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.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1716·
      29 days 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.

      • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        101·
        29 days ago

        You can block the instance, which blocks those communities, but that doesn’t block those users on them to be fair. That has to be done individually.

        Personally I am comfortable ignoring individuals (and not painting everyone on an instance with the same brush) and would prefer metas/groups/whatever you’d like to refer to them as for my subscriptions, so I’m definitely not the target user of this post.

        But just being clear, a user blocking an instance doesn’t block the users from that instance, so if that’s their goal, no, that’s not enough.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          32·
          29 days ago

          but that doesn’t block those users on them to be fair. That has to be done individually.

          It blocks notifications of replies.

          Sometimes I’ll notice a .ml responded to me, and if they seem decent I’ll reply back. But I’ll never get a notification and that’s almost always as far as it goes.

          Which is fine. Lots of people can make one civil comment to rope someone in a conversation.

          • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
            21·
            28 days ago

            You will lose that ability as soon as Lemmy.world upgrades past 0.19.3. My instance likewise had 0.19.3 until like a week ago, and ever since it “upgraded” to 0.19.5, I get notifications now from users from blocked instances. The developers of Lemmy seem adamant that people are not allowed to ban whole entire instances, which I find… ironic for… reasons:-).

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1211·
          29 days ago

          Defederation has it’s own uses, yes, but that also ironically makes it more difficult to avoid trolls. When you defederate from an instance for X reason, only the more irrational users are going to create alts to attack. Defederation is often over-used.

          • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            41·
            29 days ago

            Not advocating for defederation, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance isn’t going to achieve their goal.

            Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.

            This would avoid the exact scenario you mention because it would come down to the user level, so that troll would have to put in quite a bit more effort to get around that. Unfortunately, that’s not currently an option, along with some other features I’d love to see on Lemmy.

            Again, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance does not achieve their goal.

            • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
              55·
              29 days ago

              Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.

              I agree with this most out of what you said. This gives users the most power to curate what they see, and lessens the likelyhood of troll accounts.

      • pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        74·
        29 days ago

        different people have different needs, for example an estonian instance would have a larger need to defederate with .ml than .world would, because of the years of soviet occupation.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          89·
          29 days ago

          Sure, my point is about community replication. Defederation has its own uses, my point is that community consolidation serves very few people.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      97·
      29 days 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”?

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          61·
          29 days ago

          Nah, I replied to OP and they deleted the comment.

          Maybe that looks weird on some federated instances or apps tho.

          If it looks like I’m replying to someone else, that would explain the down votes.

          OPs post gets reposted pretty frequently, always by new accounts which tend to disappear a day or two later after some lazy posts.

          I really do think it’s the same person who’s bans are in the screenshots.

          It’s too random that a bunch of brand new accounts all find the post and quote it with perfectly formatting including all the pictures just to repost it the same place they found it.

          Especially since the new account always claims they’re “helping new users” like they’ve been here forever.

    • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2319·
      29 days 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

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
          158·
          29 days ago

          Are you using “extremism” to mean “far from the status quo,” or “has absolute belief and violent justification for said belief?” Centrists can absolutely be the latter.

            • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.mlEnglish
              105·
              29 days ago

              The others here are using it the second way, which I agree with. Centrism meaning the “status quo” can be violently and toxically upheld.

              • ∞🏳️‍⚧️Edie [it/its, she/her, fae/faer, love/loves, null/void, des/pair, none/use name, kitty]@lemmy.mlEnglish
                62·
                29 days ago

                There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

                Taken from https://redsails.org/the-two-terrors/