I completely get the stance you have. I just can’t agree with the view that the instances are as bad as fascist instances. I mean some of the communities there definitely express heinous views don’t get me wrong, but they’re a leftist instance with many different types of leftism. There’s the extremist “tankie” communities (one might call them) with all the Russian and North Korean apologia (yes, internet MLs think North Korea is free and democratic), then there’s most of the rest of the instance with well-adjusted but very leftist views. This goes for .ml and hexbear but, I haven’t seen much of anything other than authoritarian communism on lemmygrad so I can’t say anything positive about that.
I think most instances have their extremely problematic areas that those admins don’t see as problems, and we have to weigh whether those problems are serious enough to cause major problems for lemm.ee. Seemingly in our admins’ opinions, and my opinion, hexbear and .ml are easily dealt with by just blocking them. I have seen a ton of cryptofascists and actual pedophiles from some other specific large instances (cough .world), and while I certainly put some blame on the instance admins for catering towards people with those views somewhat, I don’t want to defederate from them. There’s tons of good reason to federate with .world, and tons of good reason to federate with .ml, and with hexbear. They all contribute a lot of non-political stuff to my feed. Hexbear has probably the best trans communities along with blahaj.zone, probably like 1/3 of the posts in my feed are from .ml plus .world.
IMO, since there are a lot of instances that defederate those instances already, the classic use of the Fediverse is to have your account on one of those instances. Or to block the instance if you don’t want to go that far. I go on lemm.ee specifically so I can see all the fediverse has to offer without having to change between a bunch of different accounts because of defederation. I don’t want the LGBT and leftist communities I participate in to be blocked because a bunch of guys in the instance have really bad opinions. Unless they’re spreading abuse content or something, I’d probably rather be able to see the instance.
Sorry for the wall of text, but defederation is an important topic that affects everyone on the site, I think it should have a lot of elaboration.
The administration and leadership alone is bad. Fascists have less/non controversial views too. Is that an actual argument for them?
They aren’t leftist in any meaningful sense. They’re authoritarian first. Anything else is an afterthought. An anarchist or anarco-communist like myself calling out the ML state and the vanguard party for their failures. Would be deemed an enemy of the state. Imprisoned, killed, or if I was lucky. Just have my life ruined.
There’s plenty of Anarchist and non-ML communities on .ml and hexbear. The hardcore Maoist stuff doesn’t apply to most of the communities on .ml. Either way though, the communities they do have isn’t as relevant to federation for lemm.ee since the admins stated they only consider defederation for activities on lemm.ee. Which again, I would say lemmy.world and other instances have had just as much of a problem. That’s relevant because in that case, if we’re defederating .ml/hexbear, logically we should defederate .world.
Every day on this site I see people who are into transphobia (“I don’t believe in trans people” I shit you not is something I’ve seen), Palestinians ethnic cleansing, want to get rid of healthcare, all that Project 2025 and “ancap” stuff. And they’re mostly from lemmy.world and sometimes instances like sh.itjust.works. Their propoganda seems to prove far more consequential on the site, as most people will think you’re a lunatic if you say China is a free and democratic nation, but a lot of people will buy what is now mainstream far-right propoganda and culture war nonsense. Although both of those will tell Americans to not vote for Kamala.
When reddit was the main alternative and Lemmy.ml was the main server? Sure. Even if both groups are administered by authoritarians. At least nominally leninists have a couple more things that they like to pretend they have in common.
That doesn’t mean the group’s over there were healthy or well established. You have to tiptoe around the egos of those in the in group. And criticizing the flaws of their ideology would get you banned from communities and or the server quickly.
The reason people want to de-Federate with ML and related servers is literally their administration. Not just people on the server. Are there problems with people on world? Absolutely. But I doubt you see rud or any of the admins as part of it and enabling it. Literally in your own words. They’ve kind of been too open and you don’t like some of the people that they have allowed to be on their server. You’re OKAY with cultish authoritarians who pretend to be trans friendly. Till they find some reason to call the person a secret capitalist liberal etc etc etc and ban them. I’d rather be part of a community that would risk letting in a few transphobes etc. Rather than one that cannot take self-reflection or self-criticism without lashing out against those who level it.
I completely get the stance you have. I just can’t agree with the view that the instances are as bad as fascist instances. I mean some of the communities there definitely express heinous views don’t get me wrong, but they’re a leftist instance with many different types of leftism. There’s the extremist “tankie” communities (one might call them) with all the Russian and North Korean apologia (yes, internet MLs think North Korea is free and democratic), then there’s most of the rest of the instance with well-adjusted but very leftist views. This goes for .ml and hexbear but, I haven’t seen much of anything other than authoritarian communism on lemmygrad so I can’t say anything positive about that.
I think most instances have their extremely problematic areas that those admins don’t see as problems, and we have to weigh whether those problems are serious enough to cause major problems for lemm.ee. Seemingly in our admins’ opinions, and my opinion, hexbear and .ml are easily dealt with by just blocking them. I have seen a ton of cryptofascists and actual pedophiles from some other specific large instances (cough .world), and while I certainly put some blame on the instance admins for catering towards people with those views somewhat, I don’t want to defederate from them. There’s tons of good reason to federate with .world, and tons of good reason to federate with .ml, and with hexbear. They all contribute a lot of non-political stuff to my feed. Hexbear has probably the best trans communities along with blahaj.zone, probably like 1/3 of the posts in my feed are from .ml plus .world.
IMO, since there are a lot of instances that defederate those instances already, the classic use of the Fediverse is to have your account on one of those instances. Or to block the instance if you don’t want to go that far. I go on lemm.ee specifically so I can see all the fediverse has to offer without having to change between a bunch of different accounts because of defederation. I don’t want the LGBT and leftist communities I participate in to be blocked because a bunch of guys in the instance have really bad opinions. Unless they’re spreading abuse content or something, I’d probably rather be able to see the instance.
Sorry for the wall of text, but defederation is an important topic that affects everyone on the site, I think it should have a lot of elaboration.
The administration and leadership alone is bad. Fascists have less/non controversial views too. Is that an actual argument for them?
They aren’t leftist in any meaningful sense. They’re authoritarian first. Anything else is an afterthought. An anarchist or anarco-communist like myself calling out the ML state and the vanguard party for their failures. Would be deemed an enemy of the state. Imprisoned, killed, or if I was lucky. Just have my life ruined.
There’s plenty of Anarchist and non-ML communities on .ml and hexbear. The hardcore Maoist stuff doesn’t apply to most of the communities on .ml. Either way though, the communities they do have isn’t as relevant to federation for lemm.ee since the admins stated they only consider defederation for activities on lemm.ee. Which again, I would say lemmy.world and other instances have had just as much of a problem. That’s relevant because in that case, if we’re defederating .ml/hexbear, logically we should defederate .world.
Every day on this site I see people who are into transphobia (“I don’t believe in trans people” I shit you not is something I’ve seen), Palestinians ethnic cleansing, want to get rid of healthcare, all that Project 2025 and “ancap” stuff. And they’re mostly from lemmy.world and sometimes instances like sh.itjust.works. Their propoganda seems to prove far more consequential on the site, as most people will think you’re a lunatic if you say China is a free and democratic nation, but a lot of people will buy what is now mainstream far-right propoganda and culture war nonsense. Although both of those will tell Americans to not vote for Kamala.
When reddit was the main alternative and Lemmy.ml was the main server? Sure. Even if both groups are administered by authoritarians. At least nominally leninists have a couple more things that they like to pretend they have in common.
That doesn’t mean the group’s over there were healthy or well established. You have to tiptoe around the egos of those in the in group. And criticizing the flaws of their ideology would get you banned from communities and or the server quickly.
The reason people want to de-Federate with ML and related servers is literally their administration. Not just people on the server. Are there problems with people on world? Absolutely. But I doubt you see rud or any of the admins as part of it and enabling it. Literally in your own words. They’ve kind of been too open and you don’t like some of the people that they have allowed to be on their server. You’re OKAY with cultish authoritarians who pretend to be trans friendly. Till they find some reason to call the person a secret capitalist liberal etc etc etc and ban them. I’d rather be part of a community that would risk letting in a few transphobes etc. Rather than one that cannot take self-reflection or self-criticism without lashing out against those who level it.