There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem

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 “archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://…/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:

https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/6886b092-43d3-408b-ab57-2fa686f8a6c7.png

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:

https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/9c52e470-645f-46ba-ac1d-0b7d8be17af3.png

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.

Socsa , (edited )

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 ,

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.

lltnskyc ,

Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

Except when it suits your agenda, in that case it’s not only tolerated, but actually encouraged! :)

Skepticpunk ,

I’m so bored of that line. At least come up with something different.

lltnskyc ,

You’re bored of people pointing out your hypocrisy?
But it’s not surprising, you’re not supposed to be entertained by it, you’re supposed to think about it…

Skepticpunk ,

What is there to think about? I complain about people who support Soviet-style dictatorships having full control over online platforms moderating exactly as one would expect, and I get told by Random Guy On The Internet ,452 that I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something. All this to “suit my agenda”, which in this case is wanting to be able to say that authoritarians are bad.

God forbid I find arguments like that incoherent and unworthy of taking seriously.

lltnskyc ,

I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something

No, you’re a hypocrite because you see “them” censoring “you” and you scream “censure, you can’t do that!!”, but when it’s “your” side is censuring “them”, then you have no complaints, because obviously “your” censure is good, and their is “bad”.

Or maybe I’m wrong and you’re against censure in general? :)

sudneo ,

I complain about people who support Soviet-style dictatorships having full control over online platforms moderating exactly as one would expect

I will ask in good faith: given that those people started the whole project to have that space, but built it using federated technologies which allow others to run their places, what is exactly the basis for your complaint? As absurd as they might be, instances can decide their own moderation policies, whether you or I agree with them or not. Given the fundamentally distributed nature of this platform, there is no such thing as “having full control”, and instead we can choose instances based on our preferences, so we are free to not subject ourselves to those policies, they are free to do, and both a free to use the platform in the way we use. The code is open, there are plenty of other instances. What exactly is the complaint here?

rah ,

if we want Lemmy to be something besides a place for Soviet simps to hide from criticism

There is definitely a place for Soviet simps in the Fediverse, it’s just in a corner all by itself. That’s the beauty of the Fediverse.

Oisteink ,

It’s also a great place for AI training as you have total access to data you federate to your instance. Or for Cambridge-Analytica to track tankies

sudneo ,

There are serious cyber security implications here that people are sleeping on

No, there are not.

At most, if they decide to kill the project by adding malicious code they can affect Lemmy itself. 99% of users don’t run Lemmy (which is where the “quiet exploits” would run), and the frontend simply doesn’t allow you to have a serious impact, unless you think they will stumble upon a browser 0-day and they decide to burn it by committing the exploit to an open source repo instead of selling it for millions (or use it elsewhere).

What’s with the fearmongering? Their stance is crystal clear since ever.

possibly even fork the Lemmy repos

Right, and who maintains the fork? Who, among the large population of external contributor, I mean?

muntedcrocodile ,

What do u mean their arnt any security issues here. Ive played enough 2b2t to know a backdoor makes u a literal fucking god. If u own all the servers u have everyone’s ip, u can control everyone’s interaction. U can can literally 1984 the entire federated history. Do u not see the issue here they could take control of your account post cp then report ur ip and get u locked up for long time.

sudneo ,

I am a security engineer by profession, so I do have at least a decent understanding of what I am talking about. Every server in this case has that potential. There is nothing preventing any admin from patching code and manipulating the network after TLS termination (I.e., changing payloads of POST requests etc.). That said, not even in a videogame you would be “locked up” by someone posting CP on your behalf like that. This is simply not a threat and if you think it is, then you should be worried about every website you visit.

merthyr1831 ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    A_Random_Idiot ,

    deleted_by_moderator

    •
    A_Random_Idiot ,

    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.

    Flatworm7591 ,
    @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    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.

    Daniel Baryon

    whoreticulture ,

    lmao get back to me when the mods on lemmy.world stop deleting every comment that is critical of Biden. STFU. There is no recourse for mods on Lemmy and they can use their powers to delete any comments they want. The only recourse you have is to find a fediverse that caters to your weakass centrist views.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    If anyone cares to check my comment history they’ll find a crapton of rebuttals to anti-biden comments that were NOT deleted by anyone.

    whoreticulture ,

    So the pro-Biden comments are staying up? Exactly like I said ? lmao

    maniel , (edited )

    Yeah, I’ve been banned because I said something about Uighur genocide, on the other hand I’m wondering about dessalines’ nationality and his knowledge about communism, it’s easy to be communist of you only touched it online, I for example live in post communist country and remember some of it, old people are talking about it, it wasn’t that good

    I’d “understand” if everything would be transparent and they admitted it’s tankie instance and you’re banned because you don’t like China but no, everything is saying their own COC

    Do we want someone like that not only administrating the oldest Lemmy instance but developing the whole platform?

    SupraMario ,

    Everyone who wants communism has never lived it, and those who have don’t want it.

    It sounds great on paper, but humans will always have those who wish to hold power.

    Wintex ,

    I mean… the Soviet Union was illegally dissolved and as far as I remember, the people didn’t want the dissolution to happen. A lot of tomfooleries happened after that and many former soviet countries did lose protections for their least economically safe population.

    This is not a defense of the Soviet Union, but dealing with the first statement you wrote.

    SupraMario ,

    What? No just no…what type of crazy revisionist history is this…the people on the other side of the wall tried to escape constantly, they wanted Western goods and entertainment, the ussr was made up of forcefully captured countries. I don’t know where you got this idea that they liked it, maybe the people in charge did.

    Wintex ,

    It’s not revisionist what do you mean? It’s a very normal fact that is literally even easy to wiki.

    …m.wikipedia.org/…/1991_Soviet_Union_referendum

    SupraMario ,

    When you live in an authoritarian system, votes mean jack shit. People don’t escape the ussr because they want to keep it together…

    Wintex ,

    So when faced with facts you just turn away. I mean, I’ll even concede that some of the member states didn’t hold elections and therefore, we have no statistics on them. Not every facet of your enemy can be unreasonably demonized. Not every element of Soviet life was as bad as you think, and it’s totally fair to say that the lower socioeconomic class was harmed by the dissolution.

    In the aftermath of the dissolution oligarchs did dismantle a lot of the social security nets that existed and concentrated a lot of wealth.

    I can just as easily shit on how Norwegian social security has been harmed by for-profit initiatives on the back of 8 years of Høyre and Frp rule.

    maxenmajs ,
    @maxenmajs@lemmy.world avatar

    For real, I knew people whose family had to stand in lines just to get food or common items. It’s foolish to advocate for abolishing capitalism when states with “real leftism” overwhelmingly do not thrive for long or at all.

    MindTraveller ,

    I for example live in post communist country

    I don’t believe you. I think your country was state capitalist, and would have described itself as economically socialist rather than communist.

    I live in an actual post communist country, Australia, and everyone here understands that when capitalism arrived here, it was genocidal and environmentally destructive.

    Account5600 ,

    In what universe was australia ever a communist country?

    Take your medication dude

    MindTraveller ,

    You misunderstood me. Australia was never a communist country, because it wasn’t yet a county back when it was communist. It was a landmass full of communist tribes

    taipan ,
    @taipan@lemmy.world avatar

    lemmy.ml has changed their level of transparency about their political leanings twice. Look at the history of their home page description:

    April 2021 to June 2021:

    The flagship instance of lemmy.

    June 2021 to November 2022:

    A community of leftist privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

    November 2022 to now:

    A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers

    FozzyOsbourne ,

    it’s easy to be communist of you only touched it online

    This is almost certainly the case, these kids read about the ideals of communism and think it sounds great, and they know about how things are in the USA and think that’s bad. Two fair assessments, but they then deduce that the because capitalist America is bad, then Soviet Russia “communist” China must be good, ignoring the fact that every person who survived/escaped those reigemes described them as hell.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    github.com/dessalines/essays

    Eheran ,

    What is this link supposed to tell us?

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    Maybe open it and read it ?

    Eheran ,

    I now understand why you get downvoted.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    Eheran ,

    But you do “give fluff”, there is a reason you posts random links. You want someone to see something, but do not want to talk about it, which I find odd.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    Stop it or I’m gunna spank your little bubble butt

    volodya_ilich ,

    every person who survived/escaped those reigemes described them as hell

    This is patently false, you’re either mistaken or lying. During my PhD in a western European country, I had the pleasure of working with several Chinese students and supervising the thesis of even more of them. Of all the Chinese students, all except one returned to china after finishing their studies because they prefer life in China. I made it a point to ask about their opinions on the government, and the approval rate of their government is so much higher than the approval rates of governments that we have in the west. If you look up any poll on this topic you’ll find the same conclusion: Chinese people are on average happier with their government than westerners are with theirs.

    About the USSR, a majority of the citizens were against the dissolution of the country and a transition to liberalism, so again, you’ve been misled or you’re lying.

    Maalus ,

    First of all, anecdotal evidence. Also survivorship bias. One - the type of person that goes to study abroad is usually wealthy, well off. Two, your family is collateral so you are guaranteed to return. Saying negative shut about the regime can get you in trouble so they’ll sing praises of it - just like in Russia.

    Second, the USSR thing is complete dogshit and you can see why now in Ukraine. People hated the russians. Speaking russian in western Ukraine after it disolved could get you threatened or punched in the face. Same thing with the Baltics. Same thing with Poland.

    volodya_ilich ,

    Dude, you’re absolutely delusional if you think that the conversations I’ve had with Chinese co-workers and FRIENDS (which you clearly never had) are swayed because “their family is collateral”, as if the Chinese government was punishing families for their children emigrating. That’s absolutely insane bullshit on the level of “Chinese hivemind” conspiracy. Regarding your “anecdotal evidence” claim, I beg you to please look at any poll on the topic.

    The way they arrived to western Europe isn’t because of “rich families”, it’s because of an agreement between a university in Western Europe and another university in China where China would pay for their tuition abroad. So much for the fucking oppressive state huh?

    Funny that you bring up Russia, I also happen to know people there who have no problem telling me in private (as Chinese friends could do) that Putin is borderline fascist, oligarchic, kleptocratic scum, and I fully agree with it. Almost as if, in private, people could voice their actual opinions.

    Wow, people hated Russians in post-soviet countries after decades of anti-russian propaganda, what a surprise. I wonder why the Polish were capable of forgiving Germans for the literal Holocaust, but not Russians for a bloodless invasion of their country in the context of a war against Nazis… Almost as if the hatred was manufactured and it was an unjustified form of racism…

    Maalus ,

    Yeah, okay, you are just a tankie. Fucking bloodless invasion my ass you ignorant moron. You are insulting the history of my country and my people. I won’t be wasting any more time on you - you don’t deserve the wear on my phone screen from replying to you.

    volodya_ilich ,

    Bye bye, revisionist racist prick. 3000-7000 deaths is absolutely bloodles for an invasion of half a country, keeping in mind that there were plenty of actual Nazis in Poland. Maybe you’re just one of them, since you condemn so much more a bloodless occupation than fucking Nazism.

    Maalus ,

    Ah yes the tankie forgetting about Katyn in their assessment and countless other massacres. You heard it here folks, the war in Gaza is bloodless. So many nazis we need a denazification special military operation, huh?

    volodya_ilich ,

    Again, the fact that you link the current fascist oligarch Putin, who is a byproduct of the 90s auction of the state to the lowest bidder and western interference in the process, to the USSR which eliminated oligarchs and capitalists like Putin himself, shows that you’re nothing but a racist Polish speaking out of decades of anti-Russian propaganda.

    Have some respect for the 20+ million soviet people who died to eliminate Nazism from your country, although again, I bet you’d be happier in a Nazi Poland as long as Russians were exterminated.

    Maalus ,

    Ah yes, the same 20mln people who looted the country to shit afterwards, killed an uncountable amount of Poles. Good thing that you mention me “equating bad pootin with gud USSR which totally wasn’t a shithole”. Last I checked, the invasion happened in 39’ when Russia literally allied with the Nazis to partition Poland. Last I checked, Katyn happened in 1940 in the “totally not a shithole” USSR. But maybe that’s history revisionism and the soviets were the best people around, totally not an invading nation that killed, raped and looted.

    volodya_ilich ,

    The whole “USSR allied with the Nazis” thing is actually Nazi propaganda and historical evidence proves this repeatedly. Before the war started, Stalin offered to send 1 million soldiers preemptively to England and France, together with artillery and aviation, if they agreed to a mutual defense agreement against Nazis. The soviet union wasn’t prepared industrially for a war like that, again as proven by the 20+ million deaths in the war, and wanted to postpone it as much as possible, and join the allies as soon as it started, but France and England were too eager to see communism destroyed and didn’t care about mutual defense, especially England. The fact that the Soviet Union later invaded some countries to the east of Germany was in preparation for war, to prevent Nazism from rising in these places and the military there allying with Hitler, as Finland did for example (there were plenty of Finns sieging Leningrad).

    Equating Nazism and the USSR is a revisionist, fascist talking point based on purposeful misinterpretation of some data like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and outright omission of other data such as the attempted Collective Security policy attempted by the USSR since the early 30s to protect Europe from fascism, that England and France conveniently didn’t agree to since nazis and fascists were enemies of communism as they were.

    Maalus ,

    Oh fuck off with your revisioning of history.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    github.com/dessalines/essays

    barsoap ,

    on the other hand I’m wondering about dessalines’ nationality

    I’m guessing US, on account of the whole “America Bad” thing. Can also be seen with European tankies but they’re not nearly as much USSR stans and way more likely to identify as Trots. South American is another option but then I’d expect at least some of his output to be Spanish/Portuguese. It all does have that US exceptionalism turned around “The US is the source of all evil, ever” kind of vibe you generally only see from Americans as the rest of the world plain and simply isn’t seeped in US jingoism and self-importance.

    …also I didn’t really invest much time in this at all, if someone else did, please enlighten us.

    aleph ,
    @aleph@lemm.ee avatar

    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:

    https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/9c52e470-645f-46ba-ac1d-0b7d8be17af3.png

    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?

    FaceDeer ,
    @FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

    I would imagine that if an admin is doing this the modlog could simply be faked, you wouldn't be able to trust anything that the instance is reporting to the outside world.

    goferking0 , (edited )

    Why, so you can censor some more posts critical of China?

    The modlog of this sub is absolutely ridiculous:

    Guessing that was the comment they made to trigger it. Seems perfectly reasonable after starting off just attacking them

    Dude literally started it by doing comment in their mod request post

    feddit.nl/comment/10140068

    NOT_RICK ,
    @NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

    The criticism is warranted. They don’t even equally apply their own rules depending on context

    goferking0 ,

    They’re doing it specifically to piss off the mods. That’s the context. It was the pinned mod request for it

    feddit.nl/comment/10140068

    uhN0id ,

    Perfectly reasonable to ban someone from completely unrelated communities like mechanical keyboard and arch Linux? Come on. It’s not like they’re throwing out toxic terms or criticizing on a personal level. They’re questioning the way things are being modded. Those aren’t even attacks.

    sudneo ,

    They banned from the instance. Apparently the fact that you get banned from hosted communities is just a new feature.

    aleph , (edited )
    @aleph@lemm.ee avatar

    I think you have a very different definition of “perfectly reasonable” than most people.

    ptz , (edited )
    @ptz@dubvee.org avatar

    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.

    https://tesseract.dubvee.org/image_proxy/dubvee.org/pictrs/image/4b1d3476-a36a-4f1c-ba8b-1748c3a7af18.webp?fallback=true

    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

    Socsa ,

    Imagine that - a white dude who appropriates the moniker of an actual slave revolutionary as a symbol for his “cause” might be cringe and unhinged.

    urska , (edited )

    Really stupid. Dont forget the Che hated homosexuals as well and he wrote a letter to one of his family members saying he found a meaning for his life “Killing people”

    SatansMaggotyCumFart ,

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2558d170-4fc3-4399-af1f-5305b0e38674.jpeg

    sudneo ,

    See lemmy.world/comment/10467647

    It seems this is just a new feature in the upcoming relase (the communities ban).

    ptz ,
    @ptz@dubvee.org avatar

    Interesting.

    Still, site bans for criticizing China is just as bad, if not worse as mass community banning.

    sudneo ,

    Yes, but that fact is well known and at least this shows there was no particular intention to chastise the user - it was just a button press.

    Socsa ,

    This is actually more evidence that the Lemmy devs run a modified version of the code which gives them the ability to, eg do things like dole out mass community bans. There is also some evidence that they selectively federate the mod log as well. It all points to the obvious conclusion that these people can and will abuse their power in any way they can.

    WanderingVentra ,

    I’m pretty sure any admin could do that with their Lemmy server, couldn’t they?

    PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

    Yes, an admin probably has access to community level moderation rights and the lemmy API is not difficult to figure out.

    It would be trivial to come up with a script to go through the community page, get all the current communities and iterate through them banning a user in each of them.

    vorpuni ,
    @vorpuni@jlai.lu avatar

    I have had comments removed and could never see why. Now I just block their instances.

    They roleplay as communist censors since that’s all they can afford to do from their positions.

    Eldritch ,

    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.

    Pili ,

    You gotta admit, it’s very suspicious to be massively downvoted (25, not 4) over an inconspicuous comment that merely highlights a few paragraphs of the linked article.

    I know I would also be wondering if there was a pattern in the origin of those downvotes.

    ptz ,
    @ptz@dubvee.org avatar

    Lol, is that why they removed scores from the API? 😆

    Hubi ,
    @Hubi@lemmy.world avatar

    Downvotes are public on Lemmy fyi. There are interfaces that show who voted on a post or comment.

    Eldritch ,

    For admins, yes. I was pointing that out in the picture of the responses I posted. But not for General users.

    Hubi , (edited )
    @Hubi@lemmy.world avatar

    Even regular users can see them through other federated services like kbin AFAIK. They show up under likes and dislikes.

    Speculater ,
    @Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

    They specifically obfuscate which mods take what actions so you can’t appeal or even defend.

    sudneo ,

    Tbh, also harass a mod. People get quite worked out when being moderated, and being a mod is enough work without people chasing you to argue with you or straight up harass you, I suppose. At least, I can see plenty of good reasons to hide the moderator name.

    Speculater ,
    @Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

    Then have a mod box or something. What they currently do is, “Post removed. Reason. Rule 1.”

    No details, no appeal, nada.

    sudneo ,

    What does this have to do with showing mod log? Genuinely confused

    Speculater ,
    @Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

    If they act on a post or comment, there’s no way to ask why or see what their actual reasoning was. So it allows blanket censorship without a paper trail.

    sudneo ,

    It does, but it’s an online forum, not an essential service, and easy to replace. On the other hand, being there with your name or nickname exposes you to harassment from those pissed at you for your decision.

    I would say it’s an acceptable evil given the circumstances.

    As a side note: asking why after a mod action is almost universally pointless. Moderating is free work and a level of subjectivity is implied. I think not having the ability to argue is infuriating but understandable.

    vorpuni ,
    @vorpuni@jlai.lu avatar

    My experience with them is you can’t even find the modlog if you look when they remove comments. I guess they don’t federate it and/or it only shows if you’re logged in?

    Good incentives to block their instances.

    kuato ,

    Only admins can do site bans. What you’re seeing is a hacky/temporary feature of the upcoming Lemmy v19.4, of which lemmy.ml is running the pre-release: when an admin bans someone from the site (temp or otherwise), it also automatically bans them from any community they have ever participated in. Lemmy.ml has always been the “beta” instance for new releases.

    aleph , (edited )
    @aleph@lemm.ee avatar

    Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.

    kbal ,
    @kbal@fedia.io avatar

    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.

    themoonisacheese ,
    @themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

    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)

    bdonvr ,

    Of tank man? The guy in the famous photo?

    Where’s the picture of this? I’ve never heard that before. It doesn’t appear in his Wikipedia page, it just says there nobody knows what happened to him after.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

    dual_sport_dork ,
    @dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

    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.

    Microw ,

    That photo (I’ve seen it circulate on the internet myself) is a photoshop. Every reputable source says that no one knows what happened to that man, and we have no evidence whatsoever of him getting run over.

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    A hexbear in that thread is literally claiming that “the soldiers did everything they could to avoid hurting him”

    ah the trolly problem defence

    qaz ,

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/310ec44a-29d4-4bf3-a33d-9735249e6e06.png

    gravitas_deficiency ,

    Inaccurate - the tankie pulling the switch would be smiling

    Klear ,

    And there would be more people on the track.

    feedum_sneedson ,

    He is bundled off to the left by other protestors, nobody knows what happened to him, there is no photo of him dead.

    sudo ,

    This loony bullshit is why tankies go full useful idiot and parrot shit most of them know isn’t true. The right-wing disinfo about Tianamen square - or any other communist atrocity - is so widespread. Tankies think that the most ultra counter-narrative will somehow combat that even if its just as loony.

    Kaboom ,

    Imo, when tankies get that bad, they might as well be nazis.

    Microw ,

    Crushing people with tanks

    Just a heads up, while it is established that the CCCP killed tons of people on that day, the idea that people were crushed with tanks is disputed in academia and mostly considered inaccurate news reporting.

    The famous “tank man” photo shows a guy standing in front of a tank in order to prevent them from moving tanks to another part where the protesters had gone. We have no evidence that he was driven over by that tank.

    retrospectology , (edited )
    @retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

    Those “academics” are wrong.

    We know this because there are photos of bodies and bicycles smeared into a paste [Source. Warning Blood/Gore].

    And because people who were there literally said that’s what happened:

    "The shooting was going on and people were still running to try and block the tanks, which were travelling at high speed, some positioning buses in the road. But the tanks crushed the buses and people, they didn’t care. People’s bodies were merged, moulded to their bicycles. They were flat.” [Source: Shao Jiang to The Mirror]

    The CCP has desperately tried to cleanse the most brutal images and interviews of the massacre from the Internet, but even 30 years on they can’t completely scrub it clean. There’s a reason The Pillar of Shame monument is designed as it is.

    justgohomealready ,

    the idea that people were crushed with tanks is disputed in academia

    There are photos of people clearly crushed by tanks?

    vorpuni ,
    @vorpuni@jlai.lu avatar

    No but the red paste is most likely explained by the tanks that were verifiably there. They could have crushed people with other machinery but they had tanks.

    Emperor ,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    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.

    RecursiveParadox , (edited )
    @RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world avatar

    This is a good answer and probably the right solution (still not 100% convinced defederating isn’t, ultimately, going to be the answer though).

    But your Jane/Joe Average User doesn’t look to see which instance that pr0n cute picture of a cat holding a teddy bear is on. They probably don’t even understand the concept of different instances showing content from others. Hell I’ve been online since 1992 and it took me a couple of days to get my head around it when I joined.

    So I think we need some kind of step by step “If you see X, then do Y” sticked to the instances that care about this for the people who (like me) do care about this issue.

    Emperor ,
    @Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

    still not 100% convinced defederating isn’t, ultimately, going to be the answer though

    It may be, but only as a last resort.

    So I think we need some kind of step by step “If you see X, then do Y” sticked to the instances that care about this for the people who (like me) do care about this issue.

    Yes, the map of thr Fediverse needs “here be dragons” sprinkled around.

    SpaceCadet OP ,
    @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

    This is the best solution - the answers are in our hands

    There is the problem of network effect though. People who frequent communities on lemmy.ml are often blissfully unaware of how problematic that instance is, like I was until a few days ago, and so they’re unlikely to just move as they have no immediate reason to.

    It’s easy to say just pack up and move … but I’ve been really struggling to find an alternative for !linux, to name one example. The equivalent communities !linux and !linux are rather stale with days old posts without comments.

    So I think it’s not just something an individual user can solve for themselves, and I think that the larger instances also have a role to play here. If they would defederate from lemmy.ml, it would urge users along to move away from lemmy.ml communities towards communities on other, more suitable instances.

    Next to that, we should also spread awareness about the lemmy.ml problem, and that was my intent when I originally made this post.

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

    It’s easy to say just pack up and move … but I’ve been really struggling to find an alternative for !linux, to name one example. The equivalent communities !linux and !linux are rather stale with days old posts without comments.

    !linux now has 983 weekly active users: programming.dev/post/15328354

    I think that the larger instances also have a role to play here. If they would defederate from lemmy.ml, it would urge users along to move away from lemmy.ml communities towards communities on other, more suitable instances.

    People have choices. If they want to keep using the Lemmy.ml community, that’s their freedom. The alternatives exist, if they want to switch, they can.

    Intrigued by your name change, you are really pushing for this.

    SpaceCadet OP ,
    @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

    People have choices. If they want to keep using the Lemmy.ml community, that’s their freedom. The alternatives exist, if they want to switch, they can.

    Because network effect is a thing, it’s really the illusion of choice. When a lemmy.ml community has 50k subscribers and the equivalent lemmy.world or programming.dev community has just a tenth of that, it’s not really a choice. People will always gravitate towards ml and the smaller community will never gain critical mass unless some strong enough outside force influences that decision.

    Which brings me to …

    Intrigued by your name change, you are really pushing for this.

    I think defederation from lemmy.ml together with raising awareness about ml should be the outside force to move communities off lemmy.ml.

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

    Same link

    StaySquared ,

    Semi-O/T

    There’s censorship just for having a different opinion. When you challenge someone’s belief in any subject… or just simply have a disagreement, you’re getting banned. Lemmy is following in the foot steps of Reddit in the sense that it appears that the left/progressives want to be segregated and keep the division. No dialogue, no meeting in the middle… just ban anyone who threatens their bubble.

    Illuminostro ,

    Gaslight. Obstruct. PROJECT.

    OpenStars ,
    @OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

    I mentioned elsewhere but here’s a copy and paste:

    It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.

    Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.

    “Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    💯

    Alphane_Moon ,
    @Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world avatar

    I would suggest trying to get out of the english-language (American-centric) internet bubble with respect to dialogue, “challenging beliefs” and the broader nature of what you consider to be censorship.

    Focus on real-world (internet can be a red hearing) examples of cases (particularly in Asia, Africa but Europe and LATAM too) that contradict your statements around “just ban anyone who threatens their bubble”.

    Then consider the what are the real world consequences of tankie propaganda, again better to avoid US narratives/examples. Just try a good faith approach to this question.

    StaySquared ,

    I have no idea what you’re suggesting… but just about the entire non-western world laughs at Reddit-type leftists because they can’t come to terms with reality. So much so they (Reddit-type leftists) refuse vehemently to acknowledge that it is their feelings that they’re putting before facts of life. Refuse facts, refuse reality.

    Alphane_Moon ,
    @Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world avatar

    Perhaps I misunderstood your post, were you referring to the actions of lemmy.ml mods or the proposal to avoid lemmy.ml communities?

    db0 ,
    @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    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.

    poopsmith ,
    @poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

    Tbh this is one of the reasons why I’m looking forward toward Sublinks

    SpaceCadet OP ,
    @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

    What is that?

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

    Compatible alternative to Lemmy: sublinks.org

    scytale ,

    Is there anything Sublinks will offer that’s different to Lemmy? Because if not, I’m afraid the issues OP is talking about would still exist either way.

    poopsmith ,
    @poopsmith@lemmy.world avatar

    Nothing particularly, but it would let LW and other instances distance themselves from the lemmy.ml admins.

    threelonmusketeers ,

    Is there anything Sublinks will offer that’s different to Lemmy?

    A different dev team. If there’s only one dev team for the entire threadiverse, that team has a certain degree of power. If there are multiple dev teams working on compatible threadiverse software, that power is distributed among many.

    Kecessa ,

    If it works the same way then nothing will be solved. That’s why I keep saying it, the hosting needs to be decentralized but the rest needs to work like an admin-less Reddit, moderators would have their community/ies but they wouldn’t be able to ban you altogether and you wouldn’t depend on an admin to decide what you can and cannot see, you would block the communities you don’t want in your feed yourself.

    btaf45 ,

    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.

    Blaze ,
    @Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

    Really depends on the topic.

    !movies for instance is more active than !movies

    !games is a good alternative to !gaming

    There is !til vs !todayilearned

    But LW communities are mostly fine. The top priority on Lemmy is to get communities active, we can always migrate them later if needed.

    Skepticpunk ,

    Good. Lemmy communities need to be as instance-agnostic as possible.

    threelonmusketeers ,

    we can always migrate them later if needed

    Can we? I’m not sure that community migration is that simple…

    cloudless ,

    I use lemmy.cafe now because it has defederated with lemmy.ml.

    As a lemmy.cafe user, I don’t see any post/comment from lemmy.ml users at all.

    Communities on lemmy.cafe are invisible to lemmy.ml users, so I would recommend creating more communities there.

    Roflmasterbigpimp , (edited )
    @Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

    Is there a way to message instance owners/admins? I would propose that lemmy.world defederates from lemmy.ml asap. Post

    papertowels ,

    Probably start with buying them dinner first

    Roflmasterbigpimp ,
    @Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d9182576-8f9f-47d7-a9b2-7096c5511b84.png

    laughterlaughter ,

    hehe well, you can always edit your comment!

    Roflmasterbigpimp ,
    @Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

    It’s funnier this way :P

    rufus ,

    Probably !support

    Go to lemmy.world and have a look at the Sidebar. That’s where instances publish info like that. And they list several methods to contact them, there.

    Roflmasterbigpimp ,
    @Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

    Thank you! I just did and already posted there :D

    threelonmusketeers ,

    Is there a way to massage instance owners/admins?

    I think you’d have to meet up with them IRL for that…

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    The solution is… to abandon the notion that there’s some special utopia where we might reside.

    There’s an idea that we all need to find or build some special platform which is going to be a home for all our communities and be transparent and balanced and free from corporate influence and perpetually shiny and awesome. It’s not only unachievable but probably not desirable either.

    Instead, embrace the reality that the communities we want to engage with will be in different places on different platforms and each will have different issues.

    There’s some niche communities on reddit, and yes that platform is run by a corporation but that doesn’t bother me when I’m only there to find a new recipe for snack that matches my diet requirements. I despise facebook but I do use their marketplace to sell junk my wife buys online. I’m aware of the privacy issues with telegram but that’s where I have a family chat group with my sisters. I recently discovered an XMPP channel about DIY bike maintenance which has been amazingly helpful, but I don’t like the XMPP clients I’ve tried. The forum on a torrent tracker I use is a great place to find new books to read but I need to use a VPN to access it.

    My point is, the best part of the modern web is the disparate platforms we have available. Every platform has it’s own character, and caveats to be mindful of.

    The kind of censorship you’re talking about is obviously repugnant, but the reality is that it’s just something to keep in mind when participating in lemmy.ml communities. You can refuse to participate there if you wish, but a mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

    wahming ,

    mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

    Why not? You’ve made an assertion without any reason backing it up.

    Nobody’s suggesting a mass exodus to a single lemmy server, but rather just a dispersal from .ml to the rest of the fediverse. There’s no reason it can’t or shouldn’t happen.

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    It’s as though you only read the last sentence of my comment

    wahming ,

    I’ve read it multiple times. None of it quite addresses why we can’t just move communities away from .ml en masse. From the votes I’m not the only one having trouble discerning your point.

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    Good lord. If you think lemmy votes are an indicator of solid reasoning I don’t know what to tell you.

    Communities aren’t going to move away from lemmy.ml because no one cares enough about this issue.

    You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

    wahming ,

    So your wall of text boiled down to ‘we can, but we won’t because nobody cares’. That’s pretty different from ‘that’s not how things should work in 2024’.

    You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

    Ironically, that’s how most of us ended up here on lemmy, we as a community decided to move off reddit.

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    We didn’t migrate “as a community”. All the same communities still exist on reddit.

    Alice ,
    @Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

    Lol if ‘annoying internet personality’ were a person it’d be that guy lol

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    LOL I’m sorry my opinion is so annoying LOL.

    wahming ,

    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.

    givesomefucks ,

    I got a ban for pointing out the nuclear strikes on Japan killed less than the conventional firebombing runs leading up to it, and if nukes wouldn’t have been used a shit ton more people would have died.

    Like, no opinion on if what was morally right or not, just what the numbers worked out.

    It’s all trolls over there, when a rational person makes a community, the admins start drama there and troll the mods till they leave or get kicked out for stupid shit.

    I just blocked the whole instance. I never see any of their posts now, and as an unintended bonus I don’t even get notifications when their users reply to my comments.

    Like, it would be best if we defederated from them and that hilariouschaos troll instance.

    But I can just block them, works the same.

    Hacksaw ,

    More people were killed in the firebombing.

    The theory that more people would have died of the nukes weren’t dropped is FAR from settled fact. The Japanese were already looking to surrender and it’s not likely the bomb played a big part in that decision.

    en.wikipedia.org/…/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing…

    Regardless it’s nothing to get banned over, that’s for sure.

    Excrubulent , (edited )
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    Whether that alone is something to be banned over is probably context dependent, and I don’t have any faith that that instance had a good reason for it. Nevertheless that person holding up their great take about the nuclear bombs being good actually does not paint a great picture of them as a person. It makes them look like a reactionary US nationalist who wants to believe anything that makes their side the “good guys”. They can pretend it was morally neutral all they want, but morality is the only reason anybody argues something like that because it’s so nebulous the only way you get there is with motivated reasoning.

    At any rate I wouldn’t put that on the pile of reasons to hate on the .ml instances, not when there are so many good reasons.

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    I honestly disagree that blocking works the same. Social media relies on a network effect, and if they keep being allowed to operate popular communities then they will have that network effect in their favour, and new users that don’t know any better will keep joining.

    Defederation is an important tool to turn certain instances into pariahs for bad behaviour, and individual blocks don’t achieve that.

    Cryophilia ,

    This is a lot of the problem with gen z, especially among the left. Everyone is quick to smash the block button, which in aggregate just makes everything worse for everyone else.

    intensely_human ,

    Explain?

    Cryophilia ,

    When you block someone you cede the conversation to them. When lots of people block someone, fewer people push back against their bullshit. Because the people most able to push back against it no longer see it.

    intensely_human ,

    So you make them invisible to yourself, but not to others.

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    It’s not a generational problem, it’s a platform problem. It’s a disempowered person problem. Generations are mostly made up anyway.

    Hitting the block button is fine to deal with harrassment, it just doesn’t solve the wider issue.

    Cryophilia ,

    I think zoomers are far more prone to refusing to engage with things that make them uncomfortable than previous generations.

    And just because something isn’t clear cut doesn’t make it imaginary. It’s a useful but fuzzy categorization.

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    Well I’d be fascinated to see how you arrive at that conclusion but until then I’m going to have to disagree on the basic principle that the generalisations people make about generations are usually pretty useless.

    Cryophilia ,

    If you truly don’t see any difference between Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials then I think our views of reality are so wildly different we might not be able to have any sort of communication.

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    Okay, but you brought it up and then when asked about it instead of explaining you fell back on the idea that it’s self-evident, which I think I’m right to not be convinced by.

    To the extent the generations appear different I think is easily explained by the difference in material conditions that each has grown up within and the necessarily different ages of each group at any given time, and nothing to do with the inate characters of the people involved.

    I see zoomers intensely involved in the issues that affect the world and any extent they feel the need to check out I think is 100% valid given the bleak world they have been born into, much bleaker than at any earlier time.

    I see a hard-nosed pragmatic awareness of the need for hope in the face of our grim reality because it is the only way we can find a path through. I have heard that message from people of all ages, but also from zoomers.

    Again, I don’t think there’s much difference and one thing that absolutely hasn’t changed over millenia is bemoaning the state of the “kids these days”.

    Cryophilia ,

    To the extent the generations appear different I think is easily explained by the difference in material conditions that each has grown up within and the necessarily different ages of each group at any given time, and nothing to do with the inate characters of the people involved.

    Well, I mean…yeah. Of course. I don’t think anyone is saying there’s like a BIOLOGICAL difference between generations.

    much bleaker than at any earlier time.

    I do disagree with this. In my lifetime, the great recession was much much worse than now.

    Excrubulent , (edited )
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    You fell back from the motte to the bailey then went ham on a strawman because the actual argument was getting too much for you.

    You accused Gen Z of some specific behaviour and when I asked you about it you fell back on some vague notion of the generations simply being different.

    You were clearly implying some difference of character, but when I point out that that’s pretty weak you pretend I was talking about biology, which I never mentioned.

    If you think Gen Z is more likely to block, check out, whatever, explain where you get it from. If you’re not going to do that then I will just continue to believe that you’re basing it on your own biases and move on. You clearly aren’t very disciplined about your thought processes.

    Oh but you had it worse as a kid? Also something we’ve been hearing for millenia from intellectually lazy entitled assholes.

    Cryophilia ,

    You accused Gen Z of some specific behaviour and when I asked you about it you fell back on some vague notion of the generations simply being different.

    Generations being different means they have…different behavior. Wtf are you even talking about?

    You were clearly implying some difference of character

    People’s actions are their character. That’s a distinction without a difference.

    If you think Gen Z is more likely to block, check out, whatever, explain where you get it from.

    My personal observations, which is different than bias.

    Oh but you had it worse as a kid? Also something we’ve been hearing for millenia from intellectually lazy entitled assholes.

    Millenials objectively had it worse as a kid, at least economically which is what I was referring to. Not my fault you have recency bias.

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    Okay, so whatever your bizarre non-claim is it’s just an opinion? Cool, opinion rejected.

    Now, millenials objectively had it worse? Okay, fucking prove it. Since that’s not an opinion I’m sure I won’t just get another rhetorical runaround.

    Cryophilia ,

    Comment rejected, would you like to try a new comment?

    Excrubulent ,
    @Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

    Okay, that’s not how this works, but you seem to be incapable of following the most basic line of reasoning. This wasn’t you defending an argument, it was you mentally shitting the bed. I think I’m done here. Have a great life. Or I guess have a shitty life, since your generation has it objectively worse than everyone else.

    Cryophilia ,

    Comment rejected. Would you like to try another comment?

    sudneo ,

    Like, no opinion on if what was morally right or not, just what the numbers worked out.

    I don’t want to get in the merit of the comment, but unless you see the future, this statement is simply not true. Your argument is simply based on accepting certain assumptions as true.

    Coincidentally this argument is routinely used by people supporting american atrocities, who consider nuking hundreds of thousands of people the humanitarian solution to WWII.

    To be clear, I don’t agree with that line of moderation, I don’t agree with most of the views that seem to characterize .ml, but it’s a year that people make posts like this one, you can’t tell me you don’t understand the ban based on the above.

    givesomefucks ,

    I suggest you learn about history before you form opinions on what happened

    sudneo ,

    History is about what happened. “Otherwise it would” is speculation.

    givesomefucks ,

    And even after the nuclear bombs, there was an attempted coup to stop surrender.

    Prior to the bombs, there was no chance of surrender.

    That is history.

    sudneo ,

    And where is the count of deaths in the different timeline?

    Look, my point is simple: human history is not deterministic and we simply can’t know what happens tomorrow like if we were predicting the laws of phisics. Maybe there were other 100 different course of actions leading to as many outcomes.

    You can analyze what happened, but it’s foolish to say “this was better because the alternative would have led to”. You can only analyze and discuss what happened, otherwise anything can be justified with “it wouldn’t have been worse”.

    “this genocide was good, because without it the oppressed population would have led to civil war and many more deaths”.

    givesomefucks ,

    You think the nuclear bombs were a genocide?

    Seriously, who “taught” you this stuff?

    I am genuinely curious where people presented all of this stuff you’re saying as history.

    Like, it’s almost like the only thing you know about civilian deaths in WW2 was American dropped nukes.

    There’s sooooo much that you’re missing. But unless you dropped out of school at a very young age, I can’t be the first person that tries to explain this to you

    So where are your opinions coming from?

    Is this a thing where you learned everything you know about a subject from YouTube videos?

    If so…

    Why?

    sudneo ,

    I just made an example of speculating on future occurrences to justify concrete actions that instead happened. In fact, the entire comment was about the general idea of considering history deterministic, not about the specific atomic bomb event…

    givesomefucks ,

    Bruh, you need to not speculate on things you have no idea about

    But clearly you don’t care about what actually happened, so I’ll stop trying to explain basic shit to you now.

    sudneo ,

    You need to learn what abstraction is, my friend. I am not speculating. Quite the opposite. I am saying that you like to think the world works according to precise laws that you can use to predict the future. This is why you are arguing in multiple comments that “they would have…”, as if people are NPCs with 3 different behaviors and the outcomes are predetermined so it’s just a matter of choosing.

    The reality is simple: you, me, nobody can know for sure what " would have happened" if history happened differently. This is a methodological issue, not a discussion on the merits of your speculation.

    I don’t know if nuclear bombs caused less deaths than the millions of other potential courses of actions, and neither do you, neither does anybody else. I don’t know if Israel wiping off Gaza from the map potentially saved thousands of lives in future conflicts. You see the problem?

    Now, before assuming that everyone else is an idiot and that you are the only smart one in the room, you might want to try a little harder to understand the point of your interlocutor, considering we are also discussing in what (I assume) is your native language but not mine. If you didn’t understand so far that my critique is in the method, not in the merits, of your claim, then I agree, there is nothing to talk about.

    Pili ,

    the nuclear strikes on Japan killed less than the conventional firebombing runs leading up to it, and if nukes wouldn’t have been used a shit ton more people would have died.

    That’s an absolutely disgusting thing to say. Japan was already surrendering, they were only nuked as a show of strength.

    I’m not sure what you imply when you say that “a shit ton more people would have died”, but if you’re saying that the US should have napalm bombed an entire surrendering country just to make an example, I don’t think it makes your argument valid. It’s not ok to do something horrible, just because you could have done something even worse if you had wanted to.

    givesomefucks ,

    Japan was already surrendering

    Who told you something that ridiculous?

    Omniraptor ,

    They weren’t already surrendering, ok. I’m not an expert but imo it could be argued that the Soviet Union joining the war (as they were about to) might have given Japanese command an excuse to surrender while saving face, or triggered an internal coup or something. They weren’t stupid, surely they could see the writing on the wall.

    givesomefucks ,

    If you think there was anyway they’d have surrendered without nukes then yes, I will agree that you are “not an expert”.

    For fucks sake, after the nukes there was still an attempted coup to prevent surrender…

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjō_incident

    People thay think Japan surrendered because of loss of life, have no idea what they’re talking about about.

    Japan surrendered because they thought America had more nukes, and if they kept fighting then Japan would be left uninhabitable for centuries due to atomic contamination.

    The people who tried the coup, did so because they thought America didn’t have more nukes.

    They weren’t stupid,

    They weren’t, but honor was/is huge in their culture, and Japan was an empire for thousands of years.

    They’d have fought to the last Japanese civilian was alive

    They surrendered, and I know I’m repeating myself, because they thought their islands would be literally wiped off the face of the planet.

    Anything less wouldn’t have won the war and cost more lives on both sides.

    Even as a trolly problem, it’s not a tough call on if nukes saved lives.

    ameancow ,

    I don’t think any of this is even real to them. The same way that a majority of the white-nationalist 4-channers are just roleplaying and losing themselves in the storylines, as a species we tend to do that, we just get lost in a narrative because it explains how we feel.

    The tankies are doing the same exact thing. They’re not impacting policy, they’re not marching for anything, they’re not taken seriously and it’s just another in-club that has its own language and imagery and secret handshakes and a unifying message to rally behind (America bad!) and instead of turning that criticism into actionable plans for changing representation and making anything better, they put on WW2 Russian Tanker helmets and have erotic fantasies about a communist uprising that will never happen.

    Cryophilia ,

    Children.

    Pili ,

    If anyone would like more context about the kind of think they were posting:

    https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/f2474ffc-5798-4ba2-980a-d6cb5f52b3af.png

    wahming ,

    Yep, the horror. I absolutely deserved an instance-wide ban for the terrible things I said.

    I do love the amount of facts and proof that is been dug up and displayed in this post, many thanks to all those going to the effort!

    lltnskyc ,

    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.

    And I’ve been censored (not yet banned, but I guess it won’t take long till that as well) on lemmy.world (and beehaw) for spreading “misinformation” about Ukraine, despite being a Ukrainian and actually reading (and sharing) the local news of what’s actually happening there, contrary to the government propaganda.

    wahming ,

    You claim Zelensky is illegitimate and authoritarian for not holding elections in the middle of a fight for the country’s survival. The logic there is hilariously bad. Setting aside the absolute waste of resources, the last thing any country needs in such a scenario is for their leaders to start campaigning over who’s going to take control. It’s not the time and place for it. If you want to blame anybody, blame Russia

    lltnskyc ,

    Right, so basically it’s okay for countries to be authoritarian, it’s okay to slaughter thousands of people and making everybody else live in constant fear, as long as the government aligns itself with the west.
    Why would I blame Russia? It’s not Russia, it’s not Putin who is kidnapping people of the streets in Ukraine and sends them to die. It’s Zelensky’s regime.

    Very cool and humanitarian and obviously I don’t agree with that. But out of curiosity - can you please explain to me why is North Korea different?
    It is also officially still in a state of a war with South Korea. Does it mean Kim Jong Un is suddenly also a hero that leads his country against the enemy? It doesn’t matter that people are trapped there, it doesn’t matter that people may not support him, all the atrocities committed by him do not matter as well, because they are in a war, am I right?

    wahming ,

    Because South Korea is not actively trying to wipe out NK from existence, but actually the opposite is trying to reach out to NK and stabilise relations. ‘War’ is a hilarious way to describe their status. Way to strawman the argument.

    lltnskyc ,

    but actually the opposite is trying to reach out to NK and stabilise relations

    That’s just super fucking ironic, considering that Russia never stopped saying that they are open to negotiations (and the very first peace deal was actually they they go back to before-2022-invasion borders) and it is Zelensky who always refuses to negotiate and instead sends more Ukrainians to die.

    wahming ,

    Oh you mean the deal where they tried to make their seizure of Crimea legitimate?

    Ok, this is reaching russian troll levels of disinformation. I think it’s clear enough to any 3rd parties just why you’re getting your comments deleted.

    lltnskyc ,

    Oh you mean the deal where they tried to make their seizure of Crimea legitimate?

    This has already happened, and is going to stay that way, whether you or I or anybody else likes it or not…

    So it woudn’t have changed anything, except, you know, such a tiny little details as hundreds of thousands of lives.

    Belastend ,

    Who kills the Ukranians that are being send to die?

    lltnskyc ,

    Russia.

    Now, I answered your question, would you please be so kind to answer mine now, which is also quite simple?

    If there are two men, man A is simply operating a meat grinder while man B kidnaps people from the streets (soon he will start breaking into people’s homes as well), forcefully pushes them into the meat grinder, and watches to make sure they can’t get out of it, he also makes sure nobody leaves the city so that he can continue his game, who do you blame more for deaths of people in the meat grinder?

    Belastend ,

    The man who operates the meat grinder? The man who started the business of shoving people into a grinder??? An everadvancing grinder? Jesus. At least get your metaphor right

    lltnskyc ,

    The man who operates the meat grinder? The man who started the business of shoving people into a grinder???

    Those are two different people though.

    Belastend ,

    No. Russia isnt just hosting a meat grinder that operates on the front, stationary and non threatening. The meat grinder is ever advancing and as we have seen in Bucha, its business is tp shove people in there. Russia is the aghressor after all.

    MolochAlter , (edited )

    I fucking hate tankies, but.

    The problem i have, every time this conversation happens, is that cutting them out doesn’t solve anything, and that I don’t want to be coddled.

    The 2 main issues we have, as lemmy at large, is that there are some wildly uneven standards enforced across instances and that we have no say about that. There was that hugbox instance that would ban people for being rude and yeeted itself into the void, there was hexbear that got de-federated for its mods actively encouraging being subversive (despite its users receiving intolerable psychic damage after 5 minutes in any lib space where people are free to call them names, or was that lemmygrad?) and now we’re talking about removing lemmy.ml for the fact that its mods are somehow sentient pieces of actual shit.

    And while I agree to all of those reasons, I don’t think defederating is the answer.

    Every time we fragment the fediverse we make it overall worse.

    Average users don’t even understand what they’re looking at when it comes to decentralized networks, let alone can they understand that there’s politicking between instances and such. If I were told “you can make an account on instance x or y, but they don’t talk to eachother so if you want to see stuff on instance y you can’t make an account on instance x” as a rando, I would go back to reddit, the only reason I didn’t is that i really hate the app and I am tech/net savvy enough to handle this.

    I am a tad more radical when it comes to speech than most, and I accept that, but I do believe that these people have no power so long as they can’t abuse moderation, so the answer to the question “how do we handle open propagandists”, to me, is to create perhaps a “moderation neutrality charter” and making it very clear which instances subscribe to it, having each instance’s moderation team maybe be required to weigh in on appeals to bans from other instances to ensure a certain amount of balance.

    That would take care of that real quick. They can subscribe to the charter and start abiding by neutral moderation standards agreed to across the board by some democratic standard, or they can defederate themselves.

    That’s actually something twitter does right with the idea of community notes, that for the note to be published it needs to be agreed on by multiple parties that don’t usually agree in those votes, to ensure there is a bipartisan agreement.

    I know this is perhaps too lofty for a ragtag group of essentially microblogging self-hosters, but a man can dream.

    secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

    Would there be able to be some sort of online meeting for the different instances with someone mediating to try to find a way to fragment less but also not ban certain views?

    Or could there be a settings option to let readers view all deleted posts on certain instances that would make everyone happy?

    It’s a good point you’re making about fragmentation and the problems it could create.

    MolochAlter ,

    Man, I genuinely don’t know.

    I’d expect this to be some sort of public cross-instance structure that is readonly to users so we could spectate the conversations and maybe up/downvote, where you could see what essentially amounts to the meeting minutes in the form of a normal thread?

    But before we even get there there’d need to be an agreement and either a fork of the core lemmy code to implement this or we’d need to get the lemmy devs on board and LMAO good luck with that, we’re literally discussing creating a system to divest them of their power and they’re ideologically authoritarian.

    rah ,

    Every time we fragment the fediverse we make it overall worse.

    Only if your conception of better/worse is focussed on user count rather than user quality.

    Average users don’t even understand what they’re looking at when it comes to decentralized networks

    Refraining from defederation won’t change that.

    MolochAlter ,

    Only if your conception of better/worse is focussed on user count rather than user quality.

    No, decidedly not. Unless out there there is an instance whose users are all all-around paste eaters, every instance has some users worth keeping in some conversation, furthermore political alignment says nothing about insight or competence in fields unrelated to politics.

    A nazi is just as likely to know how to fix an obscure bug in some game or program than a tankie or a liberal, people are more complicated than their political allegiances and blanket removing an instance does us a disservice as much as it does them.

    Refraining from defederation won’t change that.

    Refraining from making the fediverse an archipelago where people refuse to talk to anyone who had the misfortune of picking the wrong instance is going to make that better, yes.

    Not everyone who made an instance on lemmy.ml is a tankie. I almost did, and the only reason I didn’t is that they very gracefully and clearly state that Lemmy.ml is the flagship but not the largest instance.

    rah ,

    every instance has some users worth keeping in some conversation

    That doesn’t contradict what I said.

    Refraining from making the fediverse an archipelago where people refuse to talk to anyone who had the misfortune of picking the wrong instance

    The fediverse cannot now be made that because the fediverse is already that.

    retrospectology ,
    @retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

    Tankie mods don’t moderate in good faith though, to do so would entirely undermine their political objectives. That’s kind of the point of the thread here – to defederate so that the tankies aren’t deciding what people can or cannot see and say.

    I don’t see how the charter idea would actually help with that but maybe I’m not understanding the mechanics of how other mods “weigh in” on ban appeals from other instances.

    MolochAlter ,

    Tankie mods don’t moderate in good faith though

    Yeah, that’s why I’m suggesting making mods of other instances review ban appeals.

    If you ban someone because you’re butthurt your precious red-brown alliance is being besmirched, mods from instances that don’t suck Stalin’s dick on the daily will hopefully call you out on it and force you to reverse the ban or defederate.

    My hope is to make it so defederation is not something we do to undesirable instances, but that they do to themselves.

    The latter is preferable because it requires an instance to be so ideologically far gone that its own denizens would agree with this over replacing the mod team, whereas the former only really needs a bad enough opinion of the instance from its neighbours, which IMO is not a good standard.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •