this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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Anarchism

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Are you an Anarchist? The answer might surprise you!

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apparently r/anarchism has been in lockdown for quite some time now and they link to their own reddit alternative called raddle.me, which is not fediverse integrated, sadly. they also have a long list of alternatives, but lemmy isn't one of them

That seems to be the case because lemmy's main dev is a ml. (edit: meaning 'marxist leninist, apologies for not being clear on that)

It's somewhat sad for me because the whole philosophy of the fediverse is anarchistic in its core, it is how it should be, it is how the internet should work. So I wondered - what are the biggest anarchistic communities in the fediverse so far?

edit: here some context I found on raddle: 1 2 3

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[–] [email protected] 59 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It's ridiculous how many people completely dismiss something/someone just because of one thing. True, the main Lemmy devs seem to have some very questionable views on some topics. But they also quite obviously care a lot about privacy, free and open platforms, decentralization of power, I've not found any evidence of them censoring or even shittalking any opposing views, and their goal is to have a world where everyone is well taken care of and there's no corporate greed ruining communities.

It's just irrational blind hate because of political disagreement. Politics is the mind-killer.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think it is worth pointing out that this entire rivaly (if you can call it that) between lemmy and raddle is wayyy older than the reddit migration. Back them these spaces consisted mostly of leftists and their differences seem much more insignificant now that so many "normies" join the plattform. And I guess this whole federation thing seemed a lot less compelling when there were only of handful active communities about a pretty limited set of topics

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah it goes way back to the early days of lemmy, and it should be said that the the main Lemmy developers have from the begining been very welcoming to anarchists, have encouraged and helped anarchists run instances, and generally been very diplomatic and comradely despite obvious ideological differences.

Contrast that with the raddle people who were hostile from the begging and I think still are even opposed to the idea of federation itself -- an irony many have pointed out, anarchists being against decentralization -- the take that 'federation is just a fad' could be said 5 years ago but definitely not now. I think the raddle people are just really attached to their platform postmill and the dev never intended to do federation.

A problem with the whole ML milieu, is you have more serious Marxist-leninists who have very nuanced views of marxism, and are critical of Stalin or Mao and the like, are willing to work with people who disagree with them, and then you have people who call themselves ML's who are really red fash i.e. think Putin is great -- some non-zero number of these people are probably russian or chinese bots, let's be real.

Before lemmygrad all the tankiest* tanks were on the main lemmy.ml and they were were just a bunch of meanies. It's like every day was Tianamen Square ( which is like Christmas in tankistan ) so if you were an anarchist they'd harass the fuck out of you, so this fed into the idea that the "friendly* attitude of the admin's was just a ploy to fuck with anarchists, like a "beware of bolsheviks bearing gifts" type situation and anarchist were being led into some kind of virtual kronstadt. But as time went on the platform grew and those little commissars were gulaged into lemmygrad and that became less of a problem.

And to be fair, anarchists have these kind of liabilities too, like eco extremists and ted k fanboys. And lo and behold they all have accounts on raddle.me

*and no i don't just call everyone a tankie, but if you just love Stalin and dedicate endless hours of your life "debunking" the holodomor, yes, you're a tankie lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

There's no reason to care about any of that, anyone can fork the code and self host. The dev could be neofascist, it would barely just mean that maybe you should audit the code or make sure somebody you trust already did.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They're redditors who choose to stay on the platform. Their opinion is invalid.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Anarchism until it's inconvenient

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

to be fair we all are like that to some extend. switching to lemmy is more convenient to us than to many others as we are more tech-savy. Similarly, anarchists who have a garden and the necessary know-how to cultivate their own plants might judge others for buying veggies from the supermarket. They'd have a point but it wouldn't be entirely fair

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It’s weird they have more hate for the ml devs of lemmy then the capitalist mega corp devs of Reddit. Also they could fork the software and make their own instance and reach way more people while having a much more anarchist software than the top down control raddle has

In terms of anarchist communities on the fediverse all i know of is this anarchism /c/ https://kolektiva.social and the https://merveilles.town mastodon instance

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

You can argue that classical liberalism is marginally more aligned with anarchist traditions than the idiotic form of autocratic ML vanguardism you see around here.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Given the horrendous history of /r/Anarchism's moderation and the fact that Raddle is a direct continuation of that garbage, I'd say it's both no surprise and no loss. Let them go honeypot and jackboot themselves into oblivion. The unfortunate thing, of course, is that they've controlled a forum with a very obvious name for half a decade, and can shepherd a lot of unknowing users into their cesspit with them. But there's probably not a lot that can be done about that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

can you give me some context of that history? I'd like to read more about it

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

In IDK like the 2015-2017 timeframe some really edgy people started taking over in /r/metanarchism (the private sub where moderation decisions are made for /r/Anarchism). They formed a clique—a cult, really—and managed to force out anyone else who weren't part of it, totally ignoring even the rules they'd setup themselves for how people were to be banned. Their notion was basically that you had to subscribe to and promote the most violent possible solutions to every situation, and if you didn't jump on board enthusiastically, you weren't a "real anarchist". It was basically the most dark aesthetics of anarchism without any of the actual philosophy.

There were whole drama wars about it, where the people they banned congregated in /r/LeftWithoutEdge, /r/AnarchismOnline, and other subs, and in response the edge cult setup /r/LeftWithSharpEdge, trolled those subs their victims fled to, and harassed people with things like bloody cannibalism fantasies about their victims. Those are the folks still moderating in /r/Anarchism, and they have at least a couple moderators in subs like /r/LateStageCapitalism as well.

One of the most prolific and obsessed trolls is the guy who setup Raddit. He was caught having whole conversation trees with himself in order to fake participation on the site and set its tone. A number of times he declared he was "stepping back" from moderating it and would just run the server...and then didn't.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah I was banned from the sub with 0 explanation whatsoever. The mods for that sub suck

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[–] totallynotarobot 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What's “a ml" in this context?

Is the dev really teeny and takes up only a cubic centimetre when liquified?

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Marxist-Leninist.

Kinda funny they reject Lemmy for that but didn't reject reddit for being a capitalist but okay. There are instances ran by anarchists too.

I just got your joke. wooosh

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are instances ran by anarchists too.

cool! which ones?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Slrpnk.net feel free to join us, but we are a strictly tankie free zone (lemmygrad and Hexbear are Blocked).

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ is another one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

awesome! thanks a lot. I think slrpnk hits the right notes for me :]

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I'll check out slrpnk too but I was thinking of dbzer0. I have a backup account there if something happens to this one, which is my original.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I love being on Slrpnk.net. When I was searching for an instance to join, I wanted one that wasn't too big and wasn't too small, and this has ended up being perfect

[–] totallynotarobot 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was genuinely asking too tho, thank you for the explanation!

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Seems like a classic case of not understanding how the technology works and just assuming that because the developers are disagreeable that means the product is somehow tainted with their ideology.

I agree, decentralized things are inherently anarchic and to throw that to the wayside just because the dev is a tankie is counterproductive.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do they think about kbin ? It is part of fediverse, but not developed by ML.

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[–] neonfire 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

wouldn't the best take to be to just use the tankie's labor for the betterment of all mankind? Fuck who makes the shit if it's FOSS.

Personally I think the decentralized solution is some sort of fake-central website that many people can host part of, no one having full control of any one community. kind of like bittorrent in that you have the one torrent file, but the source of the content is pulled from many locations. You could definitely have redunancy in case one server goes down at any time, but not as much as BT where every seeder needs the whole source. spread it all out. take 100 servers connected to the project, split the content into sections, and then layer the redundancy all over so no two servers have the same cache but also that nothing is only on a single server.

I wish I was smart enough to code or even explain this idea better. :( at the very least I hope I inspire someone.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

sounds interesting, but I can't quite follow haha I think the way the fediverse works now is a good balance between individual freedom and feasibility in terms of moderation/hosting

[–] elbarto777 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hm. I don't know. If a serial kitten torturer amd killer made Foss software, I'd stay the fuck away.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't quite agree. Likewise there would be no point in torning down the infrastructure developed by fascists/colonizers - it would make a lot more sense to repurpose it for the general good.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The developer of Reiser.fs, Hans Reiser killed his wife and currently is imprisoned as a convicted murderer

The maintainer and developer of core-js served a 19-month prison sentence for killing two people in a traffic accident.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Probably not fair to mention the core-js developer in the same context as Reiser. The way he explains it, he wasn't at fault in that accident, and the Russian legal system is just messed up. His account here: https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/blob/master/docs/2023-02-14-so-whats-next.md#accident

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[–] atoll 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Marxist Leninist, but I think the correct term would be tankie.

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

ohhhhhhhhhhhh i wondered why there were a lot of .ml domains for lemmy

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

afaik Mali domains have been free to get for some time, but the letters make it very convenient for a marxist-leninist server

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Marxist Leninist.

[–] elbarto777 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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