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.
If more people would just block that instance and it’s childish admins/mods, this wouldn’t be a problem. If people think it’s exaggerating to call out the clowns at .ml, I’d definitely urge you to look into the posts/comments the remove and their reasoning.
Most are violations of Rule 1 where there is clearly no violation.
Others are removed simply for being “liberal” or “blue MAGA” which neither are violations of any rule, and the latter is just a childish nonsensical insult. Which IS against the rules.
Having said this- it’s their instance and their community to do with as they please. If the freedom to disagree violates their emotional safe-space and hurts their feelings- then they don’t deserve your traffic and interaction. They have no intention to help grow lemmy, because it’s easy to see by their example that choir preaching only appeals to the choir.
Just block them and forget they exist.
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…
Bingo.
I honestly thought it was more along the lines of they read a comment/post from another community that they didn’t like, more than likely checked their history and then decided to ban them.
Ah reminds me of good ol’ reddit
Oh, boy. Back to the old Reddit patterns. How long before they start using bots to preemptively ban anyone who has ever posted on certain communities regardless of context as a time saving measure, because that was a thing on Reddit as well?
Any idea which subs are banning like that already?
I am surprised that my comments on that post weren’t removed.
It is pretty horrifying that there are people in positions of moderating what thoughts are allowed to propagate who deny or cover up the events that took place in Tienanmen Square.
What did you say and what was the removal reason?
I said they **weren’t **removed. I think I was just commenting that China has covered up that it happened.
Oh thanks. Sometimes ml posts end up on my world feed but the comments look normal and have many world users.
When I read about people getting banned from ml for posting what they post on world I wonder if the ml mods ban world users in those posts at random or I am missing something.
Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go before you become wrong and bad (forgetting that there are folks to their right on the political spectrum who think they are.
The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.
I mean shit I’m just trying to talk leftist ideals that haven’t been twisted into neoliberal business-school-bullshit talking points. I care bout the same shit yall do, i just don’t think the DNC is going to help us get there. That prospect does not make me happy, believe me.
Libs? If you are burning with desire to debate politics? I am begging… begging you to understand that the education in school and the news yesterday on the tv Aren’t. Acumen.(why would they be more credible than the commercials in between them?), and do not fear but embrace the idea/possibility that there’s an iota of a chance you might not actually be right.
Does this notion mean i am? No. But if you don’t think you might be wrong then you’ll likely never find out you are.
Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go
Without trying to be combative, but that sounds like one of those tidbits which one side believes about the other, circulated only to divide. At least I don’t have the impression that it is a view with any footing amongst liberal-minded people.
Most liberals want to move further left, ideas like free college and public education, public transport, less corporate power and splitting up large corporations, even unconditional basic income, etc. are popular with the majority. Just violent revolution and authoritarianism won’t roll, after all, liberal means “live and let live.”
As a mixed-ideology lefty (maybe I fit within your definition of liberal), I’m not worried about tankies being too far left, not at all, rather, I am tempted to think of them as confused right wingers believing themselves to be “the left.”
Yeah that’s horseshoe theory my man! There is a left further than liberal! It’s not like liberal is the end of the pol spec right? It’s hard to get my tone right here but the idea itself that tankies are right wing is itself one of those things I’ve side believes about the other.
Also, i don’t hate liberals, i like em! I was one even. My family’s lib. I want to help libs move left of course, like you guys wanna make me see the light. The ones who tell me my politics like they know better are the only ones who annoy me and an example of the type of commenter i tried to leave behind.
Except tankies are authoritarians, and some even support the CCP, who are basically a dictatorship. How is this left wing again?
I am not going to say that tankies are right wing like this guy you’re replying to. What they are is confused people who tried to join the left for the wrong reasons and ended up becoming authoritarians because of it. That or you fell into a cult-like group that spreads misinformation.
Also Tankies saying they like liberals is a new one to me. Normally they like complaining about liberals. I’ve been called a liberal for some of the most asinine shit imaginable, basically just because I don’t immediately agree with them.
The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.
Uh…tankies and leftists are not the same thing (though the liberals on Political Memes don’t seem to understand the difference). Tankies are authoritarian-apologists. It was coined by British communists who wanted to differentiate themselves from pro-Soviet communists (specifically, communists who were defending the Soviets sending tanks into Hungary). In the modern sense, it’s used to describe communists who defend authoritarian socialist or communist states. If you don’t feel compelled to justify Stalinism, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the Uyghur genocide, you’re probably not a tankie.
weeeeellllll some of those things i am compelled to defend. Mostly in the sense that two of those are terribly misrepresented. I dont count tiennamen square with those other two, but i haven’t read anything on it. So i guess i am a tankie! Anyway I’m not here to change minds so let’s leave it there
I mean, fair enough, but I’ve never heard anyone use tankie as…well, not a pejorative. Like, I’ve never heard a liberal call themselves a, “libtard.”
Yeah you’re probably right that it started out as a prejorative. I’ve personally embraced the term cuz fuck it if I’m gonna get called names for expressing my opinion i may as well own that shit
If they are going to call me a horse fucker, well, I guess I better own it.
Now you get it!
Whatever you say, horse fucker.
a tankie like me
I’m not sure you understand exactly what a tankie is. I mean, do you really think it’s all right to sacrifice (I.E. straight up murder) people to the ideals of communism and socialism?
Being ultra liberal is fine IMO, even having the attitude that we might have to have use violence to overthrow of our government in order to get liberal ideals to be a part of our system is somewhat okay. But to think that our government, should it become communist, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist society is just straight up wrong and as far as I know that’s what a tankie is, someone who thinks that Tiananmen Square and Stalin’s reign of terror was just a necessary evil in order to strengthen the communist societal norm.
But to think that our government, should it become
communistliberal, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain asocialist or communistliberal or capitalist societySeems to me the real objection should not be the ideology but the existence of any system that must murder the people it governs in order to continue to govern.
But to think that our government, should it become communist, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist society is just straight up wrong and as far as I know that’s what a tankie is, someone who thinks that Tiananmen Square and Stalin’s reign of terror was just a necessary evil in order to strengthen the communist societal norm.
All governments kill people. That’s what governments do, specifically militaries do. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for a socialist or communist nation to defend itself. What’s wrong is countries killing peaceful protesters for no other reason than vocally disagreeing with them. That’s what makes Tiananmen Square and Stalin wrong, not just that they killed people.
Well, I stand corrected. You are, indeed, a tankie.
In that case, get fucked. Governments murdering its citizens, or anyone for that matter, for any reason whatsoever is not okay.
I wasn’t the one calling myself a tankie, learn to read usernames. I am not a marxist so can’t be one anyway. Are you a pacifist or something? Because it sounds like you oppose all militarism.
That’s not what’s happening here. Not all marxists are okay with covering up Tiananmen Square or supporting the CCP. I used to be part of a Trotskyist org and they wouldn’t be caught dead supporting either Stalin or the CCP. Anarchists certainly aren’t okay with it, and they are further left than you are. Stop pretending all your enemies are liberals.
Liberals aren’t my enemies though? I’m not pretending anything. Liberals are very high representation in lotsa comms and they are who i’m talking to seeing how this is a thread with a liberal complaining about me. Capice? Let’s not fight, let’s just chill today
Bro your the one supporting genocide denial, that’s the reason people are fighting you. Stop doing things like that and maybe “the liberals” and everyone else will leave you alone. In fact no one actually mentioned liberals until you did. You are the problem here.
Bro your the one supporting genocide denia-
No.
So you acknowledge the Uighur cultural genocide then? Also you weren’t denying the Tiananmen square massacre earlier? Why are you in this comment section if you don’t deny these things? It’s specifically complaining about Tankies who deny both those atrocities committed by the CCP.
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Lemmy should tell you the text of what was deleted and the mod who deleted it, cause there was nothing uncivil about what I said.
I don’t know what to tell ya, I don’t find the word that rhymes with “hanky” offensive at all, especially when it’s applied to someone who seems to fit the bill. I think the main difference between MLs and liberals is that liberals are well aware their governments are flawed and are willing and able to criticize them and protest against bad policies, whereas the MLs are dedicated to the idea that it’s wrong to criticize non-Western governments, because “left unity”, “critical support” etc. This, despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that most of the governments they defend are totalitarian states where government criticism lands you in jail, in a re-education camp, or falling out of a window. This quote sums it up nicely:
Authoritarians, having argued so doggedly for the domination of a paternalistic state and having therefore turned themselves into ideological infants, then develop a hyper-reductive view of geopolitics; precisely the one, in fact, that a state would like for them to have. “Socialism” becomes pathologically confused with “opposing capitalist nations” or more appropriately, “opposing all states aligned with the United States.” They attempt to simplify the struggles of the entire planet down into two camps, the “bad guy imperialist states” and the “good guy anti-imperialist states.” In doing so, worker emancipation is simplified into a single question: “do you support the imperialists or the anti-imperialists?” Woe be to those who do not submit to their reductive understanding. The statists who advocate this position are completely incapable of even understanding what an “anti-imperialist” entity might look like. They, in fact, simply support one imperialist bloc over the other in a battle of two power-hoarders.
tankies are not “left”. they’re basically fascists with a leftist paint job. they use some left-related words to propagate right-wing views.
yeah, which is why i didn’t say communists. I said tankies.
No tankies are authotarian left to be exact the term tankie is refering to those who believe in authotarian socialism (communism) they advocate for authotarian left wing policy’s . And conservative views such as family values rule of law property rights populism (caring about the wants and needs of the every day man) aren’t fascist opinions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism?wprov=sfla1
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/populism
Noun British
a political strategy based on a calculated appeal to the interests or prejudices of ordinary people
first of all i didn’t talk about conservatism so that part is irrelevant… second of all, it doesn’t matter what anyone calls it, but “authoritarian socialism/communism” is an oxymoron; which is fitting because tankie ideology is nonsensical just like fascism.
when it comes down to it, the left wing is against social hierarchy and right wing is for it. “authoritarian left” doesn’t make sense; it’s just a way to refer to nonsense like tankie ideology… right wing ideology wrapped in leftist language.
Left wing doesnt mean good. It just means left wing. Mao and Stalin were left wing.
Right wing doesnt mean bad. It just means right wing. Your average blue collar worker is right wing.
Sorry, I can’t stand tankies, but tankies are still a lot more rational than the average US conservative these days. Conservative opinions should be censored and don’t need a voice on this platform. “Everyone should have a voice, no matter how destructive and irrational” is its own extreme opinion.
And thus the inherent dichotomy of a decentralised social network is revealed: social networks require the network effect for good senses of communities which means one instance will end up hosting most of the bigger communities, therefore true decentralisation can’t occur on Lemmy but it’s a step in the right direction.
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.
How about something like elections? A community could vote to change its “base instance” to another instance. Example, ask lemmy community vote to change from .ml to .world. It’s possible to do this by just not posting in the “old community”, so maybe community cloning and community hopping could be the solution.
This just wouldn’t work.
Most mods wouldn’t willingly hold an election that potentially saw their fief moved away from their control.
Also most communities just aren’t that organised. Like if today everyone decided to move, tomorrow everyone would still visit and participate in the old community.
The “election” is perpetual. People will vote with their participation.
The “election” is perpetual. People will vote with their participation.
As it should always be.
Over the past year on Lemmy I have witnessed a constant fight between people on hexbear, lemmygrad, and ml and people on communuties like tankiejerk, meanwhileongrad, and the like.
Both appear to constantly brigade and overmoderate their respective areas of control. Since my instance: sh.itjustworks, is some combination of defederated to hexbear and lemmygrad, I mostly just see threads like these complaining about tankies. I only assume the effort is being matched by those instances I don’t see to warrant this problem being so persistent.
So to me there’s so much active bad faith behavior between the camps I assume they all just have a paranoid view of the fediverse and are mostly just perpetuating a cycle of bad faith. Maybe that relationship is terminal if just people can’t handle each other.
One side argues “maybe we should be authoritarian buttholes and quietly silence dissent on our website of 10,000” and the other side replies “don’t be an authoritarian butthole or we’ll make fun of you in our community of 200.” I’m not impartial in this, but historical revisionism and whataboutism serving the cause of spreading propaganda is generally not the right direction. Looking at the result of both actions is a decent method for determining what you’d like to support or stifle.
Will the actions of the .ml admins, course unaltered, produce an environment that you’re willing to post and interact with? For me, the answer is a big no.
The fundamental source of conflict is that developers of Lemmy, who are also admins of .ml, describe themselves as marxist-leninist. Their very allowed existence is a conundrum for some, regardless of what they do.
So there is absolutely interest in the elimination of instances like .ml from the Fediverse, especially as things like Meta’s Threads moves in to centralize communities and standardize discussioms so everything can start aligning with thr valuation of their investment.
You’ve misread the situation entirely. The most active community admin on our instance has described themselves as being staunchly pro-communism and it hasn’t evolved into a slap fight because they’ve been gently pursuing the goal of proliferating their views. Kind person, no clue how they tolerate the internet.
On the other hand, I’ve been hearing the same complaints about the Lemmy devs for like 4 years, long before META came around and before I had even tried lemmy. In this case, I firmly believe people simply dislike clandestine political chicanery and its intended goal.
So you say uou’ve heard complaints about Lemmy devs, who run the instance in question here, for four years.
That is a direct illustration of what I mean: from the start of Lemmy there’s been complaints of the devs.
As the Fediverse becomes bigger, this type of stuff isn’t going to be wanted by any entity especially not ones owned by Meta.
If you have any evidence of meta going after lemmy, I’d be keen on seeing it. Conspiracies really don’t appeal to me but I chug sauce like an Italian sex worker.
Your conspiracy theory accusing Meta of being responsible for lemmy.world users wanting to defederate from lemmy.ml is ridiculous. Nobody forced lemmy.ml moderators to block people who criticize China, Russia, or Marxism-Leninism from all of their communities.
These lemmy.ml moderators made these bad choices all by themselves without Meta’s help, and lemmy.world has the right to exclude those communities through defederation so that no lemmy.world user has to worry about whether their comment to a front page post goes against a lemmy.ml moderator’s political ideology.
I was more responding to the person from threads with that line. But I was more identifying a convenient alignment than a conspiracy to act.
I mean there are Lemmy communities with discord servers dedicated to brigading tankies and falsifying interactions on places like .ml. One of those communities is on my instance and comes up on my feed constantly. But I will admit that I have not seen that effort from Threads.
But nonetheless, since it is a fair assumption any thread with the word ‘tankie’ in it is going to go off the rails: I am not suggesting .ml admins and their mods aren’t overblowing their interactions or bringing a lot of this onto themselves. They’re just as mired in bad faith as the next poorly run community or instance. I am just saying I am not surprised by it.
Who’s from threads?
:|
I don’t think they were trying to propagate a conspiracy, just provide an example of a possible outcome with respect to, “mainstream social media”
The old cowardly “rule 1” violation. Why not just filter their garbage from your feed and be done with it?
Perhaps I don’t really understand - looking at the world news community on lemmy.ml rule 1 seems to be about only posting links to news articles. None of the things on the mod log screenshot look like news articles. Isn’t this the mods doing their jobs correctly?
The OP’s situation seems completely different to this and it’s definitely a problem - what am I missing about the rule 1 stuff though?
Rule 1 probably refers to lemmy.ml site-wide rule 1, not the community rules.
It’s not the community mods abusing their power, it’s the admins of .ml. Their rule #1 is ‘no bigotry’, which sounds nice but gets interpreted in very… creative ways.
Thanks!
I missed the site wide rules.
Yeah, that sort of rule requires a lot of faith in the moderators. Seems like they’re probably violating it themselves with their moderation.
“Rule 1” is a vague rule that allows them to delete anything they want. It’s a well-known thing they do there. They don’t even deny it.
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 this is likely just an automated script to ensure all your comments are removed from lemmy.ml before being sitebanned, as sitebanning doesn’t remove all content.
made a community rn !de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Amazing.
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