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.
I knew it was bloody and thousands had been slaughtered, but I’m so surprised they fought back. I never learned they actually had the chance to. So many survivors and observers too. That’s reassuring.
It means that the Chinese know their government is not omnipotent. That’s why all legal communication is unencrypted and monitored. If citizens were allowed to communicate as they do in the West, they’d be able to organize and overthrow the CCP.
That’s what they are afraid of. The people aren’t afraid of the mechanized power the PLA has, and as demonstrated in 1989, the power is in numbers. If the CCP doesn’t wipe out all memory of Tiannemen Square, they are doomed. But the CCP can’t. Unless they cut China off from the rest of the world entirely, the knowledge will remain. The CCP can only get stricter and harsher, speeding up the time for a pressure cooker to explode. They know this. The people know this.
At some point in the future, they will go too far, and the people will end it.
Just like the USA’s experiment with far-right ideology, and also just like the COVID pandemic - knowledge that it will eventually implode seems not to matter one bit.
Had a special experience, too.
I got blocked for arguing. Other people who he posted burning Israel flags or wanted the total destruction of Israel had nothing to fear…
“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.
Even outside of the Tankie instances the Fediverse is filled to the brim with literal terrorist simps, both within the general user base as well as the various community mods. You literally get comments removed or even banned for having nuanced middle ground positions that aren’t propaganda for one side.
i created !de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone to help people leave lemmy.ml
cheers
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.
Edit:
I was banned five days ago apparently for this comment from a year ago:
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/3159844
Definitely not because I blocked that mod five days ago and they desperately found a way to “get back”.
Great example of my point tho, silly instances like that there’s no point in fighting them, just block their instance and go about your life.
You were banned in blahaj.zone for your comment on Chess:
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.
Weird, maybe because I looked at world’s modlog and not theirs like you seem to have done.
I clicked on the link, it was a comment from literally a year ago lol.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/3159844
I blocked the mod of that sub about a week ago, so they likely went and saw my last comment there and banned me for it.
Like I said tho, I’m perfectly fine with it. I blocked their whole instance a long time ago, I think it might have actually been that thread that clued me in it wasn’t worth ever going there again.
Thanks for finding that tho! I’ll remember to check an instance’s own modlog in the future for more details.
Quick edit:
(which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports).
Nah, I was explaining how the only way to get better at chess is to play better people, and there’s no reason for any classes based around gender. And the explanation for difference in skill, is simply that the best men refused to play women, so they never improved. The first female grand master was only that good because her dad was crazy good and made her and her sister play him constantly.
You need the experience of high level play to be able to play at a high level, and any gender divide in division just prolongs that. So I was arguing against any segregation at all.
That’s why they let it stay up a year until I blocked the mod of that community.
And suddenly it was transphobic.
Yeah I saw it on their modlog. It’s very useful to check the modlogs of remote servers, especially since admin comments removals and site-bans for remote users don’t federate in the modlog.
(which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports).
Nah, I was explaining how the only way to get better at chess is to play better people, and there’s no reason for any classes based around gender. And the explanation for difference in skill, is simply that the best men refused to play women, so they never improved. The first female grand master was only that good because her dad was crazy good and made her and her sister play him constantly.
You need the experience of high level play to be able to play at a high level, and any gender divide in division just prolongs that. So I was arguing against any segregation at all.
I guess it was likely a miscommunication or misunderstanding. They probably thought you meant something different than what you actually meant.
They probably thought you meant something different than what you actually meant.
…
You think they do an annual review of threads?
It was over a year ago I made the comment, they banned me for it five days ago.
I don’t know man, it’s weird you’re not getting that, but it doesn’t really matter.
I’m sorry if I’m explaining it poorly.
I did remember it wasn’t I blocked a mod, I explained why I might not respond. And apparently they didn’t like that I had blocked their instance
I don’t know, it’s hard to say what actually happened. I will admit that it seems weird but I don’t want to jump to conclusions about how or why they did it, maybe you could post about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com to get different opinions on it.
stuff like this is why I have ml and hexbear in my blocklist, they don’t deserve my traffic
You really should join an instance that defederates from those instances. That is the way to actually “vote” on the fediverse, not via simple user blocking that doesn’t actually achieve what you think it does, as the other reply points out.
There is only a singular instance in the entire Fediverse that blocks all of the big 3 including lemmy.ml, from what I can see: lemmy.cafe. And roughly a month ago it was still federated with hexbear.net - though that was due to a bug/oversight and when it was pointed out to the admin was immediately corrected. It is a tiny instance, with only 18 users per day or 44 per month, which leaves me wondering how “robust” it is - how long has it been in operation? How long would it expect to remain? (I recall instances such as dmv.social dying off with little to no notice, though that was due to the CSAM attacks that have since been mitigated by software).
I may switch to them regardless - they have some nice features (including a link for new users to check out !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca - so friendly and welcoming!!:-), though was waiting for the likes of Sublinks, Piefed, and Mbin to catch up a bit in case they would be better than any implementation of Lemmy. Anyway I’ve been busy irl lately and not wanting to spend time thinking about this.
I say all this in case my personal example could help illustrate: there are barriers to switching.:-) Though I don’t know if everyone suddenly jumping onto that same instance would count as much of a “vote”, and especially people not doing such shouldn’t count as a vote in the opposite direction, either? Though I do take your point, ultimately we cannot control others, only ourselves, so it is our “fault” for accepting the way that things are now, rather than seeking to change them.
Also if it helps to add: many people feel that communities such as firefox@lemmy.ml that have ~2/3rds of all monthly active users for a firefox-specific community essentially hold hostage the content that they want to see, without an account that can interact with it. Ideally the politics would be separated from the non-political content - much like the NSFW tag + especially the settings button to filter out such if desired - allows us all to exist in the same space free of any conflict (barring the occasional outlier, which I’ve seen only like once or twice in the entirety of last year), however, people (such as users of those big 3 instances) refuse to label their politically extremist content, and do other things not in good faith like brigade even instance-specific communities (I can find an example if you like, also relevant is that the option to set them to “private” does not exist until… is it 0.19.6 iirc?).
So for some people, it is not enough to simply leave, they want to help migrate everyone out. By increasing awareness of the situation.
You may want to consider the fact that instance blocks on the user side don’t actually effect that, they are not in any way like defederation, not by a long shot. They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.
They simply filter communities from those instances, and not much else. It doesn’t even hide user interactions from those instances.
Yep. “Block instance” is basically “block all communities on this instance”. Its API-level behavior leaves a lot to be desired.
Some UIs will filter users from blocked instances (posts and comments). I know Tesseract does, and I think maybe Boost does?
Oh that’s so awesome! Mbin, Piefed, Sublinks, and even if Tesseract is currently running Lemmy (though I thought you mentioned wanting to switch it to Sublinks or something when that gets ready), it too helps mitigate some of the known issues. I do have enormous respect for the hard work and effort put into the Lemmy codebase… but I am even more excited to think about the possibilities of growth that lie ahead!:-)
I mean I think that’s the idea, they didn’t want people blocking the instance to disrupt normal discussions by hiding the users.
Their intent wasn’t to offer an alternative to defederation, but rather for blocking all an instance’s communities manually.
Yes avoid .ml and hexbear and life is mostly good here.
Sounds hollow coming from an instance that doesn’t even defederate hexbear.
My instance does not block them either, but I do.
Had 2 experiences where they tried to silence me via blocking me… And one time, the people I argued with and who wanted the total destruction of a state and posted burning flags of it did not get blocked or warned. I hope, they stay in their echo chamber and don’t ever leave their homes…
User blocking merely blocks their communities. You’ll still see comments from the instance and you’ll still see posts in other communities from their users. You’ll also still have their votes influence your feed.
Defederation is the more proper tool to use. Individual user blocking is not effective.
My instance has downvotes disabled. Only upvotes matter. So, at least, I don’t see destructive voting…
And as long, as I don’t post in their communities, they can’t silence me and have to deal with my view differently than just by removing it…
Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes either actually. That seems to be the main reason they brigade. Everyone has to comment to show their negative opinion on something.
What’s the problem with hexbear, is it the same? Genuine question - I think the only community in hexbear I follow is “Gaming” and it’s reasonably civil there.
Hexbear is just as toxic as ml. They will bait you to comment on topics and then remove your comments if they don’t like them. Just a terrible group of people.
I can only speak to my own experience. Most of their communities I’ve seen are not a place where nuanced views are appreciated. I saw a particularly 4Chanesque take where a guy was trashing a girl he dated for her interest in astrology. He was more than fine supporting it and humoring it while they were together. Once dumped, though, he had to use it as an example of everything he had to be tortured with in the relationship.
I had a couple of things to say about that kind of attitude, but the whole of my response centered around learning to pick partners who are aligned with our own values and goals. They banned me because of my username. I have no idea why, other than making assumptions about my views and values in a negative way. A peep into my post history should suggest otherwise, but anyway.
I don’t have a lot of respect for people with strong views that are sensitive about having them challenged. It isn’t a good faith argument.
It isn’t a good faith argument.
This nicely summarizes enormous portions of lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and a lesser though still quite sizeable proportion of lemmy.ml.
My experience: I saw a post on hexbear and only one view was present in the comments below… I did not know them then… So. I thought: Let’s share my view.
In the end, I got blocked for arguing and they removed my comment. And the people who responded to my comment with burning flags of a country and wanted its total destruction had nothing to fear. It was the most disgusting experience I have ever had on Lemmy.
But after they removed my comment, I understood why there is only 1 view present… Because the other view gets removed.
11·1 month agoI wondered what you wrote, unfortunately it seems like it was on a different account as there is zero things in the (hexbear) modlog for this username.
It was on a different account. I switched to an instance with downvotes disabled, because the experience on Lemmy started to feel too much like Reddit…
But trust me: It did not even remotly justify posting burning flags of a country with mods supporting that. Actually, I’m surprised… I’d expect that this is still normal on hexbear. Can’t imagine, they changed that much in just 6 months…
The man, the myth… the fact checker
Hexbear is way worse, imo. Those folks will straight up harass dissenters. Stay away or maybe just stick to your gaming sub if you’re happy there.
The hexbear community predated Lemmy iirc, so they have existed in an isolated bubble for a very long time. Imagine edgy teenagers with an axe to grind and no particular reason to avoid grinding it on anything that they set their sights onto.
Despite running off so much of their own community members, including some actual developers, they seem happy with the way they are. Sadly, they are also happy to spread out from their instance and fuck up everyone else’s day as well - rulez be damned. Notably, they continually keep floating the idea of defederating themselves from the rest of the Fediverse - I mean ofc those instances that have not already cut them off - so if that gives you an idea of what is going on (they are aware of their toxicity, they simply choose to not care).
That particular community might be fine though. Or not. Either way it’s probably more tolerable than many hexbear users that you will see in general across the Fediverse. You’ll see for yourself.
This is the problem with hexbear: they lure you in with things like gaming and then you start agreeing with them that none should go hungry or homeless and once you realize it, you’ve become a trans redfash tankie gobbunist (/s)
Hexbear has Marxists and Anarchists, it’s a non-sectarian “left-unity” instance. Lemmy.ml is admin’d and moderated by Marxists and some Anarchists. Similar, but different.
non-sectarian “left-unity”
Lol. I’m a social democrat. They’d send me to a camp if they had the chance to.
Then again, when put in charge of things they sent each other to camps as well, so maybe this is what tankie unity looks like.
To be fair, the only people who consider Social Democrats to be “left” are Social Democrats and the people to the right of them. Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Frankly I find this view disregards the differing material conditions that are present. Social Democrats are left of what the Americas have now, just like Capitalism was to the left of having a Monarchy. Your take is a-historical, anti-materialist, and thus anti-marxist.
I’m Scandinavian, so I come from a country defined by workers unions in the post-war era. The Norwegian post-war social democratic agenda was defined by a group of socialists while locked in a nazi concentration camp. They were locked in there not for being centrist.
Recently, the labour parties of Scandinavia have moved towards the centre, so I am alternating votes between the socialist left party, the communists when it makes sense (they have a problem of ageing ML members, but their younger people are mostly fine), and the Greens. The Greens are in some ways further to the centre than the Labour party, but they have their reasons to compromise.
The labour party is, however, still left of centre. We’re a representative democracy with four parties in parliament describing themselves as the centre, so it’s not very hard for us to make the distinction.
And recognizing that capital can be a useful way of organizing one’s economy under controlled conditions is different from capitalism.
The whole take is just stupid, and always made in bad faith. It doesn’t take American relativism for social democracy to be a left wing ideology. The generations before me faught like hell against the capitalists in order to give me rights, and implying they were not leftists because the social democrats left the comintern is ahistorical.
Furthermore, there is no “to be fair” in relation to sending your political opponents to labour camps to basically have them killed. This is something tankies will never understand.
And Anarchists need to read about the Spanish Civil War and learn to keep the fuck away from tankies. I love you guys, but just because you’re right on a fundamental level doesn’t mean you can ignore history.
Case in point.
Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Yikes, your Overton window is completely unbalanced if you think that “most people” exclude liberal progressives from the “left”. Look at any mainstream news channel or read any mainstream news website, and you’ll see that most people have a much more inclusive definition of left-wing politics, which encompasses center-left politics.
We are on an international internet forum, basing terminology on the Overton Window of the US is silly. What makes more sense is to not rely on arbitrary vibes and lines that shift second by second and instead base terminology off of structures.
The center-left includes moderate Socialists and Market Socialists, having structures that support and reinforce Capitalism like Social Democracy creep across into “left” territory blurs the lines in ways that add confusion.
the problem with hexbear is the same handful of users that have made it their hobby to complain incessantly about hexbear all over the fediverse
Honestly I think the .ml folks have shown themselves to be such zealots that they should be considered a potential security threat to the broader fediverse.
The more places defederate from them, the more opportunity and initiative there will be for alternatives to their largest communities to grow.
One of the problems is that Lemmy.ml is literally run by some of the people who developed Lemmy and it’s one of the few instances on https://join-lemmy.org/instances and the one with the highest number of users listed there with the exception of lemmynsfw.
one with the highest number of users listed there with the exception of lemmynsfw.
Why? Just why?
Fully anonymous porn viewing is something very much coveted, and there is also a huge industry whose target audience is net denizens so you could also make an argument that the number of users is inflated by the industry users.
I mean, I don’t believe it’s really that anonymous, and it’s an actual “industry”, more of people posting their photos.
This is the most hyperbolic take yet 😂 I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious fediverse memes.
Edit to add: oic, your alts keep getting banned
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Note, that just means you were sitebanned. This is how the software displays this.
Man, I just wished I couldn’t have to worry about political ideologies and extremism, it surely feels like Twitter, except the extremism comes from the left. The worst thing is that Lemmy’s developers support these stuff…
I wonder how many good, reasonable people have checked out Lemmy and seen all the CCP/Kremlin propaganda then just left.
I was close to leaving. At first I’d been given the impression that “liberal” is a dirty word on Lemmy. It helps that PSAs like this one routinely appear on other instances to inform newcomers. Just keep spreading the knowledge and let it be known that everybody should block those communities.
I often see people say that pointing new users towards instances with a lax attitude to defederation is a good idea. I kind of understand the rationale, but I’m not sure I agree. Pointing new users to an instance federated with Hexbear seems to me to be a terrible idea.
Blaze for example blocks all the political communities. That’s… … … not entirely a normal thing that people are most likely to do and moreover to never not do that.
Btw, lemmy.cafe is literally the only instance I’ve ever even so much as heard of that blocks all of the big 3, including lemmy.ml.
Personally I am sitting at 100% of the people who I mention Lemmy to irl doing so. Not only that, but they actually gave me dirty looks and admonished me for even so much as mentioning it. It is easy for us who have blocked such to forget but… the day-1 experience for someone new can be quite shocking. e.g. just search for the word “guillotine”, preferably from an instance you are not logged into, to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking… not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as … <checks notes> “have bank accounts”.
Though maybe X is just as bad these days? I dunno, I never had an account even when it was Twitter:-D. In any case, it is grandfathered into the public consciousness, and the devil you know… you know? :-P
Yeah, I imagined basically exactly that happening and decided not to tell anyone about it, not yet anyway. Also, I don’t want them to get death threats from Hexbear like I did…
Yeesh, I am so sorry that happened to you - tankies are just the worst, aren’t they? You could literally put a URL to those exact conversations and they would still come back with “well no, see, we aren’t that way at all bc… shut up!” They enjoy all the drama that they stir up - it’s the point (go read the actual sidebar text of Chapotraphouse and the_dunk_tank and their posts e.g. talking about defederating with the rest of Lemmy, except no they actually don’t want to do that for the simple reason that it provides moar people “to dunk on” - let me know if you want the receipt for that statement and I’ll dig it up).
It is somehow worse than talking to Trump supporters, bc at least those believe in something, as opposed to existing solely for the purpose of “the dunk”.
And then it’s so sad that the rest of Lemmy tolerates it. Not the communism mind you, I’m talking about the dunking and other harassment.
Well, we learn at least, not to mention Lemmy to people irl. It’s so sad that it must be that way… it severely limits our growth, but it is what it is.:-(
to see all the calls for literal and actual (and not joking… not really) murder of people who participate in such wildly anti-communist practices as … <checks notes> “have bank accounts”.
I’m gonna need a source for this, that sounds too insane to be believable, and i’ve never seen anything like that.
I don’t tell anyone I use this site in case they come across that stuff first. I just say I use a site “similar to Reddit”. I’m surprised that they don’t ask me the name but most of my friends don’t spend so much time online.
Same, I haven’t told a soul I use it despite being active here over a year. I still believe in it though (or just really hate the idea of accepting corporate social media).
I mean, lead them to instances that defederate hexbear for starters? Seems reasonable anyway.
I’m one lol. Same with hexbear.
I’ve been here since the app exodus and see way more posts complaining about tankies than actual tankie unpleasantness in the popular and top posts. I think most people just looking at the popular posts would not come across any more unpleasantness than they’d see on reddit
I didn’t see much of it except for one burst where Hexbear was getting rowdy with my instance- that was… annoying.
There was some drama I don’t recall the specifics of but it apparently angered Hexbear enough that I started seeing a lot of them in basically every comment section.
This is b/c you are on lemmy.world, which defederated from both lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. So you only have the likes of lemmy.ml and midwest.social to contend with, which are nowhere near as extreme as those others.
Also, by the time of the Rexodus a lot of that drama had already been hashed out, hence posts like the OP are rare these days. But it is preserved if you want to seek it out.
A lot of what OP is talking about is the “unexpectedness” of making a comment that might seem reasonable to them (like “the Tiananmen Square massacre actually did happen tho”), and then shockingly they get banned even from communities that they had never even so much as heard of, never mind visited. The admins of that instance are VERY eager to whip out a VERY heavy ban hammer upon their slightest whim. Which is… fine, it’s theirs to do with as they please, but some newer people (like OP) are shocked at how anti-democratic that seems, and wish that they had been told. Especially since if you read the sidebar of places such as lemmy.world, you would not expect that behavior - all the more so from an admin instance. Hence they tell others. And then new people join, and the tanky vs. anti-tanky cycle repeats:-D.
Wait, what’s wrong with midwest.social?
I think you make good points but isn’t this thread about lemmy.ml and the OP on lemmy.world?
First, the entire text is cross-posted from https://feddit.nl/post/16246531 - OP had nothing to add on their own, apparently. The OOP was likewise on feddit.nl. The community happens to be on Lemmy.world.
You also brought up your own personal experiences to add to the situation, so I pointed out that you, being on lemmy.world, would have different experiences than e.g. someone on feddit.nl. I note that that instance has not defederated from either lemmygrad.ml or hexbear.net. If you don’t know what they are about, I’m saying that yes lemmy.ml are still “tankies”, but like 1% of the problems of toxicity compared to those other two instances, so much so that while lemmy.world remains federated with lemmy.ml, it has chosen to defederate from both of those other two.
Also, don’t miss the main reason for the drama in the first place: the images show the OOP being banned. i.e. what you do not see is the point here, bc of the heavy handed banning. So you wouldn’t “see” it then, as you say just looking at the popular posts, unless you happened to have been viewing the mod log on your own initiative. The fact that any divergence of opinion is being suppressed is very much the point here. It leads to the creation of an echo chamber, which allows solely the opinions of the admins to be allowed to be spoken of.
But you need not simply believe me: check it out for yourself. e.g. go to lemmygrad.ml and see what is there - it took me (not joking) like two seconds to find this comment: “Shoot him in the head” at https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6010525, all the while making fun of Americans for being violent etc. (though when it happens on lemmy.ml - example, this one admittedly took a lot longer to find, maybe 30 seconds, though it was still on the front page - it tends to be far more tame) Note I am not complaining about the violent rhetoric here, but the total lack of self-awareness. USA=bad bc of genocide, while Russia and China are “not” doing genocide. It’s a special brand of “my side good, their side bad”, that I for one do not find very intellectually engaging. Therefore I do not choose to engage with Truth Social, or the equivalent Lemmy instances.
I browse ‘all’ quite a bit, a few times a day, and I have had the same experience as you. I see more posts complaining about “.ml/tankies/etc” than I ever see problematic/whatever posts from them.
You’re both on .world, which isn’t federated with hexbear, which is the most annoying instance. They’ll brigade other communities, for example the recent thread over at https://jlai.lu/post/11504685 (view it from that instance to see the hexbear comments)
I browse all sometimes from an instance federated with hexbear and I roll my eyes quite a bit whenever I do
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.
Edit. Now he comments only when post is locked. Hey Davel, are you a pro-Russian troll? Reply to this and ignore the bit about being pro-Russian, won’t you? ;>
Edit2 I came on PC to look up the link which he had forgotten in which he’s posted using Russian/Ukrainian (I don’t recognise which one), and the comments I’ve made about him have weirdly been removed. Something that would require a mod. But Pro-Russian Putler-dick loving trolls would never do something like remove comments that disagree with them while actively avoiding answering questions like “why do you support Putin?” “why are you pro-Russian?” **You literally circle-jerk with Yogthos about how you’re “definitely not a mouthpiece for Russian propaganda”, while refusing to answer something as simple as “are you pro-Russian”. It’s cringe. If you had grown up in the west, you’d actually know how ridiculous you sound. :D
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.
Because LW is just as bad.
.ml is run by angry tankie assholes.
LW is run by moral superiority assholes.
Assholes, assholes everywhere.
But .ee is where all the cool kids hang out, right?
I expected this type of response from idiots who think “omg this guy insulted my instance… that means they insulted me!!!”
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.
Where on reddit was as bad as .ml? Other than maybe the Donald or conservative?
Moderation is definitely a problem. I see low effort posts getting a pass all over the place, where others who take the time to write a long, thoughtful, respectful analysis get banned.
YSK that it is not length, but whether what you tried to say is agreed to by the admin of the instance or not. That is the crux of the dilemma here: that goes against the philosophies of the Western world about non-authoritarian control, which ostensibly so too does true communism, yet here we are: the USA is “doing genocide” and “is capitalist”, yet neither Russia nor China are any of those things (in their minds). This makes them a “leftist” instance in the same manner that Trump supporters are “conservative” - which is to say, not.
I feel like I’ve been saying it from the beginning, but for all of the problems Reddit has that Lemmy ostensibly solves, it opens the door for far worse moderation problems than Reddit had.
We can shit talk Reddit admins all night and day, but their long-standing and often problematic insistence on neutrality was nevertheless beneficial for the site’s growth.
And I think one of the fundamental problems with Lemmy is that too many of the people in charge of various instances don’t have a similar philosophy. They want to choke the place, and curate it to their exact specifications, for their own individual reasons.
Which would be fine in a vacuum. But in a federated space, what is done on one instance can have a wide ranging effect on the visibility of content outside of that instance. And as op rightfully points out, because communities are locked to an individual instance, the nature of federation doesn’t help users escape overbearing moderation when the only true sizable communities for a thing happen to be on a specific instance.
But communities aren’t really locked to a particular instance. Anyone can start a community that’s a clone from another instance and nothing stops everyone from migrating to that new one. Blaze has already pulled it off multiple times. If everyone doesn’t like the community on ml, then they can go to one made on another instance super easy. You can’t do that on Reddit without adding a 2 on the end or something. That’s the beauty of the fediverse.
