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

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Edit: missed that your already mentioned it, I guess the lemmy.ml link might still be useful

A list of alternative communities to the lemmy.ml ones: https://lemmy.ml/post/16531126

RagnarokOnline ,

What are you implying here? People don’t use Lemmy because of this guy’s politics? Do we know the politics of other developers?

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

To be honest the issue is more about the power tripping than politics. Banning someone from the Arch Linux community because they disagree with you seems strange

WhatAmLemmy ,

And people believed they'd escape the days of power-tripping mods by exiting Reddit.

At least with the festive there are no alternatives.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

festive

Like that new neame

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I appreciate the mod log here because at least you can see the receipts

illi ,

That's the beauty of lemmy though - there is probably another community for the same thing on a different instance.

WanderingVentra ,

Yup. There were power tripping mods on Reddit, too. Except there, you'd be out of luck. On here, you can go to other instances, like communities on programming.dev or something.

illi ,

To be fair you could've made a different subreddit but somehow this feels different

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Encourage users to create content on Lemmy communities hosted on non-tankie instances.

PopOfAfrica ,

My problem with this ideology is while there are plenty of tankies on Lemmy, the term gets overapplied.

Some people think anyone to the left of Bill Kristol is a tankie.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

Thanks for pointing this out. To some people, advocates for things like socialized healthcare are 'tankies'. Its hard to tell what people mean anymore by it, and one persons tankie might be another's centrist at this point.

prototype_g2 ,

Yeah... The label of "tankie" seems to be used to describe "anyone to the left of me".

It's so widely applied to the point of reaching meaninglessness.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Mods and admins have enormous power to shape what can be discussed using comment moderation tools, bans, and promoted content. At the very least you should be aware of what potential biases an admin has that may inform how they moderate.

RagnarokOnline ,

Oh nice, thank you. I didn’t realize they were an admin and mod too. I thought just a developer.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instances

Buelldozer , (edited )
@Buelldozer@lemmy.today avatar

Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instance

They can when they bake it directly into the lemmy code.

Here's the two primary devs arguing to do exactly that during a discussion on github regarding the slur filter.

The ended up allowing instance admins to enable / disable that filter as well as customize it but the discussion shows how much power they wield across all instances and their mindset about using that power. The comment about something not being in line with their view of the the project (lemmy) is particularly telling.

To be clear I'm not disagreeing with the filter nor am I necessarily bagging on the developers, what I'm trying to demonstrate is the breadth and depth of their reach. They are most definitely not confined to a single a instance nor is everything they do, or can do, visible to most users.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

i dont think you can take an instance of the devs considering maybe possibly baking in a poorly thought out slur filter and then being told what a stupid idea it is by the commuity as evidence that they can't be trusted not to bake in features allowing them to take admin actions on other instances

Such a change would likely trivially easy to remove by jusr forking lemmy, as they suggested people do a few times in that thread

redcalcium ,

Lemmy has a lot more contributors and eyes digging into its codebase now compared to 2021 so I think this is very unlikely to happen.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

And the creators of lemmy (same dudes lemmy.ml) have done things like this. Specifically the insertion of automatic word filters IIRC:

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622

Here you can see all the glory of these devs.

Don’t forget, there’s lots of other federated media options besides lemmy.

Frankly my time around lemmy.ml has been pretty off putting to the service as a whole. I don’t see how endless user growth is sustainable for any volunteer moderation team either.

Don’t forget, you all can go look through the lemmy.ml mod log at any time and view the bullshit that goes on over there.

Here’s a link: https://lemmy.ml/modlog

vger ,
@vger@lemmy.ml avatar

Oh, my, god, they added an optional, configurable regular expression filter. The monsters!

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Talk about over simplification of a problem lmao

PopOfAfrica , (edited )

Right, but Lemmy is open source. It can be forked.

Their political ideologies that are anti-capitalism are actually Lemmys greatest strength.

originalfrozenbanana ,

I don’t know that I’d agree that the political beliefs of the lemmy.ml admins are lemmys greatest strengths. Certainly federation amd open source contributions are core to lemmy but support of a specific nation’s policies and actions certainly is not.

PopOfAfrica , (edited )

We already have a capitalist, Lemmy. It's called Reddit.

Lemmy exists explicitly because of anti-capitalist sentiment, not despite it. Remember that politics is two separate spectrums, possibly more. Economic theory and governmetal theory are completely different things. My point is that it is their economic communism that birthed lemmy, and thier governmental theory is really not releveant to the software in the same way.

originalfrozenbanana ,

What’s that got to do with censoring some discussions about some countries?

PopOfAfrica ,

I literally just described the difference between their governmental philisophies and their economic ones.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Ok but they are administering and moderating their instance according to their political beliefs about a specific nation. They’re not defending China’s economic policies at Tiananmen Square or their notions on tariffs with Uyghurs. I don’t think you answered the question in the way you think you did.

PopOfAfrica ,

Literally, the only statement I made was that if they weren't communists, they probably would not have made lemmy. A capitalist would have made Reddit. That doesn't diminish their faults. It's just pointing out that none of us would be here if they weren't communist.

originalfrozenbanana ,

Ok, I didn’t ask that, though. That is a completely different discussion that no one is having.

TxzK ,
@TxzK@lemmy.zip avatar

And here's him praising an ethnic cleansing

cloudless OP , (edited )
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Yeah. Please note that phtn.app dev refused to change the default instance. I have moved back to Voyager since.

Edit: this has been resolved now. Photon has changed default instance to lemmy.ee

Illecors ,
@Illecors@lemmy.cafe avatar

I haven't announced it, yet, but I've been testing ph.lemmy.cafe for some time now if that's your cup of tea.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Thanks. Photon is decent but I would use Voyager instead out of principle. Would you add v.lemmy.cafe?

Illecors ,
@Illecors@lemmy.cafe avatar

I'll consider it. Need to manage the available resources a bit first.

Blisterexe ,
@Blisterexe@lemmy.zip avatar

They're going to change it soon.

Source: I asked them on matrix

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

That's good news. I will move back to Photon when that happens. Thanks for letting me know.

Xylight ,
@Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

Done

fuckingkangaroos ,

Thank you

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Thank you very much! Now I feel much more comfortable using Photon.

Thanks again for developing it and making it open source.

Xylight ,
@Xylight@lemdro.id avatar

I never refused. In fact, it's already been changed to lemm.ee

Illuminostro ,

And you linking to a direct malware .zip package.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Lemmy.zip name is really unfortunate

SeeJayEmm ,
@SeeJayEmm@lemmy.procrastinati.org avatar

The whole .zip TLD is really unfortunate.

4am ,

Yeah, people pushed Google on that one specifically and they still went and did it. It should be removed.

sylver_dragon ,

As a worker in the Cybersecurity space, it's absolutely fantastic for job security.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Imagine making a claim like this and being so lazy that you couldn’t even throw it into virus total to confirm your hypothesis

Stop making wild ass assumptions and trying to peddle it as truth. It makes you look bad

StupidBrotherInLaw ,

He's not praising an ethnic cleansing. He elsewhere has claimed that the ethnic cleansing/concentration camp narrative is entirely western propaganda and isn't happening at all. Instead, it's some sort of... Incarceration, deradicalization, and rehabilitation program? Hell, I don't know.

Either way, he already does and says enough things to criticize, let's not make up more. It just makes us look just as dumb.

reagansrottencorpse ,

I'm glad to have devs with principals. Go back to reddit lib.

muse ,
@muse@fedia.io avatar

Tianneman Square Massacre. Winnie the Pooh.

beardown ,

Winnie the Pooh

Isn't this racist?

Also, remind me about Kent State. Or Ferguson. Or the extermination of Native Americans. Or concentration camps in the Philippines.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t think I will

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

If by "principals" you mean "banning anybody who falls outside of the groupthink", then sure, more power to ya.

goferking0 ,

You say that like world or others instances don't do that

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

1, that's whataboutism, form a better argument. 2, that's still a weak "principal" to have and defending it as though it's a good thing is pretty cringe.

beardown ,

.world is a zionist and CIA-affiliated shillstorm. It's just the US version of .ml

Both are equally bad because the US and China are equally bad. Don't believe me? Check out the death toll of Native American genocide, transatlantic slavery, Latin american imperialism, CIA coups during the Cold War, police repression today, and current prison populations.

Given that I have no idea why anyone would defend the United States. Unless you're brainwashed or working for the CIA

PeggyLouBaldwin ,

i'm open to the possibility that you're right, but my experience is that criticism of the cia or zionism is tolerated to a much greater degree on .world than criticism of china or soviet russia is tolerated on .ml.

can you point to specific instance-wide bannings for talking shit on us foreign policy or zionism?

beardown ,

It's tolerated in different ways. Ostracization and orchestrated mass downvotes are used rather than bans. .world utilizes methods of control that are more subtle than .ml. Which is consistent with how the CIA/West exerts control compared to China.

Our propaganda techniques and mechanisms of control are more multifaceted and less brutish and obvious - which isn't a good thing. It means that we create a veil and drape it over the eyes of our people so that they don't even realize that they are being controlled. This is the ideological state apparatus of the West that is drastically more effective than anything a socialist state has managed to create. Of course, we both have repressive state apparatuses as well, and our police are arguably more brutal than theirs (especially if you aren't white and female), but there is less need to use that when you are able to brainwash your public so effectively with subtle acts of ideological correction. And convincing them that hundreds of strangers are mad at them is a good way to minimize dissent from being articulated in the first place, as well as distractions such as typical liberal rage bait and "red team bad" distractions

PeggyLouBaldwin ,

i think this is pretty hard to draw a direct comparison. first, a few mods/admins deciding to ban is not the same as hundreds of individuals voting. even if half of them are bots (no one games lemmy votes, though, do they?), that's still a far cry from someone stepping in and actually silencing a user.

second, while i think you're right about the nature of western societal control, i don't think there is any conspiracy to enact that on .world. maybe i'm naive though.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Imagine trying to insult someone by calling them a liberal lmfao.

Who remembers when China was doing live organ farming on people?

Pepperidge farm fucking remembers.

AINeMyot ,

Just FYI, the organ farming thing comes from Falun Gong, who are a weird cult that have been (perhaps overly) oppressed by the Chinese government. They have quite a strong media presence and some weird beliefs about organs.

stevedidwhat_infosec , (edited )

Really? Because I remember reading from the UN that this was taking place in the uyghur camps?

Edit: actually it’s both. So…

https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/forced-organ-harvesting-china-examining-evidence

AINeMyot ,

I think it's worth considering that your evidence comes directly from a country that considers China an adversary, and they seem to take the Falun Gong organ harvesting as fact.

stevedidwhat_infosec , (edited )

True, however that doesn’t necessarily constitute falsehood in what they’re claiming.

The UN also did work on this, as did Canada and some investigative reporters in Europe.

China has lots of adversaries. Mainly anybody in the west, and they dominate any of their other Allies which makes them a de facto leader and would make criticism from anyone else pretty tough.

Edit: oh and in 2015 China announced that they wouldn’t do forced organ transplants on prisoners anymore - so they were most definitely participating in this disgusting practice.

https://www.scu.edu/ethics/healthcare-ethics-blog/forced-organ-harvesting-a-decades-long-injustice-in-need-of-international-accountability-and-action/

AINeMyot ,

True, however that doesn’t necessarily constitute falsehood in what they’re claiming.

I appreciate that, I just think it was worth pointing out that its worth being sceptical about a source like that, as you would be about one coming from the Chinese government.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

100%

I’m critical of every ruling body, regardless of where I reside. There’s something to be said about having power over millions of people and how humans deal with that.

I’m especially critical of governments that are known to run PsyOps, disinformation campaigns, and known histories of abuse (US, China, Russia, Israel, Iran, North Korea, etc). Ultimately, the devil you know is better than the others, but we’re still working with devils

reagansrottencorpse ,

Falun Gong propaganda lmao. Idiot.

stevedidwhat_infosec ,

Don’t forget the Uyghurs! Your name calling has no effect against me and is frankly childish when you could’ve taken the opportunity to properly educate.

Instead you chose to call names. lol. Very telling.

There is no war in ba sing se ig

https://humanrightscommission.house.gov/events/hearings/forced-organ-harvesting-china-examining-evidence

absquatulate ,

This whole lemmy tankie dev thing has been discussed ad nauseam here for the past year or so. Not sure what solutions you suggest, but if I were to filter my software by who's an asshole dev and who's not, that list will end up really short.

As far as the ml instance goes, I don't agree that we should start defederating left and right with any and all undesirables, but to each their own. At least people now will be in the know, and it might take some weight off lemmy.world

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

Not sure what solutions you suggest

That's why I included this section in my post:

And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

HappyFrog ,

They were wondering about the dev thing. Having a lead dev be an asshole isn't that big of a deal. It's open source, so any code that would somehow benefit them would also benefit you.

givesomefucks ,

OP has been here two months, and they were shocked to find out an instance literally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin would pretend to be on the left but support authoritarian governments...

And they assume since they just "discovered" it, no one else knows.

null ,
@null@slrpnk.net avatar

... John Lennin?

CheapFrottage ,

Father of the gulag, founder of the Beatles

givesomefucks ,

It's crazy to think about, but even after all these years, people insist he was bigger than Jesus

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

Imagine all the Pol Pot...

agamemnonymous ,
@agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works avatar

https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/b45dc35c-1698-4197-a1b2-84a035efe596.jpeg

ImplyingImplications ,

"Imagine no private ownership of the means of production, I wonder if you can"

herrvogel ,

I'm the walrus

GBU_28 ,

It's as if people are joining and learning things.

Lifecoach5000 ,

Been here an almost year and literally just learned that from the above post.

octopus_ink ,

terally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin

John Lennon

Vladimir Lenin

Hadriscus , (edited )

John Lennin. Rofl Mao

errer ,

It’s not named after Lemmy from Motörhead?

redcalcium ,

They probably mean the .ml part.

realitista ,

I had to block a handful of bad actors, maybe around 15, and don't have much issue now. As usual it's a very small, very vocal minority that's doing most of the shitting in the pool. Unfortunately many are also mods of communities like politics@lemmy.ml, so generally not subscribing to stuff there is a good policy too.

Mr_Wobble ,
@Mr_Wobble@lemmy.world avatar

I've only been on Lemmy a month, and this shit is already exhausting. Isn't a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users? Why is this even an ongoing topic that spans multiple communities?

nahuse , (edited )

It’s all over because it’s a pervasive problem, and it’s obviously off putting to a lot of people.

And it’s especially a problem when there are random communities peppered in your feed that you simply can’t participate in randomly, even though they may be the largest of their kind.

Ive been banned from communities I have yet to participate in, for no reason, and without any responses from mods when I ask what happened.

It’s making it so the entire platform becomes toxic unless you actively persevere through their unfair practices.

It’s important to me because I really liked Reddit back in the day, and before that the disperate forums that existed all over. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are interested in those same things, but are put off when they inevitably say something “liberal” in a meme space and are attacked for it. It’s toxic and it is counter to growth.

Not to mention how blatant an echo chamber it creates, and how naive users can be indoctrinated to misinformation without even a hint of counter discussion being allowed.

Edit: desperate to disperate

otp ,

I can't even see what instance you're from, but your account is only a couple months old. Why not create one on a different instance?

nahuse ,

I’ve been banned from several .ml subs, some of which are so popular they appear on All, and I didn’t know I was banned until I tried to upvote, but I’ve never participated otherwise in them, it was punitive for other comments and discussions I’ve had where I have debated politics and, propaganda, and media with mods.

I may actually be banned from the instance, but i don’t know how to investigate such things. But .ml came up an awful lot when I was looking into how to join Lemmy, obviously, and I had no idea how bad the mod practices and ideological bend would be on what amounts to one of the “main” instances.

I’m on shitjustworks, which I really like. But before I knew how different instances worked, I just assumed Lemmy was Reddit power tripping mods 2.0 across all of Lemmy. I’m glad I persevered a little bit to get to more communities.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

You are, for the next 7 days. This is your modlog actions on Lemmy.ml:

https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=9504078

Some of that stuff would get you banned from shitjustworks though too - e.g. civility.

nahuse ,

I had a conversation with the mod who deleted my comments for being uncivil. A troll reported me being an asshole to him, as he trolled. If you look at the deleted thread, you can see their deleted comments.

it’s not my proudest moment, but I firmly believe that assholes should he confronted by assholes, and I took it upon myself in that moment.

Aside from that single interaction, I have abided by the rules of the forum and been polite, within reason. But I have, without remorse, questioned bullshit and disinformation.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Well I hope it helps that now you know how to check your modlog actions:-). You put your name in the box, but the hard part is figuring out which modlog even has the record of the event - though usually the instance where the community is located at.

Yeah I wonder how much assholery those admins bring upon themselves by being that way to others first, it's like they almost do it on purpose and then use it as an excuse - e.g. Russia will say "poor me, the Ukraine is attacking me, it's so not fair boo-hoo" :-P.

Jakeroxs ,

It's because they're on the same instance as you (and me)

otp ,

Ooh, good to know. I'm still a noob here, lol

octopus_ink ,

Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users?

You can do exactly that. OP wants everyone to do it.

Mr_Wobble ,
@Mr_Wobble@lemmy.world avatar

I'm new here, so pardon my lack of understanding. But if this lemmy_.ml place is engaging in such disagreed upon behavior by so many people, why hasn't it been banned so I'm not even seeing it in the first place? I've recently learned there are whole lemmy servers ignored or banned by most other civil lemmy servers due to their bad behavior, why not ml?

If this really has been going on for over a year, and so many communities are against it, why is it not banned?

octopus_ink ,

Please bear in mind that I'm a lemmy.ml user (though not a tankie, nor marxist, nor even socialist.)

Look at OP. How many lines are about smearing someone for their politics and beliefs (Even the subject line covers ONLY that), and how many are about the need to improve moderation practices at .ml (precious few, not even the subject line).

IMO that's one reason. The discussion rarely ends up being about moderation practices even when that's the stated goal. It ends up being about not liking someone's views.

The other reasons - you can personally block that instance if you choose, but for it to be hidden from EVERYONE on an instance, the admins of the instances need to make that decision. (To defederate.) There are lots of potential reasons not to do so, and I think many of them boil down to not throwing out the baby with the bathwater since there are plenty of users on ml like me who are not tankies and are just having the same discussions we'd have anywhere.

I got a 3 day ban from one single community at .ml within my first couple days here for using the term "whataboutism" - I suspect it was an automod action. I wasn't really happy about it, but eh? shrug

I have the same answer for folks now that I did when social media was somehow full of US conservatives claiming they could no longer speak their minds on social media. No one is obligated to give me or you or anyone a platform. If Lemmy.ml is that much of a shithole, it will eventually get defederated broadly, and everyone who isn't a tankie will stop using it.

The occasional thread like this, or someone complaining that my opinion is invalid because I'm an ml user (has happened maybe three times) are the only times I ever think about it really.

akakunai ,

This would make a ton of sense if your choice of Lemmy instance were not just that; a choice. It's not a characteristic innate to your being that you're born with or something.

You can choose to associate with whatever instance you want and swap it up with another account somewhere else if you want at any time (you can prob keep the same username if you want too).

octopus_ink ,

This would make a ton of sense if your choice of Lemmy instance were not just that; a choice. It’s not a characteristic innate to your being that you’re born with or something.

Either I don't understand your objection, or you don't understand my point. Legitimately it could be either of those. I don't see what this has to do with most of what I said above.

You can choose to associate with whatever instance you want and swap it up with another account somewhere else if you want at any time (you can prob keep the same username if you want too).

OK, yes... Are you saying I should move my account elsewhere because OP (or some other people) don't like that my account says .ml at the end? Or because I'm only supposed to have an account on instances where I agree with the political leanings of those who run it?

Serinus ,

There's an awful lot of political views around that aren't tankie.

And it's less about the users and more about the kind of lopsided, censorship moderation that happens on .ml

octopus_ink , (edited )

And it’s less about the users and more about the kind of lopsided, censorship moderation that happens on .ml

That may be your concern, but it's not the discusion OP started. That's the discussion OP claims to have started.

Quoting myself from yesterday:

Subject line: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

First two sentences: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

Third sentence: Links to archive.org link that fails to load. (I think they are still under DoS attack) May or may not be about moderation, but nothing OP wrote in the leadup to the link leads me to believe it's about more than smearing the target's views.

Then a couple links that sound like they are about discussing moderation.

Then another para smearing the target's opinions and politics some more.

I feel like those ratios are a bit off if OP is really so bothered about moderation practices.

There’s an awful lot of political views around that aren’t tankie.

Sure, but most of the time you don't know anything at all about who designs and develops the systems you use. I totally support people going to where they feel comfortable, and I'm a huge believer in defederation as one of the strengths of the fediverse. Block early and block often and all that. OP didn't spend time on that though, OP spent most of their time on character assassination.

Also, the target of these smears is the main Lemmy dev - not just Lemmy.ml. If OP is so concerned about their influence then OP should move to mbin or something.

nickwitha_k ,

(you can prob keep the same username if you want too).

Unless it is already taken on the new instance, you absolutely can. Usernames are namespaced similar to email addresses. So, example@lemmy.world and example@lemmy.ml are considered two different users. This means that there is no technical reason preventing it.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Tankie is a pejorative. We should stop using that - I am not sure what the best replacement is, authoritarian? Fascist?

OP seems to believe that the unfair admin/mod practices stem from their political beliefs. e.g., going against their very own Code of Conduct, the amins in question used subversive database manipulation practices to eliminate the mod-log explanations for their actions, and also preemptively banned various people from communities that they had never (even so much as once) commented in, in the past. The latter is EXTREME, and the former is disingenuous.

Oh, but the admin is an authority-loving fascist, hence it suddenly all makes sense: "service to stated principles that serve the community good" give way to "whoever has the power to accomplish things does whatever they want", in that world-view. So they are not entirely as disconnected as you might wish in a purely mathematical & theoretical world. This is the real world, where it gets messy, and EVERYTHING gets political. But okay, what if OP made a poorly-written post - b/c their heart jumped out ahead of their brain - what then? It doesn't mean that it's not true, or a good thing to do, even then, and moreover what to do about it now? Re-word it if you like and write and post a new one? But this is the one that we have. Yeah, again, irl gets messy sometimes.

You missed some stuff yourself btw. As individual people block you - by which I do not just mean personally but your entire instance of choice - increasingly you will find yourself speaking to an echo chamber consisting of fascists + those who are more neutral towards authoritarianism. You will reply to people, and wonder why so few ever reply back to you - but it won't be b/c they don't like you (well maybe some, I dunno:-P), and rather they won't even see your replies unless they happen to visit that section of the comments for some other reason. They can do so, but they will not be notified so they will not be made aware of your desire to communicate.

This event is happening, like it or not, and one way or another. This OP at least gives us the chance to talk about it, before things go too far and even this much communication becomes impossible. i.e., the Western world is offering you this lifeboat, to let you know what is coming. Truth Social surely does far worse, and when Elon took over Twitter and renamed it to X, he didn't warn people, and instead just started removing and banning at will/whim. But the rest of the Fediverse isn't going to remain associated with fascism just b/c some innocent people have an account on Lemmy.ml.

Btw, in your Settings under "Import/Export Settings" there is a large button Export that can make a JSON file, and in a new account you can Import it, for easy transfer of your settings. You'd lose all your past comments/replies/up-/downvotes, but if you also transfer your iconic avatar and keep the same name, many people may not even notice.

I am sorry that this is upsetting to you.

octopus_ink ,

First, thanks for the thoughtful and thorough reply.

I am sorry that this is upsetting to you.

It's not upsetting to me, it's just annoying. I strongly support the block early/block often culture that seems to pervade the fediverse, even when that is folks blocking me. I also support the ability to defederate, and strongly support (for example) pre-emptively defederating from threads.

Indeed, such decisions at the user or instance level are potentially messy, but the whole thing just seems self-healing over time to me. There's an equilibrium that needs to be reached, I think, and I doubt we're anywhere near it yet. Some instances are going to end up isolated, either by themselves or by others, and some won't. New instances will spring up, instances will shut down, etc etc. People will move around to find a new instance when needed. It's all really sloppy and the outcome for any one user or instance isn't necessarily going to match the outcome for another. That's freedom to me. And not in some maga "free speech means I get to be a jerk but no one can call me out" way, but in a "we're all empowered to influence our own experience here" way. People can block, instances can defederate, people can deploy their own instance and make it as open or closed or personal or public as they want to. Hot damn.

And all that is going to create friction and people are going to disagree with each other about how to do it and what the right way is, just like we're doing here.

But, despite your very reasonable rationalizations for OP, and regardless of their intent, this very subconversation and others are evidence that this isn't what a discussion about moderation practices looks like. It's what a discussion about publicly calling someone out with a pejorative term for their beliefs looks like. Expressing that opinion, and defending it when required, is the extent of my involvement or concern. I don't share the beliefs of OP nor their target. Whether folks want to change how they are discussing the issue or not is up to them. That's also freedom, in my opinion.

I might migrate instances at some point, I might not, we'll see how things go, but it's not going to be because of this post from OP. Folks can run their instances as they see fit. They don't owe me a platform, nor OP.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

It’s what a discussion about publicly calling someone out with a pejorative term for their beliefs looks like

Tbf, that's b/c that's what you turned it into... I think? You brought it up, hence we are now discussing that. Tbf that is what you saw within the OP to begin with, so I am not saying that the discussion was not worth having. And I did mention that OP might have done a lot better in their wording choices.

However, I am suggesting to look past the format of the OP, to more clearly see its content, even if OP could have made that process a lot easier from the start by having chosen a different name than 'tankie'. Which starts not here but from reading the linked posts too - I know it's A LOT of comments (~800 iirc at last count), but at the very least start with just the top-ranked ones. It's not good. OP presumed that people already knew that, and just in case, gave those exact links so that people could catch up to that, before getting into depth into this post.

They don’t owe me a platform, nor OP.

Oh absolutely 100% agree. The Fediverse is what we make of it, as you said, and we are doing that right now.

So if we are past the poor wording choice, the real issue (imho at least, perhaps OP themselves disagrees) is that those linked posts describe a situation where the admins are using database manipulation to edit the mod logs. Think about what that means. Slightly less but still extremely offensive, those admins are also mass- and preemptively banning people from communities that they have never so much as commented in even once, for a comment made in some other community that said something negative about China. This is not okay. People are not going to put up with this. The former is actually a deceptive practice, and the latter isn't nearly as bad but is still abusive, on the level of Reddit.

These posts calling for defederation of the rest of the Fediverse from Lemmy.ml aren't going to simply disappear, unless those admins step down. Instead, some instances will defederate from them, others will proudly remain federated with everyone, and overall a new equilibrium will be formed, but in the meantime there will be much turmoil.

Read the linked posts - most especially https://lemmy.world/post/16211417. This is not just about OP disagreeing with them politically. They may have worded it to look like that, but that is not all that is going on - it's not even the half of it. THAT post at least is about how modding should be done. And this one seems to have been meant as the next step. Though if you want to make a new post to replace OP's wording choices with your own, it may help? As you say, OP made the mistake of wrapping the real issue inside of an easily-dismissable minor one as if they were one and the same.

Edit: Oh but I should have said: and if you choose not to make such a post, that's fine. At least we are enjoying this conversation about it all:-).

octopus_ink ,

At least we are enjoying this conversation about it all:-).

Well you've certainly given me more to think about. I don't see much more to debate with you, but wanted to reply anyway so it didn't appear I was leaving in a huff. Have a good rest of your day.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@discuss.online avatar

Honestly, this kind of kindness, consideration, & compassion from you is what I love about the Fediverse, where we don't all have to agree with one another and in fact it's arguably more fun if we start off not that way, but all along the pathway from start to finish we respect one another (potentially barring some heated moments, hopefully forgivable, and I already don't recall but apologies if I ever did slip into that for a moment). I am told that Reddit used to be this way, before the authoritarian Huffman changed it to become mere "social media" (rather than older forum discussion board style) to increase his profits, but I barely saw it before it was gone, having joined far too late. Therefore I held out hope that I could see this in the Fediverse, which I did, then that was dashed when I encountered chapotraphouse and lemmygrad.ml, restored when I user-blocked them, and now I hope to preserve that for others to be able to enjoy it as well:-).

Fwiw I do see that you were right - this post was about differing political views, but that other post about the moderation abuses... that's some heavier stuff that I am glad you will take time to think about. B/c it is absolutely disrespectful of the admins to the community for them to not follow their own rules, but also b/c I hope to be able to converse with you again on the Fediverse!:-)

And it is complicated - b/c without power, what good is having "rightness" of thought? And yet, the world is what we make of it, so if we all band together and say "this is right, whereas this, this we will not put up with", then our collective might wins out. Speaking of, there is also a chance that Lemmy.ml could lose its grant over such practices, or be barred from the EU. At the very least, I see posts like the OP as providing fair warning that bad things may come in the future, so best start preparing now - e.g. by making communities elsewhere.

And the Federation model is so beautiful, that it seems worth attempting to preserve, by spreading communities out regardless:-).

octopus_ink ,

I already don’t recall but apologies if I ever did slip into that for a moment

No apology needed, if anything I'm the one who gets a little terse sometimes.

that’s some heavier stuff that I am glad you will take time to think about. B/c it is absolutely disrespectful of the admins to the community for them to not follow their own rules

Will do!

also b/c I hope to be able to converse with you again on the Fediverse!:-)

And you as well!

I'm sure we'll bump into each other again. Whether I'll still be on this instance or account though? Only time will tell... :)

Cowbee ,
@Cowbee@lemmy.ml avatar

Who would "ban" Lemmy.ml? There isn't a "master instance" over all, each instance is an island.

Lemmy.world is currently discussing whether or not to sever ties with Lemmy.ml, just like Literature.cafe alreay did.

Lemmy.world has already defederated from Lemmygrad and Hexbear, the 2 largest Marxist instances, so Lemmy.ml is the last major Marxist-friendly instance that Lemmy.world interacts with.

For clarity, Lemmy.ml is seen very positively by some servers, and negatively by others. You are getting viewpoints largely from Lemmy.world, whereas other communities like db0, Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Blahaj.zone, or otherwise may have different or opposite stances.

That's the beauty and messiness of federation.

teawrecks ,

Because the Lemmy user base is still relatively small, so the drama in one corner takes up a nontrivial amount of the total area. If it were the size of reddit or tiktok, you wouldn't pay threads like these any mind.

kilgore_trout ,
@kilgore_trout@feddit.it avatar

OP wants to feel like a saviour of us all from tankies.

PrettyFlyForAFatGuy ,

Yeah, like linus is a known cunt to work with, i'll still update my kernel regularly though

nickwitha_k ,

Not defending his behavior but I would note that he has been actively seeking to remedy his cunty-ness after becoming aware of how problematic it was and the problematic people that it attracted.

eldavi ,

i've been on the receiving end of his cunty-ness in person as a lowley tech support minion that he was forced to work with, as well as several other well known pioneers; i can tell through this thread that dessalines is an angel by comparison and i've never met them.

nickwitha_k ,

I'd certainly say so. I've yet to see him even coming off as dismissive without trying to clarify why in a polite manner.

rwhitisissle ,

It's the Vampire Castle phenomenon of online leftist spaces. One dev and instance admin of Lemmy has problematic personal beliefs, so now we aren't allowed to be on Lemmy anymore because it's failed an ideological purity test that OP decided for the rest of us. In other news, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is a hardcore Ayn Rand style freemarket libertarian, so I guess we should all ditch wikipedia and each buy a 400 pound Encyclopedia Britannica set. Because that'll show him to believe things I think are terrible.

StupidBrotherInLaw ,

It's all so melodramatic. I'll take a jaunt into the comments sections of these posts once in awhile to see what the libs are clutching their pearls over now. Today we have:

Oh nooooo, a dev is a ban happy shithead! How unusual and extreme! Better raise the banner and gather the troops, the tankies are coming for us all! We must defederate and/or fork a parallel Lemmy because only tankies have weird ban happy power trips! This will solve all the issues!

On the bright side, block op and the surprisingly small number of the other more vocal tankie drama lords and it gets a lot quieter.

kilgore_trout ,
@kilgore_trout@feddit.it avatar

On the bright side, block op and the surprisingly small number of the other more vocal tankie drama lords and it gets a lot quieter.

Getting worked up over a Lemmy instance upholding principles misaligned to yours, while Lemmy constitutes 3% of the Fediverse and the Fetiverse is still unknown to the vast majority, is a pointless waste of energy.

ArmokGoB ,

I got a 14 day instance ban for calling a tankie a tankie on ML. Their authoritarian ideology is dangerous and it needs to be quarantined.

rwhitisissle ,

You are more than welcome to block any and all content from that instance. You can do this by going under your user settings and clicking on the "Blocks" tab and searching for lemmy.ml in the Block Instance section. That's the thing about Federated content. You have the power to selectively engage with the content of your choosing. You don't get to quarantine others because there is no centralized authority that gets to say "your instance gets stuck in an internet ghetto where it isn't allowed to interact with other users." You have to quarantine yourself by excluding content. If that doesn't work for you, then maybe it's less that you dislike their authoritarian ideology and more that it isn't the same flavor as your own.

ArmokGoB ,

I blocked ML months ago. I'm still going to keep calling for large instances to defederate, because sticking my fingers in my ears doesn't make the problem go away.

rwhitisissle ,

Yes, that will happen when the "problem" lives solely between your ears.

Iceblade02 ,

Yeah, I honestly give very few shits about the political opinions of the lemmy devs as long as it doesn't taint the project itself -and if it did at some point in the future, forking an open-source project is stupidly easy.

I even donate a smidge of money to the development effort via librepay - man does need it to live after all.

Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.

nickwitha_k ,

Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.

I'll add that they're also generally quite pleasant when I see them on Lemmy. And I haven't seen either of them involved in being ban-happy. Some will argue otherwise based upon misconstruing the relationship between FLOSS devs and FLOSS consumers as a business/customer relationship (expecting customer service and product manager input on software that's donated free of charge). But, I think that those folks are just not yet familiar with how FLOSS development works.

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

deranger ,

I had my first ever comment, in decades of forums/reddit usage, get mod deleted because I was critical of China and the USSR. It was a fairly mild criticism. That action turned me off the whole instance.

cloudless OP ,
@cloudless@lemmy.cafe avatar

They learn from who they are worshipping. Exactly how the CCP control the narratives.

fuckingkangaroos ,

They learn from who they are worshipping pays them and might disappear them if they say the wrong thing.

realitista ,

Sad that you chose an .ml community to come back to. You can't talk about Russia or China at all without getting deleted there, unless it's saying that Tienamen Square never happened or something like that.

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

Same here, but they tried to claim I called a Steam Deck a "Rice Burner" as a racist insult when I randomly chose "rice" as the title for this meme to fill the mandatory title block. https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/401adc6d-b735-4496-96e1-cf688536068e.jpeg

Like, bro? Even if that was my intent, which it wasn't even a term I had ever seen applied to a computer, it doesn't make sense.

octopus_ink ,

And? I'm not a tankie and not a marxist. Hell, I'm not even a socialist. Hell, I identify as a leftist, but I bet lots of folks would tell me I'm nothing of the sort. But I'd rather be on an instance with folks to the left of me than to the right (to the very, very minimal degree that I care about who else is on my instance). I don't remember why I didn't sign up for .world, but at the end of the day does it really matter?

The only impact I've seen are smear posts like this one, and folks who dismiss opinions if they see a user is from .ml. shrug If that's as far as folks can look, I'm not interested in talking with them anyway.

I have hexbear blocked in my own settings; if folks want to block .ml that's no skin off my nose. Ain't respecting user freedoms great?

Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev,

So I see you are on a Lemmy instance. If we're going to smear instances based on the politics of their devs, I'd think you wouldn't want to use ANY Lemmy instance.

NOT_RICK ,
@NOT_RICK@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing wrong with holding a political stance, but they routinely ban people for specious reasons. With some of the biggest communities on .ml this is a problem for the growth of Lemmy.

octopus_ink ,

Nothing wrong with holding a political stance, but they routinely ban people for specious reasons.

OP should have left the politics and personal smears out of it then and opened a discussion about moderation practices. And as OP points out, the person he's primarily smearing is the main Lemmy dev. What's the endgame there? Trying to get the main dev thrown off his own project?

Chozo ,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

OP should have left the politics and personal smears out of it then and opened a discussion about moderation practices

That's... exactly what OP did, though. Did you even read the post?

octopus_ink , (edited )

What does it lead with? A comment about moderation or a comment about the devs politics and opinions?

(Edit: and the subject line says nothing about moderation)

Serinus ,

To brand the lemmy.ml as the censorship hell that it is.

octopus_ink , (edited )

Subject line: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

First two sentences: Nothing about moderation or censorship, it's about smearing the target's views.

Third sentence: Links to archive.org link that fails to load. (I think they are still under DoS attack) May or may not be about moderation, but nothing OP wrote in the leadup to the link leads me to believe it's about more than smearing the target's views.

Then a couple links that sound like they are about discussing moderation.

Then another para smearing the target's opinions and politics some more.

Yep, OP was really about moderation and censorship, not about a personal attack. /s

NuXCOM_90Percent , (edited )

Please don't conflate tankies with leftist thought. They are not leftists. They are fascists with strong ties toward fascist regimes that are "known" to actively usurp elections around the globe.

A good metric is: a very hardline Communist might have an argument for why effectively slavery is ethical because social and economic planning requires people to engage in jobs they actively do not want to do. I personally consider that the reason that Communism can never work at scale but that is a discussion that needs to be had.

A tankie will just justify anything that China or Russia do. Usually with an attempt to deflect by pointing out something the US or, increasingly, certain EU countries did.

But, regardless: There is another issue with your "just let everyone taolk it out" nonsense. Because the ml moderation team(s) and admin staff have increasingly been using mass bans and false claims of xenophiobia to shut down anything that is not tankie bullshit. So there is no discussion. Just one sided propaganda in some of the largest communities on lemmy.

To expand on the moderation strategy a bit. A LOT of people who aren't increasingly of one nationality and ethnicity have a lot of problems with ResetEra's moderation strategy. The mods and admins are known for using a heavy hand and outright mockery against anyone who they disagree with and the remaining community stumble over each other to be part of the "cool crowd".

But you can also very easily see why the vast majority of leftists and PC gamers and... Asian people left. Because they have a policy to only edit user posts when they contain actively dangerous/illegal statements. So you can see when someone catches a permaban because they dsiagreed with an admin or joked about the corporate interests behind brexit. And you can see the discussion of the remaining users on why that was so fucked... up until the thread gets permanently locked.

With the model ml (and certain other more "world"ly instances...) use... you don't. You just see comment branches disappear the moment anyone pushes back on some propaganda. And if a user pisses off the admins, they get banned straight up. Often with some comment about how they are racist or xenophobic in the modlog with all of their comments removed but NOT in the modlog. And that is a problem because, unless you were actively following along with that discussion, you never see anything other than MAYBE "wow, a lot of really racist people disagree with this very smart discussion on why Chinese Taipei was always a part of China and is totally not a sovereign-ish nation called Taiwan"

PopOfAfrica ,

I'm more of a libertarian communist, communist economic theory I think is excellent. That doesn't mean that communist regimes of the past make any sense, because of their authoritarian bend.

Turns out political opinions arent black and white.

TopRamenBinLaden ,

It sounds like you are a Democratic Socialist from this tidbit.

I kind of feel the same way. I think the economic theory behind communism/socialism sounds much more beneficial towards our progress as a species and towards a more sustainable existence. I just don't agree with the authoritarian methods of implementation. I think that if socialism is going to succeed, it will need to come about in a gradual democratic way.

PopOfAfrica ,

No, I'm a communist. I don't believe in monitary commerce. But I'm absolutely with you, with communism also only being able to succeed if it's democratic.

octopus_ink , (edited )

Hey thank you for this, I will read it again in more detail, but appreciate the perspective, both broadly and with regard to this specific post.

This is the only reply I received which has caused me to second guess my stance in the slightest. 🙂

Edit: If I'm going to care about such things at all, is there a left leaning instance you'd recommend? I considered blahaj, but not sure if they welcome allies there or only the queer community.

ZombiFrancis ,

This often comes up in these threads, but the point of using the term tankie is for its association with leftism.

The traditional term people otherwise use when referring to such abuse by mods and admin is 'fascist' or 'nazi', hyperbolic or not as you demonstrated. The conflation is the point.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

I‘m glad that the fediverse resists excessive moderation and silencing of unwanted political opinions. I‘m not a fan of some of the things said or done on .ml but we wont do anything which is awesome. You can make your own instance and defederate, ban, block whoever you like.

To make my point clear, I made a large donation to the lemmy devs as I think they are doing awesome work. @dessalines especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.

But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.

Blaze ,
@Blaze@reddthat.com avatar

Nice comment, have a good day too

fuckingkangaroos ,

Yes let's all just pretend their propaganda is actual opinions held by real people.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar
  1. how will you prove they’re not „real people“?
  2. you‘re using a platform made by them
  3. the post itself is also propaganda since it pushes for a „solution“ against „tankies“.
fuckingkangaroos ,

  1. Hold my hand and we'll go visit their house and ask them

  2. Creating something doesn't give them the right to spread lies, and they probably funded it specifically in order to spread propaganda

  3. This post isn't a systemic campaign of disinformation... a single person saying we should do something isn't propaganda. I'm talking about government-driven efforts to change thought and opinions. In this case, from a government with a long history of murdering and oppressing people.

haui_lemmy ,
@haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com avatar

I‘m not saying you cant be right. I still dont agree with your assumptions. Have a good day.

beardown ,

This entire thread glows and is extremely consistent with CIA goals.

You're beyond naive if you think the Marxists are brainwashed, yet you and the "people" in this thread aren't.

fuckingkangaroos ,

I don't think Marxists are brainwashed at all. Can't you contribute without putting words in my mouth?

eran_morad ,

Read fkn anything on lemmy.ml and this is obvious.

coolasbreeze ,

I mean... What is your point here? This is the internet no?

oce ,
@oce@jlai.lu avatar

FYI, the second main dev, Nutomic, although he doesn't write as much, is in the same ideology, his avatar is Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator.

During their AMA, 10 months ago, I directly asked them:

Since you’re very upfront with your political preferences, how much did it play a role in motivating you to create Lemmy? Was it a tech experiment first and a political project second?
Do you have some kind of core principle to not let your political preferences excessively interfere with your role as founders, main developers and moderators of Lemmy?

Thanks for your work, it’s projects like that keep the ideal of the open internets alive.
https://lemmy.ml/post/2920188/2385128

They intentionally ignored my questions and answered to other later questions with fewer points.

Eventually, 10 months later, my personal observation is that it seems that they keep their ideology tendencies to their home instance, which is fair enough since people are free to leave and block. And they don't seem to be developing some centralized International political oppression feature into Lemmy, like their role models may have, so far.

Don't forget that you can block an instance personally now.

Nacktmull ,
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/023/180/notsurprisedkirk.jpg

therealjcdenton , (edited )
@therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip avatar

We can't just oust them from developing sadly but we can spread the news that they are not a good person

_haha_oh_wow_ ,
@_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

Good thing I'm on sh.itjust.works

Maybe I should swap to an Mbin instance instead though... Eh, I like it here and I'm kinda lazy.

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