YSK: lemmy.ml is managed by tankies, and lead lemmy developer is a tankie

Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide

https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342

Dessalines AKA "parentis_shotgun" on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.

Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):

https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/

Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:

https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

What is a tankie?

Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

febra ,

Then don't sign up for an account there? I don't see your problem

moon ,

Who gives a fuck

Churbleyimyam , (edited )

I've seen a few posts and comments made by 'tankies' (I had to look up this term, as I've never seen it outside of Lemmy) and I don't think there should be such a moral panic about them. It implies that everyone is so impressionable that they can't be exposed to a minority fringe political opinion without being instantly turned into a rabid and dangerous extremist.

See something you don't agree with? Ignore it. Downvote it. Block it if you really want to. So many people seem to come here just looking for a fight with other users or to get some general outrage out of their system, whether it's 'tankies' or 'anti-tankies'. Just relax. Lemmy is diverse and ever-expanding; there's loads of fun, interesting and positive stuff to see and talk about here.

I will mention that smaller, niche communities have way more harmonious and interesting discussions. This suggests to me that the majority of aggro comes from people who are just logging in and scrolling down the 'front page' for something to do. It's worth putting in a bit of effort to find specific topics you're interested in and then looking at the feed of your subscriptions. It's a much better experience for everyone.

Edited for bad grammarring.

Katana314 ,

The issue that caused this topic to arise wasn't of other people having opinions we didn't like. It wasn't even a case of arguing in bad faith, eg deflecting truth, or disguising real intentions by making arguments the owner doesn't believe for some other purpose (those are also bad, but generally don't get such a response).

The issue was specific moderator/instance-ownership censorship. People's posts were being removed without warning when they were making respectful, good-faith arguments - that disagreed with the politics of lemmy.ml. Worse, they were attempting to be stealthy about this removal so that no one victimized by this censorship was aware of it.

For reference, I'm gonna be a Biden voter. If someone posted "Biden is a piece of trash old man" then I'd disagree with them, but they'd have every right to put that opinion up.

Churbleyimyam ,

Then it would be nice if they could chill out and not take themselves so seriously. Good to know if they're making the discussion shit by removing stuff though, as we can just use different communities.

egeres ,
@egeres@lemmy.world avatar

Even if we all disagree with him politically, what, is anybody going to form the lemmy repo on GH and make a better version?

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

You mean a fork? Why not? A copyright assignment and relicensing dispute is what caused a LibreOffice to fork from OpenOffice. Forks is a great feature of FOSS and there are normal.

Best recent example I bumped into was OrcaSlicer it's a fork of a fork of a fork, merging in some of a fourth fork.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

There is [Sublinks] (https://sublinks.org/) but I have no idea when it will be released.

I think the best we can do now is to move communities away from ml.

xor ,

I think the lemmy software itself isn't so much the problem (in that it isn't politically moderated), but the way he moderated his own instances make a fairly compelling reason for defederation

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

YSK: There are countless posts by "concerned" users shrieking about tankies. What is the point of these "informational" posts? Looking to stamp out opinions you don't like so you can turn the fediverse into astroturfed-to-hell-and-back reddit 2.0?

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

If Lemmy turns into a toxic cesspit, like Voat did, anyone remotely normal will leave to avoid the toxicity.

VictoriaAScharleau ,

voat tolerates Nazis. that's not what's happening here. it's actually the opposite: fascist propaganda is being spotted and removed, and the people spreading it whine

jabjoe , (edited )
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

So 'Tankies' are the ones fighting Nazis? There doesn't seam much between the two to be honest.

xor ,

Okay but this isn't "oh no, there are tankies around", it's the admin of one of the largest Lemmy instances systematically suppressing information about massacres and genocide.

There's quite a big gap between banning "opinions you don't like" and defederating from a systemically auth-left instance, in the same way that defederating from an auth-right instance would be a no-brainer.

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

There is a big gap between auth-left and auth-right thought. Auth-right thought imposes violence as an inherent part of the ideology because it promotes the idea of racial supremacy, they have to actively commit violence to achieve their goals. Auth-left uses violence on perceived threats to their order, not based on features people are born with. I do not agree with China's actions on Tiananmen Square or their treatment of Uyghurs, but these two things are definitely used by the US as a fulcrum to attack China.

Do you not find it odd how much importance is placed on Tiananmen Square after all these decades? Do you not find it odd how hard the US hammers the point of the Uyghur genocide while at the same time fully funding and supporting the genocide of Palestinians? The tactic is to flood communication channels with propaganda to achieve domination over the narrative and this is the sort of thing we're seeing here with countless posts about tankies. Why are we supposed to take American narratives as gospel to shut down opposing narratives?

xor ,

Bold to go with the pro-auth-left take

I'm just going to ignore the long responses to stuff I didn't claim in the first place

hark ,
@hark@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks for admitting you have no response and instead rely on a thought-terminating cliché.

PugJesus ,
@PugJesus@lemmy.world avatar

Really loving the "What does it matter if they support genocide???" commenters in here. Really showing where their priorities are.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

I see your posts on various communities all the time. Glad to see you here.

blind3rdeye ,

To me it is weird that every day on lemmy I see new posts complaining about all tankies... but I never actually see any of the content they are complaining about. And outside of lemmy, I never see or hear the word 'tankies' used at all. I've asked a couple of people I know in real life if they ever seen discussions about it in their parts of the internet, and none of them people I've asked have ever heard the word before.

So... like I said, I find it weird. It's like some kind of lemmy boogieman.

nutsack ,

that's because they're deleting posts. you don't see it until you are subjected to it

erev ,
@erev@lemmy.world avatar

yeah, I'm pretty radically left as it is but I've seen a few tankie posts and boy are those threads to stay away from.

nutsack ,

someone posted a thread in r/communism asking about voting in America and I said that I would have to vote Democrat this time around and I got banned

gggg ,

they seep in occasionally but mostly keep to their own instances now afaik

Facebones , (edited )

Here's an idea, block .ml and SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.

It feels like 30% of all Lemmy use is capitalists whining that they don't have a central anti leftist authority to block everyone they don't like, by linking the same two fucking posts from over at least 1 year ago or posts where they "argue" by shouting "fuck you Tankie" and it didn't go their way.

If you don't like how its run, leave. THATS THE WHOLE POINT. If you want a central authority thats gonna be strongly pro-capital, go back to Reddit. Either way:

SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.

Rin ,

Most activity is on .ml

Facebones ,

And will continue to be until people shut the fuck up and populate other instances instead of trying to bully the people who built the damned thing off their own instance.

(This isn't directed at you) -
If lemmy.ml hosts most activity, and continues to host most activity, despite your claims that nobody can have a differing opinion from 2 or 3 people without being banned, and is continuing to grow and host more of the activity.........The problem isn't the people who built the software or admin the server, maybe the problem is you.

ipkpjersi ,

In my defense, I use .ml because it tends to have the best stability/uptime. I think I was using .world before, and it was down for like 3 days straight at one point so I stopped using it and started using .ml more.

With that said, I think blocking entire instances is kind of extreme unless it's very warranted. With that said, I appreciate the ability to move between instances as necessary, or even host your own. That's one way Lemmy will always be better than alternatives like Reddit.

Facebones ,

I think blocking entire instances is inevitable, but the choices various instance owners make in doing so will help shape where the chips fall in the long run in terms of where people end up settling in - someone with leftist tendencies won't want to set up shop on an instance that defeds all the leftist instances, for example.

A lot of people call for outright defederation because they came from reddit so they want that more singular level of authority/moderation. Whereas (purely hypothetical, haven't been on reddit in a long gkme) a pro Palestinian sub could be banned because reddit took a pro - Israel stance, on Lemmy if .world bans my community I can take it to
Ml, and they HATE that.

drmoose ,

your tantrum is much more cringe than any complain post I've ever seen lmao

Facebones ,

See above advice ^

Shut the fuck up

jabjoe , (edited )
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

I'm watching with interest what happens here. I left Reddit before for Voat for a while. It turned out that without policing (or maybe it was the type of policing) it turned into a toxic cesspit.

Policing of some kind is clearly import to human groups. In the real world, across the world and history, where is no law and order, you end up with war lords and drug lords, who setup their own rules. Take moderation away and online groups get consumed by trolls.

So I'm watching what happens with federated Lemmy with interest.

Facebones ,

I'm not familiar with Voat. I'm not sure how it'd apply to something like Lemmy (probably fall on instance owners I guess) but the problem every "ultimate free speech TM" platform runs into is that laws exist and certain things are just illegal. 🤷

The most notable thing about people who complain this loudly about moderation that doesn't skew their way, is that they dont want LESS moderation - They want moderation that skews to their viewpoints. They complain about being banned on ml for saying "fuck you tankie" or other dismissive nonsense, but if you visit THEIR spaces and politely disagree and provide sources you'll get banned quicker than anyone here but none of them cry about free speech when it happens on their turf.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

See that's not my experience of the problem. They aren't being polite. They are out right hostile. Staying calm, providing trusted source references, and remaining polite, just seams to enrage they further. They seam to want to have a slagging match, which is of no interest to me as I'm not 12.

Facebones ,

I'm open to to the fact that (like basically anything) it DOES happen at some point, somewhere. The problem with taking the people complaining that its this big systemic push to purge them seriously is even the examples THEY give usually show themselves just being twats.

Also, as many people love screaming at me about "receipts," if you're getting banned left and right just for sharing a source and you're so enraged that you're taking up arms, where's the modlog entries?

Then, if it IS being mad that they're being moderated for getting shitty and acting like a cunt - could I go into their house and start pissing all over whatever they're about? Conservative spaces LOVE hyper moderation when it aligns with them, as I mentioned previously go find an instance that aligns with your shtick - that's the whole Lemmy thing.

jabjoe ,
@jabjoe@feddit.uk avatar

I'm not giving you what I regard as my instances because I think that is combative. I don't want combat, that's the whole thing. I'm not really pro or anti this defederation, but I can see the problem and I'm interested in how it plays out. In it becomes a place of combat rather than debate, I'm simply leave. If there is no news or anyone to talk to, I will also leave.

If there is coordinated defederation, maybe it'll give mods of the troll infested instances pause for thought, and make them clean house. Or not, and Lemmy bumbles along without ever hitting mainstream, until something else comes along. Maybe central instances set the tone of the whole thing, and here this is a mortal wound.

It's an interesting "natural experiment".

Tygr ,

Glad I don’t know wtf this is about.

TangledHyphae ,

Communists, unfortunately, the worst kind.

whodoctor11 ,
@whodoctor11@lemmy.ml avatar

😱 👻 👻 👻 ☭

Mouette ,

Yes please do tell me more how you're censored by Lemmy devs in a post on the top of Lemmy crybaby.

TheFriar ,

Well...that’s the great part of federation.its much harder to censor people because they can move to another instance and still reach tons of people. So…

DragonTypeWyvern ,

Wow, what a weird, untankie system to create.

Katana314 ,

The complaint is about lemmy.ml. This post is hosted on lemmy.world.

prototype_g2 ,

I've seen the label "tankie" be thrown around to describe so many different things to the point that it has lost all meaning to me. I've seen it used to describe fascists, I've seen it used as a way to discredit someone's argument without engaging with it, I've seen it used used to invalidate arguments because they were to the left of the person throwing the label.

The definition presented uses the word "authoritarian" which, in my eyes, falls on a similar category of "used on so many things it lost all meaning". (Example)

Using the words authoritarian and communist simultaneously doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me: As far as I am aware, a communist society is a stateless society. However, Wikipedia defines "authoritarian" as

"Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of democracy and political plurality. It involves the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting."

Notice the words "strong central power". Isn't that a contradiction of what communism is? Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

I've seen in the comments people saying that de-federation is not an option because of .ml's large communities, but, in my eyes, that doesn't make much sense. .world is a big instance, just recreate the communities from .ml that you don't want to miss out on. Everyone on .world will be forced to use them, since they can't post on the .ml version any more. If .ml is as awful as people make it out to be, everyone will de-federate and move to the .world alternatives.

yildolw ,

You are defining "communism" to mean not whatever Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and friends did. That's fine. Repudiating those monsters is great. However, when you do that you might as well call your thing anarcho-something and not "communism" to make it clear that you are not a fan of having a vanguard of idiots seize power and rule on behalf of a dictatorship of the proletariat in order to eventually hope to achieve a communist society by first having a strong central power as a transitional phase.

Keep on not licking the tank treads crushing freedom like the ones that destroyed the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Hungarian Uprising of 1956 and you won't be called a tankie

I certainly block every .ml community I see and it's working great for me.

Jean_le_Flambeur ,

Agree with not liking Stalin is great, but calling that "anarcho-" is just stupid. Anarchos generally believe you can run big nation States in a capitalistic world without any central power comparable to today's nations (not even a democratically controlled one) but instead jump right to the classless society by getting rid of all (or most) institutions and it will just work fine.

Communists/socialists on the other hand believe you need time, practise and fair game rules to form a classless society with enough time, especially in a capitalistic world, where the USA can just invade you, if you have no army and not even a generally recognized government.

Not liking the real life dictator countries, no matter what they call them self's should be a disconnected question from the philosophical one on how to best archive a harmonic world

Objection ,
@Objection@lemmy.ml avatar

Communism can mean a classless, stateless society, or it can mean a country where communists are in charge. Marxist-Leninists do not believe that a stateless communist society can be established overnight, especially in countries without industrial development.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Read what Dessalines wrote on his reddit or essays, there's no doubt that he supports authoritarian communism.

TrickDacy ,

without engaging with it

Sounds like the right approach to a tankie to me.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

Do you know the political views of the developers of every piece of software you use? Why is Lemmy different?

Dearth ,

Seriously

volodya_ilich ,

Because anti-communists will bicker about every single thing they've been taught not to like about communism and remain quiet in terms of criticism to the current system

TangledHyphae ,

Seems more "anti-authoritarian-communism" than anything.

volodya_ilich ,

It's cool to be an anti-authoritarian communist. It's not cool to spend half of your breathing time to talking shit about past leftist projects which were by all metrics less evil than capitalist ones.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Because it's not just any political view, tankism is part of the ideologies that support regimes which unmistakably restrict the freedom of speech. This could be an issue for an internet forum.
It's actually not different from having a right wing billionaire buying a social media. It's very much the same thing, and most people on the fediverse are there to avoid this kind of political influences on the platform.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

It's actually not different from having a right wing billionaire buying a social media.

The difference with X/Twitter is that if you want to use it, you're stuck with Elon Musk and the types of people that still use it.

With Lemmy, you can join an instance that has values you agree with, or even run your own instance and defederate/block any instances or people you don't want to see. You're not forced to see any particular communities or people.

redprog ,

I am employed as a Software Engineer in the real estate sector. I'm also a commie. Many ultracapitalist assholes are using my software and they have no idea about my political views. I'm sure there are a lot more of us than one would normally think. It's just that most of us are tired of having the same discussions with the same arguments over and over and over and over again, so we just don't out ourselves 99% of the time :)

Audacious ,

It's the radical moderators and developers of Lemmy that censor and delete posts and comments that fit their narrative. They are trying to foster authoritarian views and perpetuating lies (like tiananmen square didn't happen, or Ukraine invaded russia). It's a big mess that causes problems when people voice opposing views or even sourced material and get censored and banned. Using Lemmy feels like we have to accept their cooked views. I'm hoping there will be a fork or new federation project that doesn't have baggage. Many moved here because of the reddit bs, and now there is extreme communism baggage.

dan ,
@dan@upvote.au avatar

It's the radical moderators and developers of Lemmy that censor and delete posts and comments that fit their narrative.

The entire point of Lemmy and other decentralized and federated systems is that no one entity is in control of it. It's not like a site like Reddit where the whole thing is controlled by one company.

They can only delete posts and comments from servers they're moderators of. That's probably just a few servers out of the thousands that exist. Nobody's forcing any user to use those servers. If you don't like the moderation on one server just move to a different one.

I'm hoping there will be a fork or new federation project that doesn't have baggage.

Why fork it if the software works well as-is?

You can run your own Lemmy server and defederate from every other server if you want to, or only federated with a few hand-picked servers.

Tattorack ,
@Tattorack@lemmy.world avatar

Good thing that Lemmy is an open source federation, then. It's not like Spaz on Reddit, where one dude can ruin the whole damn thing for everyone with a few bad choices.

LustyArgonianMana ,
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

You mean u/Spez, the former moderator of r/jailbait, who reduced mod transparency on all subreddits including porn reddits? Wonder why he needed to hide who the mods were after that scandal.

Also, fyi, to post adult content on most adult subreddits, you have to verify. The way reddit does this process is creepy to say the least, (OnlyFans at least requires an ID to verify your age) along with how they delete smaller porn subreddits that do not have those rules, including porn subreddits that are explicitly moderated by the content creators themselves. It's like porn pimping on reddit. It's genuinely very creepy especially if you believe the conspiracy that Ghilisaine Maxwell was an active subreddit poster on r/news. And if Spez or his alts are moderators on most of the big porn subs, then likely he is seeing hundreds if not thousands of images (some may be of minors bc of the way they do verification) daily through the verification process. That's- creepy. Like really creepy. Lemmy is better.

Catsrules ,

As long as the developers don't force their political views on people using the software I really don't see an issue.

You could argue they aren't doing it today but what about tomorrow?

Well I would say everything is open source. If something does change that you don't agree with you can just take the code and build your own. (Obviously with blackjack and hookers)

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