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

pH3ra , (edited )
@pH3ra@lemmy.ml avatar

Wait what? A communism advocate who also develops Free and Open Source Software, which is literally communist philosphy applied to computers?

I'm blown away

Olgratin_Magmatoe ,

OP isn't taking issue with that. They're taking issue with the CPP/USSR apologetics.

Fidel_Cashflow ,
@Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml avatar

A communist who supports communism?? GASP!!

Belastend ,

You can be communist without sucking stalins cock or looking massacres and going "we didnt do and if we did it wasnt that bad, and if it was, they probably deserved it." Its the uncritical idolation of the dictatorial aspects of communist projects that i object to.

ArmokGoB ,

The CPP and USSR are about as communist as the DPRK is democratic.

Fidel_Cashflow ,
@Fidel_Cashflow@lemmy.ml avatar

Lmao okay bud, I'm sure you've done lots and lots of research on the topic 🤭

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, but also they're tankies. That's basically Putler's Russia if it were a Lemmy instance.

pachrist ,

Yeah, about a year ago when all the "wow, lemmy really feels like an edgy early internet discussion forum" threads were popping up, I think people forgot that those early forums were just eternal flame wars between communists and anarchists.

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Communism didn't invent empathy, humanism, solidarity, freedom or free sharing; it probably grew from there, and other things like FOSS can grow from there without being communist.

pH3ra ,
@pH3ra@lemmy.ml avatar

Yeah I didn't mean that FOSS was born out of communism, I believe culturally/antropologically speaking is more a direct product of the hippie movements from the 60s.
What I meant is that FOSS is aimed at "giving the means of production back to the people" and "rejecting the privatization of intellectual property" (Stallman talked about those concepts in many interviews) and those are of the core principles in Marx's philosophy.
I know that for some people "communism" can be a trigger word, but there's a big difference between a philosophy and an authority.

Also "empathy, humanism, solidarity...": have you ever interacted with people on GitHub?

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

It's not really communism. It's all about freedom to compete. The bazaar is a market after all.

Note: Reference to The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Worth at least knowing of in regard to open source history.

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

scorpious ,

Well this is news to me. The whole thing; created by Marxists, etc, etc.

Wtf?

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

This gets posted here on a near daily basis, I'm not sure how you missed it.

.world and .ml have been feuding practically since Lemmy went live. The .world folks insist .ml are full of fascist tankies who hate freedom. The .ml folks deride .world as a cesspool of white nationalism and hatred of the third world.

But the "problem" appears to be that one instance can't shut down the other. So we get these endless struggle sessions with the same angry sets of links and vows to defederate at all costs.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Hot take: .world will put it to a vote and defed from .ml before .ml does. This will split Lemmy into 2 major sections.

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

Not really a "hot take"

ArmokGoB ,

No way the LW admins would shut down controversy. It would impact their engagement and they wouldn't get to see number go up.

toaster ,
@toaster@slrpnk.net avatar

Thank goodness nobody is locked into any one instance. The beauty of the fediverse.

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

good thing I'm a furry tbh

SuspiciousCatThing ,

Why doesn't your name have an @instance beside it?

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

Hmmmmm

SuspiciousCatThing ,

Am I crazy or do I also not have one?

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

It's cuz we're server buddies!

SuspiciousCatThing ,

Ahh that makes sense.

scorpious ,

So is it … the “whole thing”? I.e., Lemmy was invented / created / etc. by a bunch of authoritarian weirdos?

I’m guessing that the question itself reveals that I don’t even understand what Lemmy is, but hey. Any help appreciated.

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Lemmy was invented / created / etc. by a bunch of authoritarian weirdos?

Lemmy was created explicitly to get away from the Reddit brand of authoritarian weirdos. Then it was made to be fungible and mutable and interconnectable in order to prevent any single mod or admin from exerting Reddit-like control over the communities at-large.

I don’t even understand what Lemmy is

It's a place to post. You don't have to get much deeper than that. So much of this drama is one group of people angry at another group of people for posting wrong.

Which is very classic "old Reddit" before the mods decided dissent was bad for monetization.

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

It's funny Lemmy was created as a way to get away from "Reddit brand authotarian weirdos" yet Lemmy's creator is a "Reddit brand authotarian weirdo" and so is most of the main moderation team on ml and elsewhere you'll think that with there combined experience on Reddit that they'lld learnt by now that censorship is bad. But then again what am I saying with my experience with tankies and socialists I've learnt a lot of them aren't that bright

It's funny and ironic that the creator of this platform has become the very thing he apparently despises although I'm not surprised to be brutally honest commies do love their censorship

UnderpantsWeevil ,
@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world avatar

Except the Lemmy design isn't authoritarian and it isn't being ruthlessly monetized.

Also, you don't seem to understand the difference between being censored publicly and being uninvited privately.

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.

otp ,

I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.

I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities. They can exist, even if I disagree with them. And if I wanted to participate, I'd probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules. Unlike r/Conservative, which required proving yourself to the mods to get a pass to enter or something...lol

But yes, it's definitely good to know what the .ml stands for, and to keep that in mind whenever one sees Lemmy.ml.

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

I subbed to r/conservative myself I tend to like to browse most political subreddits left and right. I didn't see any "proving yourself to get a pass to enter" I just remember making a comment on a post about Tiananmen square on the anniversary clicking the join icon then getting 2 automod messages one telling me that I'm banned from justiceserved and another alerting me that I've subbed to r/conservative.as simple as that. I think you might be refering to r/blackpeopletwitter which uh I think this screenshot should speak for itself

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a3d8f609-be0d-481b-b798-474e9405616f.webp

Wrench ,

R/conservative had the habit of locking most comment threads to members only. It may have been an exclude instead of include list.

otp ,

It was an include list, from what I recall, that required signing up for having a mod go through your message/post history, lol

trafficnab ,

In order to participate in the vast majority of active r/conservative threads (any tagged "Flaired Users Only", which 9 of the top 10 posts right now are), you need to first pass a mod purity test to prove you're "conservative enough", it's not a serious place and is mostly just dumb Facebook-tier memes and poor quality screenshots of news headlines or random tweets

otp ,

No, I don't think I mixed up r/Conservative with r/BlackPeopleTwitter...lmao

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

And if I wanted to participate, I’d probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules.

Not only the rules, you also have to avoid critizing the dominant ideology, otherwise you will get at best dog pilled, at worse harassed and censored by moderation.

carl_marks_1312 ,
@carl_marks_1312@lemmy.ml avatar

avoid critizing the dominant ideology

You're free to criticize liberalism on .ml all you want.

Modern_medicine_isnt ,

Honestly, is that different here? Dogpiling is the rage everywhere. It's better than reddit, but you still have a hard time if you even question something that follows the dominant ideology here. And God forbid you actually read any of the articles people post and point out that commenter's are just making shit up to fit that ideology.

otp ,

you will get at best dog pilled

What's a dog pill? Lol

Blackmist ,

I suspect there's way worse on the fediverse than Jailbait. There was a list posted a few months back of all the most defederated instance, and tankies didn't even get a look in. I didn't dare click them. Some of the domain names alone made me feel like I was going on a watchlist for even knowing about them.

otp ,

I don't doubt it. There's definitely a difference when something is in the Fediverse though rather than all hosted on the same servers. It's a lot easier to say "We don't condone this" when a server is defederated from the gross ones.

Rai ,

Eh I went to a bunch of them and nothing horrible, the most morally objectionable was loli but it was all drawn

Schadrach ,

I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.

Lemmy already had a round of that, specifically over loli. It's why a lot of instances block burghit.moe - they don't ban loli and have a few loli specific subs.

The only other Lemmy server I know of that allows loli subs is the rad queer one and it's tiny and also blocked by many other instances, though I don't know if that's for the loli or the general rad queer thing. Really, likely both.

otp ,

Yeah, though I think there's a difference between Reddit having it vs. Lemmy having it. Especially with popular/general instances defederating from the scummy ones

Schadrach ,

The main difference is that you can choose to use an instance that doesn't.

But to a user of an instance that defederated burggit it's more or less a direct parallel to r/jailbait, just with the extra step of asking the instance to confirm and losing the rest of the instance and not just the one community.

SpaceCadet ,
@SpaceCadet@feddit.nl avatar

I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities

I would be fine with that too. If the instance was just tankie people talking tankie bullshit, like lemmygrad or hexbear, it would be easy to ignore. Unfortunately it's not that simple.

The problem is that lemmy.ml has a more privileged status in the fediverse: being the first Lemmy instance in existence it still holds quite a number of popular communities that are still frequented by people from the whole fediverse, and the tankies wield their power there as well. Like literally: make a disliked comment on /c/memes and you get banned from /c/Technology, /c/linux, /c/Progammer Humor, /c/Mechanical Keyboards,... and all your other favorite communities on lemmy.ml as well. This actually happened to me.

A second issue is that the mods make efforts to hide the censorship that they are doing, because they know it's not a good look. If you examine the modlog over there you'll see that the first half of the page is like a day's worth of moderation activities, and the second half covers 4 years. So where's the rest? The many controversial comment removals and bans that happened a few days ago on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre, and who knows what else, have all been disappeared.

So yes, I think it is very important that people are being made aware of this and I also think a concerted effort should be made to move bona fide communities away from an instance ruled by bad faith actors.

otp ,

So yes, I think it is very important that people are being made aware of this and I also think a concerted effort should be made to move bona fide communities away from an instance ruled by bad faith actors.

Yeah, this sounds perfectly reasonable.

It's not like it was some grand conspiracy to make all those communities communist. It's just how Lemmy originated. As Lemmy grows, it's bound to get more communities on other instances, and if enough people hate the moderation on ML, then the other communities' growth will start to outpace the originals. It's not like Reddit where there are default subs (afaik).

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.

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

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.

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.

Tygr ,

Glad I don’t know wtf this is about.

TangledHyphae ,

Communists, unfortunately, the worst kind.

hamid ,
@hamid@lemmy.world avatar

I'm so fucking tired of people complaining about tankies, grow the fuck up this is like 20k people at most on beta software. Chill the fuck out. All the effort out into this post was a waste of your life.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

When I am tired of a post, I either downvote or ignore the post.

You seem to care enough to leave a comment, thanks.

hamid ,
@hamid@lemmy.world avatar

Ironic because instead of just downvoting lemmy.ml posts you don't like you wrote this long winded unnecessarily life wasting post. Imagine being you and spending an hour collecting links for a point literally no one cares about. Touch grass.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Yeah because I care enough to speak against tankies. Thanks.

beardown ,

And people care enough to speak against autistic CIA assets like yourself

Rhoeri ,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

Only a coward would think autism is an insult.

tobogganablaze ,

You sure seem to care a whole lot.

Urist ,
@Urist@lemmy.ml avatar

I get why you have nothing more than a surface-level understanding of the content of your own post when you take someone disagreeing with you as reaffirment that you must have been right in the first place. I ask you to consider whether it is possible that how you perceive these so-called tankies is tainted by your willful lack of understanding of their positions.

Greg ,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

Everyone that has been on the Internet for more than a few days has an illinformed hot-take floating around. You can learn something for a perspective even if it's not based in fact. Read with compassion and you don't have to believe everything you read.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Indeed, but this is more about admins banning users from the entire instance because they don't share the same political views.

Greg ,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

That's fair. I appreciate that every instance host has the right to moderate their community any way they want however moderation rules should be clear and consistent. Banning people for posting respectful criticism of communism is inconsistent with the rules of lemmy.ml

beardown , (edited )

.world does this all the time though, especially if you criticize Israel or Biden (or other CIA projects)

nahuse , (edited )

This would also be deeply problematic. I’ve seen it posted elsewhere, and asked the same thing:

Can you back this assertion up with any proof?

Edit: they can’t, they’re just insulting people with disabilities and don’t like they got called for it.

beardown ,

Yeah, I've had comments deleted and have seen others deleted that criticized Israel or that criticized Biden's support of Israel.

So my own eyes have shown me that this is true. My own eyes have also shown me that .world is run by mods who push an agenda that conforms with the CIAs goals of domestic control over the US population. Which, if I wanted to read that midwit drivel, then I would've stayed on Reddit.

nahuse ,

So you don’t have any proof?

beardown ,

I personally witnessed it. Which is proof.

What I don't have proof of is that you're a real person and not a CIA asset. Weird how you haven't verified your identity to me yet. Something to hide?

nahuse ,

I looked at your history: you were banned for calling people autistic as an insult, among other things.

There’s literally zero obligation for me to verify anything to you, and my identity doesn’t have anything to do with the conversation at hand.

beardown ,

Clearly I wasn't banned if I'm commenting now. And saying that someone is autistic isn't an insult. It's the truth. And it's very common among the userbase on here because this site's users are disproportionately autistic.

If you don't like that then maybe you're autistic? Or have some rejection sensitivity disorder. Regardless, it isn't an insult, it's an accurate statement of a behavioral deformity

It's interesting that you demand others verify things to you, yet you refuse to verify yourself. Makes it likely that you're not a "real" person at all. You could verify that easily and yet you refuse to. Something to hide?

nahuse ,

See, this is an example of bad faith interactions and bad trolling.

It’s also a good example of hate.

I hope you have the life you deserve.

beardown ,

How is any of this trolling or bad faith? I am being completely sincere.

The fact that you're a sockpuppet account that was just exposed by me doesn't mean I'm trolling. It means you're incompetent and should get better at your job if you want to persuade anyone.

Although I suppose when your employer is able to ban anyone who exposes their employees it isn't as much of an issue. Why persuade anyone when you can just destroy them, right?

In the .01% chance that you're an actual person, you need to toughen up. The internet isn't supposed to be an endless game of gotcha where you report people for saying mean words. Society isn't supposed to be like that either, and wasn't until 2014. Toughen the fuck up and abandon this hall monitor/tattle tale personality type. It makes everyone hate you. Which you would pick up on if you had any awareness of social cues - which may be hard to obtain if you're autistic, which was my previous point

Regardless officer, thank you for safeguarding the oligarchs from the masses. You're doing a great job of keeping their boot on our throats

Rhoeri ,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

Just report the ableism and move on. This person seems to think that everyone is a CIA operative and that autism is an insult.

nahuse ,

Yeah, I figured that out after a little bit of interaction, but I prefer to give the other the benefit of the doubt when i start any conversation.

Rhoeri ,
@Rhoeri@lemmy.world avatar

Apparently, they’re now banned from their own instance.

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

Your comments get deleted because you seem to think autism is a derogatory to attack people with.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

They do the shit constantly and dudes profile pic on git hub is still Fidel Castro

But go off defending these people I guess lol

Greg ,
@Greg@lemmy.ca avatar

I'm not defending these people. I'm saying illinformed hot-takes are common on the Internet. However they are an useful opportunity to understand an opposing perspective even if they're based in factual inaccuracies.

In my experience, most people are great. If a stranger has a wildly opposing opinion to myself, it's rarely because of differing values and more likely because of differing experiences.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

But what we’re saying is that there’s a difference between a mistake/a hot-headed take and a pattern of abuse.

Patterns of abuse need to be taken seriously and no amount of “we’re all human” will mend that, until they themselves choose reform. Plain and simple.

People who choose not to agree to the social contract of tolerance, do not need to be treated with tolerance. Period

archomrade ,

Anyone else seeing the irony of objecting to ml politics being discussed on a platform built by a ml for discussing and organizing around ml politics?

johannesvanderwhales ,

Not really, it's software which specifically allows people to defederate, so it's by design that you'd have splinters.

archomrade ,

Right, which is why pointing this out is especially silly

nahuse ,

To clarify, since this topic is something that I have experienced quite a lot over my two months here, now: I do not have any problem whatsoever with tankie/communist/leftist politics. I also don't have a problem with people discussing them.

What I do have a problem with is:

  • ad hom attacks calling me a "lib" when I question whether authoritarianism on the left is really much better than authoritarianism on the right
  • unequal moderation, ie. being banned/having comments deleted for giving the same bitchy energy I receive over the course of a debate, without the same enforcement of the other user
  • having a long conversation, in good faith, about politics, media, and disinformation, including providing sources and reading sources in return, with mods and then finding the entire thread deleted because I said something critical of China, or insisted on alternative, nongovernmental sources for news
  • having these activities result in bans from subs that I have never commented in, and being unable to appeal or understand them

And I think it's ok to think that these practices are inherently bad for a social media platform, and working with others to advocate against those practices.

archomrade , (edited )

The entire point of federated social media is there isn't centralized control: every instance is able to set their own rules and enforce them how they choose to. They don't have to allow you to use their instance and you don't have to allow them yours.

"I don't like how they're moderating me" - well good thing they built the platform so you can choose moderation that suits you better

nahuse ,

I understand your point, but when a group of ideologues has de facto control over one of/some of the largest entities on a social media platform, and bans people for ideology without warning, explanation, or recourse, this amounts to centralized control, or at the very least undue influence.

For me personally, it wouldn't be a big issue if .ml made its bend and moderation practices clear, because I could have avoided the headache when I was first using lemmy. I wouldn't choose to engage with a forum that has "no critique of any country that calls itself Communist is allowed, anywhere, ever, for any reason, or we will bar you from participating in all communities on this platform" and I'm sure a lot of others feel the same way. What's more, I bet the admin of .ml know that, too, and keep these practices opaque because they are interested in new users.

Why don't .ml users retreat to hexbear or lemmygrad, if making the moderation practices on one of the largest instances fair is so odious?

archomrade ,

Why don’t .ml users retreat to hexbear or lemmygrad, if making the moderation practices on one of the largest instances fair is so odious?

lmao the gall of complaining about not being allowed to espouse your ideological opinion on their instance, and then suggesting they should be the ones to retreat to a different space.

For me personally, it wouldn’t be a big issue if .ml made its bend and moderation practices clear, because I could have avoided the headache when I was first using lemmy.

Well it seems like all those people are able to understand and live by those moderation practices just fine, maybe it's a good thing that you're not on .ml? Lemmy.ml has been happily existing as their own thing and their own rules, don't you think it's a little backwards that you're suggesting they relinquish their community so that... what, everyone who's not currently a part of .ml can move in? Is this a new form of digital colonialism I'm just not aware of?

If you really don't like .ml then block them, or get your instance admins to de-federate, or, idk, maybe just know whose house you're in when you're engaging in arguments along ideological fault lines? They have a different opinion than you and don't tolerate users who push that boundary, that doesn't sound unreasonable when there are 600 or so other servers you could move to or start your own. If they haven't banned you outright congratulations, you get another chance to participate.

IDK, I've somehow managed to avoid more than 1 or 2 comment removals on any of the instances (despite being infamous in .world for getting into it all the fucking time) over the last year, maybe it's not a problem with their moderation but a problem with... dare I say it?... you?

Facebones ,

Why don't the all the pro ML users leave the .ML instance

Hey, look, its why nobody takes you seriously.

nahuse ,

So are you just generally an asshole, or just right now?

Facebones ,

You're arguing that the people who BUILT LEMMY and the people who have been around long before some Reddit drama should bail on their own instance, built to be their instance for their purposes, for YOUR comfort.

Maybe re-evaluate what "being an asshole" means before you go around calling people names.

nahuse ,

Oh.

whodoctor11 ,
@whodoctor11@lemmy.ml avatar

😱 👻 👻 👻 ☭

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Are there people that don't know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that's why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.

Thcdenton ,

Great. now we have fediverse Stalin :D

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Are you referring to me? Or Dessalines?

Thcdenton ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9b1d06f4-0c7a-45d0-a61d-7f31beec5dc4.gif

blackn1ght ,

The way comments and users are purged from ml would make Stalin proud!

blackn1ght ,

If you're new to Lemmy then it won't be common knowledge at all.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Could be, but again, Lemmy was made along Communist principles, it's safe to assume people interested in Communist principles are going to be here.

blackn1ght ,

But they may not know the history of it or why it was made before joining. I certainly didn't, it was more about a decentralised alternative to Reddit, I just joined and explored.

vga ,

Perhaps the point is that those principles predate Communism by quite some time, and Communism added a lot of its own baggage on them.

SeattleRain ,

Bruh, Lemmy is a federated clone of Reddit. And tankies did not come up with the Fediverse or Reddit.
If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).
Users have no control of any community no matter how much they contribute. I guess since tankies are state capitalists anyway they feel right at home.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

No, Marxists did not create the fediverse, but Marxists did create Lemmy.

Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist. Having managers does not make something Capitalist, lol.

SeattleRain ,

It does EL-0-L when the managers do not answer to users who create the actual value. And surprise surprise you have widespread complaints about heavy handed censorship on tankie run instances on anything that hurts their feelings.

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

When the users can create their own instances or even fork the entire project for free, the dynamic is different. Plus, calling discussion "value" is kinda goofy.

Lemmy.world has censorship too, just see return2ozma's recent ban for criticizing Biden and not posting pro-Biden content as well, literally admitted by the admin in an official post.

SeattleRain ,

This is such a typical liberal answer. The value isn't just created by the users' post but by the collective network effect of all the users being in one place. That is not replicated when a new instance is created. Tankies know this which is why they're acting like old Reddit mods with retaliatory style moderation.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

You're referring to discussion and posting as though it's a commodity. Please read Marx, lol

SeattleRain ,

I have read Marx, unlike you who's just learned about Lenin through memes.

The network effect is a commodity. That's why X and Facebook fight for users and put them in walled gardens.

Their valuations are based engagement. The most powerful and successful capitalist enterprises in history are all social media companies but okay discussion isn't a commodity. How myopic can you be.

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

The network effect is not a commodity. Lemmy is not produced for profit, it has no Value. Reread Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 1. It has a Use-Value, but no Exchange-Value and is not produced for profit. Capitalism necessitates profit and an M-C-M' circuit by which Capitalists accumulate, which is absent from Lemmy entirely.

You're deeply unserious.

SeattleRain ,

Another pedantic tankie argument. Just because something is not being exchanged doesn't mean it can't.

Regardless originally I said the network effect had value, not that it was a commodity. And the VALUE cannot be replicated by building another instance. Therefore the users do not own THE VALUE that they produce.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Lemmy is a decommodified Reddit. There's no profit motive. The network does not have Value, as it is not being exchanged. It has a Use-Value, in that it is useful, but nothing is being taken from workers as nothing is exchanged.

Please read Capital, Chapter 1 of Volume 1 makes this extremely cut and dry.

SeattleRain ,

So you think Communism = Non Profit. Please read Capital Vol 1-3 by Karl Marx and not screeds by Lenin.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

No, I don't, but I certainly don't think non-profit = Capitalism like you've asserted.

Mr_Improving ,

Man, mad respect for engaging and calmly responding to a guy like that.

SeattleRain ,

Let me ask you something. Is there anything preventing Lemmy devs from selling the code and going private like a gazillion FOSS projects have?

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

They could, but the code could also be forked and remain free. Does the fact that Capitalism could exist in the future mean it presently does?

SeattleRain ,

And Stallman was the person that invented FOSS, and he's stated over and over he was not following any type of Communist principles.
In fact FOSS programmers explicitly retain private property rights of software. It's how they enforce the share alike clauses.
If FOSS was built on some type of Communist principles it wouldn't allow the bourgeois to build billion dollar enterprises on software they pay the writers nothing for.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Marxists did not create FOSS, but they did create Lemmy.

SeattleRain ,

Lemmy is not based Communist principles is what I'm arguing please read. It's not based on Communist principals because Reddit nor FOSS were which is the architecture Lemmy copied.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Lemmy is based on Communist principles, the devs have stated as much. The fact that others use similar underlying principles does not change why Lemmy was developed in the manner it has been.

Gigasser ,

I will add though that FOSS principles do tend to align more closely with the principles of non-commodification, collaboration, voluntary contribution, community-ownership, and free access to knowledge, which "can be" associated with socialist or Marxist ideals.

xigoi ,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist.

The ability to choose what platform to use seems closer to the principle of voluntary exchange than to authoritatianism.

Kalcifer ,
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).

Personally, I like to think of instances as countries, where federation and defederation is akin to trade policies across the borders, and communities are like regional/state governments.

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

That's not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.

It's accurate to describe them as Marxists still.

SeattleRain ,

Kind of but not really. They're state capitalists.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

How so? Where along Lenin's analysis of Marxism does there become a jump away?

SeattleRain ,

Uh the fact that the workers didn't own the means of production but the state did. Spare me all the philosophical pretzels about how the state WAS the people haha.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Since when does Marx say that a Worker-State isn't Socialist? You may wish to revisit Critique of the Gotha Programme. No need to read Lenin there! Marx was no anarchist.

SeattleRain ,

I'm not an anarchist. But pretty sure "Capitalism but the booj is the government". Isn't Communism

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

That was Nazi Germany, not the USSR.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.

what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?

Cowbee , (edited )
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

What separates Marxists from Tankies? I've seen dozens of definitions of tankie.

It's important to recognize that Marxist-Leninists far, far outweigh the number of anti-Lenin Marxists. You don't have to agree with Lenin to acknowledge that at this point he is almost as relevant to Marxism in a geopolitical context as Marx himself.

Swedneck ,
@Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

oh i see now you're on lemmy.ml lol, good thing i avoided that endless bad faith argument

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

What part of that was bad-faith?

ZombiFrancis ,

Some folk identify the .ml (or the pronouns of hexbear users) and work backwards from there.

Simply: the bad faith was having .ml there in the name. I'll take him for his word and bet that's what was meant.

*edit
And it isn't like I haven't seen wingnuts go ".world eh? More like .nazi!" as well. It is just that whole general vibe with the people who all up and comment about blocking shit.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Unfortunate, but probably correct.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I've had enough bad faith interactions with lemmy.ml accounts that it's become helpful to expect it from them.

Sure there are some actual people over there who are willing to engage in a fair way, but its not worth rolling the dice.

beardown ,

its not worth rolling the dice.

You poor helpless baby

VictoriaAScharleau ,

your accusation of bad faith is, itself, bad faith.

nyctre ,

I'm sorry but wasn't Marxism-Leninism developed by Stalin? You're agreeing with Stalin, not Lenin, aren't you? Partly with Lenin as well, sure, but you're forgetting Stalin here. Or is that a marketing thing?

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Stalin used Lenin's ideas, because he was pretty much carrying them over. Stalin was merely the one to coin the term, not really the ideas behind it.

Lenin was a Marxist, he didn't consider himself a "Leninist." It's like how Jesus was Jewish, not Christian, though please don't take that metaphor any further, comparing Lenin to Jesus is not the intent.

nyctre ,

I thought Lenin used his interpretation of the communist manifesto to develop Leninism (even if he didn't call it that). Then Stalin "improved" on that and developed Marxism-Leninism and then Mao "improved" it further and made Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. They're all Marxism, but like... Super Saiyan 1,2,3 etc versions of them.

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Kinda? Lenin's ideas aren't a morphing or changing of Marxism, and it certainly wasn't just the Manifesto, but Marx's actually important works. Lenin looked at Marxism, studied it, and applied Marxist analysis to his conditions in Tsarist Russia. Notably adding his analysis of Imperialism and Revolution.

Mao did the same thing, applied Marxism (and took inspiration from Lenin) with respect to China's conditions.

The reason why Marxism-Leninism is by far the most common is because we are still clearly in the age of Imperialism as described by Lenin, and his analysis is still valid. Rejecting Lenin is very unusual for Marxists, because Lenin basically applied Marxism to the contemporary era where Revolution has been delayed due to super-exploitation of the third world in exchange for super-profits.

archomrade ,

though please don't take that metaphor any further, comparing Lenin to Jesus is not the intent

Lmao

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

I can be funny from time to time, haha

boredtortoise ,

Exactly. They're the left sect of fascism, and have "purged" communists in the past

fuckingkangaroos ,

Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it's run by "Marxists" (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).

Kalcifer ,
@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works avatar

it's run by "Marxists"

Lemmy isn't run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.

fuckingkangaroos ,

You're right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.

xigoi ,
@xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

Because Lemmy is usually marketed as the Fediverse alternative to Reddit, not as a communist platform.

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