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.

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    If more people would just block that instance and it’s childish admins/mods, this wouldn’t be a problem. If people think it’s exaggerating to call out the clowns at .ml, I’d definitely urge you to look into the posts/comments the remove and their reasoning.

    Most are violations of Rule 1 where there is clearly no violation.

    Others are removed simply for being “liberal” or “blue MAGA” which neither are violations of any rule, and the latter is just a childish nonsensical insult. Which IS against the rules.

    Having said this- it’s their instance and their community to do with as they please. If the freedom to disagree violates their emotional safe-space and hurts their feelings- then they don’t deserve your traffic and interaction. They have no intention to help grow lemmy, because it’s easy to see by their example that choir preaching only appeals to the choir.

    Just block them and forget they exist.

  • aleph@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    I’ve defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

    This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

    Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.

      1000001794

      It’s troubling behavior for anyone with power.

      • Hubi@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Downvotes are public on Lemmy fyi. There are interfaces that show who voted on a post or comment.

      • Pili@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You gotta admit, it’s very suspicious to be massively downvoted (25, not 4) over an inconspicuous comment that merely highlights a few paragraphs of the linked article.

        I know I would also be wondering if there was a pattern in the origin of those downvotes.

    • kuato@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Only admins can do site bans. What you’re seeing is a hacky/temporary feature of the upcoming Lemmy v19.4, of which lemmy.ml is running the pre-release: when an admin bans someone from the site (temp or otherwise), it also automatically bans them from any community they have ever participated in. Lemmy.ml has always been the “beta” instance for new releases.

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Tbh, also harass a mod. People get quite worked out when being moderated, and being a mod is enough work without people chasing you to argue with you or straight up harass you, I suppose. At least, I can see plenty of good reasons to hide the moderator name.

        • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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          4 months ago

          To quote the reason why calling out mods by name is forbidden from a previous encounter I had with them: “removed for doxxing”

          So yeah I think you’re giving them too much credit here

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            I am not sure I understood. You called some mod by name and they removed the comment? If that’s the case, I perfectly understand and agree with the decision tbh.

            That said, this is a general argument, not referred to any particular mod. I think that many people get angry when their content is moderated and they might want to harass/argue/avenge against the mod who took that action.

            • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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              You agree that tagging the username of a mod (wasn’t even one it was an admin) is doxxing? If so, you’re delusional.

              Mod names are visible by default on my instance so if taking a look there and then mentioning the username you see there is doxxing good luck with the rest of your life. You can’t have a system where everyone can easily find out who performed a mod action and then claim you were “doxxed”

              • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                4 months ago

                No sorry, you said name as in the person’s name, I did not understand “username”.

                • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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                  4 months ago

                  well in this particular case it wouldn’t have mattered, I used the username but the admin in question has their clear name set as the display name (which made the whole “doxxing” claim even funnier to me)

  • kbal@fedia.io
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    5 months ago

    Rule 1: Crushing people with tanks is fine so long as it’s our side doing it.

    Literal fucking tankies. I wonder if they will ever come to their senses. Oh well, it’s not as if there aren’t Nazi instances somewhere on fedi as well.

    • themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      A hexbear in that thread is literally claiming that “the soldiers did everything they could to avoid hurting him” when there’s a photo of him lying dead on the street after the tanks have gone through. They don’t think it’s fine, they’re saying it didn’t happen (curious)

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Was it actually him? I was under the impression that history did not relate what happened to him afterwards, nor who he was. That’s not to say the CCP did not murder a couple of thousand people during the crackdown regardless, because they did, but I have never seen a verifiable claim that a picture of any particular corpse actually was the Tank Man. There are numerous theories I’ve seen floated over the years alleging what may have happened to him afterwards ranging from him being caught and imprisoned, executed, living anonymously in China, or fleeing to Taiwan. All of them are unverified and, of course, mutually exclusive.

        The tank operators absolutely did attempt to (and succeeded at) avoid running him over. That much is plainly visible in the video. Whatever happened after the video ended is undocumented and pure conjecture. Plenty of well documented atrocities actually were committed that day, before and after that moment, so there’s not much sense in inventing new ones and bickering over details we haven’t actually got.

      • Microw@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        That photo (I’ve seen it circulate on the internet myself) is a photoshop. Every reputable source says that no one knows what happened to that man, and we have no evidence whatsoever of him getting run over.

      • feedum_sneedson@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        He is bundled off to the left by other protestors, nobody knows what happened to him, there is no photo of him dead.

      • katy ✨@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        A hexbear in that thread is literally claiming that “the soldiers did everything they could to avoid hurting him”

        ah the trolly problem defence

    • Microw@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Crushing people with tanks

      Just a heads up, while it is established that the CCCP killed tons of people on that day, the idea that people were crushed with tanks is disputed in academia and mostly considered inaccurate news reporting.

      The famous “tank man” photo shows a guy standing in front of a tank in order to prevent them from moving tanks to another part where the protesters had gone. We have no evidence that he was driven over by that tank.

      • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Those “academics” are wrong.

        We know this because there are photos of bodies and bicycles smeared into a paste [Source. Warning Blood/Gore].

        And because people who were there literally said that’s what happened:

        "The shooting was going on and people were still running to try and block the tanks, which were travelling at high speed, some positioning buses in the road. But the tanks crushed the buses and people, they didn’t care. People’s bodies were merged, moulded to their bicycles. They were flat.” [Source: Shao Jiang to The Mirror]

        The CCP has desperately tried to cleanse the most brutal images and interviews of the massacre from the Internet, but even 30 years on they can’t completely scrub it clean. There’s a reason The Pillar of Shame monument is designed as it is.

        • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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          4 months ago

          No but the red paste is most likely explained by the tanks that were verifiably there. They could have crushed people with other machinery but they had tanks.

  • Darkpepito_tux@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    As a marxist, I’m myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism. And I don’t even understand how people can stay with “Stalin was not so bad”, knowing that he never planned to apply the last state of the Communist theory, and even if it did, massacre are not acceptable (sounds obvious), same applying with China and their open market.
    In my country (France), Stalinism isn’t a thing, all communists are against what happend in USSR, and most are anti-china.

    • finder@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I’m myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism.

      It’s because tankies are just contrarians that use communist ideology as a vehicle to be anti-west / anti-United States (anti-liberal democracy). Tankies will defend any cause or ideology that is against ‘the west’ even if that means happily ignoring the blatant homophobic, genocidal and repressive authoritarianism.

      • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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        5 months ago

        And capitalist regimes. The Russian Federation was literally founded by a betrayal of a reformist movement in the USSR, and China consulted with Milton Goddamn Friedman on their economy, ending up with billionaires. I even saw .ml users crying about Russian *oligarchs" having their assets seized (“stolen,” as they said), and unironically citing Matt Taibbi. Not even “back in the day” Taibbi, but literally The Twitter Files. Using bought & paid for corporate propaganda to make their point.

        They’re just campists. I don’t want to run afoul of a “No True Scotsman” situation, but fuck, for people who seem to think they’re the Only True Socialists, they’re willing to drop socialism in an instant if it means they can be edgy dickheads on the internet.

        • Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It’s called second campism, and it’s been happening for a long time, it just used to make more sense when it could actually seem like there was two hegemonic camps during the cold war (still an oversimplistic view).

          Now they just support any regime that’s anti-US/the original capitalist camp because they have no hegemonic camp of their own to support, just a broad smattering of authoritarian regimes with completely different ideologies.

  • wahming@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’ve been banned from .ml for being a ‘racist’ for being anti-Xi, despite the fact that I am Chinese, and pointed out my ethnicity as such in the discussion. I guess antisemitic Jews aren’t the only weird accusation getting thrown about nowadays.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I don’t think any of this is even real to them. The same way that a majority of the white-nationalist 4-channers are just roleplaying and losing themselves in the storylines, as a species we tend to do that, we just get lost in a narrative because it explains how we feel.

      The tankies are doing the same exact thing. They’re not impacting policy, they’re not marching for anything, they’re not taken seriously and it’s just another in-club that has its own language and imagery and secret handshakes and a unifying message to rally behind (America bad!) and instead of turning that criticism into actionable plans for changing representation and making anything better, they put on WW2 Russian Tanker helmets and have erotic fantasies about a communist uprising that will never happen.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I got a ban for pointing out the nuclear strikes on Japan killed less than the conventional firebombing runs leading up to it, and if nukes wouldn’t have been used a shit ton more people would have died.

      Like, no opinion on if what was morally right or not, just what the numbers worked out.

      It’s all trolls over there, when a rational person makes a community, the admins start drama there and troll the mods till they leave or get kicked out for stupid shit.

      I just blocked the whole instance. I never see any of their posts now, and as an unintended bonus I don’t even get notifications when their users reply to my comments.

      Like, it would be best if we defederated from them and that hilariouschaos troll instance.

      But I can just block them, works the same.

      • Pili@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        the nuclear strikes on Japan killed less than the conventional firebombing runs leading up to it, and if nukes wouldn’t have been used a shit ton more people would have died.

        That’s an absolutely disgusting thing to say. Japan was already surrendering, they were only nuked as a show of strength.

        I’m not sure what you imply when you say that “a shit ton more people would have died”, but if you’re saying that the US should have napalm bombed an entire surrendering country just to make an example, I don’t think it makes your argument valid. It’s not ok to do something horrible, just because you could have done something even worse if you had wanted to.

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          5 months ago

          Whether that alone is something to be banned over is probably context dependent, and I don’t have any faith that that instance had a good reason for it. Nevertheless that person holding up their great take about the nuclear bombs being good actually does not paint a great picture of them as a person. It makes them look like a reactionary US nationalist who wants to believe anything that makes their side the “good guys”. They can pretend it was morally neutral all they want, but morality is the only reason anybody argues something like that because it’s so nebulous the only way you get there is with motivated reasoning.

          At any rate I wouldn’t put that on the pile of reasons to hate on the .ml instances, not when there are so many good reasons.

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
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        Like, no opinion on if what was morally right or not, just what the numbers worked out.

        I don’t want to get in the merit of the comment, but unless you see the future, this statement is simply not true. Your argument is simply based on accepting certain assumptions as true.

        Coincidentally this argument is routinely used by people supporting american atrocities, who consider nuking hundreds of thousands of people the humanitarian solution to WWII.

        To be clear, I don’t agree with that line of moderation, I don’t agree with most of the views that seem to characterize .ml, but it’s a year that people make posts like this one, you can’t tell me you don’t understand the ban based on the above.

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            5 months ago

            History is about what happened. “Otherwise it would” is speculation.

            • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              And even after the nuclear bombs, there was an attempted coup to stop surrender.

              Prior to the bombs, there was no chance of surrender.

              That is history.

              • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                5 months ago

                And where is the count of deaths in the different timeline?

                Look, my point is simple: human history is not deterministic and we simply can’t know what happens tomorrow like if we were predicting the laws of phisics. Maybe there were other 100 different course of actions leading to as many outcomes.

                You can analyze what happened, but it’s foolish to say “this was better because the alternative would have led to”. You can only analyze and discuss what happened, otherwise anything can be justified with “it wouldn’t have been worse”.

                “this genocide was good, because without it the oppressed population would have led to civil war and many more deaths”.

                • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  You think the nuclear bombs were a genocide?

                  Seriously, who “taught” you this stuff?

                  I am genuinely curious where people presented all of this stuff you’re saying as history.

                  Like, it’s almost like the only thing you know about civilian deaths in WW2 was American dropped nukes.

                  There’s sooooo much that you’re missing. But unless you dropped out of school at a very young age, I can’t be the first person that tries to explain this to you

                  So where are your opinions coming from?

                  Is this a thing where you learned everything you know about a subject from YouTube videos?

                  If so…

                  Why?

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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        5 months ago

        I honestly disagree that blocking works the same. Social media relies on a network effect, and if they keep being allowed to operate popular communities then they will have that network effect in their favour, and new users that don’t know any better will keep joining.

        Defederation is an important tool to turn certain instances into pariahs for bad behaviour, and individual blocks don’t achieve that.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          This is a lot of the problem with gen z, especially among the left. Everyone is quick to smash the block button, which in aggregate just makes everything worse for everyone else.

          • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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            5 months ago

            It’s not a generational problem, it’s a platform problem. It’s a disempowered person problem. Generations are mostly made up anyway.

            Hitting the block button is fine to deal with harrassment, it just doesn’t solve the wider issue.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I think zoomers are far more prone to refusing to engage with things that make them uncomfortable than previous generations.

              And just because something isn’t clear cut doesn’t make it imaginary. It’s a useful but fuzzy categorization.

              • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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                5 months ago

                Well I’d be fascinated to see how you arrive at that conclusion but until then I’m going to have to disagree on the basic principle that the generalisations people make about generations are usually pretty useless.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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                  5 months ago

                  If you truly don’t see any difference between Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials then I think our views of reality are so wildly different we might not be able to have any sort of communication.

    • Pili@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      If anyone would like more context about the kind of think they were posting:

      • wahming@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yep, the horror. I absolutely deserved an instance-wide ban for the terrible things I said.

        I do love the amount of facts and proof that is been dug up and displayed in this post, many thanks to all those going to the effort!

    • lltnskyc@monero.town
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      5 months ago

      I’ve been banned from .ml for being a ‘racist’ for being anti-Xi, despite the fact that I am Chinese, and pointed out my ethnicity as such in the discussion.

      And I’ve been censored (not yet banned, but I guess it won’t take long till that as well) on lemmy.world (and beehaw) for spreading “misinformation” about Ukraine, despite being a Ukrainian and actually reading (and sharing) the local news of what’s actually happening there, contrary to the government propaganda.

      • wahming@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        You claim Zelensky is illegitimate and authoritarian for not holding elections in the middle of a fight for the country’s survival. The logic there is hilariously bad. Setting aside the absolute waste of resources, the last thing any country needs in such a scenario is for their leaders to start campaigning over who’s going to take control. It’s not the time and place for it. If you want to blame anybody, blame Russia

        • lltnskyc@monero.town
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          Right, so basically it’s okay for countries to be authoritarian, it’s okay to slaughter thousands of people and making everybody else live in constant fear, as long as the government aligns itself with the west.
          Why would I blame Russia? It’s not Russia, it’s not Putin who is kidnapping people of the streets in Ukraine and sends them to die. It’s Zelensky’s regime.

          Very cool and humanitarian and obviously I don’t agree with that. But out of curiosity - can you please explain to me why is North Korea different?
          It is also officially still in a state of a war with South Korea. Does it mean Kim Jong Un is suddenly also a hero that leads his country against the enemy? It doesn’t matter that people are trapped there, it doesn’t matter that people may not support him, all the atrocities committed by him do not matter as well, because they are in a war, am I right?

          • wahming@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Because South Korea is not actively trying to wipe out NK from existence, but actually the opposite is trying to reach out to NK and stabilise relations. ‘War’ is a hilarious way to describe their status. Way to strawman the argument.

            • lltnskyc@monero.town
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              5 months ago

              but actually the opposite is trying to reach out to NK and stabilise relations

              That’s just super fucking ironic, considering that Russia never stopped saying that they are open to negotiations (and the very first peace deal was actually they they go back to before-2022-invasion borders) and it is Zelensky who always refuses to negotiate and instead sends more Ukrainians to die.

              • wahming@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                Oh you mean the deal where they tried to make their seizure of Crimea legitimate?

                Ok, this is reaching russian troll levels of disinformation. I think it’s clear enough to any 3rd parties just why you’re getting your comments deleted.

                • lltnskyc@monero.town
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                  Oh you mean the deal where they tried to make their seizure of Crimea legitimate?

                  This has already happened, and is going to stay that way, whether you or I or anybody else likes it or not…

                  So it woudn’t have changed anything, except, you know, such a tiny little details as hundreds of thousands of lives.

            • lltnskyc@monero.town
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              5 months ago

              Russia.

              Now, I answered your question, would you please be so kind to answer mine now, which is also quite simple?

              If there are two men, man A is simply operating a meat grinder while man B kidnaps people from the streets (soon he will start breaking into people’s homes as well), forcefully pushes them into the meat grinder, and watches to make sure they can’t get out of it, he also makes sure nobody leaves the city so that he can continue his game, who do you blame more for deaths of people in the meat grinder?

              • irmoz@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                sImPLY OPErATiNg A MeAT GRInDER

                A meat grinder needs meat, you dunce. Activating the grinder in this metaphor is invading Ukraine. “Throwing people in the grinder” is sending people to stop the grinder.

              • Belastend@lemmy.world
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                5 months ago

                The man who operates the meat grinder? The man who started the business of shoving people into a grinder??? An everadvancing grinder? Jesus. At least get your metaphor right

                • lltnskyc@monero.town
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                  4 months ago

                  The man who operates the meat grinder? The man who started the business of shoving people into a grinder???

                  Those are two different people though.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    as a communism sympathizing leftist, i hated these mods on reddit and i hate them here. the behavior is idiotic

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      That’s the most frustrating part. These “leftists” are the stupid kind who seem to care more about relitigating idiotic cold war drama than evolving or pushing forward leftist philosophy. It’s straight up brain rot, mixed with obvious right wing agitprop disguised as leftist ideology. That fact that anyone other than trolls, spies and teenagers would engage with it is astounding.

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    The thing is, the Fediverse, link the original concept of the Internet is flexible and can survive losing nodes - it just routes around and issue. If there are problems it can mutate and survive.

    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.

    This is the best solution - the answers are in our hands. Communities only thrive because the users are.posting and interacting on it. If the Mod goes inactive or an instances goes down, we can switch to a new community. That then gains the momentum and goes on to thrive. It’s survival of the fittest and why having more than one community on a topic (especially big topics) is a feature not a bug because it gives the network flexibility and resilience.

    So if there’s an issue with lemmy.ml, boycott it - unsubscribe, give the other communities on more agreeable instances your time and they will grow and prosper. If there isn’t a relevant alternative start one.

    Lemmy prevails.

    • Digitalprimate@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This is a good answer and probably the right solution (still not 100% convinced defederating isn’t, ultimately, going to be the answer though).

      But your Jane/Joe Average User doesn’t look to see which instance that pr0n cute picture of a cat holding a teddy bear is on. They probably don’t even understand the concept of different instances showing content from others. Hell I’ve been online since 1992 and it took me a couple of days to get my head around it when I joined.

      So I think we need some kind of step by step “If you see X, then do Y” sticked to the instances that care about this for the people who (like me) do care about this issue.

      • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        still not 100% convinced defederating isn’t, ultimately, going to be the answer though

        It may be, but only as a last resort.

        So I think we need some kind of step by step “If you see X, then do Y” sticked to the instances that care about this for the people who (like me) do care about this issue.

        Yes, the map of thr Fediverse needs “here be dragons” sprinkled around.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    People are naive if they think the .ml admins and devs don’t intend to keep their thumb on the Lemmy scale. More instances need to take this threat seriously and defederate from .ml, and possibly even fork the Lemmy repos for when the devs inevitably decide they want to start building quiet exploits into the code. There are serious cyber security implications here that people are sleeping on

    • Skepticpunk@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Yep. Something needs to change if we want Lemmy to be something besides a place for Soviet simps to hide from criticism. Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

      • lltnskyc@monero.town
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        5 months ago

        Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

        Except when it suits your agenda, in that case it’s not only tolerated, but actually encouraged! :)

          • lltnskyc@monero.town
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            5 months ago

            You’re bored of people pointing out your hypocrisy?
            But it’s not surprising, you’re not supposed to be entertained by it, you’re supposed to think about it…

            • Skepticpunk@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              What is there to think about? I complain about people who support Soviet-style dictatorships having full control over online platforms moderating exactly as one would expect, and I get told by Random Guy On The Internet #368,452 that I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something. All this to “suit my agenda”, which in this case is wanting to be able to say that authoritarians are bad.

              God forbid I find arguments like that incoherent and unworthy of taking seriously.

              • lltnskyc@monero.town
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                5 months ago

                I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something

                No, you’re a hypocrite because you see “them” censoring “you” and you scream “censure, you can’t do that!!”, but when it’s “your” side is censuring “them”, then you have no complaints, because obviously “your” censure is good, and their is “bad”.

                Or maybe I’m wrong and you’re against censure in general? :)

                • irmoz@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  What evidence do you have that they’re eager for any kind of censorship?

  • pukeko@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Whenever this topic comes up, I find myself wondering what these folks do all day. Not in a Boomer “don’t these people have jobs?!?” way, but more … what is it like to be them? Do they just sit in front of the computer looking for conversations to disrupt? What is their daily existence? Because I find their volume and dedication to what they do fascinating. Cancerous and absurd, but also fascinating.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      This was my experience. My first interaction was me asking a question in good faith. I was then attacked en masse and banned. When I asked about it, I was told how I was a terrible person for not already knowing and believing what they do.

      • pukeko@lemm.ee
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        5 months ago

        Keeping in mind that “knowing and believing what they do” is itself a perilous notion because one of them might be a “Post-Madrid 1933 purple throated” Marxist while another might be a “Modernist new path” Marxist (I made those terms up). I mean I know “lol factions” is an old discussion with the farthest left, but they can’t even agree with each other.

        • retrospectology@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Honestly once you sort of realize that you can’t be on the left and also support authoritarianism/fascism (regardless of the label or intent) the factionalism kind of isn’t as troublesome or confusing.

          You end up with those who believe in supporting progress informed by rational, current understanding of reality and then you have those who cling to failed ideas the same way conservatives do.

          The left can debate solutions and data reasonably without splitting into contradicting camps, people just need to always check and see if they’re actually oriented towards the defining principles of left wing politics; bolstering human rights and well being, strengthening democratic institutions and outcomes using the most current understanding of the world we have available to us right now.

          The left, by definition, flexes and adapts to reality to achieve an outcome, conservativism is when people try to bend reality to fit their ideology.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 months ago

      I really want to understand their relationship with the CCP.

      Do they genuinely believe the shit they’re peddling or are they paid propagandists or is their something more nefarious afoot.

      • rah@feddit.uk
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        5 months ago

        Do they genuinely believe the shit they’re peddling or are they paid propagandists or is their something more nefarious afoot.

        From my interactions, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re mostly seriously broken people who’ve discovered Marx, convinced themselves that capitalism is the cause of all suffering and believe socialism is the solution that will free them from their trauma. The degree of their attachment to socialism is a reflection of the degree of their suffering and brokenness.

        If they weren’t so toxic, they’d be deserving of compassion and forebearance.

        • irmoz@lemmy.world
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          I mean… that description quite accurately describes me. I’m a broken person who has become convinced capitalism is a major source of strife in today’s world, and have come to believe in socialism as the answer.

          However… that hasn’t led me to champion authoritarian states that repress people. There must be a little something extra thrown in there. My guess would be an unacknowledged desire to replace their oppressors.

          This reminds me, I wrote something on the subject once:


          When you’re privileged, and never had to fight for anything in life, you probably won’t even recognise it when you see it happen right in front of you. In fact, you might even write it off as baseless antagonism, a thoughtless disruption of peace, and side with the oppressors.

          “What do you mean he didn’t pay you? He’s an honourable man! He pays me, every friday, on the dot! You must be lying.”

          Even more insidiously, though, is the fact that, even if you do suffer and fight your whole life, you still may not see it as oppression. You may even begin to think it the natural order of things, even begin to value and love the suffering, as a trial that proves your worth in life, internalising the values of your oppressors, until even the thought of a better life becomes not only fantasy, but dangerous sacrilege.

          “He didn’t pay you? Of course he didn’t pay you. Welcome to life. Pay? You want a blowjob with that, too? Get real.”

          And with this internalisation of your oppressors’ values, this adoption of their mindset, and the unquestioning acceptance of the status quo in its current form, once enough does eventually become enough, and you finally get it into your head that things can change, the inevitable form of that change becomes a mirror image: yourself in the throne of oppressor, cracking the whip not only upon your former master, but also upon your former comrades (now, as ever, seen only as competition) for the simple reason that the throne exists, and must be filled, for why else should it exist, other than to seat a whipcracker?

          “There’s no law telling him to pay you, why are you even surprised? You expect him to do it out of the goodness of his heart? Of course not. And when I’m on top, I won’t pay you either.”

  • Audacious@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Sad to see. Feels like Lemmy has no bright future with people in charge of it thinking russia’s and China’s government is good and ban difference of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    You just made me realize that I have been banned from some of the communities over there while never having posted on them, mods are reading conversations in other communities and preemptively banning people…

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      5 months ago

      Oh, boy. Back to the old Reddit patterns. How long before they start using bots to preemptively ban anyone who has ever posted on certain communities regardless of context as a time saving measure, because that was a thing on Reddit as well?

      Any idea which subs are banning like that already?

    • Lianodel@ttrpg.network
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      5 months ago

      Tankies: The word ‘tankie’ is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.

      Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    5 months ago

    Everyone should defederate from .ml, and most have already got rid of hexbear and lemmygrad.

    It’s an absolute shit show of an instance, and the rest of us don’t want to be subject to their nonsense.

    I just wish the instance block prevented me from seeing their users as well.

  • hipsterdoofus@lemmy.zip
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    5 months ago

    Unfortunately, lemmy.ml is run by lemmy’s actual developers and will likely remain one of the most popular instances. Best thing to do is block the instance and host new communities on other instances.

  • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    The solution is… to abandon the notion that there’s some special utopia where we might reside.

    There’s an idea that we all need to find or build some special platform which is going to be a home for all our communities and be transparent and balanced and free from corporate influence and perpetually shiny and awesome. It’s not only unachievable but probably not desirable either.

    Instead, embrace the reality that the communities we want to engage with will be in different places on different platforms and each will have different issues.

    There’s some niche communities on reddit, and yes that platform is run by a corporation but that doesn’t bother me when I’m only there to find a new recipe for snack that matches my diet requirements. I despise facebook but I do use their marketplace to sell junk my wife buys online. I’m aware of the privacy issues with telegram but that’s where I have a family chat group with my sisters. I recently discovered an XMPP channel about DIY bike maintenance which has been amazingly helpful, but I don’t like the XMPP clients I’ve tried. The forum on a torrent tracker I use is a great place to find new books to read but I need to use a VPN to access it.

    My point is, the best part of the modern web is the disparate platforms we have available. Every platform has it’s own character, and caveats to be mindful of.

    The kind of censorship you’re talking about is obviously repugnant, but the reality is that it’s just something to keep in mind when participating in lemmy.ml communities. You can refuse to participate there if you wish, but a mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

    • wahming@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

      Why not? You’ve made an assertion without any reason backing it up.

      Nobody’s suggesting a mass exodus to a single lemmy server, but rather just a dispersal from .ml to the rest of the fediverse. There’s no reason it can’t or shouldn’t happen.

        • wahming@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I’ve read it multiple times. None of it quite addresses why we can’t just move communities away from .ml en masse. From the votes I’m not the only one having trouble discerning your point.

          • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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            5 months ago

            Good lord. If you think lemmy votes are an indicator of solid reasoning I don’t know what to tell you.

            Communities aren’t going to move away from lemmy.ml because no one cares enough about this issue.

            You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

            • wahming@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              So your wall of text boiled down to ‘we can, but we won’t because nobody cares’. That’s pretty different from ‘that’s not how things should work in 2024’.

              You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

              Ironically, that’s how most of us ended up here on lemmy, we as a community decided to move off reddit.