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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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?
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.
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.
Lately sh.itjust.works been more good about nuking spam and troll accounts, and they also have automated defenses set up to mitigate abuse.
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.
Lemmy.world is extremely liberal, I wouldn’t classify it as left-leaning. Both .world and sh.itjust.works are generally liberal, maintaining MeanwhileOnGrad leads to more right-wing people. 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.
muh libs aren’t left leaning
And you expect me to take anything you say after that seriously
By the standards of US and Canadian politics, yeah we’re to the left of center. But “center” has been dragged to the right so far that it’s prompting this whole argument. The Overton window had shifted so far that liberalism - which, in a current context, supports relatively unregulated capitalism and trickle down economics - there’s a whole swath of political ideologies that’s basically nonexistent within our modern day electoral politics. I’m somewhere in the anarchist range and choose to engage with electoral politics - if they chose to participate within the context of a FPTP voting system with two options, we’d find ourselves voting for the same candidate despite our likely highly differing political beliefs. In many countries that left wing is less smashed, the range of political discourse is much wider.
Shit just works is to the left side of, but comfortably within, the current Canadian Overton window. In a global sense, the instance is kinda to the right, in the same way that Bernie Sanders is moderate by western European standards.
When I say Leftist, I am using the typical definition, anti-Capitalist. Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, and all their myriad forms.
When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.
Considering Lemmy is an international site, it doesn’t make sense to use the Overton Window. If we went by, say, the American Overton Window, but another user lived in, say, Spain, there’s a significant difference there. That’s why I am using the standard definitions, and not going off of any one country’s Overton Window.
When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.
For two of the words this is not a typical definition. Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world. And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term). Elsewhere they would be closer to left or center. This whole discussion illustrates the limited usefulness of the left-right axis at describing ideas.
Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world.
Are you trying to say that wherever Social Democrats are found, they are the most left available? That may track, but again, Social Democrats want to “harness Capitalism,” it isn’t pro-Socialism nor anti-Capitalism, hence my categorization.
And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term)
Liberalism is the ideological framework for Capitalism, this is, again, supportive of Capitalism and against Socialism.
This is a bit reductive. I accept that liberalism and capitalism are closely intertwined in the historical reading. But the fact is that capitalism won the economic battle, for better and (I agree) for worse. Attempts to replace it completely, in an interconnected world, invariably end in disaster or (China) in a reversion to capitalism. Just look at the list of them. To me this whole question feels like a disconnected high-school philosophy debate.
Being full of anticommunists who call anyone left of Biden a tankie makes an instance right wing in my eyes at least
They… don’t though? Unless you’re pretending saying “voting for [not the democratic candidate] is a vote for Trump” is now apparently right wing and not just a basic understanding of how first past the post works.
Like, your definition is both wrong in terms of what right wing means, and not even descriptive of either. They’re just not tankie shitholes so I guess that makes them look bad to you?
So accusing left wingers of being right wing is okay as far as you’re concerned if it’s about an election
Pointing out that from a left wing perspective, Biden and the Democrats are doing bad things and their supporters are right wing: wrong, not descriptive, belongs in a tankie shit hole.
K
That’s… not an accurate characterization.
I would have voted for Sanders in a heartbeat. And a lot of other (Americans) on my instance would too. The disdain is more targeted and nuanced than that. A whole lot of us on sh.it just.works have a reasonably solid understanding of the difference between communism and authoritarian communism, and are also often geopolitical nerds to one degree or another. This often leads to us doing our best to combat what we see as bullshit disinformation and misrepresentation when and where we see it.
The vitriol we have towards tankies is specifically a result of:
- our dislike of the glorification of historical authoritarian leaders (Stalin; Mao)
- the intentional blurring of the line between communism (which, bluntly, many of us don’t actually have a problem with) and authoritarian communism
- the jingoistic support of modern authoritarian states that either call themselves “communist” despite not really being anything of the sort (China), or who have a historical lineage that runs through an (again, authoritarian) communist state (Russia)
When looked at that way, it’s a lot closer to modern Iron Front ideology (anti-monarchy; anti-fascist; anti-authoritarian communist).
deleted by creator
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
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”?
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.
As the dev’s flagship instance, there is only so much that can be done. There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit. They did put the work in to create the service, after all.
I think the most reasonable solution around this is to simply push mbin a little harder. Since .ml will always garner a certain degree of attention as the dev’s instance, simply pivoting more attention to a lemmy-related service may be the best option to make us more appealing to less politically-interested people overall.
There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit.
Disagreed, I’ve seen them trying to force their hand on other instances into running things the way they want them to, so I think it’s only fair others hold them to some standards as well. After all in the Fediverse there is some leverage you do have to get other instances to compromise, by way of simply refusing to operate with them anymore. Obviously that doesn’t mean completely bossing them around, which is why I said compromise, not comply. It also is still their choice whether or not to follow through, it comes at the cost of them no longer inter-operating with servers they refuse to compromise with, but I think that’s more than fair enough as a trade off.
It is also a good idea to push for alternatives, but even so, if the issue isn’t addressed it will still be problematic on those problems due to the size and weight the instance and its communities carry in the Fediverse.
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.
These are just my thoughts based on what I’ve read so far. Do what you will with it. This is just my general advice.
If you like a community on an instance, make friends on it. If you network with enough individuals that feel the same way about a community that you do, fork that community onto a new instance and carry on. I see others weighing in on too much control, not enough control, defederate, remove moderator or admin control from individuals that censor, ban, on lean one direction over another. You’ll find these power dynamics are more prevalent or less prevalent depending on the instance you’re on or communities your partipate in. If you feel strongly enough about it, be the change you want to see and determine what best course of action you should take that is within your power. Whatever you choose I hope you find or potentially create a community or instance that works best for you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I censored them. All of them.
Brand new account making smear post against lemmy.ml as if they are veterans.
Totally not sus.
That user didn’t make the post they’re linking to.
That user still made this post right here, and also they made up the fact that Lemmy is gaining in popularity.
🙄
If all you want to see are opinions and memes that fit within the political confines of the New York Times, then .ml probably isn’t for you. Lemmy.world has taken a very brave (and rare!) stance of being a champion of neoliberal politics. The mods and users here will do everything they can to make sure you aren’t exposed to any political philosophy to the left of Henry Kissinger.
There are about two people on here who wouldn’t say “fuck Henry Kissinger”.
What a massive load of shite. The fucking smell of boot polish off your breath is disgusting.
Jog on.
Hillary Clinton considered him a “great friend and mentor” so I guess I could have said her. I’m also fully aware of the liberal tendency to place a higher importance on image than on policy.
I just don’t understand why people like OP even left Reddit.
While I understand someone not agreeing with the way some instance or community is managed, I see value in different opinions.
Lemmy is great for exactly this purpose, we can have different instances and are able to be exposed to different ideas.
I can not understand the need of some people to limit their exposure to different ideas.
It’s why I try to get more people to read theory, the people leaving Reddit usually are the types who care enough to keep up with current events and willful enough to abandon Reddit over ideals, but generally haven’t yet read leftist theory.
To be clear, many people do read theory, they just aren’t the same people trying to recreate Reddit.
Hey, remember when you said you’d vote for the Dem candidate if Biden was replaced? How’s that going?
“turn this place into an echo chamber” motherfucker Lemmy world has 10 times the users, and the only “echo chamber” shit I see is insistent Kamala Harris cope and seethe whenever someone mentions Israel or Palestine.
Meanwhile Lemmy . world mods change the TOS to spite individual communities, ban discussion of piracy despite it being perfectly legal and present on a different instance! Grow up.
