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 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.
Are you against instances that speak specific languages too? feddit.it (Italian), feddit.de (German), jlailu.fr (French), feddit.nl (Dutch), feddit.uk (United Kingdom), feddit.dk (Danish), eslemmy.es (Spanish), etc. or instances for specific cities?
Or is it because it's Arabic?
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.
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.