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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.

psycho_driver ,

I think any censorship heavy instance doesn’t deserve attention in the fediverse.

lltnskyc ,

So, most of the fediverse instances don’t deserve attention is the fediverse? That’s an interesting take :)

flango ,

How about something like elections? A community could vote to change its “base instance” to another instance. Example, ask lemmy community vote to change from .ml to .world. It’s possible to do this by just not posting in the “old community”, so maybe community cloning and community hopping could be the solution.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

This just wouldn’t work.

Most mods wouldn’t willingly hold an election that potentially saw their fief moved away from their control.

Also most communities just aren’t that organised. Like if today everyone decided to move, tomorrow everyone would still visit and participate in the old community.

The “election” is perpetual. People will vote with their participation.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

The “election” is perpetual. People will vote with their participation.

As it should always be.

merthyr1831 ,

deleted_by_moderator

    •
    A_Random_Idiot ,

    deleted_by_moderator

    •
    A_Random_Idiot ,

    Lemmy should tell you the text of what was deleted and the mod who deleted it, cause there was nothing uncivil about what I said.

    Flatworm7591 ,
    @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    I don’t know what to tell ya, I don’t find the word that rhymes with “hanky” offensive at all, especially when it’s applied to someone who seems to fit the bill. I think the main difference between MLs and liberals is that liberals are well aware their governments are flawed and are willing and able to criticize them and protest against bad policies, whereas the MLs are dedicated to the idea that it’s wrong to criticize non-Western governments, because “left unity”, “critical support” etc. This, despite the fact (or maybe because of it) that most of the governments they defend are totalitarian states where government criticism lands you in jail, in a re-education camp, or falling out of a window. This quote sums it up nicely:

    Authoritarians, having argued so doggedly for the domination of a paternalistic state and having therefore turned themselves into ideological infants, then develop a hyper-reductive view of geopolitics; precisely the one, in fact, that a state would like for them to have. “Socialism” becomes pathologically confused with “opposing capitalist nations” or more appropriately, “opposing all states aligned with the United States.” They attempt to simplify the struggles of the entire planet down into two camps, the “bad guy imperialist states” and the “good guy anti-imperialist states.” In doing so, worker emancipation is simplified into a single question: “do you support the imperialists or the anti-imperialists?” Woe be to those who do not submit to their reductive understanding. The statists who advocate this position are completely incapable of even understanding what an “anti-imperialist” entity might look like. They, in fact, simply support one imperialist bloc over the other in a battle of two power-hoarders.

    Daniel Baryon

    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.

    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.

    ThePyroPython ,

    And thus the inherent dichotomy of a decentralised social network is revealed: social networks require the network effect for good senses of communities which means one instance will end up hosting most of the bigger communities, therefore true decentralisation can’t occur on Lemmy but it’s a step in the right direction.

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go before you become wrong and bad (forgetting that there are folks to their right on the political spectrum who think they are.

    The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.

    I mean shit I’m just trying to talk leftist ideals that haven’t been twisted into neoliberal business-school-bullshit talking points. I care bout the same shit yall do, i just don’t think the DNC is going to help us get there. That prospect does not make me happy, believe me.

    Libs? If you are burning with desire to debate politics? I am begging… begging you to understand that the education in school and the news yesterday on the tv Aren’t. Acumen.(why would they be more credible than the commercials in between them?), and do not fear but embrace the idea/possibility that there’s an iota of a chance you might not actually be right.

    Does this notion mean i am? No. But if you don’t think you might be wrong then you’ll likely never find out you are.

    buddascrayon ,

    a tankie like me

    I’m not sure you understand exactly what a tankie is. I mean, do you really think it’s all right to sacrifice (I.E. straight up murder) people to the ideals of communism and socialism?

    Being ultra liberal is fine IMO, even having the attitude that we might have to have use violence to overthrow of our government in order to get liberal ideals to be a part of our system is somewhat okay. But to think that our government, should it become communist, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist society is just straight up wrong and as far as I know that’s what a tankie is, someone who thinks that Tiananmen Square and Stalin’s reign of terror was just a necessary evil in order to strengthen the communist societal norm.

    areyouevenreal ,

    But to think that our government, should it become communist, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist society is just straight up wrong and as far as I know that’s what a tankie is, someone who thinks that Tiananmen Square and Stalin’s reign of terror was just a necessary evil in order to strengthen the communist societal norm.

    All governments kill people. That’s what governments do, specifically militaries do. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong for a socialist or communist nation to defend itself. What’s wrong is countries killing peaceful protesters for no other reason than vocally disagreeing with them. That’s what makes Tiananmen Square and Stalin wrong, not just that they killed people.

    buddascrayon ,

    Well, I stand corrected. You are, indeed, a tankie.

    In that case, get fucked. Governments murdering its citizens, or anyone for that matter, for any reason whatsoever is not okay.

    areyouevenreal ,

    I wasn’t the one calling myself a tankie, learn to read usernames. I am not a marxist so can’t be one anyway. Are you a pacifist or something? Because it sounds like you oppose all militarism.

    zbyte64 ,

    But to think that our government, should it become communist liberal, should be allowed to kill people in order to maintain a socialist or communist liberal or capitalist society

    Seems to me the real objection should not be the ideology but the existence of any system that must murder the people it governs in order to continue to govern.

    areyouevenreal ,

    That’s not what’s happening here. Not all marxists are okay with covering up Tiananmen Square or supporting the CCP. I used to be part of a Trotskyist org and they wouldn’t be caught dead supporting either Stalin or the CCP. Anarchists certainly aren’t okay with it, and they are further left than you are. Stop pretending all your enemies are liberals.

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Liberals aren’t my enemies though? I’m not pretending anything. Liberals are very high representation in lotsa comms and they are who i’m talking to seeing how this is a thread with a liberal complaining about me. Capice? Let’s not fight, let’s just chill today

    areyouevenreal ,

    Bro your the one supporting genocide denial, that’s the reason people are fighting you. Stop doing things like that and maybe “the liberals” and everyone else will leave you alone. In fact no one actually mentioned liberals until you did. You are the problem here.

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Bro your the one supporting genocide denia-

    No.

    areyouevenreal ,

    So you acknowledge the Uighur cultural genocide then? Also you weren’t denying the Tiananmen square massacre earlier? Why are you in this comment section if you don’t deny these things? It’s specifically complaining about Tankies who deny both those atrocities committed by the CCP.

    cygon ,

    Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go

    Without trying to be combative, but that sounds like one of those tidbits which one side believes about the other, circulated only to divide. At least I don’t have the impression that it is a view with any footing amongst liberal-minded people.

    2021 PEW poll showing that 89% of liberals and 24% of conservatives support tuition-free college.

    Most liberals want to move further left, ideas like free college and public education, public transport, less corporate power and splitting up large corporations, even unconditional basic income, etc. are popular with the majority. Just violent revolution and authoritarianism won’t roll, after all, liberal means “live and let live.”

    As a mixed-ideology lefty (maybe I fit within your definition of liberal), I’m not worried about tankies being too far left, not at all, rather, I am tempted to think of them as confused right wingers believing themselves to be “the left.”

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Yeah that’s horseshoe theory my man! There is a left further than liberal! It’s not like liberal is the end of the pol spec right? It’s hard to get my tone right here but the idea itself that tankies are right wing is itself one of those things I’ve side believes about the other.

    Also, i don’t hate liberals, i like em! I was one even. My family’s lib. I want to help libs move left of course, like you guys wanna make me see the light. The ones who tell me my politics like they know better are the only ones who annoy me and an example of the type of commenter i tried to leave behind.

    areyouevenreal ,

    Except tankies are authoritarians, and some even support the CCP, who are basically a dictatorship. How is this left wing again?

    I am not going to say that tankies are right wing like this guy you’re replying to. What they are is confused people who tried to join the left for the wrong reasons and ended up becoming authoritarians because of it. That or you fell into a cult-like group that spreads misinformation.

    Also Tankies saying they like liberals is a new one to me. Normally they like complaining about liberals. I’ve been called a liberal for some of the most asinine shit imaginable, basically just because I don’t immediately agree with them.

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.

    Uh…tankies and leftists are not the same thing (though the liberals on Political Memes don’t seem to understand the difference). Tankies are authoritarian-apologists. It was coined by British communists who wanted to differentiate themselves from pro-Soviet communists (specifically, communists who were defending the Soviets sending tanks into Hungary). In the modern sense, it’s used to describe communists who defend authoritarian socialist or communist states. If you don’t feel compelled to justify Stalinism, the Tiananmen Square massacre, or the Uyghur genocide, you’re probably not a tankie.

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    weeeeellllll some of those things i am compelled to defend. Mostly in the sense that two of those are terribly misrepresented. I dont count tiennamen square with those other two, but i haven’t read anything on it. So i guess i am a tankie! Anyway I’m not here to change minds so let’s leave it there

    pjwestin ,
    @pjwestin@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean, fair enough, but I’ve never heard anyone use tankie as…well, not a pejorative. Like, I’ve never heard a liberal call themselves a, “libtard.”

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Yeah you’re probably right that it started out as a prejorative. I’ve personally embraced the term cuz fuck it if I’m gonna get called names for expressing my opinion i may as well own that shit

    Nosavingthrow ,

    If they are going to call me a horse fucker, well, I guess I better own it.

    the_post_of_tom_joad ,

    Now you get it!

    Nosavingthrow ,

    Whatever you say, horse fucker.

    secretlyaddictedtolinux ,

    Thanks for posting this.

    I read the article you posted also.

    I think the article is likely entirely true. One of the difficulties I have, as a regular reader not highly educated in Asian politics and history, is that I know Western governments do lie in order to protect their interests. Not only that, many of their rules allow them to lie. There are gag orders, and levels of secret classifications, and ps-ops and we all know that exists.

    I am pro free speech and pro protest rights. I think since China does not allow free speech it’s likely the entire post is completely true. I really wish I could believe it completely. One thing that many Western pro-free speech countries don’t understand is that lying frequently, even if it’s sanctioned by the government and justified somehow, means they lose moral credibility with the truth of anything they say. Is it the truth this time… or is this one of the lies?

    I still want to live in a world of free speech and women and LGBT people having rights and Western governments seem to be the best at doing this, but I just wish I could believe the article you linked without any doubt at all.

    If it’s really that bad on lemmy.ml, couldn’t all the communities be replicated? I use lemmy.world and don’t know if there’s an option for me to block lemmy.ml unless I change federations. The plight of the poor and concentration of wealth among the upper classes has become very bad, and environmental problems will likely kill us all within 300 years (capitalism and democracy have environmentally failed) but I don’t want to be a part of something in which mere discussion of different views results in banning and deletion of comments, even if I have very pro-poor people views.

    wahming ,

    Using the website interface, you can go to your settings and block specific instances from there.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    I’ve commented there on a /news community with sourced points to make my argument and was basically told to shut the F up and had my comments deleted.

    So I blocked the community.

    I’m not sure how to deal with extremist mods any other way. Their instance, their community, and other than defederating and putting a lot of effort into restarting and growing any valuable communities on another instance while keeping the undesirable .ml gang out, I’m not sure there is any other solution.

    SpaceCadet OP ,
    @SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

    The problem is more that they’re holding several large bona fide communities hostage this way. For example !linux is by far the most active Linux community on Lemmy, and because of network effect it’s not easy to get people to move to another instance.

    It would take something huge to get people to move, for example some of the larger instances like lemmy.world defederating lemmy.ml.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    I don’t disagree that it’s an issue, the only thing I can offer is that Linux shouldn’t be a community full of controversy needing block/bans of participants - the issue being is views the .ml mods do espouse being placed deliberately or left as propaganda.

    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.

    pewgar_seemsimandroid ,

    made a community rn !de_ml

    fine_sandy_bottom ,

    Amazing.

    mightyfoolish ,

    There’s no need to defederate from Lemmy.ml. I rarely see their content on the front page of Lemmy.world. The other day someone complained that Lemmy.ml users were brigading a different thread. I counted three users with a ml domain…

    We have different admins and mods, everything is working as intended. The issue is people bringing up tankies, communists, and China every three posts. Yes, we get it, the benevolent people who wrote us this software are communists. They allow us to have different mods and admins, there is no problem here.

    Honestly, I wouldn’t post to /c/[email protected] even though I’m happy with how pro-Palestine those people are. The only community I look at Lemmy.ml is /c/[email protected]. It’s not their fault no one posts to the Lemmy.world instance.

    I think it’s time to start banning users who troll other instances and cross pollinate the fediverse with drama.

    taipan ,
    @taipan@lemmy.world avatar

    It is lemmy.ml’s fault that their moderators have been blocking users who criticize China or Russia from unrelated communities like the Linux one. A user’s ability to participate in a Linux community should not depend on them refraining from posting criticism about China or Russia. Defederation protects lemmy.world users from having to self-censor themselves politically to participate in general interest communities.

    mightyfoolish ,

    A user’s ability to participate in a Linux community should not depend on them refraining from posting criticism about China or Russia.

    I agree 100% with this statement. That’s not enough of a reason to defederate in my opinion. We need a better /c/Linux on our instance. It’s just that Lemmy.ml has more FOSS lovers.

    figaro ,

    Defederating sends a message that the world doesn’t like tankie bullshit

    mightyfoolish ,

    Hating their opinion is not a reason to defederate. Legitimate reasons are general harrasment (stalking specific individuals), racism, bigotry, CP, derailing entire threads (not just disagreement on a comment), etc.

    figaro ,

    Is genocide denial not racism?

    mightyfoolish ,

    Yes, it is. Which genocide are they denying? Is it the Uyghurs?

    Churbleyimyam ,

    If their community mods ban enough people, won’t they eventually no longer have the biggest communities?

    laughterlaughter ,

    In theory, yes. In practice, not necessarily.

    Churbleyimyam ,

    Pourquoi?

    laughterlaughter , (edited )

    No, come to think of it, you’re right. I was thinking of communities that ban people in droves, but they still have a lot of members.

    But the keyword in your comment is “enough.” So, yup, again in theory, if they ban 99% of the whole Fediverse, they won’t be the biggest community in it.

    rimu ,
    @rimu@piefed.social avatar

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

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

    JimSamtanko , (edited )

    The old cowardly “rule 1” violation. Why not just filter their garbage from your feed and be done with it?

    asret ,

    Perhaps I don’t really understand - looking at the world news community on lemmy.ml rule 1 seems to be about only posting links to news articles. None of the things on the mod log screenshot look like news articles. Isn’t this the mods doing their jobs correctly?

    The OP’s situation seems completely different to this and it’s definitely a problem - what am I missing about the rule 1 stuff though?

    SorteKanin ,
    @SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

    Rule 1 probably refers to lemmy.ml site-wide rule 1, not the community rules.

    wahming ,

    It’s not the community mods abusing their power, it’s the admins of .ml. Their rule #1 is ‘no bigotry’, which sounds nice but gets interpreted in very… creative ways.

    asret ,

    Thanks!

    I missed the site wide rules.

    Yeah, that sort of rule requires a lot of faith in the moderators. Seems like they’re probably violating it themselves with their moderation.

    JimSamtanko ,

    “Rule 1” is a vague rule that allows them to delete anything they want. It’s a well-known thing they do there. They don’t even deny it.

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