Lemmy's gaining popularity, so I thought new people should see this.

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨samuelblock@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

cross-posted from: 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 “archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://…/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:

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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:

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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.

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Comments

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pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
i created !de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone to help people leave lemmy.ml

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- FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  cheers
  
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- givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  On the other hand, I’ve blocked both those instances months ago and it’s been great.
  
  Strangely I did notice I got banned from a blahaj community like a week ago despite not commenting there for at least 6 months, maybe ever?
  
  Which is kind of the whole point of me blocking them
  
  Both have mods/admins that are very very opinionated about things. And they tend to refuse to let things go (much like OP or you making that sub)
  
  So if they see something they dont agree with, they’ll pre-emptively ban an account, because, and this is doubly important right here:
  
  It’s trolls feeding trolls drama in a big loop
  
  You making that sub, OP making this post…
  
  All you’re doing is encouraging them
  
  Can you really not understand?
  
  I’ll try and remember to come back and check if you respond, but I don’t get notifications from instances I’ve blocked.
  
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  - Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    You were banned in blahaj.zone for your comment on Chess: Image
    
    They take the whole trans women allowed/not-allowed in sports thing very serious there, and I agree with them mostly. The sports thing is a dog-whistle transphobes use because it sounds reasonable even though it really isn’t. It is especially unreasonable in a game like Chess (which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports). It’s likely they reacted way too harshly, outright permanent instance bans over something small like that are very extreme, a warning would’ve probably been the best thing to do, maybe a temp ban at most.
    
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halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  [deleted]
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  - halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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  - zbyte64@awful.systems ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    You have a sales pitch that works for the poorest countries, what do you have for the wealthiest?
    
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  - Zoboomafoo@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    But can they hit the dismount back to communism?
    
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- socsa@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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- fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    A “tankie” isn’t the same as a communist.
    
    A “tankie” is someone that takes China’s side (the tanks) in that famous picture of Tiananmen square.
    
    Being a “tankie” is using communism as a facade for authoritarian governments where a small group of “upper party members” are essentially oligarchs.
    
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  - OpenStars@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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 ~~magat~~ tanky you may read it from chooses to subscribe to)?
    
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- GBU_28@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Unfortunately they take the mic and poison the conversation. Imo they hold back progressive adoption/discussion.
  
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  - halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I don’t disagree, therefore the attempt to disentangle the actual ideologies from the totalitarian stans who got stuck on '80s propaganda.
    
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- givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah, a little suspect OP’s account is a week old with barely double digit posts/comments if you combine them and most are from this post…
  
  I’m guessing their favorite (of many) accounts got blocked by .ml, so now they don’t want anyone going there.
  
  I don’t get the .ml drama tho, never. I realized it was a silly place long ago, so I blocked the whole instance.
  
  I did the same for a couple others. It takes like two seconds.
  
  Who cares if it has bigger communities than others? If that’s all I cared about I’d still be on Reddit
  
  I think a lot or people (like OP) can’t drop this mindset because they’re not on the fediverse willinging. It’s probably the only social media site where IP bans aren’t a thing. So people IP banned from the big ones, are gonna trickle down here and do dumb drama hunting shit like OP.
  
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- slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Eh, I disagree. Left isn’t “when good,” right isn’t “when bad.” There are bad leftists, and you’re looking at them, right there on .ml, grad, and hexbear. These morons actually believe not only that “those states would have dissolved themselves given the opportunity if it wasn’t for ‘western interference,’” they also have such hubris to believe that if they tried the same thing they’d actually achieve what none of them did in the past. They can’t grasp that their autocrats would never cede power either to usher in Communist Utopia™.
    
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  - halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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 left that aren’t otherwise discerned.
    
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- Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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. 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, 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. 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.

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- DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works don’t seem to have any noticeable political leanings as far as I can tell. Why do you say they’re right leaning?
  
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  - umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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  - barsquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    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.
    
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  - ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Because anyone not exactly in line with his views is right leaning, that’s it. Tankies want to shame you into their ideology by calling you right leaning for thinking murder is bad, that’s basically all.
    
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  - givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    World is kind of the vanilla instance.
    
    Just.works is a “free speech” instance, I never see many communities hosted there, but a large amount of trolls make accounts there because just.works is unlikely to nuke an account.
    
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  - Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- Shiggles@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Neither .world nor .shitjustworks are “right leaning” they just hate the tankies most vocally lmao. Neither would it make too much sense to call a tankie “left” leaning given their raging hard on for authoritarianism. I also think most of Blahaj would be offended by being lumped in with them.
  
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  - Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Lemmy.world is extremely liberal, I wouldn’t classify it as left-leaning. Both .world and sh.itjust.works are generally liberal. I did not say far-right, or even right-wing, but right-leaning.
    
    Marxists are absolutely left wing, not sure what your point is here. Marx and Engels were both called “authoritarian” by their contemporaries so much that Engels wrote On Authority. I don’t think it makes sense to separate Marxism from Leftism, and redefine leftism as Anarchism.
    
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  - Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Being full of anticommunists who call anyone left of Biden a tankie makes you right wing in my eyes at least
    
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- samuelblock@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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  - givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    just advising new users to watch where they are active; I
    
    Your profile has 10 posts/comments and has been around for a week…
    
    Are you the original OP who just keeps making new accounts to spam this?
    
    Or do you think 10 posts/comments over a week means you understand Lemmy and should reach out to teach “new users”?
    
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  - Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    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
    
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  - Cowbee@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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.

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- Objection@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  immiserated possibly a billion more
  
  Hmm, this graph must be upside-down or something, weird.
  
  Image
  
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- EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Eldritch@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - halm@leminal.space ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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- samuelblock@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  For me, it’s not the fact that the instance exists that’s troublesome, it’s the fact that it’s popular, potentially luring new users into a pipeline. It’s truly a shame how big it’s gotten…
  
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  - JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    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.
    
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Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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 soltion that guarantees lemmy.mls security.

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- TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This made me cackle, have an upvote
  
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