I'm hearing Lemmy itself, the .ml instance and some others are ran by Tankies that censor criticism of russia and china. What are your thoughts on this?
I'm hearing Lemmy itself, the .ml instance and some others are ran by Tankies that censor criticism of russia and china. What are your thoughts on this?
That's why I'm on Lemmy.World. I made a new account as soon as I found out they were removing posts from people for orientalism. It's great the modlog is so transparent. The greatest thing about having instances run by different people unassociated with each other is you can just do that... go to a different instance where things are much more aligned to you morally.
You have less to worry about here than you do on a place like say Reddit where they can do it pretty discretely and you'd be none the wiser until it happened to you.
Looking at lemmy.world/instances, it explicitly federates with lemmygrad.ml
Kinda worrying to me that the two biggest instances link to the biggest tankie instances.
You can just block all lemmygrad's community, and if their users bothering other instance's community, let the mod block them. lemmyworld is free to choose which instances to federate like you are free to block all user/community you dislike. That is the beauty of federation. cheers.
The instance federates with pretty much all other instances as far as I understand.. If you have a problem with that, simply join another instance that blocks instances you don't like. Or better yet, create your own instances with your own rules and block any instance you don't like..
There is no reason to cry and do nothing when the entire point of lemmy is about giving you the power..
You can block subs yourself, right?
I see lemmy.world as the most unrestricted and neutral instance now.
The ideological leaning of the developers means nothing on a federated network. What you care about is knowing the ideology of who runs your instance.
You can just as easily fall into a right wing echo chamber by joining the wrong instance. And one that censors any kind of pro Russia or pro China sentiment, which is equally bad, in my opinion.
Propaganda can come from both sides. Just keep your eyes open.
My thoughts are that you should use an instance that is in sync with your ethics. That is the freedom you have with opensource.
@MyOpinion Relevant username
I wish. Beehaw isn't sending out confirmation emails and I can't find any other ones that block the tankies.
Like I don't mind communists and socialists, they tend to be great people. But this? "hey everyone come over from reddit! You TOO can be insulted constantly for not adoring Soviet Russia!" It's an AWFUL look.
The things on Hexbear and Lemmygrad aren't "communists and socialists" though. They're just supporting straight up authoritarian regimes simply because they oppose "the west". It's just people shilling for Xi Jinping and Putin because they think they somehow still represent Communism.
To me, this is like Richard Stallman and certain reprehensible actions and opinions.
Just like with Stallman and his contributions to software, I can justify using Lemmy to myself due to it being open source and the devs not directly financially profiting from the spread of Lemmy (although it certainly raises their public profile).
It's definitely unfortunate that they're Tankies.
devs not directly financially profiting from the spread of Lemmy
Aren't they though? Even if we ignore the obvious aspect of getting donations and exposure, they will also get more contributors for their project which will push them even further ahead of other competitors in this space.
I agree people might be blowing it a bit too much out of proportion at times, but then again we shouldn't pretend that it doesn't matter either.
There's a public modlog at the bottom of the page; you can use that to see what mods are doing on whichever instance you're on. If there's any truth to that, you'll be able to find proof there.
That was the main reason why I switched to lemmy.world; never looked back. Plus, Ruud (the admin of this instance, runs also a Mastodon instance) and actually upgrades the server so it can handle all new traffic. Lemmy.ml is often down because it can't take the heavy load.
Don’t like it, don’t read it. The price of freedom is that it is freedom for everybody even for those you (or I) don’t think should be free.
But the point of censorship is: if THEY don't like it, YOU don't read it because you don't know it exists.
You can see what instances your server has blocked at {instance_url}/instances, there's also a link in the footer. If you're unhappy with your home instance blocking too much content, you can always make an account elsewhere and sub to the same communities as before. Account export is a feature that's currently requested on the Lemmy Github so maybe that process will become easier soon.
I have more important things on my mind than internet drama. Don't really care
As a Mexican I've been dealing with stupid cartel blogs my whole life, I don't really care anymore. I just vibe with the 99.9% of people that is sane.
What do those cartel blogs look like?
What's a cartel blog?
"last week at Cartel:"
I imagine so many funny things lol
Please tell us about cartel blogs, it seems like a bad idea for an illegal organization.
We're gonna need more info on this
I joined via lemmy.world because at the time the stats just looked favorable, with the limited knowledge I had (uptime mostly).
As someone with experience in software engineering you learn to differentiate between the product and the dev.
It's especially easy with Lemmy, because every instance has its own vibe it seems. Would I join lemmygrad or how that instance is called? Probably not, but because it's the users who in the end define the direction of an instance I see no problem.
Freedom of speech is important and if all those tanky instances are about is their agenda, they will end up in an echo chamber sooner or later, as more regular people migrate and simply drown them out.
There are plenty of other instances to join if you don't like the .ml servers' opinions. From what I can see, all tastes are catered for. Just find another server.
And, no, I'm not affiliated with the .ml instances nor am I a so-called Tankie.
I just won't post on the tankie instances like I didn't post on the tankie subreddits. And if the instance I'm on starts censoring like that, I'll make an account on a different one.
Am I the only one that chose an instance based on defederation with lemmygard? I had a lemmy.ml account and it got annoying quite quickly
I'm on an instance that doesn't. It's annoying, but the main issue is in the All feed since I don't exactly subscribe to lemmygrad communities ;p.
I've had fairly decent luck just blocking any communities that show up from there. I can't wait until I can granularly block all communities from an instance, tbh ^.^
Please excuse my ignorance: what’s a “tanky/tankies”?
Derisive term for communist authoritarian who support left wing ideology and also state violence to maintain their power.
Common themes include whitewashing Mao and Stalin history, and dismissing current state sanctioned violence against minorities in “communist” countries.
Informative, thank you
The term originates from controversy among UK Communist labor-unionists over support of the Soviet Union, in its violent occupation of dissenting Communist countries Hungary and Czechoslovakia — when Khrushchev sent tanks to suppress popular revolutions against Soviet control of their countries.
Notably, this was Communist-on-Communist violence: the revolutionary Hungarian and Czechoslovak regimes were still run by their Communist Parties. Thus "tankies" were, originally, Communist labor-unionists who endorse or tolerate violent suppression of other Communists to secure the power of the Soviet Union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
More recently it's been used to refer to supporters of authoritarianism in China, which is associated with tanks by way of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre.
It's a term mostly used to distinguish left-authoritarians from left-anti-authoritarians, particularly in the context of the cold war West. 'Tankies' notably tend to defend their left-ideology by talking up major authoritarian or totalitarian regimes (like Stalin's or Mao's) that also called themselves Socialist (despite such claims being problematic in doctrinaire terms). Originally used to describe the self-proclaimed communist/Stalin apologist, the modern tankie supports pretty much any authoritarian regime that opposes the West
Here’s a discussion about this: https://lemmy.world/post/24798
TLDR :
That post is great and mostly respectful, it has 160 comments at the moment // it is involving hardcore Marxist-Leninist administrators of Lemmy.ml
in my opinion it demonstrate the hypocrisy of those administrators.
Who cares? We're not on lemmy.ml, are we?
Careful the steps you take from those kinds of thoughts, here. Lemmy is best when it is unified. A split down the middle, even worse, three ways could have drastic consequences for the sort of community, or even segmented communities that Lemmy could become if it schisms.
Lemmy could be a center-left haven for rational thought, or in three years it could be an extremely leftist community fighting an extremely right-wing community fighting a group that wants nothing to do with either, all cut off from eachother with non-political subs and the overall community suffering as a result.
Are you saying that everyone should have the same political opinions? I don't think so.
Each individual has the right to have their own opinions, and they have the right to express them, no matter how we might like them or not.
Blocking features exist for that reason, if something is too much for you to bear, block it and move on.
Lemmy is best when it is unified
Like reddit?
I see your point and raise you the fact that I shouldn't have to deal with people who legitimately want me dead. And a lot of tankies unironically unapologetically do. Same thing I say to the alt-right applies: Free speech isn't a guarantee of a platform and it absolutely doesn't mean anyone has to listen to you.
I'm gonna fill up my block list in about a day at this rate.
I'm not sure you've illustrated that it's actually a bad thing for Lemmy to fragment naturally. That's almost a certainty due to the nature of it. If Nazis started a server, which I have no doubt that they will, it will almost instantly be fragmented off, for example.
Lemmy isn't inherently better with bigger user counts, part of the core idea is actually to have numerous smaller communities. The internet was plenty healthy before everyone all used the same platforms.
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore
Well today I had someone support the Tienanmen Square massacre, another say the war of aggression in Ukraine is a denazification campaign, argue that nothing is happening untoward to Uighur's in China and assert that Pussy Riot "is a CIA op" lol. Yeah. It's over run with brain dead tankies. They suck. That instance will get defederated eventually if Lemmy actually takes off, and good riddance
Do you have any proof of that? Just curious where you got that from (:
There was some discussion just before the Reddit influx, actually: https://lemmy.ml/post/1167199 Edit: Also read through the history of Lemmy for some info on the motivations. I have no problem with the admins of their instance running it however they want, and they made a really cool project and I appreciate that for the most part they do not have a problem with people who disagree with them. I think people should think twice before re-creating all of their favorite reddit subs on that instance though.
No proof, I just heard about it. A buddy and someone on reddit told me about "tankies on lemmy" which I dismissed as drama at first, then I heard it's actually the main devs too, then I did a quick google search and search on lemmy here, it seems universally agreed upon at least in those threads from what I can see.
I can't verify their censorship, but they also run Lemmygrad. If you take a look around there you'll find literal propaganda. The solution is to not interact with lemmy.ml at least that's the solution in my opinion.
I read this on mastodon talking about it
This is why I chose to join lemmy.world vs. the main instance.
I know the lemmygrad.ml instance claims to be Marxist but I don't think they're generally taken that seriously (and not to be confused with lemmy.ml) - is that what you're confusing? Apart from that, the federal nature of Lemmy means it doesn't really matter what the creator's political beliefs are.
I think people are concerned because both lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml are operated by the Lemmy developers. At a minimum, that means I'd prefer to avoid communities based on lemmy.ml and favor servers with less spicy admins.
There is, however a popular idea that software tends to reflect the values of its authors. Mastodon seems to be "Twitter for nice people" or thereabouts. If Lemmy is "Reddit for militant communists", that's a problem for attracting an audience beyond militant communists because most people don't want to talk to them.
I don't think the creators of the software get to dictate the culture here. that would be like saying the developers of PHPBB or InvisionPowerBoard dictate what communities i run on thier projects (they dont).
Preview of the future is that it will be many federations with some bridges rather than one big federation, because of splits and issues like this.
Nah. I think the ".ml" means Marxist Leninist to them. At least that's what one of the tanky types I chatted to on lemmy.ml said.
I joined with lemmy.fmhy.ml... am I fucked?
oh no, i should have been specific. i was talking about the popular @lemmy.ml instance & its communities, lemmy.fmhy.ml seems to be a different instance just with a similar name/url.
Quick lesson on how urls work. When I purchase a domain name you usually purchase something like domain.com, domain.net ect. So once you own domain.com you have control of creating what are called sub domains. sub.domain.com or sub.sub.domain.com. you can tell that lemmy.ml and fmhy.ml are unrelated because of this.
Thanks for the clarification, now I feel better!
@Kasrean From my experience it's more like a soft censoring. But yea, censoring does exist. I've interacted with Lemmy (specially lemmy.ml initially, since it was the largest instance containing all the communities I needed) even before the Reddit exodus. Back then there were only a handful of people creating content and the narrative they were spinning was something along the line of Look how bad the West is! Now look at how great China is!. Not to mention, the same people are against supporting Ukraine.
The problem was that it was really easy to make anti-russian or anti-china (edit: or to be, somehow racist against these, only by criticizing their governments, although not the same was applied to the anti-US posts - it was totally okay to be anti-America) posts or comments (in mods' views) and you were usually banned for it. Nowadays, tho, the situation is changing, and they get a small dose of their own medicine, lol (but you can still see the comments of these guys, many of them downvoted tho).
Your description is succinct yet accurate : i know since i was there many months last year.
issue would be if the code is compromised as a result mainly. there are other networks on the protocol and others can implement servers as well. its not an exclusive protocol.
What is even the purpose to censor info on what I'd assume was a foreign govt? What's the logic?
"Well this late stage communism makes my own ideals look bad?" Laughable and pathetic.
Personally, I don't care. What someone does, politically, with their free time on the internet doesn't affect me, at least in this instance. I'm not givin money to them, keep it movin.. tbh it's their loss if that's how they wanna live.
I'm using lemmy.world
Thought I’m on NCD for a moment here lol
Where did you hear this from? That's pretty dumb, honestly, if it's true.
This is going to be why Lemmy doesn't take off long term.
I don’t think it will keep it from taking off, but I am not sure that all the most popular communities should be on lemmy.ml.
I appreciate that the devs/admins for the most part do encourage dissent.
Cool and good.