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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.

elliot_crane ,

As you say OP, the solution here is to use the fediverse model as intended and use different instances/communities. It sucks because it fragments the community, but that’s the way it is. I’ve long held the opinion that I’m grateful to the lemmy developers for building this whole thing that we all get to enjoy, but their approach to administering an instance is reprehensible and actively damaging to the relatively free and open exchange of ideas that should happen on the fediverse.

boredtortoise ,

That hides the problem instead of fixing it… and if it’s a dev as well, the whole system isn’t really safe

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Code is opensource, if they were to put a backdoor or anything that would be seen, and once detected, the code can be forked

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

You… should probably pay more attention to the news.

It is very possible for bad actors to inject malicious code into an open source project. And it is very probable for people to not notice because the vast majority of developers never read a single line of the open source code they claim to value so much.

“Any bad code will be detected by the armies of people who do rigorous code analysis of every single pull request” was always nonsense.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Dam. You’re fucking sharp like for real. Good ass fuckin point. Like assuming everyone has good intentions is really nieve seriously

FozzyOsbourne ,

Are you referring to any news stories in particular? Because the only big one I recall recently was the xz backdoor which took three years of social engineering to get in and was detected and patched within a couple of weeks!

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

There have been a number of articles (pop and scholarly) about malicious code being social engineered into codebases over the past few years. And, in this case, the malice is “expected” from one of the long time developers to begin with.

Also: We got INCREDIBLY lucky that Andres Freund detected it when he did. Because that was hitting right around the time a lot of the major distros were preparing their major releases (Fedora basically escaped by the skin of their teeth).

Malicious manipulation of open source projects has always been a concern. And the vast majority of us do the equivalent of signing whatever form we are given because “oh it just looks like a standard contract”.

elliot_crane ,

I don’t agree with the “hiding the problem” notion because different instances are independently operated, and defederation is the by-design way to “fix” malignant instances (see the LW defed of hexbear and lemmygrad for exactly this kind of behavior).

As for the whole system not being safe, I’d also disagree on that point as the entire lemmy server code is licensed under a copyleft license which allows anyone with a copy of the code to modify and distribute it. Ergo, hard forking lemmy is possible. Based on the github page, over 800 individuals already have forks of the server code. Any one of them, group of them, or some other individuals entirely, could pick up lemmy development and run with it if need be.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

💯⚡️

Socsa ,

The threat is bigger than that though. These people control the code base and can easily just start running modified code to fuck with various aspects of federation to generally keep their finger on the scale of any instance which federates with them. At best they have shown they have no shame and cannot be trusted. If there is any means of abusing their power, it must be assumed that they will embrace it.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

People are working on alternatives - Ernst started Kbin and then kinda got stuck in it but refused to allow others to help so a community fork Mbin was created, and sublinks will eventually exist as well. However, this stuff takes time. You can help by contributing code or funds or activity to one of those if you like.

elliot_crane ,

Sure, to an extent. ActivityPub is an independent protocol not controlled by lemmy or any lemmy devs, so there’s a layer of protection there. This is also a trick that can only be pulled once, because any other instances would likely defederate in response and ML would render itself irreparably untrustworthy. I don’t mean to downplay your concerns as they are valid, but I also don’t think it’s an existential threat.

WanderingVentra ,

The people nodding the instance are generally different than the devs. Also, their code is open source.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

Lemmy is open source, anyone can fork it and start running “modified code”. it’s not like they have a monopoly on that

Allonzee , (edited )

Fuck China’s and Fuck Russia’s elite.

That said, reasonable is in the eye of the beholder, and I see capitalism’s apologists at this late hour (I’m suffering a reckless capitalist growth/metastasis caused heat dome as we speak along with 10s of millions of other Americans) as just as unreasonable as you see socialism proponents.

Modding abuse destroys communities, and that’s wrong. But I don’t demand all the communities I frequent spend their days agreeing with me, nor do I walk away unless the entire ethos/subject of the sub is to be against what I’m for. By that I mean, I can generally enjoy talking about a movie, for example, with a capitalism proponent because it isn’t generally centrally relevant to the topic.

The point of discourse is discourse. An AI chatbot will be better at feeding one’s confirmation bias than any community made up of people ever can be.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

It’s one thing to believe in and promote a particular political or economic system. The censorship found on instances like Lemmy.ml is an entirely different topic. It hurts the fediverse to have people banned from some of the larger communities for nothing other than wrongthink.

Allonzee , (edited )

I was banned from the LW comics sub because there was a comic about climate change being real, and I said something along the lines of having far more sympathy for non-human life suffering the hostile climate we’re creating because we’re doing it eyes wide open out of reckless greed , which according to that mod is “ecofascist rhetoric,” which I thought was funny because I wasn’t advocating doing… anything. Saying our species is more culpable for climate change than the other animals also suffering it was wrongthink that day.

That’s the paradox of power in any form, the vast majority who pursue it, from politicians, to police, to mods, usually sought that power with a biased agenda, maybe not even consciously, but still. Power corrupts, bans for wrongthink aren’t avoidable with people in charge and no additional layers of active monitoring/auditing which isn’t really tenable on a volunteer basis.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Your memory is spotty, you were banned from [email protected] for that comment. I will say good job though, I’ll have to add “ecofascist” to my rapidly growing list of wrongthink euphemisms.

Allonzee ,

My memory is fine, this isn’t the same account.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I know, it was AllonzeeLV, right? I inferred it was you based on the comment summary you gave and similarity to your newer account handle

Allonzee ,

That’s another account I have yes, but not the one I was referring to.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Ok, well that one was banned from .ml with the same exact reason for the same kind of comment you said got you banned from LW.

Allonzee ,

I freely admit I’m a broken record on the topics I’m passionate about. Man-made climate change being one of them.

My post history on all my accounts is testament to this.

cupcakezealot ,
@cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

this is why you fediblock lemmy ml and h*xbear

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah, but for example !linux is the only reasonably active community on Linux, and one of the communities I frequent the most.

roofuskit ,

If enough people block it and move on to another instance it won’t be a problem.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

!linux seems ok, I guess if any people move to it it will become even more active

!linux could probably be a nice one too if people want to avoid hypercentralization on LW

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

And lemmygrad.ml too, though most instances seem to do that by default now (yours has, as well as hexbear.net too:-).

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

So just so I know, if I took your advice and blocked lemmy.ml, does that mean I’m also blocking comments from all lemmy.ml users on communities on other instances?

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

Yup, I haven’t seen one of them in weeks ever since one of their mods deleted a post of mine for supposedly being racist. Apparently, they can see what you write, but you won’t see their comments.

fuckingkangaroos ,

In my version of software I still see lemmy.ml comments even though I’ve blocked the instance.

They’re clearly malicious, they should be defederated.

airglow ,

I don’t think that’s the case. The v0.19.0 release notes say:

Instance Blocks for Users

Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.

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.

buddascrayon ,

I did this, worth it.

I think we all have to remember that decentralization should also come from ourselves.

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.

goferking0 ,

Is this a call out comm now?

Anticorp ,

Not only do they delete truthful responses that contradict their ideology, they often do it in such a way that it is untraceable by other mods. I’m not sure how they accomplish that, nor is the admin who messaged me letting me know that it was happening and he couldn’t figure out how. Anyways, my solution has been to completely block that instance, and delete my account there. If they want to exist in a little untruthful echo chamber, then so be it, but I don’t need to be a part of it. I recommend you do the same thing.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

I’m not sure how they accomplish that

If they have database access, which they would have being the admins, they can do anything.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

The Lemmy devs are .ml admins to boot.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Pretty hard to boot when they own the instance

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Ah, I meant “to boot” meaning “in addition to”

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Ah, makes sense!

Flatworm7591 ,

Their mod actions usually do federate out, but their outgoing federation is a bit borked right now with some instances, perhaps due to the recent upgrade to Lemmy 0.19.4-rc.6. I believe they are at least aware of it now, though they have been basically non-responsive to the issue so far.

lltnskyc ,

they delete truthful responses that contradict their ideology

That is EXACTLY what is done on lemmy.world.

barsquid ,

lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&userId=1129088

lltnskyc ,

Nice, didn’t know there was a possibility to see deleted comments, thanks :) (not every deleted comment is there though, but enough to show the total hypocrisy of lemmy.world)

OpenStars , (edited )
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

beehaw.org/modlog?page=1&userId=4130334

lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&userId=1782109

It gets difficult to find them sometimes, depending on who removed it and from where. If a moderator, from the community, removed it then the removal reason could have originated from where the community is located at, whereas if an administrator of an instance removed it then it would be elsewhere.

For all that the lemmy.ml admins enjoy going on sprees of mass-removals, it sure would be nice if they would add to the code a way to see the reasons for removal linked to directly from the comment itself.

lltnskyc ,

Oh yeah, that’s the other one, thx!
I did not even get a notification for that comment why it was deleted, but now I see, and sure enough - it’s misinformation (despite providing 5 or 6 links to sources in a comment below, including reputable western (!!) media and tens/hundreds of footages…). 🤷‍♂️

Socsa ,

It is extremely obvious that the .ml admins run a malicious version of the Lemmy code which gives them additional levers of control. This alone makes them a serious threat to the entire fediverse.

sudneo ,

It is not obvious, most likely not necessary and in any case completely unproven. Why are you so busy making stuff up in this thread?

SoleInvictus ,

There’s a ton of misinformation on this post and some of those spreading it seem to be vigorously doing so.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

So it seems they do indeed clean up the modlog… my bans are still in there, but all mod actions where they removed China critical comments are no longer there.

Jean_le_Flambeur , (edited )

I was imagining something like this in hexbear or lemmygrad, as people there seemed quite dogmatic at times, but even on Lemmy.ml? Sad to see this, as I had mostly positive interactions there till now

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

I think unlike on hexbear and lemmygrad, most lemmy.ml users simply don’t know, and many communities hosted there are bona fide. I’m not throwing stones at them, it’s the admins of the instance that I have a beef with.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Stuff trickles down though, so that it’s not solely the admins, even if a large number of the userbase are innocent.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I’m throwing stones. Lemmy.ml is toxic and people managing communities there are partly to blame.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

The hexbears realized that EVERYONE blocks them. One particularly humorous youtube even did a “One of the great things about lemmy is that you can block particularly problematic communities. Let’s use hexbear as an example. Please follow along” gag to show how to block an entire instance at the user level.

Since ml was generally sympathetic to tankies, if not full of the idiots, the hexbears basically just joined that en masse.

But yeah. Caught a ban for racism/xenophobia because I questioned what positive benefit accelerationism would have for the Palestinian people. Reminded me way too much of attempting to interact with hexbear so I used that as an excuse to just start blocking any .ml community that I see in my feed. Not QUITE at the point of blocking the whole instance but… I expect to be there by the end of the month.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

One particularly humorous youtube even did a “One of the great things about lemmy is that you can block particularly problematic communities. Let’s use hexbear as an example. Please follow along” gag to show how to block an entire instance at the user level.

Interesting, do you have a link to the video?

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Not off the top of my head. It was one of the various “tech” youtubers who will do everything ranging from “here is how to set up proxmox” to “I tried five twitter alternatives for a week” videos.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

No worries, thanks anyway!

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

i’ve noticed a butt load of lemmygrad names appearing as lemmy.ml these days. Seems they got tired of existing in their little de-federated bubble

fuckingkangaroos ,

They won’t get paid if they don’t effectively spread propaganda.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

Lemmy is far too small for any actual organized propaganda machines to target. These people are just zealots

fuckingkangaroos ,

Nonsense, go take a look at Hexbear or Lemmygrad. There’s very little moderation here, why wouldn’t they target it?

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

There’s plenty of moderation there, it’s just highly biased.

There aren’t enough users on lemmy for a state actor to bother putting resources into controlling the narrative.

Why waste time on a few thousand lemmy users when there are literally millions of gullible boomers on facebook that actually vote based on what they consume on social media

fuckingkangaroos ,

“Here” as in the fediverse generally, not “there” as in Hexbear.

The Fediverse currently has over a million active monthly users, and had more in the past. You think it’s not worth it for them to spread propaganda to a million people in an environment they can manipulate? Come on.

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.

nahuse ,

Thanks for illustrating that I was banned from not just one community I don’t participate in aside from upvoting, but several that I have never even visited. All for “Rule 4,” which as far as I can tell is spamming ads, which I have never done. I’ve tried to message the mods of those communities, but haven’t gotten any kind of response.

It’s really disappointing that this is how Lemmy seems to work. As a new user, I had to actively persevere through the .ml bullshit to understand that lemmy as a whole is not like that. But it’s almost impossible to be a progressive (but not full blown anti-western communist) on an awful lot of this platform.

It really does the other large instances a disservice that those mod/admin practices are so commonplace.

I know the answer is to defederate/block them, but I genuinely find the news and posts interesting, and .ml was one of the instances that I was first looking into, because I literally didn’t understand how the fediverse worked but kept hearing “just pick an instance, there no wrong choice since you have access to all the other instances.”

But even those posts about topics I am educated in and care about, it all just literally seems to be a vessel for a specific type of (dis/mis)information in the comments, which actively preys on the gullible and shuts out even moderately different views.

Edit: mobile formatting fix

catloaf ,

Same. I’ve only ever made one post, and it wasn’t to lemmy.ml, nor have I made a significant number of comments, yet I was banned first from the instance, then from the communities, for allegedly spamming. I asked in the Matrix chat linked in their sidebar, and they suggested I message dessalines, so I did. He rejected the message request.

If this is their ideal of Lemmy, then Lemmy is dead on arrival.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

It really does the other large instances a disservice that those mod/admin practices are so commonplace.

Agree.

On the other hand nowadays now most of the communities are on LW (lemmyverse.net/communities?order=active) so at least it’s a bit better compared to a year ago.

nahuse ,

It’s a good trend, but I still think it would behoove the admin of more reasonable instances to make it more obvious that there is a sizable and aggressive group of people with nearly unlimited (internet) power, and making it clear that they do not associate at all with those instances/individual practices.

There is a huge dearth of naming and shaming bad actors, and it’s going to reach a size where people won’t do their research as I did, but will assume that all of the fediverse is run by authoritarian Communists and (not) engage based on that.

And that wouldn’t be an unfair understanding, given who the creators of Lemmy are, who their disciples/mods are, and their influence across the platform.

Lemmy really runs the risk of being “left wing Truth Social” otherwise.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Lemmy really runs the risk of being “left wing Truth Social” otherwise.

Indeed. I’m still on /r/RedditAlternatives to talk about Lemmy, and I usually have to explain that most of the instances do not share the political stances of the main devs.

it would behoove the admin of more reasonable instances to make it more obvious that there is a sizable and aggressive group of people with nearly unlimited (internet) power, and making it clear that they do not associate at all with those instances/individual practices.

The situation here is a bit tricky: instance admins still have to debug the software (as they are the ones using it), and they have to interact with the Lemmy devs. Getting too much friction with them could break that collaboration, and leave everyone with worse software.

sublinks.org is still under development, hopefully once it will be ready instance admins will have another option to potentially replace Lemmy

nahuse ,

I hear you.

I’d just offer a slight counter, which is that if the devs want their software to succeed, they should probably work a little harder to police how their politics overflow, or work harder to contain them. And bringing these issues into the full light of day may help with that, or at least convince them to crack down on bad actors they a currently allow to function with impunity.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

convince them to crack down on bad actors

The Lemmy devs have expressed several times that they don’t want to interfere on how people use their software (e.g. admin the instances and mod the communities).

Which is good (and allow us to say that they can’t indeed interfere with Lemmy as a whole), but that also means that they won’t be the one “cracking down on bad actors”

gui.fediseer.com might be something along those lines, with a chain of trust between instances

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.

Kyle_The_G ,

I’ve had this happen to me, I was chatting in a thread with some guy about IP theft and plagiarism at universities- a legitimate discussion about a current topic- and all my comments were suddenly deleted for “xenophobia”. I let it go but its still really jarring and annoying.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Which community was that?

Kyle_The_G ,

world news lol, Thats probably why. It was a comment under an article on that topic and they went censor-crazy.

awesome_lowlander ,

I’ll go out on a limb and guess China was mentioned somewhere

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

I agree completely. Blocked the instance only now despite them becoming more and more annoying each month.

sabreW4K3 ,
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al avatar

Decentralization is good for everyone.

jaspersgroove ,

Tell that to the Chinese government lol

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

As others have said, the only option available currently is to leave the instance and re-create your beloved communities elsewhere. The Lemmy.ml Admins also happen to be the ones actively developing the Lemmy code base, and they’re not gonna change because they feel entitled to do whatever they want, and technically, they can because they run the instance.

My best advice is to move on from the instance.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

If you want to get away from the Lemmy codebase entirely I can vouch that mBin works quite nicely. I've been on fedia.io for months now and only once or twice hit some kind of technical problem, which was resolved quickly.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

MBIN FTW. KBIN has been "We are working on resolving the issues" for some days now. I hope Ernest is ok.

I have a login for lemmy.ml, as I have several from when I was switching over from Reddit. I'm thinking from what I'm reading here, that it's not an instance I want to associate with.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

Yeah, nothing against Ernest but developing and running kbin is just too big to be a one-man show.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

Dude's a superhero, and needn't be a 'lone ranger'. Agreed. As the Fediverse expands, it will be the work of many; it just has to be that way.

PugJesus ,

I do hope he eventually finds a balance that works both for him and for us. I greatly prefer Kbin, when it’s, y’know, up.

Atelopus-zeteki ,
@Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run avatar

Agreed! And yeah, still down, I just checked.

ahornsirup ,
@ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz avatar

Are there mobile apps yet? Because if no that’s one huge advantage Lemmy still has over Kbin/Mbin, and it’s why I switched to Lemmy when Artemis started having issues (it went down completely since) instead of going back to Kbin.

debounced ,
@debounced@kbin.run avatar

https://github.com/jwr1/interstellar

ahornsirup ,
@ahornsirup@sopuli.xyz avatar

Oh, cool. That one flew completely under my radar. I’ll have to check it out when I have time.

xnx ,

Don’t forget about piefed it’s amazing and lets you subscribe to posts and/or comments. Theres someone who contributed Lemmy API compatibility to use some Lemmy apps with Piefed instances. Its still very early but so far its extremely promising and the codebase is in python and the main developer is focused on ensuring it wasy to contribute. Check it out: piefed.social

Code is on codeberg which is great too codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi

bacon_saber ,

Agree and just to add to this: the official list of mbin instances

Microw ,

Well since all major lemmy instances seem to hide mod names in their logs, we don’t know who the banning mods are.

Lemmy.ml also has the funny quirk that it doesnt have a proper legal imprint or team list afaik. So we don’t have actual transparent information on who is on that instances admin team and who is not. Iirc only one of dessalines and nutomic is on that admin team anymore.

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

Well since all major lemmy instances seem to hide mod names in their logs, we don’t know who the banning mods are.

I hardly see what that would accomplish if we could.

goferking0 ,

Nothing good or productive would come out of showing mod names in mod logs. Would just have people doing witch hunts on user level instead of instances like they do now

Microw ,

People keep bringing up that because of the devs history with that instance, “surely it is the Lemmy devs themselves who are doing this”. Which hurts Lemmy’s reputation overall.

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

Actions have consequences

boredtortoise ,

I guess some mod actions could be considered accidents or mistakes instead of bad actors. A transparent system would have a flow to allow the user to contact and get such a mistake rectified, or report a wrongful mod action to an admin.

But if the admin is a problem, then that needs more figuring out how to get one removed.

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

the only one who can remove an admin is a more senior admin, and they can already see behind the “mod” alias.

your point seems moot

Eldritch ,

This Dessalines?

1000001794

Creeping the admin logs to find out who dared down vote him.

downpunxx ,

try posting any pro jewish and/or pro israeli, anywhere on lemmy or kbin instances (watch the votes for this comment, lol)

Makhno ,

Yeah cause most people on here don’t like ethnocentric genocidal states. Sorry to burst your little bubble ¯_(ツ)_/¯

toasteecup ,

Holy fuck.

Zionism (the political policy supporting the genocide) is not Judaism. How would I know? I’m a Jew and I abhore the Palestinian genocide. Nothing in the Jewish religion supports what is going on nor does anything in our religion say “go be ZIONISTS and kill people”.

EleventhHour ,
@EleventhHour@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think that person was saying that it was

toasteecup ,

That’s possible, the statement is a bit ambiguous as to which part they are "whomp whomp"ing to.

Microw ,

How exactly can a political policy support anything? It’s the people who call themselves after an ideology who support it. Not an abstract ideology that a guy invented over 100 years ago.

toasteecup ,

That’s a fair question.

In consideration, take the Jim Crow laws from the USA. These laws enforced racial segregation and allowed for abject racism and abhorrent conditions/treatment of black people. In short, they supported racism.

Now one could say “but the people were the ones to carry it out” which sure, but then we might as well start asking ourselves how much government really matters and other philosophical questions. I don’t think the people are innocent, but to focus on your question, that’s an example of how political policy and laws can support things. The laws enable the legal environment, the people then carry it out.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Watch this!

I think Jewish people are great.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Upvoted!

toasteecup ,

Thanks I think you’re pretty nifty too. You’re welcome over for latkas anytime

NoIWontPickAName ,

Hopefully yours are better than mine

toasteecup ,

People are happy and enjoy eating them so I guess I’m doing it right. How are you making yours?

NoIWontPickAName ,

Poorly. I don’t remember anything but that.

I tried twice, and have just decided that I would rather have hash browns anyway. (I can actually cook them)

boredtortoise ,

I have so much support for jewish people, and especially those who are against Netanyahu’s atrocities

flamingos ,
@flamingos@feddit.uk avatar

What do you mean by “pro Jewish”? I doubt a comment like “Jewish people are human beings that deserve respect” would get you downvoted.

toasteecup ,

That one no, but there are plenty of leftists in the fediverse that can’t understand the concept of “Zionism is not Judaism.” And saying such gets you down voted because lol.

flamingos ,
@flamingos@feddit.uk avatar

I haven’t seen that myself, but I’m sure some of them exist and they’re dumb for thinking that. The person I’m replying to, though, is clearly taking the position that anti-Zionism = antisemitism.

toasteecup ,

Not sure if you mean me by “person you’re replying to” or someone else. I believe it’s someone else but it’s a little bit of a confusing sentence.

Either way, it’s been a fun couple of months since this bullshit started. With all kinds of dumb takes and arguments. It’s enough to make someone say “oyvey”

flamingos ,
@flamingos@feddit.uk avatar

I meant downpunxx.

toasteecup ,

Gotcha gotcha

imPastaSyndrome ,

If people disagree with me and downvote my irrelevant lie they actually hate Jews fucking gottem

stormesp ,

First, its obvious that anything pro israeli is going to be met with backslash when they are doing a freaking genocide. Second, downvoting is not censoring, is just people saying they disagree with you or your comment is just stupid/non helpful

dezmd ,
@dezmd@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll argue that crocodile tears deserve downvotes, as do bullies.

Im pro jewish, Im pro Israeli, but im so anti-injustice that I’m willing to stand up to anyone pushing for or acting as a pro-war Israel supporter, or jewish as an Israeli identity when it comes to being prowarfare, when they still support what has quickly evolved into a politically strategic genocide against palestinians. Hamas deserved what it got in the immediate aftermath of October 7, but after 2 weeks then 3 weeks then a month then 2 months it showed that despite all of Israels’ military and civilian efforts of having an experienced security apparatus steeped in information warfare and threat containment, they didnt have the effective strategic competence to actually wipe out Hamas without having to constantly murder civilians.

But they went ahead and kept on fucking killing.

So now, they keep moving goal posts for any chance of peace. Its not a new strategy, but it has far more violent consequences and only further spreads fervor for more violence. Peace begets peace. One side doesn’t get to play that against the other like a ping pong match and expect objective obervers to fall for either side’s propaganda.

This is all revenge without justice now.

Take your foot off the throttle.

FaceDeer ,
@FaceDeer@fedia.io avatar

There's going to be bubbles everywhere. I've been called a troll and downvoted heavily in various communities because I don't hate Microsoft or AI in general, for example.

bolexforsoup ,

Kbin.social has been down for like 3 days now so you can’t do this experiment there :/

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Getting downvoted is one thing. There is definitely a certain bias in the wider fediverse community on this topic, so it’s normal that your comments aren’t received well. It isn’t manipulative and probably an accurate reflection of what the community thinks.

What lemmy.ml is doing is more insidious though. They are manipulating the discussion by actively muzzling users with dissenting opinions.

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