I just realised, I can’t post anything on lemmy.ml
So, I checked https://lemmy.ml/modlog, there’s a new moderator.
All posts and comments talking about China, Jinping, Russia, and Putin have been deleted and users banned
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Coming from Reddit, the very existence of this thread is a breath of fresh air. That there are mod logs at all to be able to document this, that there is a place where it can be posted that is not under control of the mods being criticized, is an enormous improvement over an unaccountable centralized platform.
The other beautiful thing is that if you aren’t satisfied with the behavior of mods and admin on one instance, there are literally hundreds of others to choose from. You aren’t stuck dealing with bad actors if you want to participate. And if moderation of a particular community upsets the users, they are free to move to or create a similar community on a different instance.
The major downside of this is that it’s going to create echo chambers, but that’s unavoidable. It’s not like this is a new problem. Communities that reject outside ideas outright have existed long before the internet.
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A meme I just saw mentioned Tiananmen Square on lemmy.ml, the comments were an absolute dumpster fire
I think this is bad for Lemmy as a whole, as a community but only due to misunderstanding and generalizations… People are going to equate the “censorship” on the server lemmy.ml as censorship on Lemmy, the platform/software. That is just NOT THE CASE. Please, whenever someone mentions lemmy.ml and its censorship or the likes, be fast to mention that that is a specific lemmy server and the beauty of lemmy is its decentralization and the fact that it is open source. There are plenty of other servers.
I fear that this kind of thing drives people away from Lemmy, when it should not.
Well, the situation is a bit more complex. Admins of this “specific Lemmy Server” are creators and main maintainers of the Lemmy project as such.
So, generalization you are afraid of makes some sense.
I have replied to someone else further down with my opinion on this topic. I think it also fits in a reply to you, so I will just copy paste it here:
Yes, it might sound worrisome, but I dont think you are pushing authoritarian ideology by using Lemmy. The code itself is fine. The code is not authoritarian. The server which hosts your account is also not authoritarian.
Lemmy is, right now, the best alternative for a reddit-like platform. It is something created for the users, by the users. By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders. By using something like reddit, you provide content and a select few get to buy a new yacht.
Also, plenty of people are contributing code to lemmy. It is no longer just these 2. The code is also Open-Source. Anyone can fork it and create a new version of lemmy, with compatibility with the current version of lemmy. By using lemmy, you are allowing the possibility that, at any time in the future, someone else comes and says “I have some ideas to improve lemmy, let’s do this on my own terms”, forks it and continues the work without massively spliting the community.
You have many good points here. Still, I have a feeling that Lemmy as a platform and as a software is still very coupled with its creators.
Yes, there are other contributors as well. But these guys currently own the official repo and make key decisions. And if you donate to Lemmy you pay a salary to these two guys (afaik, Lemmy is their full-time work these days).
So, for me, it is still rather complicated.
I don’t see a problem about their work, just because of their political orientation. And frankly, neither should you.
They develop good software, which is open source and everyone can inspect it. There is nothing wrong about them getting paid for it. Not giving donations to them because of what they believe would be the same as an employer running you through a political evaluation before actually employing you.
Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong about not donating (i did not). But not donating, solely because of some ideology a developer of open source Software has (which does not reflect in the code), seems quite stuck up to me.
I guess lemme ask this. If the devs of lemmy were open Nazis, went to rallies, openly promoted it, etc, would you still feel the same way?
What are you asking about? I don’t support extremist ideology - be it left or right. Extremism and violence was never beneficial to the political discourse or greater public. So i disagree with those ideologies. I vote on laws and elect people which i believe will keep extremism out of our system.
If it comes to the quality of someones work, private conviction does not matter. Sure, they might let personal beliefs bleed into their work. But there the beauty of Open Source comes into play: I can check it myself and if i don’t have the capability to do so, many others do.
So if they are on the far spectrum of something i disagree and i am very greatfull for good quality of work they provide for free, i might still give a small donation. If they are actually extremist, i prefer to let the authorities deal with it. Where i come from the police actually cracks down on this kind of people and they probably are better at doing so than me myself.
Just because there will be people who ask about freedom of speech… Someone way smarter than I said something like: “Your freedom ends where someone else’s freedom begins”. This should be the base rule to identify extremism. So to stay with NAZIs: A far right person who doesn’t want Jewish people owning a store infringes on someone else’s freedom. Therefore that person is an extremist, should not be protected by his freedom and authorities should deal with them.
Yes yes, the authorities should deal with them but would you support them? Would you recommend their software if it was good, would you use their products?
By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders.
You actually have no guarantee that any given deployment doesn’t harvest and sell data. They probably don’t, but it’s not guaranteed.
The data is public. It doesn’t matter.
Only if it’s actually having an effect on the Lemmy project.
From what I’ve seen, the Lemmy devs recognize that their opinions aren’t welcome everywhere, and that Lemmy should not have any biases.
That might still have secondary effects such as in what kind of moderation features they develop and support
Hint: the moderation tools they are choosing to develop are none.
They are intentionally refusing to develop any moderation tools despite current moderation tools not working and it being the biggest issue instance admins are facing.
“Intentionally” is a bit overdramatizing, don’t you think?
It’s just not as much of a priority, which is still questionable.
It also has the largest worldnews community, which bans you for discussing a literal war in Europe
psssst… check out [email protected]
Censorship is certainly the kind of thing that drove people away from dotworld for preemptively defederating from Hexbear by fiat.
Fuck these tankies man. I’m as leftist as they come and I HATE what these people are doing to the cause. We want healthcare and equal rights, and these loonies are dragging us all down with their fascination for those horrible fascist regimes (it takes 2 braincells to realize the CCP is 1984 incarnate).
I’m at the same time horrified and fascinated by them. I saw a comment that accused NATO of causing he war to “drag on”. When I brought up that Russia could just leave, I got people unironically replying that Ukraine was the aggressor in the war and that it was Ukraine committing genocide and attacks on civilians. I understand that I could be trapped in a western bubble… but really? I didn’t bother asking for a source because I’m sure the only source for that misinformation is the Kremlin. What’s crazy is that you would think the Russian shills would be spread out trying to infect other communities with disinformation, instead they all flock to this echo chamber apparently, so it seems likely that they genuinely believe this stuff.
They know it’s bullshit. The United States in this instance is doing the largely correct thing. However historically that hasn’t always been the case. Were usually the ones attacking and destabilizing other countries. South America, Hawaii, the middle east, Korea, Vietnam and on and on. Anyone that opposed US homogene as pushed by wealthy oligarchic fascist throughout American history. Has historically met and unfortunate end.
Realistically in this instance Russia is much closer to what the United States has been historically. Than they are any Ally of leninist regimes. But to leninists. They are the enemy of their enemy and an ally of convenience. Because overall outside of World War II etc. The United States has been the biggest constant enemy to much the rest of the world.
1984 was based on the Soviet Union
that and Nazi Germany. Or as Orwell said it was… Totalitarianism.
Yeah, he was basically warning Socialists off getting in bed with Stalinists and similar regimes just because their causes appeared to align. The cure must not be worse than the disease.
i would argue that he saw the soviets as the bigger threat at the time, considering the Nazis got beat a few years beforehand and a lot of the left in the west were fanboying the Soviet Union at the time (1947-1948)
He was a socialist which contrary to American reactionary rhetoric is incompatible with communism.
You are missing the point of the book IMO. The threat is not necessarily external.
It was pretty easy to see totalitarianism as a dangerous global trend at the time, since it was in Germany, Italy, Spain, Soviet Union, China, Eastern Europe. Apart from Eastern Europe, these countries all “chose” it for themselves.
I never said anything about the threat coming from the soviets, after all it was never about Russia invading the UK, but rather he modelled the dystopian government based on the inner workings of the Soviet Union, because he witnessed it during his time in Spain before the Stalin aligned republic and the anarchist split.
Modern capitalist Russia is closer to 1984 than Soviet Union. Fuck Putin.
no, fundamentally the only thing that really changed is who the inner and outer party is
No. For one SU did not have oligarchs. Also SU had really good(for its time) healthcare and education, while Putin’s mafia closed or defunded few orders of magnitude more hospitals and clinics, than opened, many schools work in 2 shifts, some even 3. UR has party in it’s name, but it lacks ideology. “Steal money here, spend it in the West, luxury for members, misery and poverty for everyone else” hardly counts as one, it is literally description of mafia.
For one SU did not have oligarchs. where did the Oligarchs come from? the first wave of oligarchs came from the Russian political elite, basically claiming what was “theirs” during the communist government, now sure, most subsequent Oligarchs came about because Yeltsin and later Putin wanted to strengthen their own supporter base among the oligarchs, but all we are seeing here is what used to happen totally inside the government (because the government was the primary economic power) is now happening in a hybrid approach of government+“market”.
where did the Oligarchs come from?
From organized crime groups.
the first wave of oligarchs came from the Russian political elite, basically claiming what was “theirs” during the communist government
Yep. Oligarchs came into existance after union collapse. And usually not political elite, but beaurocratic elite also called nomenclature.
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That’s just racism.
Yeah, us Americans have got fucking up democracy covered pretty well.
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I’m a progressive who thought I was moderate for the longest time because tankie rhetoric on the left. I fully recognize now though that the tankies are a laughable minority. They’re just a bunch of loud people on the Internet.
You ironically have a post saying that Muslims are culturally terrorists and all Muslims need to fall in line with French cultural authoritarianism. Totally not tankie behavior, just regular normal, “leftist as they come” behavior, right?
https://lemmy.world/comment/2941761
You sound like another run of the mill racist, bigoted liberal who wants to smear the leftist label by LARP’ing as one for the sole purpose of attacking leftists.
this thread is just you stalking people and copying their comments. can you do me? maybe the one where i enjoy watching mobiks getting blown up in drone videos, that seemed to upset a few tankies
What?
Muslim is not a race, just as Socialism is not a race. The idea that religion deserves special treatment needs to die.
Obviously a bit thin skinned, but IMO lemmy.ml can do what they want with their moderation. It is not anybody else’s decision how they moderate, except of course keeping it legal.
Seems to me almost all those comments are somewhat offensive, for instance calling people tankies, claiming they should go back under their stone, and frequently use the word fuck, as if those are some sort of argument. I’m guessing rule 2 is something about not being rude. Personally I find that perfectly OK not to allow rude comments.
OP should “read the room” and terms better, then maybe they could have a proper debate.
PS:
Rule 2 of lemmy.ml includes: "Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. " Clearly that rule is ignored over and over again by the above user.
I’m shocked the statement that lemmy.ml can moderate as they want is in any way controversial, yet here we are, and this post has about a third downvotes.
Lemmy dot ml is like, one step away from becoming another Lemmygrad.
and I think thats probably by design, Since lemmygrad is defederated from a lot of the better instances, what better way to get back into them than to take over a federated instance.
Especially when the admins and lemmy creators are down with your tankie ideology and support you taking over the instance.
lemmy.ml defederated lemmygrad.com ages ago
I mean, if you’re gonna lie about it, you could at least lie in a way thats not provably false. https://defed.xyz/check/lemmy.ml
also, dot ml is one of the lemmies i frequented (well, used to, until the tankies became such a fucking problem), so I can tell you from personal experience that lemmygraders are there, in droves, and posting constantly, from their lemmygrad accounts.
um… but it’s listed under blocked instances right here… https://lemmy.ml/instances
That’s .com. I’ve never even heard of lemmygrad.com until now. I have heard of .ml though.
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Seems .com’s no longer up. I guess .ml’s just where they migrated to, is my best guess?
Theres literally posts from lemmygrad on the front page of lemmy dot ml local right now right now.
Just use the period. It’s so weird you keep saying “dot”.
Anyways, notice what I said vs what your post contains:
Excuse me for giving you the benefit of the doubt of just typing .com by habit, instead of assuming you are trying to actually, legitimately talk about a site that doesnt exist.
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They are literally run by the same people and everyone can look and see they are not defederated. Why are you blatantly lying about something that is easily verifiable?
Again, lemmygrad.com is literally on the blocked list, and it’s easily verifiable. I did not know that lemmygrad.ml was where it was at now. Sue me ig.
Uh, lemmygrad.com isn’t the URL for lemmygrad. It’s lemmygrad.ml.
But you already knew that and are being intentionally disingenuous. You should stop lying.
except of course keeping it legal
This is also up to them. If the admins are ok to get corresponding consequences - they can do this.
Posts like this posted here from time to time.
And I think the main problem is: the fact that an instance has a very strong political view and even a censorship becomes a big surprise for people using this exact instance.
It looks like an instance and community policies must be somehow better visible.
This is also up to them.
No it’s not, they may walk the line, but if they cross it, the law will ultimately be enforced. So in the long run, a service can only exist if it is kept legal.
Posts like this posted here from time to time.
I’m not sure what you mean, but yes there are repeated attacks on lemmy.ml, and it’s getting tiring, because it always turns out to be very speculative, and not really an issue.
an instance has a very strong political view and even a censorship
They are moderating according to their own rules. Rule 2: “Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.” Clearly the above poster violated this rule over and over.
It looks like an instance and community policies must be somehow better visible.
That’s a completely different debate.
That rule is enforced capriciously and randomly. I just caught a rule 2 ban (I’m in the screenshot) for using the word “genocide” in a way they don’t like.
Meanwhile, I’ve reported literally dozens of hexbears for posting their pig shit memes and not a single one got removed. Apparently that’s more respectful than wrongthink.
Yeah, so lemmy.ml moderation sucks for you. So what? Go somewhere else.
Lemmy allows you to do exactly that.
Let me get this straight. You defend the moderation by suggesting that most of the removed comments were offensive or rude. But when someone provides a counterexample to that, you tell them to just go somewhere else if they don’t like the moderation?
Yeah it’s pretty fucking obvious you’re not acting in good faith here. You don’t see anything wrong with what their mod team does, even if it’s to ban dissenting opinions.
This is the only good take I’ve read on this thread so far. People are mad their opinions, vitriol, and/or FUD aren’t tacitly approved by the mods of another instance.
Thank you. I find it sad that so many people don’t seem to understand that their right to free speech, is not a right to dictate other people, or force themselves on whatever forum they want.
But they are taking away free speech!!! \s
Truly sad to see a majority is down voting this, meaning they believe free speech includes how a lemmy instance is moderated?!
About 30% (just my estimate) of the people here from Reddit had a problem with mods having too much freedom granted to them by Spez. There is an irony that such people would be attracted to a decentralized network where instances have even more freedom to shape their communities, but as you said- it doesn’t really matter what people think when anyone can go start their own.
Genuine question, is that 30% a real number with a source?
Just my estimate based on observation. It’s been my experience that most of the people on the Fediverse seem to want strong moderation tools, but there’s definitley a contingent that would prefer a looser form of moderation (or none at all). The cool thing about the Fediverse is that both can peacefully coexist.
The cool thing about the Fediverse is that both can peacefully coexist.
Ya I love this feature of the platform. Some instances can be strict on what content they want to have (e.g. beehaw and exploding-heads) while others can be the libertarian platform of their dreams (e.g. personal instances).
It would be interesting to see some polling on this, but I’m no statistician and wouldn’t be able to perform it in a way that wouldn’t be bias, nor could I account for that bias. 😔
I prefer looser mod powers
Reddit mods were capricious and drunk with petty power
Yeah the first ban I got was warranted, but this time it was just using the word “genocide” consistently with the UN definition. That’s chilling as fuck and goes way beyond simple “stated moderation standards.” That’s straight up information warfare.
“Don’t worry, if you correctly call this a genocide, hexbear will ban you for genocide denial without a hint of irony.”
If you were already on thin ice, this shouldn’t have really been a surprise. Like most internet dwellers who get banned somewhere you’re dressing up your offending comment to make it seem like persecution, but while it’s not a heinous comment on its own, but if you have history I can absolutely see a mod not wanting to deal with you trolling the hexbears. And it certainly wasn’t just “using the word genocide”.
It was always a tankie den. The Lemmy developers are very openly tankies.
They held their heads relatively low during the whole Reddit exodus, but that’s about it.Here are some examples: https://raddle.me/f/lobby/159606/is-lemmy-still-a-tankie-platform-or-are-there-actual
Reading this really troubles me. I don’t like the implication that using lemmy is pushing authoritarian ideology.
If I was born 50 yrs earlier I would literally have been put in the gas chamber. I tick several qualifiers for it.
Yes, it might sound worrisome, but I dont think you are pushing authoritarian ideology by using Lemmy. The code itself is fine. The code is not authoritarian. The server which hosts your account is also not authoritarian.
Lemmy is, right now, the best alternative for a reddit-like platform. It is something created for the users, by the users. By using lemmy, you are not enriching the wallets of the shareholders. By using something like reddit, you provide content and a select few get to buy a new yacht.
Also, plenty of people are contributing code to lemmy. It is no longer just these 2. The code is also Open-Source. Anyone can fork it and create a new version of lemmy, with compatibility with the current version of lemmy. By using lemmy, you are allowing the possibility that, at any time in the future, someone else comes and says “I have some ideas to improve lemmy, let’s do this on my own terms”, forks it and continues the work without massively spliting the community.
I really enjoyed reading your explanation. Thank you very much.
This calms me down quite a bit. :) have a good day.
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I don’t think comparing communism with fasism, at least when it comes to exterminating ethnic minorities is accurate. this is an opinion shared by academics, including coauthors of “The Black Book of Communism” (the book which claims communism killed 80M-100M people, though the upper end of the range is the one which has more attention. this number is disputed, again also by coauthors)
I could explain why I believe you shouldn’t do this in my own words, but I will use the words of Nicolas Werth, one of the three main coauthors who distanced themselves from the book:
Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union.
and
The more you compare Communism and Nazism, the more the differences are obvious.
Another quote I will give is from Amir Weiner an American historian and associate professor of Soviet history at Stanford University who wrote:
[w]hen Stalin’s successors opened the gates of the Gulag, they allowed 3 million inmates to return home. When the Allies liberated the Nazi death camps, they found thousands of human skeletons barely alive awaiting what they knew to be inevitable execution.
I sourced these quotes from Wikipedia: “The Black Book of Communism”, references 19 and 14.
My point isn’t to say the Soviet Union, or other states which had or have Marxist-Leninist governments are without critique, but that comparing them to the III Reich, at the very least diminishes the crimes committed by Nazis and makes analysis of the aforementioned States more muddy.
Authoritarianism is bad regardless of the ideology behind it and leads to people with reasonable beliefs (communism could help people that capitalism harms) doing unreasonable things (denying active genocides being carried out by governments that have historically been pro-communism because… cognitive dissonance?) like the subject of this post.
I’m not attempting to argue communism is not bad in my comment, I believe this is even more true if you believe communism is bad.
I am strictly saying comparing Nazism and communism does not give a full picture, which is, AFAIK, something that experts in Soviet history, some of which I quoted, agree with.
What I’m trying to say is that comparing the two you risk either reducing the weight of crimes committed by Nazis, which are worse than those committed in any communist state, I hope you’ll agree and also risk loosing the detail distinguishing the two.
I would elaborate further, but I want to make this comment shorter to make what I’m saying a bit more accessible.
I think you mean 80 years. Unless there were genociding gas chambers in 1973 I haven’t heard about.
(And I would have been put in one too, just not in 1973.)
[email protected]: >If I was born 50 yrs earlier
FlyingSquid: >I think you mean 80 years
You presume to know his/her age?
Actually, I just misread.
Yeah, that happened to me once too.
OK maybe twice.😋
I am kinda skeptical as zig has admitted to using sockpuppets and retracted their statement which doesn’t sit well with me.
Fuck I had no idea, why can’t we just have nice things.
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Yes. People who just consume content can easily switch. But for people who create content this is not that easy, especially for users who created communities there.
I agree it sucks but at least you have that option considering the nature of the Lemmy project.
Lemmy ml has always been radically pro-fascist, honestly it’s your fault for having made communities there. Start again but this time make sure the server is someone trustworthy
The most popular (?) Open source software community is hosted on Lemmy.ml
Time to make another one popular in another instance then
What? I don’t have a community, I’m not even a moderator. I’m trying to help lemmy to grow by populating small communities because there are a lot of people complaining because lack of content.
Then do not invest your time in communities hosted on lemmy.ml (if you do not agree with the instance ideology).
I’m quoting your comment
Yes. People who just consume content can easily switch. But for people who create content this is not that easy, especially for users who created communities there.
Look there community on lemmy.ml who might have similar things to say about China or Uyghurs. Do they have to move?
Misread, mb, but the point stands like the other commenter said
I’ve already done that twice. It’s annoying, and a pain in the ass to reset subscriptions and blocks. If I am forced to do so again, I don’t know if I will. I doubt I’m alone in this feeling.
For me, 4th time’s hopefully the charm
Hah I’m in that screenshot. I just caught my second ban for suggesting that mass deportation of children might qualify as genocide.
It’s infuriating, because if you talk to actual survivors of genocide, they use words like “vigilance” and “never again.” Meanwhile, tankies literally just want to gatekeep the word to protect their ability to simp for tyrants.
Mass deportation of children is literally (one of) the dictionary definitions of genocide.
Not if done by Communists. According to tankies.
Not if done by anti-west authoritarian dictatorships. Russia isn’t communist.
Power to you. I feel like whenever I say anything trying to inject some form of “genocide is bad” into one of their conversations, I get about 20 comments telling me I’m a shitty person for saying that. Or like, a copy and pasted book that they want me to read and then I’ll understand why genocide is “justified.”
It’s fucked.
So yeah, thanks for your effort, you aren’t alone 😅
They don’t seem to understand that genocide, as a term, does not exclusively mean a violent purge nor Holocaust. The erasure of a group of people can happen with minimal violence too.
It’s hardly surprising though, considering the USSR regularly practiced genocide with “Russification”. This wasn’t so much the violent kind, but more trying to erase a people’s culture and make them assimilate into Russia’s.
To tankies, that’s not genocide, even though it is erasing a culture to impose your own.
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Your removed post does talk about genocide, but it also talks shit about Hexbear users. Which I get, I won’t join instances that federate with them, but it’s not exactly comporting with their Rule 2 of “Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.”
Like to some extent yeah, tankies kind of provoke it because apologia for oppressive regimes actively invading their neighbors is itself offensive, but you’re conveniently spinning this to be about genocide rather than the aspect of the comment that would run risks of removal in most communities trying to not foster flame wars. And since you’ve been banned before, it’s hard to believe this isn’t your first time doing it.
Always has been.
It’s one of the reasons why lemmy never really took off until the great reddit migration despite having a decent software product.
Curious to see how this develops
tankies + fedidrama = classic lemmy
This is where I learned the word tankies. It sounds like British slang honestly.
Think that’s where it started actually.
In typical internet fashion, rather than read these mod logs and decide who was right, I’m just going to say “down with the CCP” a bunch of times there and see if I get banned.
The real, cool, interesting content that isn’t worthy of deletion at all
Obviously I’m going to post it when relevant, not in reply to beef stroganoff recipes.
Oddly specific. I’d like this to become a new meme please. The beef stroganoffadors will have no idea what’s going on.
CCP delenda est
typical internet fash
I laughed
The creators are known to lean towards tankie rhetotic and I‘ve read they chose .ml because of Marx and Lenin before. That rose concerns from the beginning so it‘s hardly surprising a moderator there would do this. It is very concerning nonetheless and threatens to throw the creators‘ work into jeopardy because at that point you might as well use twixxer or whatever it‘s called now.
I had no idea what a tankie was until I read the comments here.
This is great news. It’s their way if encouraging you to swap instances! You shouldn’t stay on the main popular instance, it defeats the entire point of decentralization.
