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

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

  • Draconic NEO@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Yeah I saw it on their modlog. It’s very useful to check the modlogs of remote servers, especially since admin comments removals and site-bans for remote users don’t federate in the modlog.

    (which your agreement to could be seen as agreement with trans-segrigation in sports).

    Nah, I was explaining how the only way to get better at chess is to play better people, and there’s no reason for any classes based around gender. And the explanation for difference in skill, is simply that the best men refused to play women, so they never improved. The first female grand master was only that good because her dad was crazy good and made her and her sister play him constantly.

    You need the experience of high level play to be able to play at a high level, and any gender divide in division just prolongs that. So I was arguing against any segregation at all.

    I guess it was likely a miscommunication or misunderstanding. They probably thought you meant something different than what you actually meant.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      They probably thought you meant something different than what you actually meant.

      …

      You think they do an annual review of threads?

      It was over a year ago I made the comment, they banned me for it five days ago.

      I don’t know man, it’s weird you’re not getting that, but it doesn’t really matter.

      I’m sorry if I’m explaining it poorly.

      I did remember it wasn’t I blocked a mod, I explained why I might not respond. And apparently they didn’t like that I had blocked their instance