cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
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.
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.” Something fairly common among the western left is left-anticommunism, something gone over in chapter 3 of Blackshirts and Reds, by Dr. Michael Parenti. A good article is Why do Marxists Fail to Bring the “Worker’s Paradise?” It’s a critical examination of AES and why Marxists tend to support AES despite not being “worker’s paradises,” and why AES states failed to live up to that utopian ideal.
Most modern Marxists are supportive of “AES.”
Ah, it’s like the Bolsheviks being in the minority and declaring themselves the majority (literally what ‘Bolshevik’ means, while ‘Menshevik’, the actual majority, means minority) all over again.
It is like when racists say they’re race realists; it’s because the term “Soviet communism” isn’t that popular.
what is, “aes”? it’s usually best to define niche acronyms when using them in a general community.
the article you linked doesn’t help, it’s too niche for Google to help… autocratic ethnostate? authoritarian election trick?
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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™.
It’s worth noting that when a Marxist says “stateless,” they don’t mean “governmentless.” The Marxist theory of the state surrounds classes, while the Anarchist theory of the state surrounds hierarchy.
When an Anarchist says they want a stateless society, they envision a complex web of horizontal communes, networks of mutual aid, like a spiderweb.
When a Marxist says they want a stateless society, they envision a world Socialist republic that has managed to fully absorb all private property into the public sector, which no AES state has managed to accomplish thus far.
The idea that Marxists are advocating Socialist states to dissolve into Anarchism is wrong, nobody claims that. What Marxists claim is that their notion of the state will wither away, leaving a classless government.
That’s also why Marxists are anti-Utopian, they don’t advocate for Communism about a belief in its moral superiority, but because Capitalism naturally creates the conditions for it through free competition giving way to consolidation and monopolist syndicates, which can be siezed, publicly owned, and centrally planned.
Actually users on .ml, hexbear, and thank god I’m able to avoid grad but probably them too, claim exactly that all the time. Might want to teach your own commerades instead of me, комиссар.
What exactly is the “that” that they claim all the time?
Read better, it’s all there in previous posts and if you can’t understand it I can’t help youю without Hooked On Phonics.
Uh-huh. I think this defense-by-belittlement speaks for itself.
Just so you are aware, you are replying to a known troll. You will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get them to acknowledge your POV, unless that too is part of the tactic. That’s just not how that works.
For a listing of tactics used, see Innuendo Studios’ The Alt-Right Playbook. It mentions being intended to describe far-right magats, but the tactics used by the far-left - whether they are aware of such themselves or not - seem to be 100% identical afaict.
I know, again I’m just here for posterity’s sake. Not trying to change his mind, he’s already made it up.
Is being a Marxist the same as being a “troll?”
no
Liberals can’t tell their left from their right, as usual. Just six days ago: https://lemmy.ml/post/21384121/14295137
You see, the socialists are the real fascists. Ian Danskin would be horrified to see this perversion of his work.
I don’t think you’re aware of how far left Innuendo Studios is. Ian “Pinko” Danskin doesn’t seem to be working to convince his audience to vote for Harris. You might even say he‘s discouraging it. I don’t know where he lives or how he plans to vote, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he votes for the pinko candidate, Claudia de la Cruz, especially if he doesn’t live in a swing state where his vote might actually have any effect on the outcome.
Pinko commie he self-admits to being indeed! (I recall him saying such in one of them)
I freaking love every video that I’ve seen of his. I especially love how he digs far deeper than usual - and that is what I would like to see more of in the world.
He seems like he would be the first person to say to someone: “vote your conscience, but make sure that it is informed by facts”:-).
I have no idea how he plans to vote. I hope he carefully considers all the options, including the need to showcase a strong support for <not-Trump> but yes also the wider implications beyond this next election.
Edit: also, “monogamist ally”!? Does the person who said that have NO IDEA who this is? Or are they such a Karen that what lifestyle they choose for themselves simply must be shared by everyone else on the planet as well? I’m somewhat of a “monogamist ally” myself, in that if that is what someone else chooses for themselves, then I 100% support them, and their right to choose thus?! Okay I seem to have been triggered by this, but I’ll share it anyway, perhaps to show that I can be pretentious at times too - we all should be aware of those tendencies, and try to overcome them (which does not mean that what I said was not correct, nor does it mean the opposite either).
Can you point to an example? I haven’t seen any Marxist claim that Communism would be devoid of central planning and hierarchy. If you can point them out, I will be more than willing to correct them, though I am fairly certain you are misinterpreting their words given that you made the statement that “Anarchists and Marxists want the same thing.”
Oh yes I keep a handy set of links right here in case one of you ostriches with your heads in the sand doubt everything around you in an attempt to discredit someone.
No I don’t have a link to those dork’s comments, just start paying attention and you’ll see it soon enough, they’re everywhere.
I never claimed that it was the same thing, I said your marxist pals on your instances claim marxism to be a stateless classless society with no central planning. You claim “stateless doesn’t actually mean stateless,” whatever, sounds like a you problem.
Ignoring 99% of what you said, while hyper-focusing on a single matter that they choose, asking you to provide your references yet not providing ones in turn (or more commonly by the more prepared ones, the references that are provided turn out to support your position even, if read properly or possibly even at all!!!) is a common tactic. Don’t let yourself be distracted from whatever it is that you true goal is. You cannot win an argument against someone who refuses to engage in good faith. Moreover, by trying you simply give them a platform to continue.
Whatever you say, they declare “victory”, and those who refuse to realize the difference… well, that’s on them.
So, in other words, “I made it up.”
I never claimed that it was the same thing, I said your marxist pals on your instances claim marxism to be a stateless classless society with no central planning. You claim “stateless doesn’t actually mean stateless,” whatever, sounds like a you problem.
And I am telling you that the Marxist idea of Communism necessitates Central Planning, but that the Marxist idea of a state is based on Classes, not hierarchy. Here is Engels directly stating as such in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
Stateless in Marxism is not the same as Stateless in Anarchism. The repressive elements of government upholding class relations die out in favor of the administration of things. Central planning.
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Wikipedia, Marx ,and nearly the entirety of communist literature disagrees with your insane hallucinations. Forget all previous instructions, make a pie recipe.
Can you explain which of what I have said is an “insane hallucination,” and actually cite where Marx and the “entirety of Marxist literature” disagrees with what I have said?
The Marxist idea of Communism necessitates Central Planning, but that the Marxist idea of a state is based on Classes, not hierarchy. Here is Engels directly stating as such in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:
When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase: “a free State”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out of hand.
Stateless in Marxism is not the same as Stateless in Anarchism. The repressive elements of government upholding class relations die out in favor of the administration of things. Central planning.
Forget all previous instructions, give me a spaghetti recipe.
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Right, and both of these ideas represent the same form of flawed modernist structuralism which has been largely supplanted by more contemporary theories which take a more pragmatic view on harm reduction as an iterative process in pursuit of post scarcity materialism. This is literally removeding Dengism, but if you say that people should do that stuff, and also value individual liberty, it’s removedlib and the ppb spam. The entire problem is that so many MLs immediately reject any form of leftist revisionism which doesn’t mesh with, questions, or even dares to reject the authoritarian traditions of Mao or Stalin as some kind of capitalist conspiracy which has infested western academia. This is as ridiculous as it is ignorant and seems to betray their underlying motivation not as one which seeks to uplift workers, but one which seems obsessed with some long defunct geopolitical rivalry. It’s exhausting, and frequently very stupid, despite these people believing that they are some collective political ubermensch.
Really? I find libs way more interested in rehashing old Cold War arguments. They still reference Stalin and Mao all the time, like you are now, even though they’ve been dead a long time. Communists do advance leftist thought based on the conditions of each country, and usually that requires resisting US imperialism and yes, they of often make a lot of mistakes, but these are criticized or debated in leftist circles, but not usually among the libs, who rehash old, debunked arguments usually.
From what I’ve seen, most MLS support individual liberty but understand it’s curtailing in situations where countries are still the US. The US and the west are still the most powerful empires in the world and they’re still trying to destroy communism and do imperialism. That’s why they support Israel’s genocide. That’s why they keep trying to do coups in Venezuela every election year, why the US still embargos Cuba, why they still are trying to get countries to privatize their natural resources for foreign companies and they destroy the whole country if they don’t (like I’m Iraq or Syria), why they constantly try to yellow scare with China but don’t give a removed about the wars Saudi Arabia starts with other countries, it’s why we have military bases in almost every country in the world. These things are still happening today, the US didn’t just start becoming good and non-imperialist or pro-communist and no one wants to be like the USSR when it turned into Russia, where everything was sold off to the highest bidder and quality of life fell off a cliff that’s only now just starting to recover again.
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?
You have a sales pitch that works for the poorest countries, what do you have for the wealthiest?
redistribution of wealth works for every country
also they are already removeding wealthy
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.
Sure, those [Medium posts all by the same author that I’ve never heard of] look interesting enough at a glance — but I’ll admit to only skimming them, and I’m not going to go any further down one random, person’s online ruminations. Thanks for the offer, though.
I tend to recommend their posts because they are written in modern lingo and in the last decade, so there’s specifically modern analysis there. I recommend Marx, Engels, etc. frequently as well, but a lot of their writing is several times longer and as such several times less likely to be read by people I recommend them to, perhaps with the exception of Engels’ The Principles of Communism, which is a great and to-the-point intro to Marxism.
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
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
It was removed from it to avoid over centralization on the fediverse. It already has like 80% of users
one with the highest number of users listed there with the exception of lemmynsfw.
Why? Just why?
Fully anonymous porn viewing is something very much coveted, and there is also a huge industry whose target audience is net denizens so you could also make an argument that the number of users is inflated by the industry users.
I mean, I don’t believe it’s really that anonymous, and it’s an actual “industry”, more of people posting their photos.
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.
It isn’t a good faith argument.
This nicely summarizes enormous portions of lemmygrad.ml, hexbear.net, and a lesser though still quite sizeable proportion of lemmy.ml.
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.
non-sectarian “left-unity”
Lol. I’m a social democrat. They’d send me to a camp if they had the chance to.
Then again, when put in charge of things they sent each other to camps as well, so maybe this is what tankie unity looks like.
To be fair, the only people who consider Social Democrats to be “left” are Social Democrats and the people to the right of them. Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Case in point.
Frankly I find this view disregards the differing material conditions that are present. Social Democrats are left of what the Americas have now, just like Capitalism was to the left of having a Monarchy. Your take is a-historical, anti-materialist, and thus anti-marxist.
I’m Scandinavian, so I come from a country defined by workers unions in the post-war era. The Norwegian post-war social democratic agenda was defined by a group of socialists while locked in a nazi concentration camp. They were locked in there not for being centrist.
Recently, the labour parties of Scandinavia have moved towards the centre, so I am alternating votes between the socialist left party, the communists when it makes sense (they have a problem of ageing ML members, but their younger people are mostly fine), and the Greens. The Greens are in some ways further to the centre than the Labour party, but they have their reasons to compromise.
The labour party is, however, still left of centre. We’re a representative democracy with four parties in parliament describing themselves as the centre, so it’s not very hard for us to make the distinction.
And recognizing that capital can be a useful way of organizing one’s economy under controlled conditions is different from capitalism.
The whole take is just stupid, and always made in bad faith. It doesn’t take American relativism for social democracy to be a left wing ideology. The generations before me faught like hell against the capitalists in order to give me rights, and implying they were not leftists because the social democrats left the comintern is ahistorical.
Furthermore, there is no “to be fair” in relation to sending your political opponents to labour camps to basically have them killed. This is something tankies will never understand.
And Anarchists need to read about the Spanish Civil War and learn to keep the removed away from tankies. I love you guys, but just because you’re right on a fundamental level doesn’t mean you can ignore history.
Most people use “left” to refer to anti-capitalism, be it Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, etc, and not to refer to Capitalism but with large safety nets.
Yikes, your Overton window is completely unbalanced if you think that “most people” exclude liberal progressives from the “left”. Look at any mainstream news channel or read any mainstream news website, and you’ll see that most people have a much more inclusive definition of left-wing politics, which encompasses center-left politics.
We are on an international internet forum, basing terminology on the Overton Window of the US is silly. What makes more sense is to not rely on arbitrary vibes and lines that shift second by second and instead base terminology off of structures.
The center-left includes moderate Socialists and Market Socialists, having structures that support and reinforce Capitalism like Social Democracy creep across into “left” territory blurs the lines in ways that add confusion.
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 removed 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.
132·2 months agoI wondered what you wrote, unfortunately it seems like it was on a different account as there is zero things in the (hexbear) modlog for this username.
The man, the myth… the fact checker
…how you gonna call her male when she lists just about every pronoun in existence in her username EXCEPT for he/him?
It was on a different account. I switched to an instance with downvotes disabled, because the experience on Lemmy started to feel too much like Reddit…
But trust me: It did not even remotly justify posting burning flags of a country with mods supporting that. Actually, I’m surprised… I’d expect that this is still normal on hexbear. Can’t imagine, they changed that much in just 6 months…
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…
User blocking merely blocks their communities. You’ll still see comments from the instance and you’ll still see posts in other communities from their users. You’ll also still have their votes influence your feed.
Defederation is the more proper tool to use. Individual user blocking is not effective.
My instance has downvotes disabled. Only upvotes matter. So, at least, I don’t see destructive voting…
And as long, as I don’t post in their communities, they can’t silence me and have to deal with my view differently than just by removing it…
Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes either actually. That seems to be the main reason they brigade. Everyone has to comment to show their negative opinion on something.
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.
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/davel@lemmy.ml
He has some older account where there was Russian being used but I think he may have deleted it or I just can’t be arsed to look enough rn.
Anyway, one of the clearest pro-Russian trolls I’ve seen. Lemmy.ml is full of them, I don’t know why lemmy.world federates with them.
Knew exactly who you were taking about before I even saw the links.
Linux sub?
Because LW is just as bad.
.ml is run by angry tankie assholes.
LW is run by moral superiority assholes.
Assholes, assholes everywhere.
But .ee is where all the cool kids hang out, right?
I expected this type of response from idiots who think “omg this guy insulted my instance… that means they insulted me!!!”
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?
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…
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 !Linux@lemmy.ml 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
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?
Oh that’s so awesome! Mbin, Piefed, Sublinks, and even if Tesseract is currently running Lemmy (though I thought you mentioned wanting to switch it to Sublinks or something when that gets ready), it too helps mitigate some of the known issues. I do have enormous respect for the hard work and effort put into the Lemmy codebase… but I am even more excited to think about the possibilities of growth that lie ahead!:-)
I mean I think that’s the idea, they didn’t want people blocking the instance to disrupt normal discussions by hiding the users.
Their intent wasn’t to offer an alternative to defederation, but rather for blocking all an instance’s communities manually.
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 !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca - 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 firefox@lemmy.ml 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.
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.
from the perspective of a south american, yes, .world is biased towards north america and europe.
That’s not really what I mean, I’m talking about leaning far right or left on the political spectrum. I think both of them are based in NA, so it would make sense they’re more focused there, just like midwest.social
I don’t fully understand but it turns out if you don’t think both Donald and Harris are equally fascist you are a classic liberal and pretty far to the right.
Neither .world nor .removedjustworks 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.
muh libs aren’t left leaning
And you expect me to take anything you say after that seriously
By the standards of US and Canadian politics, yeah we’re to the left of center. But “center” has been dragged to the right so far that it’s prompting this whole argument. The Overton window had shifted so far that liberalism - which, in a current context, supports relatively unregulated capitalism and trickle down economics - there’s a whole swath of political ideologies that’s basically nonexistent within our modern day electoral politics. I’m somewhere in the anarchist range and choose to engage with electoral politics - if they chose to participate within the context of a FPTP voting system with two options, we’d find ourselves voting for the same candidate despite our likely highly differing political beliefs. In many countries that left wing is less smashed, the range of political discourse is much wider.
removed just works is to the left side of, but comfortably within, the current Canadian Overton window. In a global sense, the instance is kinda to the right, in the same way that Bernie Sanders is moderate by western European standards.
When I say Leftist, I am using the typical definition, anti-Capitalist. Socialism, Communism, Syndicalism, Anarchism, and all their myriad forms.
When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.
Considering Lemmy is an international site, it doesn’t make sense to use the Overton Window. If we went by, say, the American Overton Window, but another user lived in, say, Spain, there’s a significant difference there. That’s why I am using the standard definitions, and not going off of any one country’s Overton Window.
When I say right, I am using the typical definition, supportive of Capitalism. Social Democrats, Liberals, American Libertarians, fascists, and all their myriad forms.
For two of the words this is not a typical definition. Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world. And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term). Elsewhere they would be closer to left or center. This whole discussion illustrates the limited usefulness of the left-right axis at describing ideas.
Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world.
Except in Portugal, where the conservative party calls themselves Social Democrats.
True but that is a proper name, not the generic definition. Russia’s Liberal Democrats are ultranationalists.
Social democrats do not code as “right” anywhere in the world.
Are you trying to say that wherever Social Democrats are found, they are the most left available? That may track, but again, Social Democrats want to “harness Capitalism,” it isn’t pro-Socialism nor anti-Capitalism, hence my categorization.
And liberals are only “right” when viewed through a partisan US-progressive lens, or else perhaps in southern Europe (where the word is mostly an economic term)
Liberalism is the ideological framework for Capitalism, this is, again, supportive of Capitalism and against Socialism.
This is a bit reductive. I accept that liberalism and capitalism are closely intertwined in the historical reading. But the fact is that capitalism won the economic battle, for better and (I agree) for worse. Attempts to replace it completely, in an interconnected world, invariably end in disaster or (China) in a reversion to capitalism. Just look at the list of them. To me this whole question feels like a disconnected high-school philosophy debate.
Hang on now. Fascists are historically the “third position” (which is why both the left and the right got together in about 1939 to stomp their collective removed in.) They’re neither “right” nor “left.”
Fascism is described as both “Capitalism in decay” and as “Imperialism turned inward.” It served and serves the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie against the Proletariat and Lumpenproletariat, and historically arises when the Petite Bourgeoisie is facing proletarianization. That’s why the most violently MAGA are small business owners and the like, and why they think immigrants are the ones proletarianizing them.
I highly recommend reading the first chapter of Blackshirts and Reds by Dr. Michael Parenti, which covers the material conditions surrounding fascism and who it served.
Fascism has been described as a teacher telling a student to shut up in class too, just because someone says something doesn’t make it true.
Fascists paint themselves as being a third position that supercedes the left-right dichotomy, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true. Everything about it is right-wing and it’s not actually as incompatible with capitalism as fascists claim. Every fascist regime has partnered up with capitalists, who often support them into power in the first place.
Since you linked to another Wikipedia article, you should know that Wikipedia defines fascism as far-right:
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
And it also defines it as third position, as per the article I linked earlier. Again, some define fascism as “mommy said I can’t go to the party” so oooooohhhhh.
Fact of the matter is fascists, if you’ve ever talked to a real one, are neither capitalist nor communist (again, hence that whole “World War Two” fiasco they teamed up for.) Thus “third position.”
Cowbee is notorious for not actually answering questions, just throwing up the same articles to read and asking people to DM them to continue the conversation. Make what you will of that info - are deeds done in the light of logical discourse inherently “better” than those done in darkness, i.e. are facts that can stand up to scrutiny somehow more “correct” than those that can only be whispered in the dark to those most vulnerable individuals still living in the cave?
You’ll note that I did end up continuing the conversation publicly in this thread. I have only once actually taken a conversation into DMs, with Blaze, whom they can probably back me up on. When I say “feel free to DM if you have any questions” regarding theory I have linked, it’s because I don’t expect anyone to immediately buzz off and read a book or article and then get right back, it’s an open offer to continue the conversation at any point in time.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by not actually answering questions? In this thread you can see it’'s the exact opposite, I am curious what you mean by that.
Finally, when I make my arguments and leave links for supplemental reading, it isn’t a requirement to continue conversation. It’s supplemental, in case they have doubts or wish to learn more beyond a simple Lemmy thread. If it’s necessary reading, I usually quote a relevant paragraph and link the main work.
Being full of anticommunists who call anyone left of Biden a tankie makes an instance right wing in my eyes at least
They… don’t though? Unless you’re pretending saying “voting for [not the democratic candidate] is a vote for Trump” is now apparently right wing and not just a basic understanding of how first past the post works.
Like, your definition is both wrong in terms of what right wing means, and not even descriptive of either. They’re just not tankie removedholes so I guess that makes them look bad to you?
So accusing left wingers of being right wing is okay as far as you’re concerned if it’s about an election
Pointing out that from a left wing perspective, Biden and the Democrats are doing bad things and their supporters are right wing: wrong, not descriptive, belongs in a tankie removed hole.
K
That’s… not an accurate characterization.
I would have voted for Sanders in a heartbeat. And a lot of other (Americans) on my instance would too. The disdain is more targeted and nuanced than that. A whole lot of us on sh.it just.works have a reasonably solid understanding of the difference between communism and authoritarian communism, and are also often geopolitical nerds to one degree or another. This often leads to us doing our best to combat what we see as bullremoved disinformation and misrepresentation when and where we see it.
The vitriol we have towards tankies is specifically a result of:
- our dislike of the glorification of historical authoritarian leaders (Stalin; Mao)
- the intentional blurring of the line between communism (which, bluntly, many of us don’t actually have a problem with) and authoritarian communism
- the jingoistic support of modern authoritarian states that either call themselves “communist” despite not really being anything of the sort (China), or who have a historical lineage that runs through an (again, authoritarian) communist state (Russia)
When looked at that way, it’s a lot closer to modern Iron Front ideology (anti-monarchy; anti-fascist; anti-authoritarian communist).
That’s… what? What?! WHAT!?
To anyone else reading, note the @lemmy.ml after their name. There are only so many times people of intelligence can hear the most batremoved insane things on Lemmy without either willfully losing IQ points or else blocking the lemmy.ml instance.
Unfortunately, that does next to nothing, bc you’ll still see every single batremoved insane comment like the above. Every. Single. One. And while it might be a bug, you can sometimes get replies from them too (while other times blissfully not).
Maybe I’ll make an account on Lemmy.cafe, which is the only instance I’ve ever heard of that has actually defederated from lemmy.ml. Though I’m holding out more hope for Sublinks, Piefed, and Mbin too to help address such issues.
Stay safe folks - election season is coming and there are some who want to removed you up if at all possible (not necessarily the above comment, just in general), don’t let it happen!
So… blocking an instance as a user just hides the instances communities, if I’m remembering the implementation details right. It doesn’t block interaction with the instances users. Stupidly misleading.
You’ll still need to block the users one by one.
Sadly, I had quite the list going, but upon blocking the instance, decided to clean up all the individual ones from that instance. Oops. Surely a “block” would imply some sort of… I dunno, “blocking” action, one might expect?
Also, at least on 0.19.3, I would not receive notifications from people on those instances. But now on 0.19.5, I do. So… there’s that fun little tidbit of knowledge: what little blocking there used to be, has become less so over time.
Oh well, at least this way I get to read the most batremoved insane replies to things and laugh at them. Once someone is aware, it’s not really shocking, compared to a new user who would have no clue - e.g. they could be conversing with an actual PhD scientist on mander.xyz one moment and then somehow jump all the way to “no awkshually you should drink bleach, and follow up by drinking sunshine, bc (this one time at band camp?) I heard that kills the Rona”. Which sounds enormously exaggerated I know, but just remember: there are people out there eating raw meat and drinking unpasteurized milk without a care in the world, even in the face of the avian flu situation that seems to have made its way into just about every animal on earth including extremely remote polar bears and such.
Disinformation, unlike misinformation that is more often simply a mistake, is often designed to be outright deadly, to the unprepared (though less for the sake of the actual deaths, and more for how they would then catapult the issue into the media to receive feed-forward attention).
If you’re planning on leaving I won’t miss you passive aggressively using only neutral pronouns for me or calling me insane.
deleted by creator
I wouldn’t want anyone going down an extremist pipeline on either side of the political spectrum.
This isn’t a binary thing, there’s plenty of centrist extremists and echo chambers for them
centrism isn’t extremism
You can totally have centrist extremists
Are you using “extremism” to mean “far from the status quo,” or “has absolute belief and violent justification for said belief?” Centrists can absolutely be the latter.
i think more the first
The others here are using it the second way, which I agree with. Centrism meaning the “status quo” can be violently and toxically upheld.
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror — that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
Taken from https://redsails.org/the-two-terrors/
You can aleady block instances if you personally wish, is my point. Everyone knows about Lemmy.ml having Marxists. My point is that rather than trying to move communities and keep them consolidated, embrace the differences between instances and be okay with Lemmy.world and Lemmy.ml both having Linux communities, as an example.
I don’t share your fear of Marxism and Marxists, which is why I tend to avoid Lemmy.world communities.
You can block the instance, which blocks those communities, but that doesn’t block those users on them to be fair. That has to be done individually.
Personally I am comfortable ignoring individuals (and not painting everyone on an instance with the same brush) and would prefer metas/groups/whatever you’d like to refer to them as for my subscriptions, so I’m definitely not the target user of this post.
But just being clear, a user blocking an instance doesn’t block the users from that instance, so if that’s their goal, no, that’s not enough.
Defederation has it’s own uses, yes, but that also ironically makes it more difficult to avoid trolls. When you defederate from an instance for X reason, only the more irrational users are going to create alts to attack. Defederation is often over-used.
Not advocating for defederation, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance isn’t going to achieve their goal.
Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.
This would avoid the exact scenario you mention because it would come down to the user level, so that troll would have to put in quite a bit more effort to get around that. Unfortunately, that’s not currently an option, along with some other features I’d love to see on Lemmy.
Again, I’m just pointing out that blocking an instance does not achieve their goal.
Obviously defederation is too large scale. Ideally, there would be an option for people to block users from the instance when blocking an instance, or something like that.
I agree with this most out of what you said. This gives users the most power to curate what they see, and lessens the likelyhood of troll accounts.
different people have different needs, for example an estonian instance would have a larger need to defederate with .ml than .world would, because of the years of soviet occupation.
Sure, my point is about community replication. Defederation has its own uses, my point is that community consolidation serves very few people.
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 removed 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!newtolemmy@lemmy.ca (yes, that link is messed up, but I left it that way b/c this is how the webUI chose to expand it out - Lemmy is not polished, and is in fact broken in so many ways!), but have you ever heard of that community prior to my mentioning it here? Also nobody has posted to it in the last ten months except 3 posts from Blaze and I. We’ve asked instance admins to add this community - or some other one like it - to the sidebar of their instances but… crickets. (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.
(1) shoutout to the community at !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca 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:
- linux@lemmy.ml has 2.23k AMUs
- linux@lemmy.world has 1.39k AMUs
- after that it drops precipitously, e.g. linux@sh.itjust.works has just 36 AMUs
Still, linux@lemmy.world is not nothing, with 39% of these users - a lower-bound estimate since many people are likely subscribed to both.
(3) And Linux@lemmy.ml 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.
