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.
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.
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.
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.
Knew exactly who you were taking about before I even saw the links.
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!!!”
Linux sub?
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…
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?
Anti-communism is the root of fascism
So nuanced. So brave.
You are the fascist problem of communism.
I’d say it’s the love of social heirarchy but tomato tomatoes, as the red scare nonsense in this thread proves.
You’ve got morons babbling about .ml users being “security threats to the fediverse” LMAO, shitlibs will never change, and I say that as someone that got instance banned from .ml for saying federal representative democracies are, by definition, a form of democracy.
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.
Lemmy.world is just the regime front on the fediverse.
News, politics subs, political memes are just place to talk about things the regime likes peasants to discuss. Trying saying vote for third party on there and watch that ban hammer lol
Regime whores for ya.
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.
Don’t use lemmy.ml then?
Read the post?
Genuine question: HOW though?!? I’ve user-blocked the entire instance, yet I see those comments basically everywhere I go, plus they used to not be able to reply to me and have a notification sent to me, but now on 0.19.5 that seems to have been un-done. In no way is a user-block like a personal defederation.
Also, fully 100% (not making this up) of everyone that I have told Lemmy about irl has said that this issue is why they refused to join the Fediverse. As the number of alt accounts goes up (some of them mine) yet the total number remains mostly constant, that spells doom for us eventually.
And it is not fair to the users of lemmy.ml either, for the rest of us to see the instance they come from and immediately brace ourselves for an onslaught - thereby potentially misinterpreting what they say, just b/c their fellows are so arrogant and insensitive and we have come to expect that from them.
The whole “just ignore the cancer and it will go away” approach leaves much to be desired, imho. Feel free to do as you please, but that’s not what I am talking about: you asked, and as a result now you know some (certainly not all) of the reasons why others may not wish to do the same.
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…
World smallest violin is playing Lol
Fuck Israel, it is an abomination.
Black and white, you know… Maybe, there is a grey way between loving a country and its total destruction…
The “innovative” idea to destroy that country is probably 100 years old, has never been successful and is always a very good attempt to get as many people as possible killed over there… Maybe, if something fails every time over 100 years, it’s time to try out something new. 😐
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.
It depends on what exactly do you consider the problem to be, but my understanding is that solutions to the more general problem of “what server a community is in” are already in the works (multicommunities and stuff).
As for a more local kind of change… Be the change you want to see. Start up, and maintain, those alt communities that would serve as counterweights to the ones that are in .ml. Also, understand why they are in .ml in the first place yet still manage to function.
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.
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
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.
It also has less users than sh.itjust.works and lemm.ee. And way less compared to lemmy.world but I guess they aren’t linked on the joinlemmy site for some reason
It was removed from it to avoid over centralization on the fediverse. It already has like 80% of users
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.
ITT: genocide supporting fascists get triggered by being called genocide supporting fascists
We get it, you’re jealous about how leftists are always on the correct side of history.
The funny thing is I thought you were talking about all the genocides, including those led by Russia, but then I saw your handle and realized you mean only those done by NATO and their allies.
cringe take
This is like the perfect comment as to why a lot of people find ml users insufferable and toxic.
b-b-bUt SuReLy rUsSiA hAs NeVeR dOnE a GeNoCidE?!
Or ChInA eItHeR?!
The USA supporting Israel is… ahem, never mind, anyway it’s not anywhere on the same class as Russia CURRENTLY and ACTIVELY being the very ones DOING the genocide.
Nobody is that dumb. Therefore that’s beyond ignorance - that’s sheer, willful obstinacy.
Most of their comments are perfect examples. Everyone except them is a fascist liberal who loves genocide.
Even Uncommitted, who have basically the same opinion as everyone that Harris is in the wrong but Donald would be worse. Fascist genocide lovers.
“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 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.
In short, we are trying to turn Lemmy into a Reddit clone, when it is a different toolbox with a different purpose.
Personally I think that people were just so burned out from leaving Reddit, that they just accepted whatever else they could find. Many did not even do that much - I have no idea where a great many of the content creators went, some seemingly went back to X, others from there onto Bluesky, but notably many seemed to have simply left social media altogether. And until this next USA election is over, that’s probably for the best…
Anyway, I am saying that people no longer feel the desire to put in the hard work that it takes to moderate a community. Some very few seem to shoulder the vast majority of the work, but it is not spread out. And ironically, this wraps back around to the OP issue, b/c the presence of such toxicity is precisely the reason why (okay well tbf among the top 3 lets say) I, who was a mod of two gaming subs on Reddit, did not want to volunteer my time here. 99% of the effort ends up going to deal with 1% of the people, I am talking about the people for whom “no means yes”, i.e. those who e.g. create alt accounts to get around bans and just keep going.
Also, the tools and infrastructure just aren’t really here yet. e.g., what concept could be more foundational than “helping guide new users to how Lemmy works?” Do a little digging and you will be fantastically depressed to learn the state of affairs there. e.g. Lemmy.ml’s sidebar features a post titled “What is Lemmy.ml”, except that is a broken link to a post that must have been removed at some point. And that is the chief instance of Lemmy!? Lemmy.world’s status is not much better, pointing to a neat Quick start guide, but so very many features (e.g. cross-posting, and in fact I only count a singular occurrence of the word “instance” in the entire thing). Notably, there is an entirely community to help people get acclimated to Lemmy, called !newtolemmy!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca (yes, that link is messed up, but I left it that way b/c this is how the webUI chose to expand it out - Lemmy is not polished, and is in fact broken in so many ways!), but have you ever heard of that community prior to my mentioning it here? Also nobody has posted to it in the last ten months except 3 posts from Blaze and I. We’ve asked instance admins to add this community - or some other one like it - to the sidebar of their instances but… crickets.
Sadly, what I conclude from this is that this is still an alpha-level “experiment” in social media. I thought that we were at least in beta but… if so, it is quite low-level. We seem stuck in this downwards spiral where the people aren’t willing to put forth effort b/c the infrastructure isn’t quite fully here yet. Perhaps Mbin, Piefed, or Sublinks will offer greater hope?
Brand new account making smear post against lemmy.ml as if they are veterans.
Totally not sus.
It’s obviously an alt. And I want to say I understand OP’s decision to use an alt. I’ve had some creepy stalking and people downvote large parts of my entire post history for criticism of ML.
They need an alt to go around Lemmy badmouthing another instance?
The user states they have a political agenda as well.
Well I don’t know how you like it when a user gets mad at you for something you share and goes back months in your post history until they found something personal you said and then starts insulting you based on that. But I’d prefer to avoid the situation.
And “bad mouth” is very subjective here. They are shaeing an older post which is basically a transcript of the modlog.
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.
“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.
Regime doesn’t like it, so they won’t allow it ;)
