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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.

helenslunch ,
@helenslunch@feddit.nl avatar

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

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yes, DEFEDERATE LEMMY.ML

GreatDong3000 ,

This is the fediverse and that is their instance. You just move to another instance and mute them if you are desatisfied with them.

Buddahriffic ,

Or post about it and build a case for defederating from them or more users to block them individually.

figaro ,

Exactly. Why are we federated with people who deny genocides? Fuck all of that

LunarSpaceDani ,

Exactly, not only did I block LML over this but I vote for defederating with them from my home instance.

kilgore_trout ,

So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”

That is really the solution though, isn’t it.

rufus ,

I don’t think so. It’s a bit like being bullied and your friends are being bullied, too. What do you do? Leave the room and be happy they bully your friends and not you? Keep silent which ultimately enables them? No. You’re being vocal about it. You warn your friends not to go in there. And you try to do sth about it. In the end it’s the bullies who should leave, not the nice people. Or the whole place is doomed and just getting worse.

laughterlaughter ,

Silly. The internet is full of echo chambers. Just move on. If an instance is run by people you can’t reason with, why hang out there? Will you try and change 4chan too?

rufus ,

And am I supposed to let other people be subject to that, too? Let people like that drag down Lemmy as a whole? Shouldn’t I have a nice and welcoming place on the internet for me and my friends?

Do you like echo chambers? If you want my perspective: I have until now recommended Lemmy to exactly zero of my friends. Because of things like this. Lemmy has quite some potential. But it just has so many issues to tackle and the culture here just isn’t what appeals to “normal” people. If other people share my experience, that’s exactly why Lemmy still is below 50k active users and super small.

Sure. I moved away from the .ml communities a few weeks ago because I think it’s the right thing to do (for me). It’s just dragging down everyone and making Lemmy a worse place. Like we see constantly with all the posts like this. Should we (the people who want more than an echo chamber, and want fair and honest discussions) all abandon Lemmy?

laughterlaughter ,

And am I supposed to let other people be subject to that, too? Let people like that drag down Lemmy as a whole? Shouldn’t I have a nice and welcoming place on the internet for me and my friends?

It’s… Lemmy. One instance does not represent all of it. Move to a friendlier instance. That’s the beauty of the fediverse.

And in the end, lemmy.ml, like many other instances, are run by its owners, technically for the fun of it. They’re absorbing the cost. Not us. They can do whatever they want with their little toy server.

Look, I’m not defending them. They suck. I’m just saying that the internet is vast. Why focus of one small corner of it? Again, that’s like trying to change 4chan. Or moving to a tornado area and trying to get rid of the tornadoes.

rufus , (edited )

I get you. But they’re the flagship instance. At least they used to be. They shape the brand identity of whole Lemmy. And that’s being tankie and having a culture that could be nice, but regularly isn’t. So everyone on the internet knows Lemmy isn’t really something I want to subject myself to. And if we’re being honest, alsmost nobody knows the fine nuances of power abuse on specific instances. It’s just “Lemmy” that this gets attributed to.

Every interaction here represents Lemmy. Some disproportionately so.

And we’ve established, me leaving (which I’ve done) is not gonna change anything about it. The communities are still amongst the largest and where most of the users are, and also attracting the new users.

Your argumantation would be perfectly valid if lemmy.ml were some small instance that’s unheard of by most users. Or blocked by the rest of the network. We could ignore them then, let them do their own thing like the Fediverse does with a few nazi and conspiracy instances. But this isn’t the case here.

Regarding money and doing it “for the fun of it”: That’s not correct. They get money for two or three full-time jobs from the NLNet fund and the EU. They could be having fun, too. But they definitely also get a substancial amount of money for it.

Concerning the 4chan example: That’s on point. 4chan is the epitome of echo chamber and incel culture. That’s mainly because there’s no one else. They left. And now, why would anyone else visit a place like that in the first place? I’d rather not Lemmy become like that. Do you?

laughterlaughter ,

Wait… is lemmy.ml really the flagship instance? I thought that was lemmy.world.

Here’s how I see it: an instance becomes bullshit, all the rest of the instances defederate from them. It has happened in the past, it will keep happening in the future. Lemmy self-corrects.

And if it doesn’t, welp, it will go the way of Slashdot, Digg and Reddit. I’d be okay with that.

rufus ,

It’s lemmy.ml . During the API wars on Reddit lots of people came here and lots of new instances were founded. lemmy.world was part of that and quickly grew into -I think- the now largest instance by far. But lemmy.ml is at least 2 years older and hosted by the actual developers. And due to history hosts to this point some of the large communities.

Yeah. And “Lemmy self-corrects” is kind of what this post is about (in my opinion.) I’d like to see lemmy.world and a few other instances now do it and defederate. That’s how it should be, call out bullshit, be vocal and then do something about it. My point is, we’re at phase 1 or 2. Now we’re going to see if Lemmy self-corrects. As of now it didn’t.

I think just hoping for a bright future isn’t cutting it. And if you ask me, all the infighting and defederating each other also isn’t healthy.

laughterlaughter ,

Thanks for the history lesson. I didn’t really know lemmy.ml was the first Lemmy instance.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

I don’t think there is a solution.
Effective moderation to protect vulnerable people needs more centralization. Avoiding the influence of bad-actor mods needs more decentralization. The two seem fairly mutually exclusive. Or rather, they trade off against each other.

With more users, having a fractured community wouldn’t be a huge problem, because they could all have critical mass. But with the current user base that is generally not feasible, even for really popular topics.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Defederation of lemmy.ml from the larger instances would be a solution.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

I’m talking about systemic solutions for the general problem of bad-actor mods.

Defederating an instance is fracturing the community which difficult for a community to withstand with our current user numbers.

Giving mods less power, such as making communities themselves defederated, makes problems for good-faith mods who are trying to protect vulnerable community members.

It’d be neat if the community itself could vote to migrate to a new instance, but that’d be so fraught with abuse that I can’t see it actually working.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

It’d be neat if the community itself could vote to migrate to a new instance

You kind of already can do this. It’s just that instead of voting directly, people choose individually where to go instead. That is also kind of a “vote” - you vote by choosing a community and so whichever gets most votes becomes the new major community of that topic.

There is no need for a systematic solution, it is already in place. The admins/mods of lemmy.ml are acting in questionable ways and people are pointing this out and some are even trying to rally to defederate and trying to get people to move off the instance and all that. This is the systematic solution. The system is working as intended.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

But again that fractures the community.

You lose all the community history, and not everyone migrates to the new community. You end up with a bunch of new splinter communities, none of which have critical mass to survive.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

You can’t have decentralisation without the possibility of some amount of fracturing. I mean decentralization is essentially fractured by design. I think this won’t be such a big problem in the future as instances and communities mature more.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

I don’t necessarily agree that decentralized is fractured by design, nor that “working as intended” means that it’s the best solution for this/every situation.

I’m saying that as we decentralize, we get both advantages and disadvantages. I’m saying that this is a situation where we can’t both have our cake and eat it too.

For example:
We could decentralize communities themselves, preventing them from fracturing. Instead of having communities hosted on a single instance, communities could be feeds aggregating all posts tagged as belonging to that community. Then if you defederate an instance you simply stop seeing posts from users in that instance.
But then good-faith mods are defanged and can no longer protect vulnerable community members from antagonistic actors.

I think my straw example tradeoff is a bad one, that’s too much decentralization of power.

GreatDong3000 ,

Man do you know how many instances exist? I hate this idea of trying to coordinate defederation across all bigger instances all at once. You have the option of migrating to an instance which is already defederated from them, or hosting your own instance and defederating from whoever you want. You can also mute them. Don’t come to a decentralized network with the expectation of imposing centralized decision making behaviour?

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

Effective moderation to protect vulnerable people needs more centralization.

No it doesn’t. Centralization would make it so that if there are bad mods, you would have nowhere to go instead. That’s how reddit is - if you don’t like the mods in a subreddit, tough luck.

Decentralisation helps by providing alternatives if the existing mods/admins go bad.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

I actually already discussed that if you go back and read the comment that you’re replying to

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

The only thing you can really do is create new communities and wait for them to grow.

spez_ ,

Don’t go on the instance

whoreticulture ,

lmao get back to me when the mods on lemmy.world stop deleting every comment that is critical of Biden. STFU. There is no recourse for mods on Lemmy and they can use their powers to delete any comments they want. The only recourse you have is to find a fediverse that caters to your weakass centrist views.

RememberTheApollo_ ,

If anyone cares to check my comment history they’ll find a crapton of rebuttals to anti-biden comments that were NOT deleted by anyone.

whoreticulture ,

So the pro-Biden comments are staying up? Exactly like I said ? lmao

Fizz ,

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

fine_sandy_bottom ,

The solution is… to abandon the notion that there’s some special utopia where we might reside.

There’s an idea that we all need to find or build some special platform which is going to be a home for all our communities and be transparent and balanced and free from corporate influence and perpetually shiny and awesome. It’s not only unachievable but probably not desirable either.

Instead, embrace the reality that the communities we want to engage with will be in different places on different platforms and each will have different issues.

There’s some niche communities on reddit, and yes that platform is run by a corporation but that doesn’t bother me when I’m only there to find a new recipe for snack that matches my diet requirements. I despise facebook but I do use their marketplace to sell junk my wife buys online. I’m aware of the privacy issues with telegram but that’s where I have a family chat group with my sisters. I recently discovered an XMPP channel about DIY bike maintenance which has been amazingly helpful, but I don’t like the XMPP clients I’ve tried. The forum on a torrent tracker I use is a great place to find new books to read but I need to use a VPN to access it.

My point is, the best part of the modern web is the disparate platforms we have available. Every platform has it’s own character, and caveats to be mindful of.

The kind of censorship you’re talking about is obviously repugnant, but the reality is that it’s just something to keep in mind when participating in lemmy.ml communities. You can refuse to participate there if you wish, but a mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

wahming ,

mass-exodus on that basis just isn’t how things should work in 2024.

Why not? You’ve made an assertion without any reason backing it up.

Nobody’s suggesting a mass exodus to a single lemmy server, but rather just a dispersal from .ml to the rest of the fediverse. There’s no reason it can’t or shouldn’t happen.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

It’s as though you only read the last sentence of my comment

wahming ,

I’ve read it multiple times. None of it quite addresses why we can’t just move communities away from .ml en masse. From the votes I’m not the only one having trouble discerning your point.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

Good lord. If you think lemmy votes are an indicator of solid reasoning I don’t know what to tell you.

Communities aren’t going to move away from lemmy.ml because no one cares enough about this issue.

You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

wahming ,

So your wall of text boiled down to ‘we can, but we won’t because nobody cares’. That’s pretty different from ‘that’s not how things should work in 2024’.

You can dream that that’s how communities ought to work but they just don’t.

Ironically, that’s how most of us ended up here on lemmy, we as a community decided to move off reddit.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

We didn’t migrate “as a community”. All the same communities still exist on reddit.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

Lol if ‘annoying internet personality’ were a person it’d be that guy lol

fine_sandy_bottom ,

LOL I’m sorry my opinion is so annoying LOL.

Crashumbc ,

Side question, how do you retrieve or see “removed” comments? I get some removed and I’m not sure what they were…

barsquid ,

lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=1082…

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Yeah the modlog is where you can normally see them. Mind you they seem to selectively purge the modlog too, presumably to hide their obvious censorship bias.

Crashumbc ,

Yeah, that’s one thing reddit did right, ban/removal notifications included a copy of the comment.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

No they don’t. I received a two week ban in the wake of the API protests, never got an explanation why or what comment triggered it.

Crashumbc ,

Shrug, my notifications always included it. Maybe the mod just banged you directly or something.

mightyfoolish ,

selectively purge the modlog

Now this would be a good reason to defederate from an instance. Modlog is what keeps mods consistent (right now I don’t like the Lemmy.ml mods rulebrick but at least they were open about what they don’t like).

TheObviousSolution , (edited )

Happened to me with an even bigger instance because of an asshole admin making shit up. A solution might be to divide up the host of the user comments versus the moderator agents versus receiver of the comments. If your host bans you, that’s it, but if the receiver bans you, that only affects their users, and if a moderator agent group bans you, that only bans you from their distribution group of moderator agents but could be read by other groups.

If a community / group-of-moderator-agents-under-a-community-tag-for-a-particular-host bans you, you’d have to find another groups of moderator agents or accept all that are allowed by your host. Accepting all allowed by your host could only realistically exclude the worst offenders - spammers, doxxers, etc - so you’d really be incentivized to find a better block of moderator agents if you want to avoid certain types of comments. People who want to live in a bubble could live in a bubble but people who want to prioritize the greatest participation would try to find the most lenient host and the most lenient moderation agents, at least to their particular sensitivities.

It would be a truer federated model, but this is not lemmy as it is.

johannesvanderwhales ,

This seems like a by design thing.

StaySquared ,

Semi-O/T

There’s censorship just for having a different opinion. When you challenge someone’s belief in any subject… or just simply have a disagreement, you’re getting banned. Lemmy is following in the foot steps of Reddit in the sense that it appears that the left/progressives want to be segregated and keep the division. No dialogue, no meeting in the middle… just ban anyone who threatens their bubble.

Illuminostro ,

Gaslight. Obstruct. PROJECT.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

I mentioned elsewhere but here’s a copy and paste:

It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.

Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.

“Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.

Alice ,
@Alice@hilariouschaos.com avatar

💯

Alphane_Moon ,
@Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world avatar

I would suggest trying to get out of the english-language (American-centric) internet bubble with respect to dialogue, “challenging beliefs” and the broader nature of what you consider to be censorship.

Focus on real-world (internet can be a red hearing) examples of cases (particularly in Asia, Africa but Europe and LATAM too) that contradict your statements around “just ban anyone who threatens their bubble”.

Then consider the what are the real world consequences of tankie propaganda, again better to avoid US narratives/examples. Just try a good faith approach to this question.

StaySquared ,

I have no idea what you’re suggesting… but just about the entire non-western world laughs at Reddit-type leftists because they can’t come to terms with reality. So much so they (Reddit-type leftists) refuse vehemently to acknowledge that it is their feelings that they’re putting before facts of life. Refuse facts, refuse reality.

Alphane_Moon ,
@Alphane_Moon@lemmy.world avatar

Perhaps I misunderstood your post, were you referring to the actions of lemmy.ml mods or the proposal to avoid lemmy.ml communities?

Grimy ,

I agree with the sentiment of your post and I won’t comment on the other posts that were banned but your image turns into hardcore gore half way through. Like hanged burned bodies and people leaking their brains.

Maybe it was removed for the wrong reason but it’s not as innocent as you make it seem.

SpaceCadet OP ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

Like “how dare you actually show the atrocities my Chinese overlords committed in a way that can’t be denied” ?

Grimy ,

Ya it’s a fine line I guess but any kind of gore goes directly into the “can be removed” category in my opinion. I fully understand if some mods want to keep the link up and some mods don’t and I won’t be judging either camp.

I’m just commenting on the fact that you specifically don’t really have a right to complain but that being said, the other posts that were deleted probably didn’t have gore in them.

Strawberry ,

If you wanna educate people on the events in Beijing around the tiananmen square protests, the Wikipedia page has a decent overview of the scientific consensus, what is established to have happened, and what is not. What you shouldn’t do is give some random Imgur post with unsourced claims and gore images to shock people into embracing the narrative you want to push

retrospectology ,
@retrospectology@lemmy.world avatar

I was actually banned for linking to the wiki about the Uyghur genocide and the death toll estimates from the Great Leap forward. It’s not about the gore, it’s about them trying to distance public understanding of the true horror and extreme violence that took place at Tiananmen etc.

The CCP’s objective for at least the last decade or two has been trying to make the government in China apoear “normal”. Before this latest era people understood clearly that China was extremely authoritarian, but that understanding is being eroded as the CCP puts up a civilized facade, when that’s not the reality – they’re still brutalizing people it’s just so horrifyingly systematic and industrialized that you can’t even see it on the surface anymore due to how they doggedly chase information and dissidents.

They achieve this by downplaying events like Tiananmen, invasion of Tibet, Uyghur genocide, brutalization of HK etc. They exercise the most extreme measures to silence dissidents even when they are in other countries, and they repeat over and over again how the west is “just as bad!” until it becomes background noise. Having tankies modding communities helps supercharge this effort by allowing them to remove anyone who confronts that narrative, leaving only what they want people to see.

SorteKanin ,
@SorteKanin@feddit.dk avatar

If this was an isolated case, I would also give the benefit of the doubt like you say here. Unfortunately there’s a clear pattern when it comes to moderator and admin actions on lemmy.ml which makes me think it has nothing to do with the gore.

merthyr1831 ,

Join literally any other community if you’re upset at their moderation, which again is only upsetting y’all because it doesn’t align to Reddit and the US state department

Hadriscus ,

It’s upsetting because of the reasons listed in the post, and everywhere else in the thread

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