this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/fediverse
 

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy's massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It's been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let's say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they're what's colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn't be much of an issue if they didn't regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, ...

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to "https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs" (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren't widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the "Be nice and civil" rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn't you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: "So what, it's the fediverse, you can use another instance."

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they're not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it's rather pointless sitting for example in /c/[email protected] where there's nobody to discuss anything with.

I'm not sure if there's a solution here, but I'd like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

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[–] [email protected] 263 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (13 children)

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.

Did that months ago; defederated completely when they turned into Lemmygrad-lite. At first I missed some more active FOSS communities, but since then, others on different instances have become more active. programming.dev has a lot of communities that overlap with some of the bigger FOSS ones on .ml so maybe check out what they've got.

If there's a community that only exists there, be the change you want to see: create it somewhere else, nurture it, and give it time to grow. You're not the only one making this complaint about .ml, and you probably won't be the last.

Related: I genuinely feel that ml being the official or at least de-facto flagship instance is turning people away.

Edit: Oh yeah. Didn't recognize your username at first, but I was looking at the modlog the other day from my LW account, and saw a bunch of individual community bans from Dessalines and wondered what was up. Figured it was something exactly like this, and it was. Thanks for sharing.

[–] [email protected] 95 points 5 months ago (8 children)

If there’s a community that only exists there, be the change you want to see: create it somewhere else and give it time to grow. You’re not the only one making this complaint about .ml, and you probably wont’ be the last.

Maybe we should open a thread on [email protected] about this

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[–] PugJesus 50 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Related: I genuinely feel that ml being the official or at least de-facto flagship instance is turning people away.

I had actually considered Lemmy before The Great Reddit Exodus. Lemmy.ml turned me off from that.

Now we have Kbin (you can make it, my love!) and Lemmy.world, and I feel much better.

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[–] [email protected] 177 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Rule 1: Crushing people with tanks is fine so long as it's our side doing it.

Literal fucking tankies. I wonder if they will ever come to their senses. Oh well, it's not as if there aren't Nazi instances somewhere on fedi as well.

[–] [email protected] 59 points 5 months ago (9 children)

A hexbear in that thread is literally claiming that "the soldiers did everything they could to avoid hurting him" when there's a photo of him lying dead on the street after the tanks have gone through. They don't think it's fine, they're saying it didn't happen (curious)

[–] dual_sport_dork 68 points 5 months ago

Was it actually him? I was under the impression that history did not relate what happened to him afterwards, nor who he was. That's not to say the CCP did not murder a couple of thousand people during the crackdown regardless, because they did, but I have never seen a verifiable claim that a picture of any particular corpse actually was the Tank Man. There are numerous theories I've seen floated over the years alleging what may have happened to him afterwards ranging from him being caught and imprisoned, executed, living anonymously in China, or fleeing to Taiwan. All of them are unverified and, of course, mutually exclusive.

The tank operators absolutely did attempt to (and succeeded at) avoid running him over. That much is plainly visible in the video. Whatever happened after the video ended is undocumented and pure conjecture. Plenty of well documented atrocities actually were committed that day, before and after that moment, so there's not much sense in inventing new ones and bickering over details we haven't actually got.

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[–] [email protected] 154 points 5 months ago (27 children)

I've defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

[–] [email protected] 67 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

I can't see those, specifically, but a similar pattern of mass community bans after even remotely criticizing an authoritarian regime is completely on brand for Dessalines.

I don't have record of the comment that triggered these, but when it's something like civility, it's usually just a comment removal and maybe a single community ban.

More of Dessalines getting his stanky tankie tightie-whities in a bunch

Dessalines bans people

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[–] Eldritch 53 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (8 children)

Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.

1000001794

It's troubling behavior for anyone with power.

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[–] [email protected] 125 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

People are naive if they think the .ml admins and devs don't intend to keep their thumb on the Lemmy scale. More instances need to take this threat seriously and defederate from .ml, and possibly even fork the Lemmy repos for when the devs inevitably decide they want to start building quiet exploits into the code. There are serious cyber security implications here that people are sleeping on

[–] Skepticpunk 63 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Yep. Something needs to change if we want Lemmy to be something besides a place for Soviet simps to hide from criticism. Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

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[–] wahming 116 points 5 months ago (53 children)

I've been banned from .ml for being a 'racist' for being anti-Xi, despite the fact that I am Chinese, and pointed out my ethnicity as such in the discussion. I guess antisemitic Jews aren't the only weird accusation getting thrown about nowadays.

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[–] EleventhHour 100 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (19 children)

As others have said, the only option available currently is to leave the instance and re-create your beloved communities elsewhere. The Lemmy.ml Admins also happen to be the ones actively developing the Lemmy code base, and they’re not gonna change because they feel entitled to do whatever they want, and technically, they can because they run the instance.

My best advice is to move on from the instance.

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[–] Darkpepito_tux 97 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

As a marxist, I'm myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism. And I don't even understand how people can stay with "Stalin was not so bad", knowing that he never planned to apply the last state of the Communist theory, and even if it did, massacre are not acceptable (sounds obvious), same applying with China and their open market.
In my country (France), Stalinism isn't a thing, all communists are against what happend in USSR, and most are anti-china.

[–] finder585 51 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

I’m myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism.

It's because tankies are just contrarians that use communist ideology as a vehicle to be anti-west / anti-United States (anti-liberal democracy). Tankies will defend any cause or ideology that is against 'the west' even if that means happily ignoring the blatant homophobic, genocidal and repressive authoritarianism.

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[–] nutsack 88 points 5 months ago (1 children)

as a communism sympathizing leftist, i hated these mods on reddit and i hate them here. the behavior is idiotic

[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago (11 children)

That's the most frustrating part. These "leftists" are the stupid kind who seem to care more about relitigating idiotic cold war drama than evolving or pushing forward leftist philosophy. It's straight up brain rot, mixed with obvious right wing agitprop disguised as leftist ideology. That fact that anyone other than trolls, spies and teenagers would engage with it is astounding.

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 5 months ago (2 children)

The mods of the non-political subs need to move elsewhere, eventually after that the content will just be tankie bullshit and everyone can just defederate them.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 5 months ago

Thanks for shedding light on this! I will do my part and no longer post in communities tied to lemmy.ml!

[–] [email protected] 75 points 5 months ago

I think all instances need to defederate. This is totally inexcusable. We shouldn't be attached and well connected to a CCP-controlled (influenced or directly) community. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

It's not a problem to have dissenting opinions to widely held beliefs, but it is a problem to have those injected constantly into our streams while all opposition is silently erased and curated to artifically support state-sponsored CCP propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Sad to see. Feels like Lemmy has no bright future with people in charge of it thinking russia's and China's government is good and ban difference of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 5 months ago (7 children)

Thanks for spreading the word. We get these complaints every few weeks. More people need to be educated and move away from these instances to make the Threadiverse a better place.

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[–] [email protected] 70 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Lemmy.ml is a cancer on the Fediverse. If we want it to survive, we need to cut it off.

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[–] Anticorp 67 points 5 months ago (11 children)

Not only do they delete truthful responses that contradict their ideology, they often do it in such a way that it is untraceable by other mods. I'm not sure how they accomplish that, nor is the admin who messaged me letting me know that it was happening and he couldn't figure out how. Anyways, my solution has been to completely block that instance, and delete my account there. If they want to exist in a little untruthful echo chamber, then so be it, but I don't need to be a part of it. I recommend you do the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I'm not sure how they accomplish that

If they have database access, which they would have being the admins, they can do anything.

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[–] 33550336 64 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Tankies warming up to call you and Lemmy.World fascists in 3, 2, 1...

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[–] Kyle_The_G 64 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I've had this happen to me, I was chatting in a thread with some guy about IP theft and plagiarism at universities- a legitimate discussion about a current topic- and all my comments were suddenly deleted for "xenophobia". I let it go but its still really jarring and annoying.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 5 months ago (13 children)

Whenever this topic comes up, I find myself wondering what these folks do all day. Not in a Boomer "don't these people have jobs?!?" way, but more ... what is it like to be them? Do they just sit in front of the computer looking for conversations to disrupt? What is their daily existence? Because I find their volume and dedication to what they do fascinating. Cancerous and absurd, but also fascinating.

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm all for defederating from tankie instances. They suck.

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[–] cygon 59 points 5 months ago (9 children)

Thanks for bringing this up, it's really needed.

Your example is just one of many I've seen. The entire instance seems to be engaged in an opinion shaping campaign where only this gross mix of Western doomerism with Russia/China-glorifying fascism is allowed to thrive.

I don't know how to best deal with such indoctrination chambers. Their members become completely divorced from reality and there's no way to pull them back from the brink because anything you could say to that effect gets moderator-deleted. Yet vice versa, they can freely spread their propaganda and engage in "raids" on other instances.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 5 months ago

Its about time people bring up the .ml tankie problem. Lemmygrad was defederated but .ml was ignored due to basically being their PR instance. This is the main reason I have stuck to kbin social despite it having a lot of spam and errors and why I am now on Mbin.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 5 months ago (13 children)

Unfortunately, lemmy.ml is run by lemmy's actual developers and will likely remain one of the most popular instances. Best thing to do is block the instance and host new communities on other instances.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Decentralization is good for everyone.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 5 months ago

Everyone should defederate from .ml, and most have already got rid of hexbear and lemmygrad.

It's an absolute shit show of an instance, and the rest of us don't want to be subject to their nonsense.

I just wish the instance block prevented me from seeing their users as well.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago (6 children)

The thing is, the Fediverse, link the original concept of the Internet is flexible and can survive losing nodes - it just routes around and issue. If there are problems it can mutate and survive.

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.

This is the best solution - the answers are in our hands. Communities only thrive because the users are.posting and interacting on it. If the Mod goes inactive or an instances goes down, we can switch to a new community. That then gains the momentum and goes on to thrive. It's survival of the fittest and why having more than one community on a topic (especially big topics) is a feature not a bug because it gives the network flexibility and resilience.

So if there's an issue with lemmy.ml, boycott it - unsubscribe, give the other communities on more agreeable instances your time and they will grow and prosper. If there isn't a relevant alternative start one.

Lemmy prevails.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago

I moved from .ml because of this. Haven't had a ban since and can still interact with .ml communities

[–] splonglo 54 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I would have become a socialist way sooner if Tankies weren't so prominent. 'USSR good' is not a great selling point.

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[–] btaf45 53 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Thanks for calling this out. I will stop posting content to lemmy.ml. What is the next best alternative to lemmy.world? I have nothing against lemmy.world, but would like to spread out content to different sites.

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[–] Katana314 52 points 5 months ago (11 children)

I am one of the removed comments and just found out about it here. Does the Lemmy standard really not send direct messages to users when one of their messages was removed? If it was an actual Rule 1 violation (which of course, it wasn't) I'd like to know.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago (3 children)

You just made me realize that I have been banned from some of the communities over there while never having posted on them, mods are reading conversations in other communities and preemptively banning people...

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 5 months ago (10 children)

this is why you fediblock lemmy ml and h*xbear

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[–] Aux 46 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Tankies are modding many communities here as well. The solution is to fight them tooth and nail.

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[–] elliot_crane 45 points 5 months ago (13 children)

As you say OP, the solution here is to use the fediverse model as intended and use different instances/communities. It sucks because it fragments the community, but that’s the way it is. I’ve long held the opinion that I’m grateful to the lemmy developers for building this whole thing that we all get to enjoy, but their approach to administering an instance is reprehensible and actively damaging to the relatively free and open exchange of ideas that should happen on the fediverse.

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