Comment on Statistics for Lemmy Instances and Communities
comfy@lemmy.ml 2 days ago[This user claims to have blocked the instance I registered on, so I assume they won’t read this]
Lemmy is what it is because of the beliefs and values of instances like lemmy.ml. There have been many other attempts at creating reddit alternatives, decades of them, from voat to raddle. The lead developers have clear values which guided Lemmy into being a better platform than reddit and the other reddit-like forums - free-and-open source, anti-commercial, decentralized, and counter to the pro-US media hegemony. These are not incidental, values aren’t a syncretic pick-and-choose buffet! They are a result of the socialist ideologies of the admins of each of those instances, and how they have been applied to material reality.
And keep in mind that these instances aren’t some outsider aberration, they were the three largest Lemmy instances until 2023, they remain large and popular, and host popular active communities frequented by users of many other instances.
And while Zedestrian perceives lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad and Hexbear as problematic (and I have my criticisms of each of them), from my perspective, many of the big liberalist instances are far more problematic, tolerating right-wing bigots and banning users from advocating for action (including, where necessary, violence) against the ruling class destroying us and our planet. That’s a big reason why many left, for were banned from, reddit. Should lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works therefore be removed, for being problematically close to the harmful behaviors of reddit.com that many of us are trying to escape? That’s a serious reputational liability too, it can drive users away if they can’t find the places they want to join.
Zedstrian@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
Platforms like Voat have disgustingly promoted fascist ideologies in the name of “free speech”, but that doesn’t excuse leading members of Lemmygrad, Hexbear, and Lemmy.ml from their persistent history of supporting Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, supporting Chinese totalitarianism (not even true communism) over Taiwanese democracy, and disgusting transphobia.
I block the communities on those instances, even those I might be interested in, to instead support the growth of alternatives on mainstream instances. I still want to see comments from their users on other instances though, as many are still reasonable, and the Threadiverse is already too small as it is. I’d like to see it get bigger, and have no intention of returning to Reddit and having my data commercialized, but for as long as Lemmy is defined by those three instances, we are at a strong disadvantage in terms of user growth and retention.
comfy@lemmy.ml 46 minutes ago
First things first, I do not defend nutomic’s ignorant transphobia. It’s unfortunate to see how legitimate complaints about capitalist exploitation of trans issues (rainbow capitalism) can be wrongfully misdirected into reactionary anti-trans victim-blaming. Their personal writings on trans issues are harmful.
And I don’t think Lemmy really is defined by the politics of those instances anymore. Their politics are largely optional, especially now that many other instances have grown. These days, I see more red-scare posters than tankies, who regularly inflame off-topic instance drama whenever they see a username from one of the instances.
The cm0002 compilation linked is a list of trolling strawman claims, many are either completely made up or shamelessly misframed. I’ll pick a few representative ones to talk about, obviously there’s too many to give proper attention to in one reply:
The first one: [Dessalines:] “Slava Ukraini” is considered a “Fascist slogan”: Yes, this is a true claim from cm0002 and a fair position from Desallines to hold: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini#Second_World_… . Openly-fascist groups like Azov Battalion maintain a strong presence in Ukrainian nationalism, so the preservation of this slogan isn’t a historical oddity.
^^ We also see cm0002 list another post of a user being banned for saying “Slava Ukraini”, which cm0002 knows is considered by lemmy.ml staff as being a fascist slogan, but instead knowingly misframes the ban as “Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban”, which simply isn’t the case. fwiw, I do believe the two devs, in the busyness, do a terrible job of explaining their perspectives in ban messages, using quick messages like “orientalism” or “Rule 1” which will just puzzle someone who doesn’t understand how what they said was offensive.
[Dessalines:] “The BBC is not a credible news source”: I don’t unconditionally agree with that as a general statement, but in the context of some political topics, this is a fair position. They’re a state-sponsored channel, and like all countries, the British state has biases too. Here is one case of MI5 state intervention into the BBC ongoing for over 50 years: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/“Christmas_tree”_files .
“[Davel:] Response to a valid report of “NK is actually good” as propaganda/misinfo”: The report is right there to read, it’s not claiming “misinfo”. Spreading political beliefs is not against the rules of that community or the instance, why should it be? The point of thinking about politics is to improve the world. cm0002 just assumes saying some basic positive things about countries they don’t like should be banned. That is a chauvinistic belief, and them posting about it this way is propaganda in itself. Yet we can assume someone reporting their post for propaganda would get a similarly dismissive reaction.
[Cowbee:] "Propaganda is good actually”: - and then you click on the link and now it’s changed to the lesser strawman - “Propaganda can be good!”… cm0002 is, again, making false statements to fabricate an extreme position out of some pretty boring factual claims, and then points to them and says “Look at all this extremism!”. Just look at the comments on that post, even they’re saying Cowbee is right, and that’s a politically-motivated circlejerk in a circlejerk community. cm0002 is inventing and exaggerating to create drama, and in my experience, drama spreaders are much more effective at driving people away than unpopular communities.
As a side note, and I want to point out that that I’m commenting about media propaganda practices and not taking a side (I support the working class in both Ukraine and Russia, I would pop champagne if Putin and their friends were shot tonight, and the same goes for Russian mercenaries, the Azov fascists and the US vultures prolonging their proxy war at the expense of Ukrainian people), but it’s always puzzled me that the phrase “illegal invasion” caught on. What the hell does a “legal invasion” look like? Laws are written by the victor, there is nothing inherently wrong with breaking law. 🏴☠️💿