Thank you all for your patience, I'm back now from my honeymoon and can now respond to everything that's been going on. There have been a large number of falsehoods and rumours shared that I will fully address so this will be a long post.
For anyone not in the server, this post is also available here:
To start, here is a summary of the events of last week:
- Mounting pressure was made onto me regarding antisemitism on the Discord server.
- An announcement was made stating that support of Zionism was not permitted in the server. A one warning rule was added to address complaints of antisemitism.
- 5 users were unbanned due to insufficient ban reasons written, most later re-banned.
- About 3 tickets were open in response to complain
- I responded and declined the requests in the complaints and all people accepted it and dropped the issue.
- A moderator leaked the contents of these tickets to other Discords
- I dismissed this moderator and announced an apology
- Many Israeli flags started appearing in the announcement, making it look like it was decision made in support of them. I removed the flags and announced again about that.
- One or more groups appeared to take great offence to the moderator's dismissal and this second event and raided the server, and set about to attack me, the mods and any bystanders, creating and spreading rumours. This is additionally backed up by the large number of Q&As suddenly appearing attacking the decision to dismiss this mod.
- I joined the general chat after a message of support for me was left, which led to a number of misunderstandings that are addressed below.
- After I left, the attacks continued and the server was locked down.
To address the most pressing issue, one statement I made was that Hamas are internationally recognised as a terrorist organisation, which is factual, they are on those lists. Unlike everyone here, I am not anonymous, my name and website are all public, so everything I do, say and publicly support has consequences. In my country (UK), support of an organisation on these lists is illegal and can and has led to arrests and prosecutions. I am not willing to be quite literally thrown in prison over making a statement.
This ties in also to the removal of the page /whatisazio, once I am made aware of a page that supports an organisation on these lists, if I do not remove it then I expose myself and Rentry to legal liability.
To pre-empt anyone trying to say that I should take the risk, I put my daughter above everything and everyone. To risk her growing up for years without her father present is something I won't even consider.
The raid carried out on the server highlighted something that's often complained about, rampant toxicity. I've often heard reports that Rentry Discords are toxic, but only now that it's landed on the official Discord can I see what's going on. This isn't just evidenced by attacks on myself, but by attacks on the mods and bystanders that dared to not immediately agree with the accusations.
One of the core problems is that it's completely free to accuse someone of being a Zionist. As soon as that happens the accused person needs to immediately fully redeclare their support for the cause, which must fully match with every one of the pre-decided opinions and statements. The accuser is left with zero consequences. One accusation can completely destroy someone's reputation, any teenager at the receiving end of that would be devastated.
When a group of coordinated people set out with a target, they're quickly able to set a narrative that gets immediate visual support and is shortly afterwards no longer questioned, as people fear that they'll be attacked themselves and accused of being a Zionist. This is effectively an abuse of a good cause, using their outspoken support to justify toxic behaviour that nobody can challenge.
Another core problem is the set of statements that needs to be declared. If someone is still in the learning process, then they are forced to make statements they do not yet understand, or risk being immediately ostracised. This as I've read has a name, a Purity Spiral. Everyone is either fully in agreement, or they are in this case labelled a Zionist. As I've mentioned, I cannot follow fully down this path as I could quite literally be imprisoned for it, making any public declarations of support for Palestine by myself a trap with no way out.
Discords will always be toxic while people live in fear of being called a Zionist and therefore avoid ever questioning an established narrative to avoid being singled out. I'd estimate that before this incident hundreds of people have left the community solely due to unfounded harassment, attacks and toxic behaviour.
Something notable in my experience with Zionists is that they do not try to hide it. They're proud of it and would rather shout it from the rooftops than pretend they support Palestine. So if correct this means that basically everyone accused of being a Zionist is actually a Palestine supporter being attacked for one reason or another to force them to prove themselves, making this one big case of infighting.
It's very telling that we made a step into the pro Palestine direction and immediately got attacked by the same people who had previously pushed for us to embrace this stance. Not once was I asked to clarify my words, no benefit of doubt was ever given and the assumption was always immediately a jump to the worst. I made a statement in the general chat about my principles of neutrality. This didn't actually mean my personal views, it referred to how I think a public platform must be run. My view is that any platform with an agenda slowly slips down this path until they're removing everything that that they even remotely don't agree with and everything that is demanded of them to remove, which is parallel to the toxic behaviour we've seen and that I want to stand against. I have always maintained a separation of my own personal views with the website TOS and only ever take action in response to TOS violations or due to legal requirements.
It's clear to me that expressing any of my personal views was a mistake, as these words get misunderstood, twisted and exaggerated, leading to rumours that nobody bothers to fact check or challenge, due to the risk of being attacked themselves.
I will therefore make one final statement on my personal views on what's happening in Palestine, then afterwards never make any public expression of my personal views again.
I am utterly appalled by the genocide perpetuated by Israel against Palestinians. I sincerely wish for this violence to end immediately and that the people of Palestine gain their freedom to live and prosper without fear of further oppression.
To further counter claims against myself I also can state that I have no connection or affiliation with Israel, I've never been there and I never will.
Now looking forward.
On this Discord we will:
- Commit to the protection of members, recognising that the overwhelming majority are pro Palestine and so anyone looking to cause trouble is not welcome.
- Enforce the rules fully, with no exceptions.
There will also be some new rules:
- Publicly accusing someone of belonging to a group or subscribing to an ideology is not permitted as this shuts down a lot of toxic behaviour at the source. Genuine concerns can still be made to mods.
- Making statements to re-affirm dedication to the cause following an accusation is not permitted as this behaviour perpetuates the toxicity. Violating this will not result in a ban.
- Inviting or participating in a raid is not permitted.
- Refusal to adhere to the rules after being warned by a moderator will lead to an immediate ban.
- Coordinating or joining an attack on a specific person, similar to the Rentry TOS rule of no callouts.
And a new channel:
- A Palestine Support channel will be opened containing links and resources to learn about the situation and how to make a difference.
On the Rentry site:
- Two new TOS rules have been added that effectively make glorification or support of the IDF a valid reason for a page to be removed, and to ban the act of intentionally sharing a controversial page with a group that will take great offence.
My intention is to ensure this Discord remains a safe and helpful place to discuss Rentry, free from toxic behaviour and baseless attacks on members.
This covers everything I have to say on this topic, thank you for reading. If you're still deciding to leave the community then I'm saddened that it's come to that but I wish you the best. If you're staying then I'd like to thank you once more and I hope that we can continue to make Rentry the best service and community that it can be.
Appendix A
All relevant messages by myself on the day of the incident
[Context] in square brackets
[Thankful message by someone in General]
Thank you so much for saying this, I've been hyper stressed these last few days with all these things going on, staying true to my principles of fairness and neutrality but also taking a stand against people coming here and intentionally causing problems and upsetting people.
You've genuinely made me feel a lot better which is needed because I'm signing off now to go on my honeymoon, so I leave you all in the hands of the mods, who will not show any mercy to anyone breaking any rules.
Of course I am not. Anyone remotely supportive of it[genocide] is not welcome.
The only stance I am protecting, and it's something I inherited from our former head mod who is very pro Palestine, is that you cannot control your birthplace.
The latest rule change locks in that Zionists are not welcome here, and when I return from my honeymoon we can review it once more. I will work closely with the mods to make the right decisions
If you're referring to one specific page, that was removed because it violated an existing TOS, I feel that all actions must be mandated by the TOS, which can be updated. I reached out to the user to explain and to tell them that I can restore it if it can be edited in line with the TOD[Typo, TOS]
I guess I'm just paralised by lack of knowledge. Every time I've tried to dig into it the rabbit hole goes deeper and deeper, I've got people left and right telling me different contrasting things and to take a stance like that when you lack knowledge, is in my opinion not right.
It's certainly not genocide i'm avoiding a hard stance on, the moment someone is indicating they in any way support it they will be banned and removed.
Anyone supportive of the genocide does not have my support or protection and is not welcome here
[Initially I mistakenly wrote 'war', which I corrected]
[Is support of Hamas allowed]
As they are an internationally recognized terrorist organisation, no
Appendix B
Example of rumours and falsehoods spread elsewhere, with my comments
[Start of an announcement on a Rentry Discord]
it's been brought to our attention that Matt, the creator and owner of Rentry, is a zionist. he's publicly stated that he supports the right for israel to exist as a state, is anti-hamas and calls them a terrorist group, (evidence can be found here: [link to post]) and claims he is "neutral" on the "war".
Matt, the creator and owner of Rentry, is a zionist.
Example of the toxic behaviour I'm standing against, accusation without justification. In this case it's even worse, stated as an absolute fact that cannot be directly responded to.
he's publicly stated that he supports the right for israel to exist as a state
Where? I've never said this. The only related thing I've said (in an q&a, a long time ago with nobody pushing back on it) is that people should have the right to support the existence of their own country, but that doesn't mean I'm going anywhere waving any flags to help them.
This stems from the concept of self-determination, definition copied:
The right of self-determination is a fundamental principle in international law that allows peoples to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development.
is anti-hamas and calls them a terrorist group
An internationally recognised terrorist group, meaning support of them would have legal repercussions for me, see expanded reply to this in main post.
and claims he is "neutral" on the "war".
Two messages I wrote (both in appendix A) with different contexts, combined to make it appear as if I had said something completely different. Clear distortion of fact.
Appendix C
Stat differences from the previous week.
Discord Member Count: Decreased by around 70
Page views per day: no noticable change
Edits per day: increase of about 10k per day
Claims per day: Normally 100-200, On Tuesday: 1526. Spread out over all of HP's URLs coming up for claim
Logins per day: Small decrease, by about 50 per day
Registrations per day: no noticable change
Support emails per day: Slightly fewer but many still unanswered as Sarah is away