I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.
I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
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Side question, how do you retrieve or see “removed” comments? I get some removed and I’m not sure what they were…
Yeah the modlog is where you can normally see them. Mind you they seem to selectively purge the modlog too, presumably to hide their obvious censorship bias.
Yeah, that’s one thing reddit did right, ban/removal notifications included a copy of the comment.
No they don’t. I received a two week ban in the wake of the API protests, never got an explanation why or what comment triggered it.
Shrug, my notifications always included it. Maybe the mod just banged you directly or something.
selectively purge the modlog
Now this would be a good reason to defederate from an instance. Modlog is what keeps mods consistent (right now I don’t like the Lemmy.ml mods rulebrick but at least they were open about what they don’t like).
Shit like this makes people go back to reddit. At least there’s more content and getting banned from one million user subreddit doesn’t stop you from going to another big sub. Here, if you get banned in one or two of the big instances you have to become a lurker. I take pride in being able to disagree with the dominant opinion in a reasonable way, but these .ml mods are unreasonable.
It’s much easier to still contribute to the conversation on Lemmy than Reddit.
Also !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com allows you to call out power tripping mods
They didn’t let me join in the first place lol. They are so weird.
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Note that this is likely just an automated script to ensure all your comments are removed from lemmy.ml before being sitebanned, as sitebanning doesn’t remove all content.
This seems like a by design thing.
Removed by mod
Semi-O/T
There’s censorship just for having a different opinion. When you challenge someone’s belief in any subject… or just simply have a disagreement, you’re getting banned. Lemmy is following in the foot steps of Reddit in the sense that it appears that the left/progressives want to be segregated and keep the division. No dialogue, no meeting in the middle… just ban anyone who threatens their bubble.
Gaslight. Obstruct. PROJECT.
I would suggest trying to get out of the english-language (American-centric) internet bubble with respect to dialogue, “challenging beliefs” and the broader nature of what you consider to be censorship.
Focus on real-world (internet can be a red hearing) examples of cases (particularly in Asia, Africa but Europe and LATAM too) that contradict your statements around “just ban anyone who threatens their bubble”.
Then consider the what are the real world consequences of tankie propaganda, again better to avoid US narratives/examples. Just try a good faith approach to this question.
I have no idea what you’re suggesting… but just about the entire non-western world laughs at Reddit-type leftists because they can’t come to terms with reality. So much so they (Reddit-type leftists) refuse vehemently to acknowledge that it is their feelings that they’re putting before facts of life. Refuse facts, refuse reality.
I mentioned elsewhere but here’s a copy and paste:
It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.
Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.
“Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.
Removed by mod
Tbh this is one of the reasons why I’m looking forward toward Sublinks
Is there anything Sublinks will offer that’s different to Lemmy? Because if not, I’m afraid the issues OP is talking about would still exist either way.
Nothing particularly, but it would let LW and other instances distance themselves from the lemmy.ml admins.
If it works the same way then nothing will be solved. That’s why I keep saying it, the hosting needs to be decentralized but the rest needs to work like an admin-less Reddit, moderators would have their community/ies but they wouldn’t be able to ban you altogether and you wouldn’t depend on an admin to decide what you can and cannot see, you would block the communities you don’t want in your feed yourself.
What is that?
Compatible alternative to Lemmy: https://sublinks.org/
Tankies are modding many communities here as well. The solution is to fight them tooth and nail.
Oh they are all over the politics communities. Both as mods and as trolls.
Pretty sure they are creating alt accounts on non-tankie instances.
They are. Many usernames are strangely familiar despite being relatively new accounts, and there’s often a matching .ml or Hexbear user. They know their nonsense is unwelcome.
Tankies warming up to call you and Lemmy.World fascists in 3, 2, 1…
Tankies: The word ‘tankie’ is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.
Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.
They also sometimes overuse the word “ultra”, but instead of “right wing” they use the word “reactionary”, to be compliant wit soviet aesthetics I suppose.
Every word used by disingenuous people on the right becomes “useless” - freedom, patriot, Christian, help, law, order, justice, democracy, Constitution, agreement, good, bad - you name it, they twist it into a 100% polar opposite of what it used to mean before they got their hands on it.
So at some point, I think perhaps they should not be in charge… of what words “mean”? :-P
That said, ‘tankie’ is pejorative so perhaps we can find a better one for that different reason. I don’t know what, or for sure that a pejorative is bad, but maybe “authoritarian”, totalitarian, or fascist seems accurate - as in not beholden to “principles” so much as whoever holds the power gets to do whatever they want.
No, we want EVERYONE to feel welcome.
wait, so if someone is a Nazi, you want us to be respectful of them too? you’re falling into the tolerance paradox again. “EVERYONE” here shouldn’t really include the intolerant. if the intolerant feel welcome in a space, that space quickly becomes inhospitable to anyone who isn’t.
edit: yeah i misread the image and the intent of the comment. apologies.
I feel like you’re not understanding the image
that’s right
You just made me realize that I have been banned from some of the communities over there while never having posted on them, mods are reading conversations in other communities and preemptively banning people…
Bingo.
I honestly thought it was more along the lines of they read a comment/post from another community that they didn’t like, more than likely checked their history and then decided to ban them.
Oh, boy. Back to the old Reddit patterns. How long before they start using bots to preemptively ban anyone who has ever posted on certain communities regardless of context as a time saving measure, because that was a thing on Reddit as well?
Any idea which subs are banning like that already?
Ah reminds me of good ol’ reddit
I’m all for defederating from tankie instances. They suck.
Yes, we should all recognize that Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.
Reread OP
lmao get back to me when the mods on lemmy.world stop deleting every comment that is critical of Biden. STFU. There is no recourse for mods on Lemmy and they can use their powers to delete any comments they want. The only recourse you have is to find a fediverse that caters to your weakass centrist views.
If anyone cares to check my comment history they’ll find a crapton of rebuttals to anti-biden comments that were NOT deleted by anyone.
So the pro-Biden comments are staying up? Exactly like I said ? lmao
