Lemmy's gaining popularity, so I thought new people should see this.
Lemmy's gaining popularity, so I thought new people should see this.
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/[email protected] 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.
Just to weigh in here with a bit of political nuance — "tankies" are certainly defined by their leftist politics, but moreso by their apologist defense of regimes that more or less transparently use socialist or communist maxims as a cover for state capitalism or straight out autocracy.
Tankies may be the loudest voices to claim themselves Marxist or socialist, but please don't mistake them as actually representing those ideologies truthfully or completely. Personally, I see tankies as more indebted to a cold war-style school of Soviet dogma transplanted to current autocracies. Marx and Trotsky would have rolled their eyes at either.
Yes, I hate to be “no true Scotsman”, but they are not actually leftists, just fan of a few dictatorships, some of which claim or used to claim to be socialist.
Yeah coming to lemmy and finding out about the so called communist reminded me more of those in favor of the small ruling elite like the pigs from Animal Farm was surprising. Not realizing they are the ones being sent to the glue factory while the pigs lounge around enjoying the lavish life in this so called communist workers paradise.
Reminded me nothing of socialists or at least what I think of socialism with it reminding me of more the monarchy. They seem more like nationalists who coopted socialism/communism to white wash what they actually support and overlooking the elite ruling class that they are not a part of.
Much like the fascists in Western countries who deny they are fascists and are for democracy while supporting ideas of coups for life time dictators that hold their views. Very similar groups.
Eh, I disagree. Left isn't "when good," right isn't "when bad." There are bad leftists, and you're looking at them, right there on .ml, grad, and hexbear. These morons actually believe not only that "those states would have dissolved themselves given the opportunity if it wasn't for 'western interference,'" they also have such hubris to believe that if they tried the same thing they'd actually achieve what none of them did in the past. They can't grasp that their autocrats would never cede power either to usher in Communist Utopia™.
No, completely fair point! I think on a platform with a lot of Americans (currently locked in an election where many seem to consider the centrist candidate "too far left") it's good to call out the differences on the [edit: international] left that aren't otherwise discerned.
Unfortunately they take the mic and poison the conversation. Imo they hold back progressive adoption/discussion.
I don't disagree, therefore the attempt to disentangle the actual ideologies from the totalitarian stans who got stuck on '80s propaganda.
This is why it's so frustrating, because tankies being overrepresented in online leftist spaces is one of the things which harms the acceptance of leftist ideals more than most of their imperialist windmills.
People aren't scared away from socialism by economic democracy, egalitarianism or radical direct action. They are scared away by confrontational and aggressive tankies defending tyrants, who seem to care more about relitigating random cold war drama than lifting up workers.
that state capitalism was able to grow the poorest country in the world into one of the richest without relying on destroying the third world to do so.
that sounds like a step up to me.
without relying on destroying the third world
Whether you're talking about Russia or China here, both of those countries have massive resources, both natural and in terms of population. I'd argue that they didn't have to look for (other) third world countries to ruin; they had plenty of area and people of their own to turn to.
Also, a Lemmy ML user charging into the comments to defend state capitalism in oppressive regimes kinda proves my point.
But can they hit the dismount back to communism?
The Hexbear and .ml instances aren't really tankies/communists, IMHO. Some of them, sure, but mostly it's just a facade for their propaganda.
A "tankie" isn't the same as a communist.
A "tankie" is someone that takes China's side (the tanks) in that famous picture of Tiananmen square.
Being a "tankie" is using communism as a facade for authoritarian governments where a small group of "upper party members" are essentially oligarchs.
They're not truly communists, but wouldn't they still be truly tankies then? Especially in the most literal sense of denying that the Tiananmen Square massacre even took place (or that anyone died from it, or that... whatever other BS interpretation the particular
magattanky you may read it from chooses to subscribe to)?
Yeah, a little suspect OP's account is a week old with barely double digit posts/comments if you combine them and most are from this post....
I'm guessing their favorite (of many) accounts got blocked by .ml, so now they don't want anyone going there.
I don't get the .ml drama tho, never have. I realized it was a silly place long ago, so I blocked the whole instance.
I did the same for a couple others. It takes like two seconds.
Who cares if it has bigger communities than others? If that's all I cared about I'd still be on Reddit
I think a lot or people (like OP) can't drop this mindset because they're not on the fediverse willinging. It's probably the only social media site where IP bans aren't a thing. So people IP banned from the big ones, are gonna trickle down here and do dumb drama hunting shit like OP.
I don't want to spiral this out of control, but I do think you might be interested in Why do Marxists fail to Bring the "Worker's Paradise?" as well as Why Public Property? The former is a critical examination of why states guided by Marxism haven't been worker utopias from the perspective of a Marxist-Leninist, the latter is an exploration of why Marx believed Socialism to overtake Capitalism. It isn't a moral argument, rather, as markets consolidate into monopolist syndicates devoid of competition, they make themselves ripe for public ownership and central planning.
What is Socialism? is also good, it goes over the various arguments between different strains of Marxism over what can be considered Socialist, but at this point I think I've recommended far more than enough articles. Really, the first one about "Worker's Paradises" is the one I think you'd find the most interesting.
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.
same, that was a weird first impression.
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
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'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
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.
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.
I mean, lead them to instances that defederate hexbear for starters? Seems reasonable anyway.
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'm one lol. Same with hexbear.
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.
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
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
Yes avoid .ml and hexbear and life is mostly good here.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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...
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.
Also [email protected]
Why doesn't this one open on my mbin instance?
🤷
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.
“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.
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/[email protected]
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.
Linux sub?
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.
Yeah the moderation on .ml is insane, users are better off letting them fester in their toxic little bubble.
They’re falling behind in MAUs, slowly but surely. It’ll work itself out.
Not everything is about growth. If that instance's userbase or activity plateaus I'm sure they won't mind at all.
MAU?
Monthly Active Users
It’s a user that has posted/commented within the last 30 days, and it’s the best metric for measuring the activity of an instance
MAU: monthly active users
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?
Frankly, who cares? If you don't want to see or participate in tankie propoganda, then don't. People point out that lemmy.ml is the hub for a lot of communities, so it isn't reasonable to switch to another instance. And then they bring up communities like [email protected] Guess what, Linux isn't meant to be a hub for political discourse, and for the most part, it isn't. Use lemmy.ml how you want to use it, and if you want to participate in other political leanings, go to a different instance. No one is really stopping you, and that's the whole idea of the fediverse. And there really isn't any value lost, because this isn't a "choose one and only one" situation. You've got all of the fediverse at your fingertips
<EDIT> So this came off a bit abrasive. But the point I want to convey is that if you want to have deep/heated political discourse, either do that on a community (and instance) suitable for it, or use an account specifically for political discussion. I think it helps everyone. The mods can referee communities with more clear boundaries, the lurkers/users don't need to worry about political debates when looking up tech support or whatever, and you (the reader/political dissident) can still enjoy your discussions with less worry about being randomly banned. </EDIT>
Use lemmy.ml how you want to use it, and if you want to participate in other political leanings, go to a different instance. No one is really stopping you, and that's the whole idea of the fediverse. And there really isn't any value lost, because this isn't a "choose one and only one" situation. You've got all of the fediverse at your fingertips.
Until you make the mistake of replying with the wrong kind of comment to the wrong sub, and get banned from the entire instance and lose the ability to post on many of the largest subs on this side of the fediverse. Or maybe they just see you out and about and decide to ban you on sight because they don't like what you said. There's nothing stopping that.
Admin overreach and abuse is a major issue for the fediverse because it affects more than just the user in question. Admins of large instances get to decide who has access to the users and communities on their instances, and very often the users of the instance aren't even aware of the actions taken on their behalf. Mastodon recently implemented a notification for when blocks and defederation remove your follows or followers, and this is a great first step. Users deserve to know when they are impacted by decisions such as these.
I love the fediverse and want to see it thrive, so we need to stop putting our heads in the sand on this issue. It's always discussed as if it's an issue with a few problematic instances rather than the systemic issue in need of a solution that is is. Admins need the tools to protect their instances from real abuse, but we need to balance that with the right of the users to know what's going on and not be unfairly deprived of the social aspect of this social media experiment, especially without knowing.
It's shocking to me when people say that reddit moderators are more overbearing than here. They'll literally ban you for how you vote here. Lol
As the dev's flagship instance, there is only so much that can be done. There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit. They did put the work in to create the service, after all.
I think the most reasonable solution around this is to simply push mbin a little harder. Since .ml will always garner a certain degree of attention as the dev's instance, simply pivoting more attention to a lemmy-related service may be the best option to make us more appealing to less politically-interested people overall.
And shout-out to Piefed and Sublinks as well. All three of those look so promising! They have a bit of catching up to do but... yeah, I agree with you. Plus, being written in a more widely-known language (the likes of Python vs. Rust), I would hope that it would catch up rather quickly?
There is also only so much that should be done, since they should have the right to run their own instance however they see fit.
Disagreed, I've seen them trying to force their hand on other instances into running things the way they want them to, so I think it's only fair others hold them to some standards as well. After all in the Fediverse there is some leverage you do have to get other instances to compromise, by way of simply refusing to operate with them anymore. Obviously that doesn't mean completely bossing them around, which is why I said compromise, not comply. It also is still their choice whether or not to follow through, it comes at the cost of them no longer inter-operating with servers they refuse to compromise with, but I think that's more than fair enough as a trade off.
It is also a good idea to push for alternatives, but even so, if the issue isn't addressed it will still be problematic on those problems due to the size and weight the instance and its communities carry in the Fediverse.
Do you have an example of how they've tried to force their hand on other instances? That's not really a thing they can do...
stuff like this is why I have ml and hexbear in my blocklist, they don't deserve my traffic
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?
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 [email protected] - 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 [email protected] 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.
in the fediverse; blocklists only serves to remove you from the group chat that everyone else can see.
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.
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[email protected] (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. (edit: though lemmy.cafe has it in their top banner, yay - that instance looks so damn welcoming and friendly!!:-)
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?
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.
I censored them. All of them.
You mean you personally blocked them? You need to actually be on an instance that defederates them for it to mean anything. User blocking hardly does anything, it just hides communities from that instance, that's all it does.
No I just blocked the instance. While there is a chance those mods could be mods on other servers. The hamfisted and out right petty ways they employ are less likely to get a pass elsewhere. I have no doubt many lemmy.ml users are okay. Its just the reddit style modding that I'm avoiding.
(1) shoutout to the community at [email protected] for helping guide people into things like how to make a functioning link to communities and users, and I posted something there myself mentioning a variety of ways to curate someone's experiences, e.g. to block extremist content. I would share a link to that here... except links to posts are not fully functional on the Fediverse, since they take you off of your home instance and require jumping through hoops to avoid that. Also, if that community does not show up for you, like if visiting that link it looks empty, then subscribe to it and wait about a day. The Fediverse is not so easy to use as people keep saying it is...
Though ironically, as you said, what's the point when nobody even knows of that community's existence. Worse yet, a lot of "guides" pointed to in the sidebar of a large number of instances either have next to no information, or at most only a single years-old post with a ton of comments like "thanks" and "^THIS" that you cannot easily get past b/c of how the Lemmy web UI makes you load only a portion before making you go to the bottom and load another, and another, and another, and another... almost none of which have anything useful to add, and yet the instance admins (which people like Blaze and I have specifically told) choose not to point to a "community", and instead leave those years-old links to posts. Speaking of, and funny enough, in the case of lemmy.ml go to the sidebar and click the "What is Lemmy.ml" - the result is hilariously on-brand!:-P
(2) measuring community engagement stats can be tricky - for one thing, the numbers when viewed from an external instance are often wrong, but going to the home instance and looking in the sidebar iirc offers the true values. Also, "subscribed" means next to nothing, and instead active users per month (AMU) is where it's at. With that in mind then:
- [email protected] has 2.23k AMUs
- [email protected] has 1.39k AMUs
- after that it drops precipitously, e.g. [email protected] has just 36 AMUs
Still, [email protected] is not nothing, with 39% of these users - a lower-bound estimate since many people are likely subscribed to both.
(3) And [email protected] is the #3 community on that instance. The large majority of the other communities - asklemmy, memes, news, privacy, technology, etc. - all have counterparts on other instances.
One counterexample that is pretty bad is firefox, with lemmy.ml vs. lemmy.world having 3.82k vs. 0.72 AMUs, respectively.
So, do whatever you want, but it is what it is. Personally I've user-blocked lemmy.ml b/c... well, you can see it yourself from the replies to your post here, it's just not worth the hassle of having to receive such in my feed (though sadly, user-blocking seems to make extraordinarily little difference compared to not doing such). All I can suggest is that while it may not be "easy", we can each of us be a part of the change that we want to see in the world. Find, subscribe to, and POST on communities that you would like to see grow.
All instances, except for the lightly moderated ones, have censorship issues from time to time. You can say one thing on one thread, and that same thing can get you banned in another thread on the same instance. This is an issue with the great degree of political polarization on Lemmy.
My point is that Lemmy is multipolar. It’s divided between the right-leaning instances like Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, the left-leaning instances like Lemmy.ml, slrpnk.net, blahaj.zone, and dbzer0, and the leftist instances like Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Mods and admins on each instance are guilty of maintaining the “instance line.”
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
While I won't repeat what got me banned, this is what got me banned from Political Memes on Lemmy.world, this isn't just a Lemmy.ml thing. This is also when one of the moderators claimed they weren't censoring anyone and were incredibly fair on a comment chain calling out their censorship, and refused to elaborate. They would not even tell me how I could edit my comments to comply with their rules.
What does this all mean?
Honestly, I think close to everyone knows that Marxists dominate Lemmy.ml, Lemmygrad.ml, Hexbear.net, etc. I think close to everyone knows Liberals dominate Lemmy.world. I think everyone knows that anarchists dominate dbzer0, slrpnk.net, Hexbear.net, etc.
If your call to action is to defederate Lemmy.ml, then that's just contributing to this polarization effect, as people would jump ship from .world and .ml to the other if it fits their views better. If your call to action is that people should move communities from Lemmy.ml to other instances, this has already happened a bit, this thread gets reposted very frequently. All it really seems to me is that you're spreading drama.
What do I recommend?
Rather than trying to consolidate communities across instances, replicate communities as needed. Communities on Lemmy are more like hashtags for an instance, and instances are more like subreddits of old. Instances have their own cultures and values, so a Gaming thread on Hexbear, for example, is going to be different from a Lemmy.world Gaming thread, and that's a good thing. All sorting can still let you see other instances, there's no need to risk moderator dominance over communities by trying to consolidate on a single instance. Heck, this community is an example of that very process.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works don't seem to have any noticeable political leanings (far right or far left) as far as I can tell. Why do you say they're right leaning?
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works don’t seem to have any noticeable political leanings as far as I can tell.
...What?
I consider myself a raging liberal, at least in the US. A socialist. But lemmy.world is so liberal it makes me feel like a Trumpster.
I guess I don't feel at risk of getting globally banned like I would for disagreeing with the consensus like on .ml, but claiming .world is neutral is quite a sweeping statement.
There are definitely some bad actors on here who are trying to manipulate the election in Trump's favor. The sort that claim to be leftists and come to every US politics-related thread (or even ones that aren't related to the US until they make it so) with their list of talking points about why no one should vote for Harris, but conveniently have no answers for who deserves votes more.
Because anyone not exactly in line with his views is right leaning, that's it. Tankies want to shame you into their ideology by calling you right leaning for thinking murder is bad, that's basically all.
I can DM you if you want, this is already spiraling far beyond my intentions of my original statement, that I think it's better rather than to consolidate communities and overpower an instances mods and admins, to decentralize and replicate so there's always a space for people, on an as-needed basis.
The short answer is that Lemmy.world is a very US-focused liberal instance, essentially the Democrats embodied in an instance.
Sh.itjust.works maintains NCD, MeanwhileOnGrad, and other generally pro-Liberalism, anti-Communist communities, hence why I say it leans right.
As always, you can absolutely find Anarchists and Communists on both Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works, my point is more that the moderators and userbase generally consolidate around a given stance, my point isn't that you can't be a leftist on Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.
Neither .world nor .shitjustworks are “right leaning” they just hate the tankies most vocally lmao. Neither would it make too much sense to call a tankie “left” leaning given their raging hard on for authoritarianism. I also think most of Blahaj would be offended by being lumped in with them.
Lemmy.world is extremely liberal, I wouldn't classify it as left-leaning. Both .world and sh.itjust.works are generally liberal, maintaining MeanwhileOnGrad leads to more right-wing people. I did not say far-right, or even right-wing, but right-leaning.
Marxists are absolutely left wing, not sure what your point is here. Marx and Engels were both called "authoritarian" by their contemporaries so much that Engels wrote On Authority. I don't think it makes sense to separate Marxism from Leftism, and redefine leftism as Anarchism.
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, or 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.
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.
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.
The solution is that an instance that cheerfully associates itself with an ideology that wiped away the lives of many tens of millions of people and immiserated possibly a billion more - that instance should be relegated to a dusty basement room where new users won't easily find it.
To be fair, those deaths can be blamed on the brutality of the likes of Stalin and Mao. Communism didn’t kill those people— but its authoritarian nature certainly provided fertile ground to be abused by monsters.
Like most things political, it’s highly nuanced and complex. I don’t particularly like to defend communism, but an ideology alone can’t do anything. It requires bad actors who use that ideology for their own ends.
I think that, more to the point, no matter the culpability of communism in Soviet politics, tankies seem more enamoured with the latter — the militant, strongarm regimes — than the actual ideals and principles of ideology.
Many would say that this is disingenuous reasoning. The fact is that the brutality was committed in the name of the ideology, and that whenever the ideology has been tried out, it always - always - ends the same way. For exactly the reason you suggest: any ideology that precludes dissent is ripe for abuse.
A few things. Communism isn't Marxist leninism. Communism isn't authoritarian. And it's not just Stalin and Mao. It's literally everywhere Marxist leninism has ever been attempted. Communism is a classless stateless society. Therefore a Marxist leninist government will never become communist. Because they are defined by their class separation of those with political power and those without, and the strong overbearing presence of the state.
There's nothing objectionable to Communism whatsoever. And no one should have any qualms about defending it ever. What we should question is why one group of authoritarians the Marxist leninist desire to be so closely tied to it. And another group of authoritarians the capitalists demand everyone be afraid of it.
For me, it’s not the fact that the instance exists that’s troublesome. The bigots can have their space if they want; that’s the point of the fediverse. My issue is the fact that it’s so popular and potentially luring new users into a pipeline. It’s truly a shame how big it’s gotten…
Yes, sure. As a liberal, I'm pretty suspicious of even speech-policing, let alone bans or (here) defederation. But I just wish more people understood that the ideas these people claim to support are not anodyne. They're not just sticking it to The Man, they're not democrats or even Swedish-style socialists. They're defending the indefensible. Addendum: To be clear, I think even many of them don't understand this properly.
you mean the us-led neoliberal ideology?
if so, agreed
immiserated possibly a billion more
Hmm, this graph must be upside-down or something, weird.
Every influx of users and the usual suspects who are DESPERATE to have Lemmy turn into Reddit start pissing and shitting themselves that maybe their American liberal opinions arent dominant anymore.
This shit is pathetic.
Yeah, no... We just don't like people who straight up deny history that actually happened nor do we like fascist fuck heads. Seen enough bullshit from your instance to know it's full of Nazi dumbshits acting like they're actually leftists. Not to even mention the mountain of hypocrisy shown by the admins and moderators.
You mean that people are annoyed that tankies like you, want to turn this into an echo chamber that's just like the right wing republicans...and that bothers you?
Edit: checking your history... yes you're a solid tankie idiot.
Hope you at least see the irony in being able to come here to criticize our 'American liberal opinions' in a thread about the systematic censorship of people criticizing yours.
It is hilarious to see that on every single "we should defed from the tankies" post, the tankies always show up to demonstrate for us all first-hand precisely why we should defederate from the tankies. Not b/c of their political views, but b/c of the abusive toxicity.
How can it be dominant on ml instances, if it's removed after 10 seconds by scared ml mods that can't handle different views on anything?
I agree with you that this conflict needs a resolution, it's possible lemmy.ml has done some things wrong, that's why I support a two state solution that guarantees lemmy.mls security.
This made me cackle, have an upvote
i created [email protected] 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.
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.
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 ;)
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…
If all you want to see are opinions and memes that fit within the political confines of the New York Times, then .ml probably isn't for you. Lemmy.world has taken a very brave (and rare!) stance of being a champion of neoliberal politics. The mods and users here will do everything they can to make sure you aren't exposed to any political philosophy to the left of Henry Kissinger.
There are about two people on here who wouldn't say "fuck Henry Kissinger".
What a massive load of shite. The fucking smell of boot polish off your breath is disgusting.
Jog on.
Hillary Clinton considered him a "great friend and mentor" so I guess I could have said her. I'm also fully aware of the liberal tendency to place a higher importance on image than on policy.
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.
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...
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 just don't understand why people like OP even left Reddit.
While I understand someone not agreeing with the way some instance or community is managed, I see value in different opinions.
Lemmy is great for exactly this purpose, we can have different instances and are able to be exposed to different ideas.
I can not understand the need of some people to limit their exposure to different ideas.
It's why I try to get more people to read theory, the people leaving Reddit usually are the types who care enough to keep up with current events and willful enough to abandon Reddit over ideals, but generally haven't yet read leftist theory.
To be clear, many people do read theory, they just aren't the same people trying to recreate Reddit.
Anti-communism is the root of fascism
So nuanced. So brave.
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.
You are the fascist problem of communism.
🙄
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.
This is like the perfect comment as to why a lot of people find ml users insufferable and toxic.
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.
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.
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
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.