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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.

33550336 ,
@33550336@lemmy.world avatar

Tankies warming up to call you and Lemmy.World fascists in 3, 2, 1…

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/956332a9-1a24-4692-b35b-55ca93997656.webp

Lianodel , (edited )

Tankies: The word ‘tankie’ is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.

Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Every word used by disingenuous people on the right becomes “useless” - freedom, patriot, Christian, help, law, order, justice, democracy, Constitution, agreement, good, bad - you name it, they twist it into a 100% polar opposite of what it used to mean before they got their hands on it.

So at some point, I think perhaps they should not be in charge… of what words “mean”? :-P

That said, ‘tankie’ is pejorative so perhaps we can find a better one for that different reason. I don’t know what, or for sure that a pejorative is bad, but maybe “authoritarian”, totalitarian, or fascist seems accurate - as in not beholden to “principles” so much as whoever holds the power gets to do whatever they want.

33550336 ,
@33550336@lemmy.world avatar

They also sometimes overuse the word “ultra”, but instead of “right wing” they use the word “reactionary”, to be compliant wit soviet aesthetics I suppose.

figaro ,

I’m all for defederating from tankie instances. They suck.

vga ,

Yes, we should all recognize that Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Reread OP

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

pukeko ,

Whenever this topic comes up, I find myself wondering what these folks do all day. Not in a Boomer “don’t these people have jobs?!?” way, but more … what is it like to be them? Do they just sit in front of the computer looking for conversations to disrupt? What is their daily existence? Because I find their volume and dedication to what they do fascinating. Cancerous and absurd, but also fascinating.

stoly ,

This was my experience. My first interaction was me asking a question in good faith. I was then attacked en masse and banned. When I asked about it, I was told how I was a terrible person for not already knowing and believing what they do.

pukeko ,

Keeping in mind that “knowing and believing what they do” is itself a perilous notion because one of them might be a “Post-Madrid 1933 purple throated” Marxist while another might be a “Modernist new path” Marxist (I made those terms up). I mean I know “lol factions” is an old discussion with the farthest left, but they can’t even agree with each other.

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

Honestly once you sort of realize that you can’t be on the left and also support authoritarianism/fascism (regardless of the label or intent) the factionalism kind of isn’t as troublesome or confusing.

You end up with those who believe in supporting progress informed by rational, current understanding of reality and then you have those who cling to failed ideas the same way conservatives do.

The left can debate solutions and data reasonably without splitting into contradicting camps, people just need to always check and see if they’re actually oriented towards the defining principles of left wing politics; bolstering human rights and well being, strengthening democratic institutions and outcomes using the most current understanding of the world we have available to us right now.

The left, by definition, flexes and adapts to reality to achieve an outcome, conservativism is when people try to bend reality to fit their ideology.

pukeko ,

My wife and I have a saying we find ourselves using far, FAR too often: “Conservatism lurks in the most unexpected places…”

JimSamtanko ,

Yes.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

I really want to understand their relationship with the CCP.

Do they genuinely believe the shit they’re peddling or are they paid propagandists or is their something more nefarious afoot.

barsquid ,

They get half a yuan per post. Not sure what the rate is on banning or deleting comments.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

i’ve seen you say this more than once. do you have a source?

ryan_ ,

This is what’s being referred to:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

rah , (edited )

Do they genuinely believe the shit they’re peddling or are they paid propagandists or is their something more nefarious afoot.

From my interactions, I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re mostly seriously broken people who’ve discovered Marx, convinced themselves that capitalism is the cause of all suffering and believe socialism is the solution that will free them from their trauma. The degree of their attachment to socialism is a reflection of the degree of their suffering and brokenness.

If they weren’t so toxic, they’d be deserving of compassion and forebearance.

boredtortoise ,

It is an interesting question because even China doesn’t believe in the disinformation they spread. It’s just a tactic

barsquid ,

This is their job. They get half a yuan (wumao) per post.

cygon ,

Thanks for bringing this up, it’s really needed.

Your example is just one of many I’ve seen. The entire instance seems to be engaged in an opinion shaping campaign where only this gross mix of Western doomerism with Russia/China-glorifying fascism is allowed to thrive.

I don’t know how to best deal with such indoctrination chambers. Their members become completely divorced from reality and there’s no way to pull them back from the brink because anything you could say to that effect gets moderator-deleted. Yet vice versa, they can freely spread their propaganda and engage in “raids” on other instances.

barsquid ,

I don’t think we can help them. They’re praising the authoritarian state capitalist nation of China as an ideal form of government just because the country lies about being socialist. (The “Chinese characteristics” are billionaires and capitalism.) They need cult deprogramming to re-enter reality. Just like the Trumpanzees who think Donald did a good job.

For the rest of us, a team should fork the code and the rest of us cut them loose. I came to Lemmy to get away from delusional far-right redditors. I don’t want to read similar idiotic doublethink from “communists” who love capitalism and think North Korea has done nothing wrong.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

You don’t need to do a full lemmy code fork ffs. The problem is moderation style of a specific instance, just set up a new instance and defed from the problem instances.

barsquid ,

If we don’t trust them to moderate instances with integrity I don’t know why we would trust them to maintain the source indefinitely. We’ll eventually have to fork even if it doesn’t seem necessary at the moment.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

you can’t trust anyone to maintain source indefinitely. forking now just means everything has to be done twice

niktemadur ,

The entire instance seems to be engaged in an opinion shaping campaign

That’s too subtle a statement. It is a willful, bad-faith, full-on attack on objective reality via the rewriting of historical facts, redaction of massive volumes of information and constant aggressive, knee-jerk silencing of voices.

As such, it can also be described as a malicious assault on the mental health of individuals and society as a whole. Their actions a clear example of the type of repressive, miserable society they would have us live in, if given the chance by hook or by crook.

phoenixz ,

Makes you wonder if they are supported, or directly controlled by either china or russia

Delta_V , (edited )

Or simply working out of troll farms in China or Russia while being bankrolled by Republicans in USA. Same M.O.

edit: for example: dailydot.com/…/chatgpt-bot-x-russian-campaign-mem…

Raffster ,

Yet so few people see this reality. And engage in pointless fights where there is absolutely nothing to gain but only lost time and effort. Meanwhile this strategy seems to work very successfully and not only here…

Schadrach ,

I don’t know how to best deal with such indoctrination chambers. Their members become completely divorced from reality and there’s no way to pull them back from the brink because anything you could say to that effect gets moderator-deleted. Yet vice versa, they can freely spread their propaganda and engage in “raids” on other instances.

This is essentially the same problem Reddit has (mods/admins can control what is discussed on their boards), stems from the same place (mods/admins have essentially unlimited power over their boards/instances), and has the same basic solution - let the echo chamber echo chamber and create alternative communities that don’t have that problem. And on the upside, since this is a federated space you can just have [email protected] instead of r/truewhatever7alpha.

It’s just more noticeable here because the censorious leftward fringe is both more extreme and more aggressive about it.

At least we haven’t started getting mods running bots to auto-ban anyone who has ever interacted with other specific communities yet.

Blackmist ,

Everyone should defederate from .ml, and most have already got rid of hexbear and lemmygrad.

It’s an absolute shit show of an instance, and the rest of us don’t want to be subject to their nonsense.

I just wish the instance block prevented me from seeing their users as well.

Gamers_Mate ,

Its about time people bring up the .ml tankie problem. Lemmygrad was defederated but .ml was ignored due to basically being their PR instance.
This is the main reason I have stuck to kbin social despite it having a lot of spam and errors and why I am now on Mbin.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

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

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?

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.

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.

sabreW4K3 ,
@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al avatar

Decentralization is good for everyone.

jaspersgroove ,

Tell that to the Chinese government lol

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

splonglo ,

I would have become a socialist way sooner if Tankies weren’t so prominent. ‘USSR good’ is not a great selling point.

Akasazh ,
@Akasazh@feddit.nl avatar

I am a socialist, but I will not simp for authoritarian technocrats

barsquid ,

Are you even a real socialist, then? If you aren’t excusing absolutely everything from an authoritarian country that calls themselves socialist but produces hundreds of billionaires?

xor ,

You had me for a moment there

splonglo ,

Damn you raise a good point. Afterall capitalism is when the means of production is owned by small elite, and socialism is also that but like even more.

Bernie_Sandals ,
@Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world avatar

But you see that small socialist elite proclaims it’s doing it for the working class, therefore it’s okay now.

Don’t look at those prisons full of attempted trade unionists pls.

Emperor ,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

The thing is, the Fediverse, link the original concept of the Internet is flexible and can survive losing nodes - it just routes around and issue. If there are problems it can mutate and survive.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

This is the best solution - the answers are in our hands. Communities only thrive because the users are.posting and interacting on it. If the Mod goes inactive or an instances goes down, we can switch to a new community. That then gains the momentum and goes on to thrive. It’s survival of the fittest and why having more than one community on a topic (especially big topics) is a feature not a bug because it gives the network flexibility and resilience.

So if there’s an issue with lemmy.ml, boycott it - unsubscribe, give the other communities on more agreeable instances your time and they will grow and prosper. If there isn’t a relevant alternative start one.

Lemmy prevails.

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

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

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

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

Emperor ,
@Emperor@feddit.uk avatar

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

It may be, but only as a last resort.

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

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

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

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

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

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

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

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

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

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

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

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

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

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

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

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

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

Which brings me to …

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

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

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Same link

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