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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.

noisefree ,

They will ban you for comments that are so inert it’s impossible to even know what offended them, it’s ridiculous.

HawlSera ,

This shit is what made Reddit unusable, up until it literally became unusable when site-wide bans started getting handed out like candy.

Cryophilia ,

There’s an unforgiving list of keywords that in the right context could mean something objectionable so they just blanket ban anyone who says the word or phrase.

noisefree ,

I got a temporary ban in memes for saying “OpenAI/MS media alliance goes brrrrr” lmao. “Rule 1.” The OP was yet another post about Google’s crappy AI suggestions and I was implying that the mass beating of that dead horse in article after article was because the media is friendlier to OpenAI and MS in the AI space (kinda the same way Apple gets a free pass in the phone space more often than not for shitty practices and taking credit for inventing features that have existed on Android for years prior). But, even in the absence of clarification (since my quip was just observational and not meant to spark conversation lol), I have no clue how that or a lot of the other things they cite “Rule 1” on could possibly be construed as bigoted - there aren’t enough words to work with in the comment I used as an example, just a barely coherent bit of tongue-in-cheekness. Arbitrariness of enforcement is authoritarian af. I messaged a mod to ask what was up since I didn’t realize modlog was a thing at the time and didn’t hear back (which is fine really). It’s more just the finding out when you go to interact and getting a connectivity error and having to sus out what happened that’s annoying and doesn’t feel conducive to a healthy community.

Getting an automated message in your inbox telling you you’re banned, the length of the ban, and why would be a little more user friendly (though public modlogs are nice) if the goals of the developers are trying to build an inclusive platform. A lot of users aren’t necessarily the type to get a persistent itch when something curious happens, so “figure it out yourself” isn’t a great system. But, if what’s going on over at .ml really is indicative of what the goals of the developers are, it does give me pause about Lemmy as a project and where it will go in the future. As has been mentioned elsewhere, the situation is ripe for the project to be compromised if a dev is compromised and people shouldn’t be sleeping on that. Bad actors injecting seemingly inert exploits into code reviewed by others can happen with any software and fly under the radar, even popular and well trusted FOSS (for reference, see “that time the CIA snuck a backdoor into Notepad++”), so it’s alarming if a group of developers appear to be sympathizers for nationstates that are notoriously privacy hostile.

Cryophilia ,

You’re operating under the delusion that they’re moderating in good faith.

noisefree ,

You’re operating under the delusion that they’re moderating in good faith.

Believe it or not, also Rule 1, straight to the banhaus you go. /s

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I just ended up banning the whole instance from my account so I don’t end up posting there accidentally. If they want an echo chamber, they can have an echo chamber.

Pilferjinx ,

I too have received bans for very innocuously based opinions there. I like having civil discussions that expand my scope but they’re not having any of that. Feels bad man.

rickyrigatoni ,

Have you tried making innocuously cringed opinions instead?

Pilferjinx ,

That’s a bold strategy, wow. Believe it or not, banned.

rickyrigatoni ,

These monsters must be stopped.

Pilferjinx ,

Okay, commisar.

TheObviousSolution , (edited )

Happened to me with an even bigger instance because of an asshole admin making shit up. A solution might be to divide up the host of the user comments versus the moderator agents versus receiver of the comments. If your host bans you, that’s it, but if the receiver bans you, that only affects their users, and if a moderator agent group bans you, that only bans you from their distribution group of moderator agents but could be read by other groups.

If a community / group-of-moderator-agents-under-a-community-tag-for-a-particular-host bans you, you’d have to find another groups of moderator agents or accept all that are allowed by your host. Accepting all allowed by your host could only realistically exclude the worst offenders - spammers, doxxers, etc - so you’d really be incentivized to find a better block of moderator agents if you want to avoid certain types of comments. People who want to live in a bubble could live in a bubble but people who want to prioritize the greatest participation would try to find the most lenient host and the most lenient moderation agents, at least to their particular sensitivities.

It would be a truer federated model, but this is not lemmy as it is.

fuckingkangaroos ,

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

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

On your Lemmy instance, go to Settings -> Blocks and just block the entire instance. That’s what I did.

Blackmist ,

Doesn’t block their users though, only their communities.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I’m honestly fine with that, because outside of their home server, they cannot rely on their mods to protect them from arguments they don’t want to hear.

fuckingkangaroos ,

You’re fine with a murderous authoritarian government spreading disinformation where you socialize?

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

I’m fine with it as long as I don’t have to debate them on THEIR terms.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Go ahead and “debate” the CCP, enjoy.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Like I said, fine with me as long as it’s on neutral ground and they can’t just have an admin delete some of my arguments because they don’t like them.

fuckingkangaroos ,

You’ll waste your time arguing with authoritarian ChatGPTs.

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

Two can play that game. And since ChatGPT has a rather liberal bias baked in, I’m not sure it would it work out too well for the tankies.

Zeroxxx ,

rather extremist and onesided political views…

Sounds like far left and far right are the issue.

FiniteBanjo , (edited )

I wouldn’t refer to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as far left, tbh.

Zeroxxx ,

Yes, they’re far right.

FiniteBanjo ,

Lemmy ML, Hexbear, and Lemmygrad users would try to tell you otherwise. My perspective might just be warped, I consider people who post Tiananmen square pictures as a pretty universally accepted stance outside of the CCP.

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.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy.world heavily censors criticism of israel over at /politics and /news

.ml is far less tankie than .world.

Duke_Nukem_1990 ,

Describe to me what you think a tankie is.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

A person so brainwashed by their government that they will deny war crimes from said government and actively participate in censoring and lying about them in order to spread propaganda.

Duke_Nukem_1990 ,

Do you think you maybe missed an important classification there? Do you think Hitlers followers were Tankies?

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Of course not. Nazis are rather honest about their intentions. You don’t hear Nazis saying “No actually we didn’t kill ze Jews, we really like them very much”. If a Nazi supporter would actually say that previous sentence I would classify them as a Tankie.

The original definition is used to “distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring”

So you can try to deny it being about supporting war crimes by slapping on more labels but that would just backfire as CCP posters suddenly aren’t tankies anymore.

Duke_Nukem_1990 ,

Of course not. Nazis are rather honest about their intentions. You don’t hear Nazis saying “No actually we didn’t kill ze Jews, we really like them very much”.

Riiight, that’s why it is necessary for the denial of the Holocaust to be a serious criminal offense in Germany, cause Nazis totally don’t deny it happened.

You don’t seem to be intelectually honest in this at all, so bye.

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

Right, try to deflect to strawman and dip. If you can’t even tell the difference between a Neo Nazi and a Nazi then don’t bring it up.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Linkerbaan spreading more lies. Glad I have you tagged as “shill” so it’s easy to recognize you.

takeheart ,

How do you tag another user? Did you just mean you left a mental note or is it possible to assign custom tags to users somehow?

fuckingkangaroos ,

I use two apps to access Lemmy and both allow me to save notes/tag users. Maybe if you click their username you’ll see the option.

If you see accounts pushing agendas, you can tag with a note about their bias.

takeheart ,

That sounds like a useful feature. Which apps are you using?

mzesumzira ,
@mzesumzira@leminal.space avatar

One of them is definitely Sync, don’t know about others

fuckingkangaroos ,

Connect and Boost

Linkerbaan ,
@Linkerbaan@lemmy.world avatar

At the start of the Genocide debunking any israeli lie was absolutely forbidden over at /world. Muh beheaded babies. Muh mass rapes. Oh wait you still can’t mention that israel lied about the mass rapes because israel themselves hasn’t admitted they lied about it yet. Despite the overwhelming evidence that israel lied about it. If you do you get permabanned for “antisemitism”.

MBFC only by the way, gotta make sure the site says that UNRWA = Hamas to be reliable!

The place is ran by Liberal Zionists.

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

They’re also hyper sensitive and generally toxic with their reflex delete/ban/block. They’ll see what they want to see in the most mundane comments and nuke an entire thread. Best to just block them and ignore.

ID411 ,

I’m sure you meant to say “thank you for pioneering an alternative to Reddit so people had a home when Reddit sharted “

Chozo ,

Both can be true.

palordrolap ,

Yep. When I was migrating, I saw some advice to avoid Lemmy on account of its provenance, which is how I ended up on Kbin instead.

Unfortunately, it's not going well on the original instance (getting in before "how's that working out for you"), but for reasons very different to lemmy.ml.

Still don't have a lemmy account, but I am, for my sins, subscribed to communities there. Like this one.

ArcaneSlime ,

And hitler made the trains run on time, but fuck both him and desalinator.

boredtortoise ,

Time for them to move on to a new hobby then, surely there are more sane people to take over the development

Crowfiend ,

I’ve been censored/shadowbanned in a couple .ml instances for calling out their overzealous comment-nuking mods. Not even political in nature, just seeing threads where 80-90% of the comments are ‘removed by moderator’ and commenting how suspicious it was.

Then they removed that comment, and after taking a screenshot of the new comment calling out that, I got shadowbanned and can’t even vote there anymore.

catloaf ,

That’s just a regular ban. If you were shadowbanned, you would be able to vote but it wouldn’t do anything. As far as I know, Lemmy doesn’t have shadowbanning.

Natanael ,

Instance admins could easily patch it in for their local communities (just add a filter ignoring API actions like posting and voting for some users), but it’s not official and probably won’t ever be official behavior

catloaf ,

They could. But you can’t just ignore it, else they would see it missing when they refresh. You’d have to keep track of which things to actually count, and which to hide. It’s complicated, and Lemmy isn’t big enough to need it yet.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Instance admins could easily patch it in for their local communities

Any patch like that would need to be published publicly as Lemmy uses the AGPL license.

Natanael ,

Yeah, but who would be able to prove it?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

I imagine someone would eventually find out that their comments or votes aren’t visible to others users or somehow don’t register. But yea that is of course an issue.

Sunny ,

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

rufus ,

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

Brunbrun6766 ,
@Brunbrun6766@lemmy.world avatar

What the fuck is the threadiverse. This is the Fediverse. Threads has added nothing and has no place here.

Duamerthrax ,

They speak like a bot. Zuckerberg sending miles to infiltrate?

rufus , (edited )

Are you referring to me or BigFig? I’m neither a mile (I’m European, so we use the metric system), nor a mole. If you make me choose an animal, I’d like to be an alpaca. And I’d be willing to do a captcha to prove to you that I’m not a bot.

FozzyOsbourne ,

Are you new here? “Threadiverse” has been used to refer to thread-based fediverse technologies that use threaded comments since before Zuck’s “threads” was even announced!

Duamerthrax ,

I’ve only really heard Fediverse. I don’t really get into the meta discussions on here though. I’m also getting hyper sensitive to chatters that sound like bots. They mentioned “we”, but it doesn’t look like they’re a mod or admin, so I thought it was a bot using some PR speak from the dataset.

pmk ,

thread as in threaded posts as opposed to other parts of the fediverse with another layout. it’s not about the instance Threads, but the type of fediverse service allowing a lemmy/kbin type of conversation.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Threadiverse is just a general term to refer to the parts of the Fediverse that behaves like forums (cause forums have threads). It has nothing to do with threads.net.

it_depends_man ,

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

Yes.

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.

To whom?

If people agree with you, they will move and block and defederate. And if they don’t they don’t.

Sounds like a “you” problem.

Their server, their rules. If they want to run a political censorship social platform, they can and it’s totally ok if they un-invite you.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Network effect is a thing.

rufus ,

You’re 100% right OP. Don’t let the people tell you it’s a you problem and you should leave. It’s exactly like you said (in my opinion.) If at all, it’s the bad people who should leave. Not the nice ones and the ones calling out the bullshit.

Nothing changes if the just people keep silent and let bigotry or whatever just happen. It just makes the whole place become worse. And I’d say it’s warranted to speak up or do something. And as far as I heard you’re not the only one complaining.

LibertyLizard ,

I agree with the facts here but have a slightly different conclusion. This is a problem that exists on many similar platforms like Reddit, etc. If you give mods or admins unlimited power over their users, it is an almost foregone conclusion that it will be abused in some circumstances. While Lemmy.ml is perhaps the perfect storm of a bad example, I’ve seen examples of abuses of mod power from almost every community on both Lemmy and Reddit.

So how do we fix it? Migrating to different communities or instances can sometimes help, but the potential for abuse remains. Having more options for active communities and making migration easier is a step in the right direction. Despite its flaws, Lemmy is an improvement in this respect because its federated nature allows more choice in who has power over you, but the problem remains.

In my view the internet has always worked best when problems are solved democratically rather than autocratically. Content aggregators already allow for this to some extent in what content is presented, but moderation remains quite undemocratic. I think it may be that a new platform with new innovations to make moderation decisions more driven by community consensus instead of owners or founders of communities will be needed. Exactly what this will look like, I don’t know, but some brainstorming might be in order for the next evolution in social media.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

We have decades of proof of chuds brigading and building up hate speech hellfests in these “just let capitalism decide” laissez-faire models.

Moderation free environments just turn places into kiwi farms.

LibertyLizard ,

I obviously didn’t explain myself clearly if that’s what you took from this. I’m saying the community should be in control of moderation, not that there should be no moderation.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

It’s a cute idea but in practice, very, very few users want to deal with content moderation. The far majority of users just want to consume good, moderated content without worrying about removing bad content. Getting people to volunteer as mods is already hard enough. Making it democratic will not help I think.

Also, mob rule is not always the best. It is not uncommon for totally reasonable takes to be down voted - sometimes just because it started getting down voted and then others went on the bandwagon.

The way to achieve democracy in communities is not by making moderation democratic, but to make community switching easy. So if you don’t like your community mods, you can easily go elsewhere. That is also a kind of democracy I would say.

Maybe a middle ground could be moderator elections. At least then it’s a representative democracy and it would largely work as it already did. But again, very few people volunteer as mod so I believe you’ll find that the mods you could vote for would be very, very few mods (potentially just 1).

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

All moderator elections would do is let chuds stack the ballot. Look up shit like the sad puppies debacle.

The answer is that a site needs to decide what its rules are and then moderators need to enforce those rules, regardless of how the community feels. Which, ironically, is what ml is doing (even if they don’t publicize those rules). And if the community dislikes the rules, you disassociate with them.

The issue with the fediverse is that you need to defederate or else you are tacitly approving of their bullshit.

Dogyote ,

Kiwi farms?

Jakeroxs ,

wired.com/…/keffals-kiwifarms-cloudflare-blocked-…

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

Nobody is saying that there should be no moderation at all. What we are saying is that lemmy.ml moderators tend to remove users and content that are seen as even mildly critical of China, Russia, or Marxism-Leninism, and then sometimes hide the evidence of the removals from the modlog. That’s not acceptable to many people, including me.

WanderingVentra ,

The problem is that someone has to host the data. That will always be true. Even in the cloud, someone has to own the servers that the data are on. The only solution I can see is something basically like what we have the fediverse, only where other instances are sharing copies of the same community and the posts on it, kind of preventing one place from having ownership of it. But then if the instance goes down or gets defederated, I suppose you’d still have different versions of it floating around, plus the problem of someone posting CSAM and it getting pushed to all the instances and stuff.

Still, I agree that I think the closest solution is going to be something like the fediverse we’re seeing now. I just don’t know how to solve the problem of overzealous mods still, because we need mods. Having some democratic control over modding seems dangerous, too. Imagine a place gets brigaded by The Donald at 3am and everyone wakes up to their community being totally different. Or sometimes people are just wrong, like we have the problem of pre October 7th where 99% of the US believed Israel was a golden angel thanks to propaganda and dismissed all criticism. Same thing with socialism in the 50’s, or racism. Democratic modding at the time would lead to MLK getting banned lol.

It’s definitely an issue, because the ml mod and mods like them are way too trigger happy on the bans, but it’ll probably take some time to think of good solutions, and lots of experimenting with new forms of social media, like the fediverse.

LibertyLizard ,

Regarding server ownership, yes that is a thorny problem. One could dream up some kind of communally owned server system but that might be far fetched. However, I think the issue of mod power is distinct and might be easier to address.

As for the flaws of democratic systems, yes, they are real but most of these flaws apply to more autocratic systems as well. And we see from numerous examples that more democratic systems tend to abuse their power less often and severely than autocratic ones do. It’s a higher bar to get the whole community together to ban MLK than just one racist mod. Carefully thought out governance structures can also help. You certainly don’t want 51% of the community to be able to ban 49% whenever they want to, but the ideal would be to enable easy involvement with a structure that guides users towards making the right decisions.

The structure and culture to make this work could be difficult to build, so I’m not saying it’s an easy answer but it does seem like something to consider and maybe experiment with.

rufus ,

My first idea would be to have users report posts and ping a random sample of like 20 active and currently online users of the community and have them decide (democratically). That way prevents brigading and groups collectively mobbing or harassing other users. It’d be somewhat similar to a jury in court. And we obviously can’t ask everyone because that takes too much time, and sometimes content needs to be moderated asap.

Nelots ,

But then if you report something nobody should see, say CP for example, you’re suddenly subjecting 20 random people into seeing it.

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

Right but you could have filters to opt out of mod requests or certain types of mod requests. It could even be opt-in, with some trust level requirement before you’re included.

Also “CSAM” is a better term, because putting “porn” in the name focuses on the intended use by abusers, whereas the term “CSAM” focuses on the victims.

Nelots ,

Also “CSAM” is a better term

I see. I had noticed people using that term instead, but I never knew why. Thanks for the info.

Klear ,

Also “CSAM” is a better term, because putting “porn” in the name focuses on the intended use by abusers, whereas the term “CSAM” focuses on the victims.

Why is that at all important?

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

Because calling it ‘porn’ makes it sound appealling to people who associate porn with sexy things. It makes it sound like something they might want to seek out. It also demeans the victim by rhetorically placing them as the subject of pornography which can contribute to the damage.

Calling it “child sexual abuse material” centres the victim and puts distance between this material and pornography that was made consensually and ethically.

In a similar vein, “revenge porn” should be called sexual abuse material as well. And in fact a lot of technically legal “porn” would fall into the category of sexual abuse material if the full circumstances of its production was made known, but in the case of children the distinction is unambiguous.

commandar ,

This comment is kind of fascinating because it’s essentially reinventing Slashdot’s metamoderation system 25 years later.

It was good then. No reason it wouldn’t work again today.

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

Basic sortition method, I think that has a lot of merit.

rimu ,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

Sorry you stumbled into the wrong instance. Fortunately, other instances already offer alternative communities that are more active and moderated differently.

This could have been avoided if the UI included a warning about communities with problems. Like how PieFed does: https://piefed.social/post/89659

Thorny_Insight ,

I usually refrain from replying to threads on those instances and when possible use the non-.ml equivalent

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