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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.

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.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

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

therealjcdenton ,

Chinese honey pot

ahornsirup ,
@ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz avatar

Ironically, .ml seems to be blocked in China.

Daxtron2 ,

Pretty much any popular site they can’t censor is like that.

ahornsirup ,
@ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz avatar

Oh, for sure. I just think it’s funny.

Daxtron2 ,

Definitely lol

thesocavault ,
@thesocavault@lemmy.world avatar

As being new to Lemmy, I do understand what you are saying. There is no balance of conversation - it’s I’m taking my ball and going home type of thing.

Rather not all cases, but it does happen.

**People just want a good conversation **

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

**People just want a good conversation **

Feel free to join at !casualconversation

Alpha71 ,

Np offense but so what? nothing you post on there is going to change anything, anywhere. You’re shouting into a vacuum.

Fizz ,

Eventually lemmy will grow to a point where these communities are moved off that instance.

nutsack ,

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

Socsa ,

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

Duamerthrax ,

Some people just have daddy issues and need an image of a power figure to guide their life. It’s obvious on the right, but I’ve seen various shades of it in the left as well.

WanderingVentra ,

Cold war drama is still alive and well. You could see it when people call freaking Bernie, or even more laughably Biden, a communist, or in the fall out of every country in the global south, from Latin America to the Middle East, from propped up divisions of countries in East Asia, to the poor former Soviet block of Eastern European countries looted in the wake of the fall of the USSR. Our present interference in South Korea, Taiwan, Cubs Afghanistan, Yemen, and elsewhere are all relics of that time. The US has never really left the red scare mindset, and the global geopolitics of that era will reverberate for generations to come. It’s why everyone celebrated when Kissinger died.

Still, saying all that commie and socialist stuff, I still think lemmy.ml is too ban happy. I like that they don’t defederate as fast as Lemmy.world, which I think is too eager on that front. But in terms of their posting moderation, I think lemmy.ml is way too heavy handed, and hence I don’t like their moderation style at all. It’s why I made sure not to choose either of those instances despite them being the biggest and most default. I do like having the choice, though, which is one big thing I like about the fediverse. There’s no way to avoid that kind of shit on Reddit. I just wish people would split up the communities among different instances better, though.

fuckingkangaroos ,

“leftists”

They’re not, that’s just a cover for spreading CCP propaganda.

tigeruppercut ,

Let’s play identify the ml propaganda! Is it CCP or from the Kremlin?

fuckingkangaroos ,

Tough game, as part of their “super authentic bff” relationship they seem to be loosely coordinating social media disinformation operations.

Zeroxxx ,

If .ml is a CCP propaganda, then blahaj and co are terrorists.

It’s pretty weird with massive amount of money CCP has, they decide to spread propaganda on, gasp, smol forums like Fediverse.

Not that I support .ml, I don’t care either way, I just find your view… weird.

Cryophilia ,

Bigger bang for their buck here. Trust me, the fediverse is not their only target, but they can have a lot of influence with less effort than reddit or Facebook.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yeah, there’s no central entity to address misinformation.

Zeroxxx ,

Disagreed. But you do you

bigboig ,

Anyone can spread propaganda pro bono

Halosheep ,

I got banned from a blahaj instance for likening them to ml and hexbear.

taipan ,
@taipan@lemmy.world avatar

.ml = Marxism-Leninism

This wasn’t obvious to me because ML could also mean the country of Mali or machine learning, but based on their content and moderation patterns, it’s unmistakable that the “.ml” in Lemmy instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml stands for Marxism-Leninism.

Hope that clears things up.

uis ,

Two-character TLDs are country codes

taipan ,
@taipan@lemmy.world avatar

I know that and that’s why I said .ml could stand for the country of Mali. However, the .ml in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml clearly stands for Marxism-Leninism, not Mali, the same way the .tv domain suffix often stands for television, not Tuvalu.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

.ml top level domains are very cheap, as well, so I think it was a happy coincidence for them to choose the .ml TLD.

They most definitely didn’t mind that .ml can stand for Marxist-Leninism, but I don’t think that was the only reason it was chosen.

uis ,

Oh, right. .tk, .ml and others

Gork ,

I say Twitch dot Tuvalu and people give me weird looks for doing so.

intensely_human ,

gesundheit

delirium ,
@delirium@lemmy.world avatar

That’s a con and a pro of decentralized net: if you don’t like the owner, pick another instance or create your own and be the king. Bad news is, every instance is controlled by couple regular folks who’re not responsible financially so they can imply their own rules and post and ban whatever they want.

Like the jungle: you gotta learn to survive and avoid the monkeys with rabies.

hipsterdoofus ,

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

retrospectology ,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

That kind of makes me a bit more skeptical of Lemmy as a whole if I’m being honest. Not necessarily the instance owners, but the system as a whole.

hipsterdoofus ,

Yeah, I’ve been eyeing kbin/mbin for a bit, which can actually federate with lemmy.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

👌

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

LW is already much more active than lemmy.ml (18k monthly active users vs 2.5k: fedidb.org/software/lemmy/), so the system is working, people have left for a less politically biased instance

Skepticpunk ,

Good. Is development of Lemmy still controlled by tankies?

AnxiousOtter ,

Yep

WanderingVentra , (edited )

Lemmy.world is biased, but in a way that’s harder to see. They’re more liberal and centrist, which isn’t political in the same way being white “isn’t”. It seems like it isn’t because it’s the default of the English speaking West.

But still, ya, lemmy.ml needs to cool it with the bans and heavy handed moderation. I’m glad it’s not the biggest anymore but now I think everything is too much on Lemmy.world. I wish people would split up their accounts and communities on more instances instead of putting it all on one (or two). This and Reddit is a great example of why we shouldn’t be giving the same people power over everything.

LesserAbe ,

Just like there’s no such thing as an unbiased person, there’s no unbiased instance. Better to know what you’re getting into than to assume what you’re reading isn’t coming from a particular point of view.

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

I’d say the problem with bias isn’t that it exists, but when it’s covert. The ML instances were covert for a while if you weren’t paying attention, LW is “centrist” and “neutral” which means it defaults to a vaguely conservative position (conservative in the sense of being passively okay with the status quo, not the US sense in which conservative is an electoral party), but it remains covert simply by being default.

It also has open sign up which means anyone can sign up, which will tend to attract people who know their politics suck, so it will tend to attract unpleasant users.

Another instance with open sign up is sh.itjust.works which I’ve noticed a lot of the more toxic assholes I’ve dealt with come from. I imagine having profanity implied in their name doesn’t help with that.

Whereas instances like lemmy.blahaj.zone and beehaw.org wear their bias on their sleeves and require sign ups be approved. I chose slrpnk.net for a similar reason. These instances seem like a much nicer experience in general, and I would recommend anyone wanting to join lemmy find an instance that they like that has an approval process.

I think the fediverse presents a vision of an internet based on trust, and I think that sign up process is an important place to start building that trust.

sudneo ,

They were openly discouraging people to sign up on .ml already a year ago (I remember a banner to register elsewhere). I don’t think “anything” in particular is working. The devs seem not to care less for having the biggest instance, or communities there etc. They had the instance long before most of Lemmy users joined, after all.

volodya_ilich ,

less politically biased

There’s no such thing as “less politically biased”, it’s just that you don’t perceive the things that align with the center of the overton window as political.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

We all have to wrestle with those ethics ourselves, but fwiw most of us have come down to the idea that writing code is one thing whereas administering an instance is something else altogether. People are working on other implementations of the ActivityPub protocol e.g. Kbin, its community fork Mbin, and things like sublinks that doesn’t fully exist yet.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

I’m staring at the front page of lemmy.ml and I’m trying to find what’s got people so worked up. It seems fairly simple to not go into a prolonged rant about how much you hate China when the content is just silly imgr memes.

I mean, by all means, block it if you don’t like the content. But why are you obsessed with the modlogs of an instance you blocked?

lltnskyc ,

You don’t see even a bit of hypocrisy in that? Holy shit…
I have exactly the same complaint about lemmy.world - it’s censuring everything that doesn’t align with leftist views (and on the other hand, when I post on lemmy.ml it’s usually not deleted).
Oh I know, I know, let me guess, they are censoring people because they are evil and authoritarian and are bad people, but you are censuring people because you are all democratic and for freedom and so on and anyway the ones that get censored are tankies and fascists and russian bots/propagandists?..
knowyourmeme.com/…/2355607-our-blessed-homeland-t…

zbyte64 ,

Yeah, very ironic that deleting misinformation is equated to deleting accurate information.

lltnskyc ,

Oh yeah definitely, I forgot that one - everything they say is a misinformation, no matter the included sources and any proofs, and everything we say is the purest truth possible!
Seriously, it’s like the meme was created exactly for this post 🙃

zbyte64 ,

everything we say is the purest truth possible!

People obsessed with purity will think like that.

aleph ,
@aleph@lemm.ee avatar

It’s not exactly the same complaint at all. You got a single comment removed from a single thread by a single moderator.

The equivalent would be if the admin of lemmy.world stepped in and not only banned you from World News but also every single other LW community you posted in, out of spite.

lltnskyc ,

Okay, that’s fair enough.
Still, complaining about censorship while engaging in censorship is hypocritical 🤷

MrSpArkle ,

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

Wrench ,

We can defederate them now. Content will move as it reaches fewer eyes.

Crowfiend ,

Even the non political .ml communities are full of power-tripping, ban-happy, thread-nuking tyrants in my experience.

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.

PugJesus ,

Yeah, I made a specific point of avoiding participation in any .ml groups for that very reason.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

Best thing to do is to personally ask your instance admin to defederate, as well as other users and admins of other popular instances.

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yes, DEFEDERATE LEMMY.ML

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