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cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

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 "https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/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:

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:

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/linux@some.random.other.instance.world 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.

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[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

"turn this place into an echo chamber" motherfucker Lemmy world has 10 times the users, and the only "echo chamber" shit I see is insistent Kamala Harris cope and seethe whenever someone mentions Israel or Palestine.

Meanwhile Lemmy . world mods change the TOS to spite individual communities, ban discussion of piracy despite it being perfectly legal and present on a different instance! Grow up.

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 17 points 1 week ago

If all you want to see are opinions and memes that fit within the political confines of the New York Times, then .ml probably isn't for you. Lemmy.world has taken a very brave (and rare!) stance of being a champion of neoliberal politics. The mods and users here will do everything they can to make sure you aren't exposed to any political philosophy to the left of Henry Kissinger.

[-] khannie@lemmy.world 18 points 1 week ago

There are about two people on here who wouldn't say "fuck Henry Kissinger".

What a massive load of shite. The fucking smell of boot polish off your breath is disgusting.

Jog on.

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago

Hillary Clinton considered him a "great friend and mentor" so I guess I could have said her. I'm also fully aware of the liberal tendency to place a higher importance on image than on policy.

[-] manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 week ago

Anti-communism is the root of fascism

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[-] doctortran@lemm.ee 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I feel like I've been saying it from the beginning, but for all of the problems Reddit has that Lemmy ostensibly solves, it opens the door for far worse moderation problems than Reddit had.

We can shit talk Reddit admins all night and day, but their long-standing and often problematic insistence on neutrality was nevertheless beneficial for the site's growth.

And I think one of the fundamental problems with Lemmy is that too many of the people in charge of various instances don't have a similar philosophy. They want to choke the place, and curate it to their exact specifications, for their own individual reasons.

Which would be fine in a vacuum. But in a federated space, what is done on one instance can have a wide ranging effect on the visibility of content outside of that instance. And as op rightfully points out, because communities are locked to an individual instance, the nature of federation doesn't help users escape overbearing moderation when the only true sizable communities for a thing happen to be on a specific instance.

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[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

I knew it was bloody and thousands had been slaughtered, but I'm so surprised they fought back. I never learned they actually had the chance to. So many survivors and observers too. That's reassuring.

It means that the Chinese know their government is not omnipotent. That's why all legal communication is unencrypted and monitored. If citizens were allowed to communicate as they do in the West, they'd be able to organize and overthrow the CCP.

That's what they are afraid of. The people aren't afraid of the mechanized power the PLA has, and as demonstrated in 1989, the power is in numbers. If the CCP doesn't wipe out all memory of Tiannemen Square, they are doomed. But the CCP can't. Unless they cut China off from the rest of the world entirely, the knowledge will remain. The CCP can only get stricter and harsher, speeding up the time for a pressure cooker to explode. They know this. The people know this.

At some point in the future, they will go too far, and the people will end it.

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[-] OpenStars@discuss.online 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

(1) shoutout to the community at !newtolemmy@lemmy.ca for helping guide people into things like how to make a functioning link to communities and users, and I posted something there myself mentioning a variety of ways to curate someone's experiences, e.g. to block extremist content. I would share a link to that here... except links to posts are not fully functional on the Fediverse, since they take you off of your home instance and require jumping through hoops to avoid that. Also, if that community does not show up for you, like if visiting that link it looks empty, then subscribe to it and wait about a day. The Fediverse is not so easy to use as people keep saying it is...

Though ironically, as you said, what's the point when nobody even knows of that community's existence. Worse yet, a lot of "guides" pointed to in the sidebar of a large number of instances either have next to no information, or at most only a single years-old post with a ton of comments like "thanks" and "^THIS" that you cannot easily get past b/c of how the Lemmy web UI makes you load only a portion before making you go to the bottom and load another, and another, and another, and another... almost none of which have anything useful to add, and yet the instance admins (which people like Blaze and I have specifically told) choose not to point to a "community", and instead leave those years-old links to posts. Speaking of, and funny enough, in the case of lemmy.ml go to the sidebar and click the "What is Lemmy.ml" - the result is hilariously on-brand!:-P

(2) measuring community engagement stats can be tricky - for one thing, the numbers when viewed from an external instance are often wrong, but going to the home instance and looking in the sidebar iirc offers the true values. Also, "subscribed" means next to nothing, and instead active users per month (AMU) is where it's at. With that in mind then:

Still, linux@lemmy.world is not nothing, with 39% of these users - a lower-bound estimate since many people are likely subscribed to both.

(3) And Linux@lemmy.ml is the #3 community on that instance. The large majority of the other communities - asklemmy, memes, news, privacy, technology, etc. - all have counterparts on other instances.

One counterexample that is pretty bad is firefox, with lemmy.ml vs. lemmy.world having 3.82k vs. 0.72 AMUs, respectively.

So, do whatever you want, but it is what it is. Personally I've user-blocked lemmy.ml b/c... well, you can see it yourself from the replies to your post here, it's just not worth the hassle of having to receive such in my feed (though sadly, user-blocking seems to make extraordinarily little difference compared to not doing such). All I can suggest is that while it may not be "easy", we can each of us be a part of the change that we want to see in the world. Find, subscribe to, and POST on communities that you would like to see grow.

[-] SoJB@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

ITT: genocide supporting fascists get triggered by being called genocide supporting fascists

We get it, you’re jealous about how leftists are always on the correct side of history.

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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024
458 points (100.0% liked)

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