cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
Just to weigh in here with a bit of political nuance — “tankies” are certainly defined by their leftist politics, but moreso by their apologist defense of regimes that more or less transparently use socialist or communist maxims as a cover for state capitalism or straight out autocracy.
Tankies may be the loudest voices to claim themselves Marxist or socialist, but please don’t mistake them as actually representing those ideologies truthfully or completely. Personally, I see tankies as more indebted to a cold war-style school of Soviet dogma transplanted to current autocracies. Marx and Trotsky would have rolled their eyes at either.
Yes, I hate to be “no true Scotsman”, but they are not actually leftists, just fan of a few dictatorships, some of which claim or used to claim to be socialist.
Yeah coming to lemmy and finding out about the so called communist reminded me more of those in favor of the small ruling elite like the pigs from Animal Farm was surprising. Not realizing they are the ones being sent to the glue factory while the pigs lounge around enjoying the lavish life in this so called communist workers paradise.
Reminded me nothing of socialists or at least what I think of socialism with it reminding me of more the monarchy. They seem more like nationalists who coopted socialism/communism to white wash what they actually support and overlooking the elite ruling class that they are not a part of.
Much like the fascists in Western countries who deny they are fascists and are for democracy while supporting ideas of coups for life time dictators that hold their views. Very similar groups.
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.” Something fairly common among the western left is left-anticommunism, something gone over in chapter 3 of Blackshirts and Reds, by Dr. Michael Parenti. A good article is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” It’s a critical examination of AES and why Marxists tend to support AES despite not being “worker’s paradises,” and why AES states failed to live up to that utopian ideal.
what is, “aes”? it’s usually best to define niche acronyms when using them in a general community.
the article you linked doesn’t help, it’s too niche for Google to help… autocratic ethnostate? authoritarian election trick?
deleted by creator
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.”
Ah, it’s like the Bolsheviks being in the minority and declaring themselves the majority (literally what ‘Bolshevik’ means, while ‘Menshevik’, the actual majority, means minority) all over again.
It is like when racists say they’re race realists; it’s because the term “Soviet communism” isn’t that popular.
No, completely fair point! I think on a platform with a lot of Americans (currently locked in an election where many seem to consider the centrist candidate “too far left”) it’s good to call out the differences on the [edit: international] left that aren’t otherwise discerned.
I don’t want to spiral this out of control, but I do think you might be interested in Why do Marxists fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” as well as Why Public Property? The former is a critical examination of why states guided by Marxism haven’t been worker utopias from the perspective of a Marxist-Leninist, the latter is an exploration of why Marx believed Socialism to overtake Capitalism. It isn’t a moral argument, rather, as markets consolidate into monopolist syndicates devoid of competition, they make themselves ripe for public ownership and central planning.
What is Socialism? is also good, it goes over the various arguments between different strains of Marxism over what can be considered Socialist, but at this point I think I’ve recommended far more than enough articles. Really, the first one about “Worker’s Paradises” is the one I think you’d find the most interesting.
Sure, those [Medium posts all by the same author that I’ve never heard of] look interesting enough at a glance — but I’ll admit to only skimming them, and I’m not going to go any further down one random, person’s online ruminations. Thanks for the offer, though.
I tend to recommend their posts because they are written in modern lingo and in the last decade, so there’s specifically modern analysis there. I recommend Marx, Engels, etc. frequently as well, but a lot of their writing is several times longer and as such several times less likely to be read by people I recommend them to, perhaps with the exception of Engels’ The Principles of Communism, which is a great and to-the-point intro to Marxism.
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
This is why it’s so frustrating, because tankies being overrepresented in online leftist spaces is one of the things which harms the acceptance of leftist ideals more than most of their imperialist windmills.
People aren’t scared away from socialism by economic democracy, egalitarianism or radical direct action. They are scared away by confrontational and aggressive tankies defending tyrants, who seem to care more about relitigating random cold war drama than lifting up workers.
that state capitalism was able to grow the poorest country in the world into one of the richest without relying on destroying the third world to do so.
that sounds like a step up to me.
without relying on destroying the third world
Whether you’re talking about Russia or China here, both of those countries have massive resources, both natural and in terms of population. I’d argue that they didn’t have to look for (other) third world countries to ruin; they had plenty of area and people of their own to turn to.
Also, a Lemmy ML user charging into the comments to defend state capitalism in oppressive regimes kinda proves my point.
But can they hit the dismount back to communism?
You have a sales pitch that works for the poorest countries, what do you have for the wealthiest?
redistribution of wealth works for every country
also they are already fucking wealthy
The Hexbear and .ml instances aren’t really tankies/communists, IMHO. Some of them, sure, but mostly it’s just a facade for their propaganda.
They’re not truly communists, but wouldn’t they still be truly tankies then? Especially in the most literal sense of denying that the Tiananmen Square massacre even took place (or that anyone died from it, or that… whatever other BS interpretation the particular
magattanky you may read it from chooses to subscribe to)?I think they’re paid to spread disinformation (or run LLMs that spread it) that makes “the West” look bad and their authoritarian leaders (CCP, Kremlin) look good.
So if someone mentions Tiananmen Square they delete it or lie about it, or say “what about Mk ultra,” but not because they actually believe in anything other than getting paid.
Never underestimate the utility of a useful idiot, who will do it for free ™.
Though I will add that the West also does a fantastic job, at making itself look bad:-). In large part by actually being thus:-).
Though also the West tends to be fairly open about that - e.g. here’s a segment from the Wikipedia page for Christopher Columbus:
Some historians have criticized Columbus for initiating the widespread colonization of the Americas and for abusing its native population.[300][114][301][302] On St. Croix, Columbus’s friend Michele da Cuneo—according to his own account—kept an indigenous woman he captured, whom Columbus “gave to [him]”, then brutally raped her.[303][r][s]
According to some historians, the punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, failing to pay a hawk’s bell, or cascabela,[306] worth of gold dust every six months (based on Bartolomé de las Casas’s account) was cutting off the hands of those without tokens, often leaving them to bleed to death.[296][114][307]
So our sins tend to be on full public view - Donald Trump’s suing anyone who criticizes him in order to shut them up notwithstanding - while in contrast, try saying something like “the Tiananmen Square massacre happened”, and see how fast you get banned from Lemmy.ml. They are not the same! (the badness of The West that acknowledges errors yet does nothing whatsoever to counteract them, vs. tankies who don’t even seem to be aware of the simplest of basic facts!)
Anyway, be advised that we must stop this conversation here - the last time I even so much as questioned whether Dessalines was receiving money from the Chinese government (as someone said, which I included an exact URL to iirc) or the Russian one, to develop the Lemmy codebase (nothing necessarily nefarious there by itself - grants should be sought out, no?), my comments were removed. In fact, I only have 3 comments removed across the entire Fediverse for the past 10 months that I’ve had this account, and all 3 were removed for talking negatively about Lemmy.ml. i.e. this conversation is not on lemm.ee that welcomes a diversity of ideas - we are at risk right now of being removed just for what we’ve said so far. So, I guess, if you want to criticize them further, don’t spend too much time typing it all out I suppose:-).
I wonder how many good, reasonable people have checked out Lemmy and seen all the CCP/Kremlin propaganda then just left.
I was close to leaving. At first I’d been given the impression that “liberal” is a dirty word on Lemmy. It helps that PSAs like this one routinely appear on other instances to inform newcomers. Just keep spreading the knowledge and let it be known that everybody should block those communities.
I often see people say that pointing new users towards instances with a lax attitude to defederation is a good idea. I kind of understand the rationale, but I’m not sure I agree. Pointing new users to an instance federated with Hexbear seems to me to be a terrible idea.
Blaze for example blocks all the political communities. That’s… … … not entirely a normal thing that people are most likely to do and moreover to never not do that.
Btw, lemmy.cafe is literally the only instance I’ve ever even so much as heard of that blocks all of the big 3, including lemmy.ml.
same, that was a weird first impression.
Personally I am sitting at 100% of the people who I mention Lemmy to irl doing so. Not only that, but they actually gave me dirty looks and admonished me for even so much as mentioning it. It is easy for us who have blocked such to forget but… the day-1 experience for someone new can be quite shocking. e.g. just search for the word “guillotine”, preferably from an instance you are not logged into, to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking… not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as … <checks notes> “have bank accounts”.
Though maybe X is just as bad these days? I dunno, I never had an account even when it was Twitter:-D. In any case, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, and the devil you know… you know? :-P
Yeah, I imagined basically exactly that happening and decided not to tell anyone about it, not yet anyway. Also, I don’t want them to get death threats from Hexbear like I did…
Yeesh, I am so sorry that happened to you - tankies are just the worst, aren’t they? You could literally put a URL to those exact conversations and they would still come back with “well no, see, we aren’t that way at all bc… shut up!” They enjoy all the drama that they stir up - it’s the point (go read the actual sidebar text of Chapotraphouse and the_dunk_tank and their posts e.g. talking about defederating with the rest of Lemmy, except no they actually don’t want to do that for the simple reason that it provides moar people “to dunk on” - let me know if you want the receipt for that statement and I’ll dig it up).
It is somehow worse than talking to Trump supporters, bc at least those believe in something, as opposed to existing solely for the purpose of “the dunk”.
And then it’s so sad that the rest of Lemmy tolerates it. Not the communism mind you, I’m talking about the dunking and other harassment.
Well, we learn at least, not to mention Lemmy to people irl. It’s so sad that it must be that way… it severely limits our growth, but it is what it is.:-(
to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking… not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as … <checks notes> “have bank accounts”.
I’m gonna need a source for this, that sounds too insane to be believable, and i’ve never seen anything like that.
I’ve been here since the app exodus and see way more posts complaining about tankies than actual tankie unpleasantness in the popular and top posts. I think most people just looking at the popular posts would not come across any more unpleasantness than they’d see on reddit
This is b/c you are on lemmy.world, which defederated from both lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. So you only have the likes of lemmy.ml and midwest.social to contend with, which are nowhere near as extreme as those others.
Also, by the time of the Rexodus a lot of that drama had already been hashed out, hence posts like the OP are rare these days. But it is preserved if you want to seek it out.
A lot of what OP is talking about is the “unexpectedness” of making a comment that might seem reasonable to them (like “the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did happen tho”), and then shockingly they get banned even from communities that they had never even so much as heard of, never mind visited. The admins of that instance are VERY eager to whip out a VERY heavy ban hammer upon their slightest whim. Which is… fine, it’s theirs to do with as they please, but some newer people (like OP) are shocked at how anti-democratic that seems, and wish that they had been told. Especially since if you read the sidebar of places such as lemmy.world, you would not expect that behavior - all the more so from an admin instance. Hence they tell others. And then new people join, and the tanky vs. anti-tanky cycle repeats:-D.
I think you make good points but isn’t this thread about lemmy.ml and the OP on lemmy.world?
First, the entire text is cross-posted from https://feddit.nl/post/16246531 - OP had nothing to add on their own, apparently. The OOP was likewise on feddit.nl. The community happens to be on Lemmy.world.
You also brought up your own personal experiences to add to the situation, so I pointed out that you, being on lemmy.world, would have different experiences than e.g. someone on feddit.nl. I note that that instance has not defederated from either lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net. If you don’t know what they are about, I’m saying that yes lemmy.ml are still “tankies”, but like 1% of the problems of toxicity compared to those other two instances, so much so that while lemmy.world remains federated with lemmy.ml, it has chosen to defederate from both of those other two.
Also, don’t miss the main reason for the drama in the first place: the images show the OOP being banned. i.e. what you do not see is the point here, bc of the heavy handed banning. So you wouldn’t “see” it then, as you say just looking at the popular posts, unless you happened to have been viewing the mod log on your own initiative. The fact that any divergence of opinion is being suppressed is very much the point here. It leads to the creation of an echo chamber, which allows solely the opinions of the admins to be allowed to be spoken of.
But you need not simply believe me: check it out for yourself. e.g. go to lemmygrad.ml and see what is there - it took me (not joking) like two seconds to find this comment: “Shoot him in the head” at https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6010525, all the while making fun of Americans for being violent etc. (though when it happens on lemmy.ml - example, this one admittedly took a lot longer to find, maybe 30 seconds, though it was still on the front page - it tends to be far more tame) Note I am not complaining about the violent rhetoric here, but the total lack of self-awareness. USA=bad bc of genocide, while Russia and China are “not” doing genocide. It’s a special brand of “my side good, their side bad”, that I for one do not find very intellectually engaging. Therefore I do not choose to engage with Truth Social, or the equivalent Lemmy instances.
Thanks for the long and considered response. I did misread the post header the first time.
I am glad to have maybe helped, even if only in some small way.:-)
You had a lot of really good comments in this thread. And also in general. Thank you for being here 🫡
Wait, what’s wrong with midwest.social?
I didn’t see much of it except for one burst where Hexbear was getting rowdy with my instance- that was… annoying.
There was some drama I don’t recall the specifics of but it apparently angered Hexbear enough that I started seeing a lot of them in basically every comment section.
I browse ‘all’ quite a bit, a few times a day, and I have had the same experience as you. I see more posts complaining about “.ml/tankies/etc” than I ever see problematic/whatever posts from them.
You’re both on .world, which isn’t federated with hexbear, which is the most annoying instance. They’ll brigade other communities, for example the recent thread over at https://jlai.lu/post/11504685 (view it from that instance to see the hexbear comments)
I browse all sometimes from an instance federated with hexbear and I roll my eyes quite a bit whenever I do
Lemmy.world has like 80% of the lemmy fediverse or something like that, so this I’d a problem not thag many people are actually going to run into realistically.
I mean, lead them to instances that defederate hexbear for starters? Seems reasonable anyway.
I don’t tell anyone I use this site in case they come across that stuff first. I just say I use a site “similar to Reddit”. I’m surprised that they don’t ask me the name but most of my friends don’t spend so much time online.
Same, I haven’t told a soul I use it despite being active here over a year. I still believe in it though (or just really hate the idea of accepting corporate social media).
I’m one lol. Same with hexbear.
Honestly I think the .ml folks have shown themselves to be such zealots that they should be considered a potential security threat to the broader fediverse.
The more places defederate from them, the more opportunity and initiative there will be for alternatives to their largest communities to grow.
One of the problems is that Lemmy.ml is literally run by some of the people who developed Lemmy and it’s one of the few instances on https://join-lemmy.org/instances and the one with the highest number of users listed there with the exception of lemmynsfw.
It also has less users than sh.itjust.works and lemm.ee. And way less compared to lemmy.world but I guess they aren’t linked on the joinlemmy site for some reason
It was removed from it to avoid over centralization on the fediverse. It already has like 80% of users
one with the highest number of users listed there with the exception of lemmynsfw.
Why? Just why?
Fully anonymous porn viewing is something very much coveted, and there is also a huge industry whose target audience is net denizens so you could also make an argument that the number of users is inflated by the industry users.
I mean, I don’t believe it’s really that anonymous, and it’s an actual “industry”, more of people posting their photos.
This is the most hyperbolic take yet 😂 I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious fediverse memes.
Edit to add: oic, your alts keep getting banned
Yes avoid .ml and hexbear and life is mostly good here.
What’s the problem with hexbear, is it the same? Genuine question - I think the only community in hexbear I follow is “Gaming” and it’s reasonably civil there.
Hexbear is way worse, imo. Those folks will straight up harass dissenters. Stay away or maybe just stick to your gaming sub if you’re happy there.
Hexbear has Marxists and Anarchists, it’s a non-sectarian “left-unity” instance. Lemmy.ml is admin’d and moderated by Marxists and some Anarchists. Similar, but different.
non-sectarian “left-unity”
Lol. I’m a social democrat. They’d send me to a camp if they had the chance to.
Then again, when put in charge of things they sent each other to camps as well, so maybe this is what tankie unity looks like.
To be fair, the only people who consider Social Democrats to be “left” are Social Democrats and the people to the right of them. Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Case in point.
Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Yikes, your Overton window is completely unbalanced if you think that “most people” exclude liberal progressives from the “left”. Look at any mainstream news channel or read any mainstream news website, and you’ll see that most people have a much more inclusive definition of left-wing politics, which encompasses center-left politics.
We are on an international internet forum, basing terminology on the Overton Window of the US is silly. What makes more sense is to not rely on arbitrary vibes and lines that shift second by second and instead base terminology off of structures.
The center-left includes moderate Socialists and Market Socialists, having structures that support and reinforce Capitalism like Social Democracy creep across into “left” territory blurs the lines in ways that add confusion.
Frankly I find this view disregards the differing material conditions that are present. Social Democrats are left of what the Americas have now, just like Capitalism was to the left of having a Monarchy. Your take is a-historical, anti-materialist, and thus anti-marxist.
I’m Scandinavian, so I come from a country defined by workers unions in the post-war era. The Norwegian post-war social democratic agenda was defined by a group of socialists while locked in a nazi concentration camp. They were locked in there not for being centrist.
Recently, the labour parties of Scandinavia have moved towards the centre, so I am alternating votes between the socialist left party, the communists when it makes sense (they have a problem of ageing ML members, but their younger people are mostly fine), and the Greens. The Greens are in some ways further to the centre than the Labour party, but they have their reasons to compromise.
The labour party is, however, still left of centre. We’re a representative democracy with four parties in parliament describing themselves as the centre, so it’s not very hard for us to make the distinction.
And recognizing that capital can be a useful way of organizing one’s economy under controlled conditions is different from capitalism.
The whole take is just stupid, and always made in bad faith. It doesn’t take American relativism for social democracy to be a left wing ideology. The generations before me faught like hell against the capitalists in order to give me rights, and implying they were not leftists because the social democrats left the comintern is ahistorical.
Furthermore, there is no “to be fair” in relation to sending your political opponents to labour camps to basically have them killed. This is something tankies will never understand.
And Anarchists need to read about the Spanish Civil War and learn to keep the fuck away from tankies. I love you guys, but just because you’re right on a fundamental level doesn’t mean you can ignore history.
The hexbear community predated Lemmy iirc, so they have existed in an isolated bubble for a very long time. Imagine edgy teenagers with an axe to grind and no particular reason to avoid grinding it on anything that they set their sights onto.
Despite running off so much of their own community members, including some actual developers, they seem happy with the way they are. Sadly, they are also happy to spread out from their instance and fuck up everyone else’s day as well - rulez be damned. Notably, they continually keep floating the idea of defederating themselves from the rest of the Fediverse - I mean ofc those instances that have not already cut them off - so if that gives you an idea of what is going on (they are aware of their toxicity, they simply choose to not care).
That particular community might be fine though. Or not. Either way it’s probably more tolerable than many hexbear users that you will see in general across the Fediverse. You’ll see for yourself.
I can only speak to my own experience. Most of their communities I’ve seen are not a place where nuanced views are appreciated. I saw a particularly 4Chanesque take where a guy was trashing a girl he dated for her interest in astrology. He was more than fine supporting it and humoring it while they were together. Once dumped, though, he had to use it as an example of everything he had to be tortured with in the relationship.
I had a couple of things to say about that kind of attitude, but the whole of my response centered around learning to pick partners who are aligned with our own values and goals. They banned me because of my username. I have no idea why, other than making assumptions about my views and values in a negative way. A peep into my post history should suggest otherwise, but anyway.
I don’t have a lot of respect for people with strong views that are sensitive about having them challenged. It isn’t a good faith argument.
It isn’t a good faith argument.
This nicely summarizes enormous portions of lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and a lesser though still quite sizeable proportion of lemmy.ml.
19·1 month agoThis is the problem with hexbear: they lure you in with things like gaming and then you start agreeing with them that none should go hungry or homeless and once you realize it, you’ve become a trans redfash tankie gobbunist (/s)
Hexbear is just as toxic as ml. They will bait you to comment on topics and then remove your comments if they don’t like them. Just a terrible group of people.
My experience: I saw a post on hexbear and only one view was present in the comments below… I did not know them then… So. I thought: Let’s share my view.
In the end, I got blocked for arguing and they removed my comment. And the people who responded to my comment with burning flags of a country and wanted its total destruction had nothing to fear. It was the most disgusting experience I have ever had on Lemmy.
But after they removed my comment, I understood why there is only 1 view present… Because the other view gets removed.
I wondered what you wrote, unfortunately it seems like it was on a different account as there is zero things in the (hexbear) modlog for this username.
The man, the myth… the fact checker
…how you gonna call her male when she lists just about every pronoun in existence in her username EXCEPT for he/him?
It was on a different account. I switched to an instance with downvotes disabled, because the experience on Lemmy started to feel too much like Reddit…
But trust me: It did not even remotly justify posting burning flags of a country with mods supporting that. Actually, I’m surprised… I’d expect that this is still normal on hexbear. Can’t imagine, they changed that much in just 6 months…
the problem with hexbear is the same handful of users that have made it their hobby to complain incessantly about hexbear all over the fediverse
Sounds hollow coming from an instance that doesn’t even defederate hexbear.
My instance does not block them either, but I do.
Had 2 experiences where they tried to silence me via blocking me… And one time, the people I argued with and who wanted the total destruction of a state and posted burning flags of it did not get blocked or warned. I hope, they stay in their echo chamber and don’t ever leave their homes…
User blocking merely blocks their communities. You’ll still see comments from the instance and you’ll still see posts in other communities from their users. You’ll also still have their votes influence your feed.
Defederation is the more proper tool to use. Individual user blocking is not effective.
My instance has downvotes disabled. Only upvotes matter. So, at least, I don’t see destructive voting…
And as long, as I don’t post in their communities, they can’t silence me and have to deal with my view differently than just by removing it…
Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes either actually. That seems to be the main reason they brigade. Everyone has to comment to show their negative opinion on something.
All instances, except for the lightly moderated ones, have censorship issues from time to time. You can say one thing on one thread, and that same thing can get you banned in another thread on the same instance. This is an issue with the great degree of political polarization on Lemmy.
My point is that Lemmy is multipolar. It’s divided between the right-leaning instances like Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, the left-leaning instances like Lemmy.ml, slrpnk.net, blahaj.zone, and dbzer0, and the leftist instances like Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Mods and admins on each instance are guilty of maintaining the “instance line.”
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
While I won’t repeat what got me banned, this is what got me banned from Political Memes on Lemmy.world, this isn’t just a Lemmy.ml thing. This is also when one of the moderators claimed they weren’t censoring anyone and were incredibly fair on a comment chain calling out their censorship, and refused to elaborate. They would not even tell me how I could edit my comments to comply with their rules.
What does this all mean?
Honestly, I think close to everyone knows that Marxists dominate Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, etc. I think close to everyone knows Liberals dominate Lemmy.world. I think everyone knows that anarchists dominate dbzer0, slrpnk.net, Hexbear.net, etc.
If your call to action is to defederate Lemmy.ml, then that’s just contributing to this polarization effect, as people would jump ship from .world and .ml to the other if it fits their views better. If your call to action is that people should move communities from Lemmy.ml to other instances, this has already happened a bit, this thread gets reposted very frequently. All it really seems to me is that you’re spreading drama.
What do I recommend?
Rather than trying to consolidate communities across instances, replicate communities as needed. Communities on Lemmy are more like hashtags for an instance, and instances are more like subreddits of old. Instances have their own cultures and values, so a Gaming thread on Hexbear, for example, is going to be different from a Lemmy.world Gaming thread, and that’s a good thing. All sorting can still let you see other instances, there’s no need to risk moderator dominance over communities by trying to consolidate on a single instance. Heck, this community is an example of that very process.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works don’t seem to have any noticeable political leanings (far right or far left) as far as I can tell. Why do you say they’re right leaning?
I can DM you if you want, this is already spiraling far beyond my intentions of my original statement, that I think it’s better rather than to consolidate communities and overpower an instances mods and admins, to decentralize and replicate so there’s always a space for people, on an as-needed basis.
The short answer is that Lemmy.world is a very US-focused liberal instance, essentially the Democrats embodied in an instance.
Sh.itjust.works maintains NCD, MeanwhileOnGrad, and other generally pro-Liberalism, anti-Communist communities, hence why I say it leans right.
As always, you can absolutely find Anarchists and Communists on both Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, my point is more that the moderators and userbase generally consolidate around a given stance, my point isn’t that you can’t be a leftist on Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.
There are definitely some bad actors on here who are trying to manipulate the election in Trump’s favor. The sort that claim to be leftists and come to every US politics-related thread (or even ones that aren’t related to the US until they make it so) with their list of talking points about why no one should vote for Harris, but conveniently have no answers for who deserves votes more.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works don’t seem to have any noticeable political leanings as far as I can tell.
…What?
I consider myself a raging liberal, at least in the US. A socialist. But lemmy.world is so liberal it makes me feel like a Trumpster.
I guess I don’t feel at risk of getting globally banned like I would for disagreeing with the consensus like on .ml, but claiming .world is neutral is quite a sweeping statement.
from the perspective of a south american, yes, .world is biased towards north america and europe.
That’s not really what I mean, I’m talking about leaning far right or left on the political spectrum. I think both of them are based in NA, so it would make sense they’re more focused there, just like midwest.social
I don’t fully understand but it turns out if you don’t think both Donald and Harris are equally fascist you are a classic liberal and pretty far to the right.
They’re not equally fascist.
It’s fascism lite vs fascism deluxe!
Right? The system is awful that lite is the best of the options that will actually happen. And yet here you are, every day campaigning for fascism deluxe by telling everyone who chooses lite that they are genocidal goose-steppers.
Harris wouldn’t support genocide if she knew it would cost her the election. There would be an arms embargo by now if it weren’t for her voters reassuring her; “No no, it’s okay! You can kill anyone you want and start WW3 and we’ll still vote for you.”
But calling you all genocidal goose-steppers isn’t fair. You’re just cynical. You fundamentally do not believe you can change anything.
Sure. But unfortunately the country is so diseased with far-right radicals that even for people absolutely opposed to Gaza as a primary motivation, such as Uncommitted (you going to call them genocidal as well?), she is still the least bad option.
But that’s kinda my point, though. Anybody with radical ideas like “Donald will make this worse,” will fail .ml purity testing, regardless of their stance on economics. And so much so that you’ll call them a goose-stepper.
Again, like I said, calling y’all genocidal goose-steppers wasn’t fair of me to do. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings. I was mad.
Your cynicism is a tragedy. You can only imagine two outcomes. Either everything gets worse under Trump or things stay as bad as they are right now under Harris. There’s no other options in your mind. You are too cynical to imagine anything else.
And so you attack anyone who refuses to vote for genocide and then get offended when they strike back. Did it occur to you that I was lashing out because other .world posters were dogpiling on me in various threads and attacking me? Or do my feelings not matter?
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I wouldn’t want anyone going down an extremist pipeline on either side of the political spectrum.
This isn’t a binary thing, there’s plenty of centrist extremists and echo chambers for them
centrism isn’t extremism
You can totally have centrist extremists
Are you using “extremism” to mean “far from the status quo,” or “has absolute belief and violent justification for said belief?” Centrists can absolutely be the latter.
i think more the first
The others here are using it the second way, which I agree with. Centrism meaning the “status quo” can be violently and toxically upheld.
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Taken from https://redsails.org/the-two-terrors/
You can aleady block instances if you personally wish, is my point. Everyone knows about Lemmy.ml having Marxists. My point is that rather than trying to move communities and keep them consolidated, embrace the differences between instances and be okay with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml both having Linux communities, as an example.
I don’t share your fear of Marxism and Marxists, which is why I tend to avoid Lemmy.world communities.
You can block the instance, which blocks those communities, but that doesn’t block those users on them to be fair. That has to be done individually.
Personally I am comfortable ignoring individuals (and not painting everyone on an instance with the same brush) and would prefer metas/groups/whatever you’d like to refer to them as for my subscriptions, so I’m definitely not the target user of this post.
But just being clear, a user blocking an instance doesn’t block the users from that instance, so if that’s their goal, no, that’s not enough.
Defederation has it’s own uses, yes, but that also ironically makes it more difficult to avoid trolls. When you defederate from an instance for X reason, only the more irrational users are going to create alts to attack. Defederation is often over-used.
Not advocating for defederation, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance isn’t going to achieve their goal.
Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.
This would avoid the exact scenario you mention because it would come down to the user level, so that troll would have to put in quite a bit more effort to get around that. Unfortunately, that’s not currently an option, along with some other features I’d love to see on Lemmy.
Again, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance does not achieve their goal.
Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.
I agree with this most out of what you said. This gives users the most power to curate what they see, and lessens the likelyhood of troll accounts.
different people have different needs, for example an estonian instance would have a larger need to defederate with .ml than .world would, because of the years of soviet occupation.
Sure, my point is about community replication. Defederation has its own uses, my point is that community consolidation serves very few people.
Don’t use lemmy.ml then?
Genuine question: HOW though?!? I’ve user-blocked the entire instance, yet I see those comments basically everywhere I go, plus they used to not be able to reply to me and have a notification sent to me, but now on 0.19.5 that seems to have been un-done. In no way is a user-block like a personal defederation.
Also, fully 100% (not making this up) of everyone that I have told Lemmy about irl has said that this issue is why they refused to join the Fediverse. As the number of alt accounts goes up (some of them mine) yet the total number remains mostly constant, that spells doom for us eventually.
And it is not fair to the users of lemmy.ml either, for the rest of us to see the instance they come from and immediately brace ourselves for an onslaught - thereby potentially misinterpreting what they say, just b/c their fellows are so arrogant and insensitive and we have come to expect that from them.
The whole “just ignore the cancer and it will go away” approach leaves much to be desired, imho. Feel free to do as you please, but that’s not what I am talking about: you asked, and as a result now you know some (certainly not all) of the reasons why others may not wish to do the same.
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Note, that just means you were sitebanned. This is how the software displays this.
“So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
Dismissal of this type of criticism by just telling people to use another instance or saying “fediverse is decentralized” is unproductive, and honestly should be called out as harmful because it ignores the fact that instances when they become large enough and centralized enough, carry weight and can be extremely problematic like shown here.
A big part of dealing with these types of problems is to make people aware of them, another one is to deal with it at the instance level by defederating the problematic instances and cutting off the communities so that network effect doesn’t continue to rear its ugly head. Just creating new communities isn’t enough, if it was this wouldn’t be the problem that it is. When people tell others to stop complaining and dismiss the criticism because the fediverse is decentralized it seems like they either don’t understand the issue, or they would just rather it not be addressed.
So while many people would prefer we just leave well enough alone, that’s not condusive to these problems being dealt with, people need to talk about them, and action needs to be taken.
Frankly, who cares? If you don’t want to see or participate in tankie propoganda, then don’t. People point out that lemmy.ml is the hub for a lot of communities, so it isn’t reasonable to switch to another instance. And then they bring up communities like !Linux@lemmy.ml Guess what, Linux isn’t meant to be a hub for political discourse, and for the most part, it isn’t. Use lemmy.ml how you want to use it, and if you want to participate in other political leanings, go to a different instance. No one is really stopping you, and that’s the whole idea of the fediverse. And there really isn’t any value lost, because this isn’t a “choose one and only one” situation. You’ve got all of the fediverse at your fingertips
<EDIT> So this came off a bit abrasive. But the point I want to convey is that if you want to have deep/heated political discourse, either do that on a community (and instance) suitable for it, or use an account specifically for political discussion. I think it helps everyone. The mods can referee communities with more clear boundaries, the lurkers/users don’t need to worry about political debates when looking up tech support or whatever, and you (the reader/political dissident) can still enjoy your discussions with less worry about being randomly banned. </EDIT>
Use lemmy.ml how you want to use it, and if you want to participate in other political leanings, go to a different instance. No one is really stopping you, and that’s the whole idea of the fediverse. And there really isn’t any value lost, because this isn’t a “choose one and only one” situation. You’ve got all of the fediverse at your fingertips.
Until you make the mistake of replying with the wrong kind of comment to the wrong sub, and get banned from the entire instance and lose the ability to post on many of the largest subs on this side of the fediverse. Or maybe they just see you out and about and decide to ban you on sight because they don’t like what you said. There’s nothing stopping that.
Admin overreach and abuse is a major issue for the fediverse because it affects more than just the user in question. Admins of large instances get to decide who has access to the users and communities on their instances, and very often the users of the instance aren’t even aware of the actions taken on their behalf. Mastodon recently implemented a notification for when blocks and defederation remove your follows or followers, and this is a great first step. Users deserve to know when they are impacted by decisions such as these.
I love the fediverse and want to see it thrive, so we need to stop putting our heads in the sand on this issue. It’s always discussed as if it’s an issue with a few problematic instances rather than the systemic issue in need of a solution that is is. Admins need the tools to protect their instances from real abuse, but we need to balance that with the right of the users to know what’s going on and not be unfairly deprived of the social aspect of this social media experiment, especially without knowing.
One of the mods over there is a Russian who refuses to answer whether he’s pro-Russian or not, says Russian propaganda doesn’t exist, pretends to be American while intensely engaging in American threads, denies Uighur genocide, etc etc etc.
https://lemmy.world/u/davel@lemmy.ml
He has some older account where there was Russian being used but I think he may have deleted it or I just can’t be arsed to look enough rn.
Anyway, one of the clearest pro-Russian trolls I’ve seen. Lemmy.ml is full of them, I don’t know why lemmy.world federates with them.
Knew exactly who you were taking about before I even saw the links.
Because LW is just as bad.
.ml is run by angry tankie assholes.
LW is run by moral superiority assholes.
Assholes, assholes everywhere.
But .ee is where all the cool kids hang out, right?
I expected this type of response from idiots who think “omg this guy insulted my instance… that means they insulted me!!!”
Wait, now I’m a Russian pretending to be an American? This tale gets taller every time you tell it 😂
He has some older account where there was Russian being used but I think he may have deleted it or I just can’t be arsed to look enough rn.
Every influx of users and the usual suspects who are DESPERATE to have Lemmy turn into Reddit start pissing and shitting themselves that maybe their American liberal opinions arent dominant anymore.
This shit is pathetic.
You mean that people are annoyed that tankies like you, want to turn this into an echo chamber that’s just like the right wing republicans…and that bothers you?
Edit: checking your history… yes you’re a solid tankie idiot.
Yeah, no… We just don’t like people who straight up deny history that actually happened nor do we like fascist fuck heads. Seen enough bullshit from your instance to know it’s full of Nazi dumbshits acting like they’re actually leftists. Not to even mention the mountain of hypocrisy shown by the admins and moderators.
Hope you at least see the irony in being able to come here to criticize our ‘American liberal opinions’ in a thread about the systematic censorship of people criticizing yours.
It is hilarious to see that on every single “we should defed from the tankies” post, the tankies always show up to demonstrate for us all first-hand precisely why we should defederate from the tankies. Not b/c of their political views, but b/c of the abusive toxicity.
How can it be dominant on ml instances, if it’s removed after 10 seconds by scared ml mods that can’t handle different views on anything?
The solution is that an instance that cheerfully associates itself with an ideology that wiped away the lives of many tens of millions of people and immiserated possibly a billion more - that instance should be relegated to a dusty basement room where new users won’t easily find it.
For me, it’s not the fact that the instance exists that’s troublesome. The bigots can have their space if they want; that’s the point of the fediverse. My issue is the fact that it’s so popular and potentially luring new users into a pipeline. It’s truly a shame how big it’s gotten…
Yes, sure. As a liberal, I’m pretty suspicious of even speech-policing, let alone bans or (here) defederation. But I just wish more people understood that the ideas these people claim to support are not anodyne. They’re not just sticking it to The Man, they’re not democrats or even Swedish-style socialists. They’re defending the indefensible. Addendum: To be clear, I think even many of them don’t understand this properly.
To be fair, those deaths can be blamed on the brutality of the likes of Stalin and Mao. Communism didn’t kill those people— but its authoritarian nature certainly provided fertile ground to be abused by monsters.
Like most things political, it’s highly nuanced and complex. I don’t particularly like to defend communism, but an ideology alone can’t do anything. It requires bad actors who use that ideology for their own ends.
I think that, more to the point, no matter the culpability of communism in Soviet politics, tankies seem more enamoured with the latter — the militant, strongarm regimes — than the actual ideals and principles of ideology.
Many would say that this is disingenuous reasoning. The fact is that the brutality was committed in the name of the ideology, and that whenever the ideology has been tried out, it always - always - ends the same way. For exactly the reason you suggest: any ideology that precludes dissent is ripe for abuse.
I don’t think any ideology has not had brutality committed in its name.
Disingenuous or ignorant. By definition a Quaker or a Jain cannot commit brutality in the name of their beliefs. Conversely, an ideology which puts the collective before the individual, such as fascism or communism, is, a straightforward recipe for brutality.
Quakers are just an extension of Christian ideology. Jainism I don’t know enough about, but any religious identity will eventually develop the concept of justified violence when faced with the existential threat of a larger opposing religion.
Hair splitting. Some ideologies are more dangerous than others.
Sure, not arguing that. But there’s no ideology that can completely preclude violence.
A few things. Communism isn’t Marxist leninism. Communism isn’t authoritarian. And it’s not just Stalin and Mao. It’s literally everywhere Marxist leninism has ever been attempted. Communism is a classless stateless society. Therefore a Marxist leninist government will never become communist. Because they are defined by their class separation of those with political power and those without, and the strong overbearing presence of the state.
There’s nothing objectionable to Communism whatsoever. And no one should have any qualms about defending it ever. What we should question is why one group of authoritarians the Marxist leninist desire to be so closely tied to it. And another group of authoritarians the capitalists demand everyone be afraid of it.
you mean the us-led neoliberal ideology?
if so, agreed
immiserated possibly a billion more
Hmm, this graph must be upside-down or something, weird.
stuff like this is why I have ml and hexbear in my blocklist, they don’t deserve my traffic
You really should join an instance that defederates from those instances. That is the way to actually “vote” on the fediverse, not via simple user blocking that doesn’t actually achieve what you think it does, as the other reply points out.
There is only a singular instance in the entire Fediverse that blocks all of the big 3 including lemmy.ml, from what I can see: lemmy.cafe. And roughly a month ago it was still federated with hexbear.net - though that was due to a bug/oversight and when it was pointed out to the admin was immediately corrected. It is a tiny instance, with only 18 users per day or 44 per month, which leaves me wondering how “robust” it is - how long has it been in operation? How long would it expect to remain? (I recall instances such as dmv.social dying off with little to no notice, though that was due to the CSAM attacks that have since been mitigated by software).
I may switch to them regardless - they have some nice features (including a link for new users to check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca - so friendly and welcoming!!:-), though was waiting for the likes of Sublinks, Piefed, and Mbin to catch up a bit in case they would be better than any implementation of Lemmy. Anyway I’ve been busy irl lately and not wanting to spend time thinking about this.
I say all this in case my personal example could help illustrate: there are barriers to switching.:-) Though I don’t know if everyone suddenly jumping onto that same instance would count as much of a “vote”, and especially people not doing such shouldn’t count as a vote in the opposite direction, either? Though I do take your point, ultimately we cannot control others, only ourselves, so it is our “fault” for accepting the way that things are now, rather than seeking to change them.
Also if it helps to add: many people feel that communities such as firefox@lemmy.ml that have ~2/3rds of all monthly active users for a firefox-specific community essentially hold hostage the content that they want to see, without an account that can interact with it. Ideally the politics would be separated from the non-political content - much like the NSFW tag + especially the settings button to filter out such if desired - allows us all to exist in the same space free of any conflict (barring the occasional outlier, which I’ve seen only like once or twice in the entirety of last year), however, people (such as users of those big 3 instances) refuse to label their politically extremist content, and do other things not in good faith like brigade even instance-specific communities (I can find an example if you like, also relevant is that the option to set them to “private” does not exist until… is it 0.19.6 iirc?).
So for some people, it is not enough to simply leave, they want to help migrate everyone out. By increasing awareness of the situation.
You may want to consider the fact that instance blocks on the user side don’t actually effect that, they are not in any way like defederation, not by a long shot. They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.
They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.
Yep. “Block instance” is basically “block all communities on this instance”. Its API-level behavior leaves a lot to be desired.
Some UIs will filter users from blocked instances (posts and comments). I know Tesseract does, and I think maybe Boost does?
Oh that’s so awesome! Mbin, Piefed, Sublinks, and even if Tesseract is currently running Lemmy (though I thought you mentioned wanting to switch it to Sublinks or something when that gets ready), it too helps mitigate some of the known issues. I do have enormous respect for the hard work and effort put into the Lemmy codebase… but I am even more excited to think about the possibilities of growth that lie ahead!:-)
I mean I think that’s the idea, they didn’t want people blocking the instance to disrupt normal discussions by hiding the users.
Their intent wasn’t to offer an alternative to defederation, but rather for blocking all an instance’s communities manually.
in the fediverse; blocklists only serves to remove you from the group chat that everyone else can see.
My post criticizing China’s high-speed rail network was yanked. I was surprised and immediately thought of Reddit.
Same. Their SCS incursion and claiming it as their own.
I agree with you that this conflict needs a resolution, it’s possible lemmy.ml has done some things wrong, that’s why I support a two state solution that guarantees lemmy.mls security.
