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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.

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

Katana314 ,

I am one of the removed comments and just found out about it here. Does the Lemmy standard really not send direct messages to users when one of their messages was removed? If it was an actual Rule 1 violation (which of course, it wasn’t) I’d like to know.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

There is no “lemmy standard”. There is ActivityPub though. Lemmy could maybe implement something to send an ActivityPub message when something is removed but this has not been done yet. I think there is an issue for it on GitHub though?

Microw ,

Yes there is an open issue on Github for moderation notifications (Get notified when you’ve been banned, your post has been removed, etc): https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4572

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Mods will never tell you that you’ve been moderated.

Mods are generally fieflords exercising their mediocre powers for kicks. It wouldn’t be much fun if they had to have a discussion with all of the poors about why they’ve been censored.

Katana314 ,

Might be time to pull a “body cam policy” and take the fun out of moderating.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

meh. I don’t think anyone is that interested.

SorteKanin , (edited )
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Not all mods are like that, for the record. I’d even say it’s the minority of mods that are like that (at least on the Fediverse - on reddit, I’m not so sure).

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Disagree.

In my experience ist the vast majority of mods on any platform. Lemmy has some of the worst in my experience.

Zeroxxx ,

Yep. When the power shifts to user (as opposed to Reddit’s corp power) it gives more freedom for abuse since there’s no longer centralized control

Power trip is one of the biggest issue – ‘THIS IS MY INSTANCE NOW BEGONE YOU INFIDELS!’

Kecessa ,

And that’s an issue with the instance system, losing access to tons of communities you have no problem in because you happened to piss off the instance’s admin in a community they frequent? That’s completely ridiculous.

BarbecueCowboy ,

Saying anything negative about China is a violation of rule 1 on lemmy.ml from the admins perspective. They classify anything critical that gains any attention as Sinophobia and file it under bigotry.

Lianodel ,

It honestly reminds me of fascists saying that harsh criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. It’s a dishonest rhetorical game.

Kecessa ,

You just made me realize that I have been banned from some of the communities over there while never having posted on them, mods are reading conversations in other communities and preemptively banning people…

Weslee ,

Ah reminds me of good ol’ reddit

Schadrach ,

Oh, boy. Back to the old Reddit patterns. How long before they start using bots to preemptively ban anyone who has ever posted on certain communities regardless of context as a time saving measure, because that was a thing on Reddit as well?

Any idea which subs are banning like that already?

StaySquared ,

Bingo.

I honestly thought it was more along the lines of they read a comment/post from another community that they didn’t like, more than likely checked their history and then decided to ban them.

Aux ,

Tankies are modding many communities here as well. The solution is to fight them tooth and nail.

Mastengwe ,

Oh they are all over the politics communities. Both as mods and as trolls.

noisefree ,

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

HawlSera ,

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

Cryophilia ,

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

noisefree ,

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

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

Cryophilia ,

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

noisefree ,

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

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

MacNCheezus ,
@MacNCheezus@lemmy.today avatar

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

Pilferjinx ,

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

rickyrigatoni ,

Have you tried making innocuously cringed opinions instead?

Pilferjinx ,

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

rickyrigatoni ,

These monsters must be stopped.

Pilferjinx ,

Okay, commisar.

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

TrickDacy ,

I am surprised that my comments on that post weren’t removed.

It is pretty horrifying that there are people in positions of moderating what thoughts are allowed to propagate who deny or cover up the events that took place in Tienanmen Square.

IndustryStandard ,

What did you say and what was the removal reason?

TrickDacy ,

I said they **weren’t **removed. I think I was just commenting that China has covered up that it happened.

IndustryStandard ,

Oh thanks. Sometimes ml posts end up on my world feed but the comments look normal and have many world users.

When I read about people getting banned from ml for posting what they post on world I wonder if the ml mods ban world users in those posts at random or I am missing something.

hellofriend ,

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, …

So what you’re essentially saying is that these moderators are effectively propagandists/state actors for China, Russia, and so on. I left Reddit to get away from psychic attacks like that, so I’m perfectly happy to defed from the instance. Glad I have the option, too.

barsquid ,

Defederation is a good step but I think it blocks only posts and leaves you still able to see user comments on other instances.

cloudless ,

My account is on lemmy.cafe which has defederated from lemmy.ml

I never see any comment from lemmy.ml users.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

You are talking about user-level blocking, whereas iirc defederation is an instance-level blocking that also stops user comments too, as well as votes.

viking ,
@viking@infosec.pub avatar

Tankies gonna tank. Just block their shit instance and move on with your life.

wahming ,

The issue at hand is there are way too many neutral / unrelated communities which are resident on .ml, and it’d be nice if we could manage to move some of them off.

TachyonTele ,

You can. Create a new community and tell the most active people in the original about it. Once everyone posts in the new comm you’re done.

It’s not like it hasn’t been done before.

wahming ,

Well yes, that’s what this entire post is about. My comment is just replying to OP that it’s a little bit more than ‘block and move on’.

AmosBurton_ThatGuy ,
@AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca avatar

Ten forward is a good example, the big posters in c/risa got fed up with the mods and made ten forward on Lemmy.world. Now I almost never see risa anymore but ten forward is always on the front page.

TachyonTele ,

That was exactly the comm I had in mind!

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

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

Crowfiend ,

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

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

catloaf ,

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

Natanael ,

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

catloaf ,

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

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Instance admins could easily patch it in for their local communities

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

Natanael ,

Yeah, but who would be able to prove it?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

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

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

TexMexBazooka ,

I’ve been making fun of Lemmy.Ml for months, I’m glad to see I’m not the only one

EunieIsTheBus ,

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.

I think this is a core problem of lemmy as it is right now. This place is meant to be federated and decentralized. Instead it is heavily centralized as communities lie on one instance. What one needs should be federated communities as well. Like say c/[email protected] is the same as c/[email protected]. this way one could subscribe to communities on your home instance and if the home instance defederates from one other instance the community can defederate from the community on that instance without completely breaking apart

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Communities living on instances is a feature i think actually. Where else would it be? It must be hosted or originate from somewhere. I’m also not sure how you would make it more decentralised in practice - I mean, what if you defederate from the instance that has all the mods of the community for example? How is moderation handled in general?

Also to be clear, it’s more of an ActivityPub thing than a Lemmy thing. This is just how ActivityPub works.

carbon_based ,
@carbon_based@sh.itjust.works avatar

[OT; tl/dr: the issues with forums and user accounts being under hegemony of server instances is by design but it’s not actually the way one would design a truely de-centralised network]

It’s a feature but not the best practice if the idea would be forums (and users) being free of domains (and the dangers of domains being taken down, and host admins’ whims). The design approach of Lemmy however, speaks “hegemony” all over. It says a lot about the mindset of its creators.
An alternative would be indeed distributed directory systems, employing concepts like DHT … well proven de-centralized resiliency for quite a while. Would it have been done in such a way, there would be no difficulty with migrating forums and users across instances, and even a domain getting lost would not necessarily lead to all forums/accounts there-on to be lost. Also the issues with link creation across instances were due to forums being bound to domain names instead of them having Universal IDs thus being agnostic of which node they are actually hosted on.

ActivityPub, AFAIK only defines a protocol for communicating datasets between instances, not the structures in which federation should be done.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

It’s a feature but not the best practice if the idea would be forums (and users) being free of domains

I don’t think the idea is for users to be free of domains. One of the key benefits of tying users to their instance is that you defederate from the users of an instance when you defederate from an instance. If users were not bound to instances, it would be hard to defederate from certain groups without manually defederating a million users. Users being tied to domains makes moderation via defederation much, much simpler.

The design approach of Lemmy however, speaks “hegemony” all over. It says a lot about the mindset of its creators.

[…]

ActivityPub, AFAIK only defines a protocol for communicating datasets between instances, not the structures in which federation should be done.

I’m not an expert on ActivityPub but I think you’re wrong about this being Lemmy’s design decision. I think ActivityPub is designed in this way and it is intentional. I mean, all other ActivityPub apps do the same thing (e.g. Mastodon users are also tied to their instance).

forums being bound to domain names instead of them having Universal IDs thus being agnostic of which node they are actually hosted on.

Just want to point out that domain names are also perfectly capable of being agnostic about nodes - i.e. you can host multiple websites on a single computer or distribute the hosting of a website across many computers. I’m not really sure what you’re saying here but I don’t know if it’s important.

carbon_based ,
@carbon_based@sh.itjust.works avatar

Umm… I was not so very clear perhaps. The idea would still be that user accounts as well as forums all contain their domain name, as their site of origin rather than a location identifier. Just that the host could change to any other domain (after negociation with the new host, that is). So it’s not about domains being tied to specific hosts/IPs but entities being tied to domains. It would be up for design discussion if that identifier should change or not, iin the case of a migration. The idea would be to give entities the ability to roam or be resurrected from any federated copy in case they are dissatisfied with the policies of their hosts, or in the event a domain gets taken down by authoritrian actors. (That’s why this actually is off-topic here)

From my glance into the ActivityPub doc, I concluded that it’s really only about the data exchange protocol, yet I might have overlooked something as I never had an in-depth talk with people who implement the thing. Yet, just because many do it in a certain way does not mean to me that this is written in stone somewhere. :-)

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

What you are describing is basically Mastodon (or, if you like porn and hatespeech, twitter… non-consensual porn because a lot of Mastodon instances are REALLY horny).

The moment you aggregate communities across instances you remove the ability to moderate them. Because maybe a hexbear mod wants to remove all mention of the Uyghur people, an ml mod wants to remove all mention of genocide against them, and a zip mod wants to remove all the comments about why genocide is good in a thread about god damned Bluey.

Do they all get to delete everything across every instance? Do you start having different views of the same community depending on your home instance?

Nomecks ,

No, they control their content and you control whose instances you sub to.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

Again, how does that work if c/linux is “the same” on every instance?

Will comments and posts exist on the world view of c/linux but not the zip view? At which point… what are we actually getting over the status quo? Because you can bet that anyone who has hexbear unblocked would see two different versions of every single thread because nobody else would see the hexbear posted thread.

EunieIsTheBus ,

What I mean is that a subset of all Linux communities agrees on a common set of rules and forms a community of communities. Content of all communities is shared with everyone who subscribes to one of the communities. Every community moderates its own content. If one community decides to have stricter rules than the others it can defederate. Basically just like on the level of instances.

What stops us to just defederate from lemmy.ml is that the community is hosted there and all members are linked to that one point of failure.

NuXCOM_90Percent ,

So… exactly what we already have except instead of c/[email protected] it is c/[email protected]?

EunieIsTheBus ,

What you are describing is basically Mastodon

No. Mastodon and twitter are short message services. Lemmy and reddit are content aggregators.

The moment you aggregate communities across instances you remove the ability to moderate them. Because maybe a hexbear mod wants to remove all mention of the Uyghur people, an ml mod wants to remove all mention of genocide against them, and a zip mod wants to remove all the comments about why genocide is good in a thread about god damned Bluey. Do they all get to delete everything across every instance? Do you start having different views of the same community depending on your home instance?

Instance A also cannot moderate the content of Instance B. Your argument is therefore invalid. The point of federation is that instances can agree on a common set of rules and values or not. In that case they defederate from each other. However, this doesn’t work in practice as communities are centralized. Obviously, most of us agree that lemmy.ml is a problem but we don’t federate just because they ‘own’ the instance.

socialmedia ,

If we keep going we might accidentally reinvent Usenet news.

Not saying that like its a bad thing, just saying we might be able to take some inspiration from there.

TheFonz ,

I don’t mind being banned from the ml instance. The issue is their users come to all the other instances and use the same old strategies to stifle any speech by engaging extremely hyperbolic language and name-calling. The goal is to have a chilling effect on any discourse where their opinions are scrutinized in the slightest.

They can’t engage with any topics or offer counter arguments. Every response is:

“I don’t know how to respond to your argument. You must be a _____________[insert ‘racist’ or ‘genocide defending’ or ‘fascist’ or my new favorite ‘zionist’]”

Gamers_Mate ,

Or a bunch of memes that are on the same level as what a MAGA idiot would make.

lltnskyc , (edited )

They can’t engage with any topics or offer counter arguments. Every response is:

Calling people fascists, insulting and using ad hominems is lemmy.world’s thing.
The comment section to this is mind-blowing, really.
All the things of which users of lemmy.world are accusing other instances, is exactly what your instance is doing.
And you don’t even see the hypocrisy…

TheFonz ,

While I will be the first to admit that name calling and being incapable to engage with arguments is typical for social media platforms, I can also testify that it is the only treatment I’ve ever received from LML users. And the goal is pretty clear: you’re with us or you’re not. When you haven’t forged your own independent conclusions through reflection and any deeper examination but rather through mimicry and simulated discourse your only option is fall back to in-groups or out-groups.

As an LML user the game quickly becomes: how fast can I “otherise” my interlocutor so that I don’t have to respond to their points because that would require looking in the mirror and not liking what I might see.

lltnskyc ,

And I received no such treatment from LML users (but do receive such treatment with almost every comment at lemmy.world and similar instances).
Hm, can it be because both instances just censure the opposite opinions and label it as misinformation resulting in echo-chambers and both groups believing their own (false) truth?..
Nah, no way, after all we are the good ones and the other side is bad and is censoring the truth while we are censoring misinformation and propaganda 🤦

TheFonz ,

I’m curious if you’ve ever pushed back against the grain of lml or if perhaps your opinions already align? lemmy.world is a big tent so you’ll get a bigger diversity of users. LML skews heavily in one narrow direction so they have to contend with more outfielders and by default need to cater to their own insularity.

It’s possible that your experience has been positive so far. The reach of this post alone which started this thread shows how much of an existential challenge LML is. How many threads are there on LML about being banned from lemmy.world? This one is like the 3rd or 4th i’ve seen (just from this month!) about being banned from LML.

lltnskyc ,

I’m curious if you’ve ever pushed back against the grain of lml or if perhaps your opinions already align?

I never post about communists and stuff, I post about horrors that are happening in Ukraine (not the ones that are committed by Russia, but by Zelensky’s regime with support from the west), and I guess it so happens that it aligns with their narration of anti-imperialism/anti-USA (that’s why I’m not censored and generally agreed with there), but it totally misaligns with heavily left-leaning views of lemmy.world and similar instances who think they are the good guys and are helping Ukrainians instead of slaughtering them (and that’s I’m censored and generally disagreed with and even called fascist here).

How many threads are there on LML about being banned from lemmy.world?

I guess being banned/censored from left-leaning communities is so not surprising anymore that people do not even see a point in doing so? I see no point in creating such a thread. But that’s just my opinion.

TheFonz ,

Your statement sounds like: “being banned from left leaning lemmy.world is so common we don’t even bother talking about it over here at lml”. Ok, I guess? Not much for me to contend with there.

I don’t want to take the bait about your Ukraine stance, because it’s a peculiar insertion at this point but ok. Suffice it to say it seems like you already agree with the de facto LML stance: west is evil. I push back against statements on l.world every day and I’m not worried about being banned. I push back one time on one thread on lml and the rest is history.

I do take umbrage with your stance on Ukraine, however (bait taken): That the US is a giant military industrial complex pulling the puppet strings from the shadows and sending Ukrainians to the slaughter. This is also a typical LML position that I hear often and seems to fall apart pretty quickly when examined a little better. This position seems to divorce Ukrainians of any agency in determining their future. Are they not entitled to defending the sovereignty of their nation? Who are you (or I) to tell them under what circumstances they should be allowed to push back against an invading force such as Russia? They are a sovereign nation that agreed to the Budapest memorandum and regardless who supplies them with weapons they can determine for themselves their destiny. It isn’t for us to adjudicate from some kind of moral high ground which parts of Ukraine should be sliced off to the highest bidder even if the bullets they fire are made in capitalist imperialist evil America.

lltnskyc ,

Suffice it to say it seems like you already agree with the de facto LML stance: west is evil.

Yep, that’s correct. (btw I definitely do not associate myself with communists, it’s just that we agree on this particular point)

This position seems to divorce Ukrainians of any agency in determining their future.

It doesn’t! Those who want to fight, should definitely fight, and I don’t argue against west supporting those who want to fight with weapons, training, and whatever else. It’s actually the west that is not giving Ukrainians any choice in determining their future (see text below).

Are they not entitled to defending the sovereignty of their nation?

Again, they absolutely are! I totally support right for self-defense.

Who are you (or I) to tell them under what circumstances they should be allowed to push back against an invading force such as Russia?

Absolutely correct again and I totally agree with you, nobody should be able to prevent people from “pushing back against an invading force”.

They are a sovereign nation that agreed to the Budapest memorandum and regardless who supplies them with weapons they can determine for themselves their destiny. It isn’t for us to adjudicate from some kind of moral high ground which parts of Ukraine should be sliced off to the highest bidder even if the bullets they fire are made in capitalist imperialist evil America.

Again, totally agreed.

The thing that I’m trying to say, and the thing that I’m getting called a fascist for, is that it is not “west is supporting brave Ukrainians who want to defend their nation and fight Russia to regain the occupied territories at all cost” it is “west is supporting Zelensky’s regime (which I also consider absolutely illegitimate and authoritarian, their terms have expired, they ban all the opposition, they refuse elections, etc.) which forces people to fight by forbidding people to leave the country (which has already lead to many deaths of people who tried to escape this hell by crossing rivers/mountains and not making it), and kidnapping people on the streets, putting them into vans and sending them to the frontlines to die, and making the rest fear of going out” (you can find footages and sources for all of that if you visit my profile’s comments, but lemme know if you want me to repost it again here).

TheFonz ,

It seems to me you have more of an issue with the concept of the draft, which ok, is a fine position to take. Nothing wrong with having a stance on that. Some people are pacifists and radically opposed to any type of armed conflict or draft service. But there are valid arguments for the draft too, so you can’t just write them off by painting Zelenski into some type of tyrannical despot.

But that’s neither here or there. The country is already in the midst of a full fledged war and elections don’t typically occur in time of war.

I’ve found that it’s best to be precise when articulating a position. When you paint things in broad strokes (ie Zelenskis cabinet as authoritarian) you are inviting unnecessary argumentation from other sides. If your thesis is that the draft is authoritarian then argue your point why you think that is. For instance, I do contend that the draft was executed in Russia under Putin is a manifestation of an authoritarian exercise because there is no justification for the war. Russian soldiers are not going to the meat grinder to defend their homeland. It’s a completely different take. I can also provide counter arguments as to why the notion of the draft is not authoritarian when it’s implemented in the service of defense.

lltnskyc ,

It seems to me you have more of an issue with the concept of the draft

I do have an issue with killing people (because that’s what draft is - you force somebody to go war, where they die) who done you no harm, indeed.

Some people are pacifists and radically opposed to any type of armed conflict

I’m not and I don’t really care about what other people do to each other, as long as both parties consent, they are free to wound, murder, rape and do whatever else to each other - “whatever makes your boat float” or something…

But there are valid arguments for the draft too, so you can’t just write them off by painting Zelenski into some type of tyrannical despot.

Is there something one can’t provide a valid argument for?
For one, slavery is extremely good for the economy, if we enslave all the black people (or anybody else, black is here just to make a point) we can have lots of goods and services for fraction of the cost for example, we will solve the unaffordable housing very quickly and many other problems, wouldn’t you agree?
And yet, I guess, if somebody does that - people will probably argue that that person is a tyrannical despot or something?
Zelensky effectively enslaved the Ukraine, where people are forced to do what he says, can’t leave, and so on, and yet I wrong to say he is a tyrannical despot?

The country is already in the midst of a full fledged war and elections don’t typically occur in time of war.

I am not too well-versed to really argue that point, but quick googling “are elections held during wartime” paints a mixed picture really, and says that at least in case of US it did hold elections during wars.

If your thesis is …

My point is a little bit different than simple “draft is not okay” (although that is definitely included) - people in the west are thinking that by helping the Ukrainian government they are helping Ukrainians to survive, and I am trying to tell people that it is exactly the opposite, and by supporting our government, they are only contributing to more of us dying and suffering (and so, I consider them directly responsible for all the deaths), as simple as that.
I’m having a problem with this narration of “helping”.
If the narration was honest, like “let’s support Zelensky’s regime and supply him with weapons, because we want to harm Russia no matter the cost and no matter how many Ukrainians die” then it’d be a different conversation, but it isn’t.
So, I guess, my point is trying to make people admit that this ^ is the case, and not “but we are helping Ukrainians and you are a russian bot!” 🤷‍♂️.
Thanks for the advice tho, I suppose you are right that I should be more precise when articulating a position.

TheFonz ,

I understand what you’re saying.

On another note, are you Ukrainian by any chance brother? I really feel for you and I can tell that the draft is reality and not a joke for you if that’s the case. I hope I wasn’t rude and that you stay safe.

lltnskyc , (edited )

On another note, are you Ukrainian by any chance brother?

I am. Although nobody believes that because I don’t praise our glorious Lord and Savior Zelensky.

I really feel for you and I can tell that the draft is reality and not a joke for you if that’s the case.

Thanks man, really appreciate it! It’s rare to hear that on this instance :(

I hope I wasn’t rude

You are perfectly reasonable, I wish the rest of the instance could participate in a civil discussion instead of name-calling and ad hominem.

stay safe

Thanks again man.
I am safe, as I’ve left Ukraine before the war started, so unless other countries start cooperating with Zelensky’s regime and kidnap people from the streets [and send them to Ukraine to die] there is no threat for me.
Unfortunately it’s not true for some of my family members, my friends, and millions of Ukrainians :(

TheFonz ,

I totally understand! Peace and love homie.

ShitOnABrick ,
@ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world avatar

It’s genuinely nice to see two people with completely different opinions and views on a topic just get along nevermind engage in civil discourse and debate. Thats something I find Exceptionally hard to find on Lemmy. Thumbs up from me mate 👍

TheFonz ,

That’s Lemmy.world for ya! Stick around 🙂

ShitOnABrick ,
@ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve been on instance for 8 months now m8.

rah ,

I post about horrors that are happening in Ukraine (not the ones that are committed by Russia, but by Zelensky’s regime with support from the west)

Any chance of a link? Just out of curiosity.

lltnskyc ,

Sure, and not just one!
Here is a collection of footage of people being kidnapped from the streets, put into vans and sent to die: uadraftmuseum.ch
Here is a recent news (in ukr, so please use a translator) that now they will be breaking into people’s homes to do the same: focus.ua/…/650441-mobilizaciya-po-novomu-voennaya…
And a few more links about how people are trying to survive this hell, and how people are dying trying to escape:
www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/…/ar-BB1naQUE
www.rferl.org/a/…/32310040.html
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66542065
theguardian.com/…/bribes-and-hiding-at-home-the-u…

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

The uadraftmuseum is interesting I might look into it when I get the chance.

rah ,

Thanks but I meant links to your posts :-) Or more specifically, the communities you post to with anti-regime info. I looked through your profile but I couldn’t see where you were posting such things beyond World News.

lltnskyc ,

Oh, gotcha!

Sorry for being confusing, by “posting” I actually meant “commenting”, I don’t really post anything.
You can see all comments in my profile, but I guess due to way lemmy works you can only see all of them if you open it through my home instance? idk, but here’s the link: monero.town/u/lltnskyc

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

I agree with you. Alot of hypocrites in lemmy.world. Think that censorship is okay when they are the ones doing it and it suits they’re agenda. I personally am of the belief that we shouldn’t censor any speech. No matter how uncomfortable it might make you me or them feel. Any kind of censorship should be condemned including Lemmy.world and lemmy.ml censorship. I think that both tankie nutcases and MAGA nutcases have a right to freedom of speech and expression. but so does everyone else.

lltnskyc ,

Oh well, prepare for the downvotes now, I guess…

ShitOnABrick ,
@ShitOnABrick@lemmy.world avatar

Downdoots hardly mean a thing to me. Bring erm on

moormaan ,

I actually upvoted the comment because I agree that silencing voices (which aren’t harassing or abusive) is a bad thing, regardless of what opinion they are expressing. But downvotes aren’t the same as admins banning you based purely on difference of opinion, let’s not conflate the two. This thread is about the latter, while downvotes are just another form of free speech.

lltnskyc ,

But downvotes aren’t the same as admins banning you based purely on difference of opinion, let’s not conflate the two. This thread is about the latter, while downvotes are just another form of free speech.

But I don’t complain about it and don’t conflate the two! I totally agree that downvotes is just another form of free speech.
That was just ironic “you agreed with me that censuring people is wrong and now people are going to show you how wrong you are” kind of thing, I have nothing against downvotes (I mean I’d prefer people try to engage in a civil conversation instead of that, but I’m definitely not forcing anybody to do anything, downvote away) :)

retrospectology ,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

I do understand how the brigades can be annoying for sure, but I don’t mind arguing with tankies, – I think it’s actually really useful for exposing their propaganda for what it is. It helps expose normal people to counter arguments so that they might become a little more aware, rather than just seeing propaganda go unaddressed and being morel likely to assume it must then be true.

The only issue I have personally is if the mods are in on it too and delete your posts/comments because you start to make a bit too much sense.

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