer
Older

I got banned from Stack Exchange for not supporting Israel

Date: 2024-05-07 04:20
Tags: politics, wtf, platforms

Hello,
We're writing in reference to your Politics Stack Exchange account:
[link removed]
We have contacted you twice before because of your conduct on this website. In particular, we asked you to not abuse Politics Stack Exchange to spread extremist political messages.
However, today we had to delete a question posted from your account that questioned the right to exist of a sovereign state. This is another clear violation of our Code of Conduct.
We also found another comment from you that is advocating for terrorism:
The problem is not a lack of money. No amount of money will open the border crossing. Bombs will, but who's going to risk that?
Your account has been temporarily suspended for 30 days. While you���re suspended, your reputation will show as 1 but will be restored once the suspension ends.
Regards,
Politics Stack Exchange Moderation Team

This is the third time I've received a message like this. The first was for using the word "fascist" to describe a politician who used violence to force everyone to obey his religious beliefs. It was also for pointing out the Nazis were right wing. The second time was for complaining about someone else wanting to exterminate a race. The third time was for mentioning that nations could have chosen to bomb Israel. Are you seeing a pattern?

Can you guess the context to the comment mentioned above? It was about what other nations are doing to help Palestinians escape from Palestine. "Why don't they just donate money to help them get out?" one user asked. "Because no amount of money would open the border crossing. You'd need bombs for that." Banned.

On Stack Exchange it's entirely kosher, but not halal, to talk about Israel or other nations dropping bombs on Palestine. But if you even dare to mention the possibility that a nation could drop one on Israel as well, you are a terrorist just for mentioning it, and you get banned.


"Why is Germany the country that Nicaragua is suing at the ICJ?" reads another question.
"Because Germany is supporting war crimes: here is the evidence." - negative 2 votes at the time of writing this, and the person who wrote it is banned too.
"Because Nicaragua is attention-seeking and hopes to curry the favour of the high-ranking anti-German politicians who support Palestine." - positive 5 votes. Presumably, people who would have downvoted this are already banned.

Naturally, I figured this was just one bad volunteer moderator, and appealed to Stack Exchange itself, an option provider on all moderator-applied suspensions. Here's their response:
I have looked into your situation and are happy to address your concerns. In your correspondence you mentioned concerns over bias in the enforcement of our Code of Conduct. I investigated this situation fully and hope I can provide some clarity and guidance moving forward.

During my investigation I saw a couple of comments that were discussed the the moderator messages. Moderators have given you specific instances which I can affirm are violations of our Code of Conduct. Such as:

The problem is not a lack of money. No amount of money will open the border crossing. Bombs will, but who's going to risk that?
One day where the Palestinian people tried to defend themselves was October 7 2023.
These comments violate our CoC, specifically our dangerous speech and extremism policies. Please understand that we at Stack Exchange do not condone the violence that occurred on October 7th 2023. Historically we do not allow statements of direct support of acts of terrorism or mass violence as they fall under the intimidation and harassment policy in our CoC. As such, I believe that moderator actions in this situation were reasonable and have decided to uphold the suspension. In the future, please do not use rhetorical questions to allude to the usage or advocacy of violence as further violations could result in longer suspensions being applied to your profile.
Can you guess the context for the second quote? That's right: it was "Why didn't Palestine take more drastic actions to defend itself?" And naturally, the answer is "because look what happens when it does." Straightforward question, straightforward answer. Yes, it's a quick half-answer in the comments section, but it's not like that's particularly unusual on SE.
So, it's systemic. I guess the only question left is whether to DMCA my own contributions on the way out or not. Remember that time Stack Exchange fucked up the Creative Commons licensing and removed their own permission to reproduce contributed content?