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.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    as a communism sympathizing leftist, i hated these mods on reddit and i hate them here. the behavior is idiotic

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      That’s the most frustrating part. These “leftists” are the stupid kind who seem to care more about relitigating idiotic cold war drama than evolving or pushing forward leftist philosophy. It’s straight up brain rot, mixed with obvious right wing agitprop disguised as leftist ideology. That fact that anyone other than trolls, spies and teenagers would engage with it is astounding.

  • Cloudless ☼@lemmy.cafe
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    7 months ago

    For people who want to avoid all content from lemmy.ml, including posts and comments:

    I use lemmy.cafe now because it has defederated with lemmy.ml.

    As a lemmy.cafe user, I don’t see any post/comment from lemmy.ml users at all.

    Communities on lemmy.cafe are invisible to lemmy.ml users, so I would recommend creating more communities there.

  • GreatDong3000@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    This is the fediverse and that is their instance. You just move to another instance and mute them if you are desatisfied with them.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Or post about it and build a case for defederating from them or more users to block them individually.

      • figaro@lemdro.id
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        7 months ago

        Exactly. Why are we federated with people who deny genocides? Fuck all of that

        • LunarSpaceDani@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Exactly, not only did I block LML over this but I vote for defederating with them from my home instance.

  • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    I think all instances need to defederate. This is totally inexcusable. We shouldn’t be attached and well connected to a CCP-controlled (influenced or directly) community. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

    It’s not a problem to have dissenting opinions to widely held beliefs, but it is a problem to have those injected constantly into our streams while all opposition is silently erased and curated to artifically support state-sponsored CCP propaganda.

  • Aux@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Tankies are modding many communities here as well. The solution is to fight them tooth and nail.

  • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    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…

    • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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      7 months ago

      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?

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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      7 months ago

      On your Lemmy instance, go to Settings -> Blocks and just block the entire instance. That’s what I did.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
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          7 months ago

          I’m honestly fine with that, because outside of their home server, they cannot rely on their mods to protect them from arguments they don’t want to hear.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    People are naive if they think the .ml admins and devs don’t intend to keep their thumb on the Lemmy scale. More instances need to take this threat seriously and defederate from .ml, and possibly even fork the Lemmy repos for when the devs inevitably decide they want to start building quiet exploits into the code. There are serious cyber security implications here that people are sleeping on

    • Skepticpunk@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yep. Something needs to change if we want Lemmy to be something besides a place for Soviet simps to hide from criticism. Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

      • lltnskyc@monero.town
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        7 months ago

        Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

        Except when it suits your agenda, in that case it’s not only tolerated, but actually encouraged! :)

          • lltnskyc@monero.town
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            7 months ago

            You’re bored of people pointing out your hypocrisy?
            But it’s not surprising, you’re not supposed to be entertained by it, you’re supposed to think about it…

            • Skepticpunk@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              What is there to think about? I complain about people who support Soviet-style dictatorships having full control over online platforms moderating exactly as one would expect, and I get told by Random Guy On The Internet #368,452 that I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something. All this to “suit my agenda”, which in this case is wanting to be able to say that authoritarians are bad.

              God forbid I find arguments like that incoherent and unworthy of taking seriously.

              • lltnskyc@monero.town
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                7 months ago

                I’m apparently a hypocrite because wanting action to be taken to stop authoritarians from controlling social networks makes me the real authoritarian or something

                No, you’re a hypocrite because you see “them” censoring “you” and you scream “censure, you can’t do that!!”, but when it’s “your” side is censuring “them”, then you have no complaints, because obviously “your” censure is good, and their is “bad”.

                Or maybe I’m wrong and you’re against censure in general? :)

                • irmoz@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  What evidence do you have that they’re eager for any kind of censorship?

  • aleph@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I’ve defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

    This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

    Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      This is actually more evidence that the Lemmy devs run a modified version of the code which gives them the ability to, eg do things like dole out mass community bans. There is also some evidence that they selectively federate the mod log as well. It all points to the obvious conclusion that these people can and will abuse their power in any way they can.

      • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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        7 months ago

        I have had comments removed and could never see why. Now I just block their instances.

        They roleplay as communist censors since that’s all they can afford to do from their positions.

      • sudneo@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        Tbh, also harass a mod. People get quite worked out when being moderated, and being a mod is enough work without people chasing you to argue with you or straight up harass you, I suppose. At least, I can see plenty of good reasons to hide the moderator name.

        • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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          7 months ago

          To quote the reason why calling out mods by name is forbidden from a previous encounter I had with them: “removed for doxxing”

          So yeah I think you’re giving them too much credit here

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            I am not sure I understood. You called some mod by name and they removed the comment? If that’s the case, I perfectly understand and agree with the decision tbh.

            That said, this is a general argument, not referred to any particular mod. I think that many people get angry when their content is moderated and they might want to harass/argue/avenge against the mod who took that action.

            • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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              7 months ago

              You agree that tagging the username of a mod (wasn’t even one it was an admin) is doxxing? If so, you’re delusional.

              Mod names are visible by default on my instance so if taking a look there and then mentioning the username you see there is doxxing good luck with the rest of your life. You can’t have a system where everyone can easily find out who performed a mod action and then claim you were “doxxed”

              • sudneo@lemm.ee
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                7 months ago

                No sorry, you said name as in the person’s name, I did not understand “username”.

                • Neshura@bookwormstory.social
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                  7 months ago

                  well in this particular case it wouldn’t have mattered, I used the username but the admin in question has their clear name set as the display name (which made the whole “doxxing” claim even funnier to me)

    • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.

      1000001794

      It’s troubling behavior for anyone with power.

      • Hubi@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Downvotes are public on Lemmy fyi. There are interfaces that show who voted on a post or comment.

      • Pili@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        You gotta admit, it’s very suspicious to be massively downvoted (25, not 4) over an inconspicuous comment that merely highlights a few paragraphs of the linked article.

        I know I would also be wondering if there was a pattern in the origin of those downvotes.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      7 months ago

      I can’t see those, specifically, but a similar pattern of mass community bans after even remotely criticizing an authoritarian regime is completely on brand for Dessalines.

      I don’t have record of the comment that triggered these, but when it’s something like civility, it’s usually just a comment removal and maybe a single community ban.

      More of Dessalines getting his stanky tankie tightie-whities in a bunch

      Dessalines bans people

          • sudneo@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            Yes, but that fact is well known and at least this shows there was no particular intention to chastise the user - it was just a button press.

            • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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              2 months ago

              The punishment was easy, so the intent wasn’t as great. You know, the difference between a bullet to the head and repeated bashing with a rock. I’m sure in all these instances, the lack of effort was a relief to the target of the action.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Imagine that - a white dude who appropriates the moniker of an actual slave revolutionary as a symbol for his “cause” might be cringe and unhinged.

  • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Tankies make liberals uncomfortable because liberals believe they are the furthest left you can go before you become wrong and bad (forgetting that there are folks to their right on the political spectrum who think they are.

    The worst thing for a tankie like me was running here to get away from the insane msn-pilled discourse, finding some actual leftists, only to have have leredditors chase me down sayin’ i am following them.

    I mean shit I’m just trying to talk leftist ideals that haven’t been twisted into neoliberal business-school-bullshit talking points. I care bout the same shit yall do, i just don’t think the DNC is going to help us get there. That prospect does not make me happy, believe me.

    Libs? If you are burning with desire to debate politics? I am begging… begging you to understand that the education in school and the news yesterday on the tv Aren’t. Acumen.(why would they be more credible than the commercials in between them?), and do not fear but embrace the idea/possibility that there’s an iota of a chance you might not actually be right.

    Does this notion mean i am? No. But if you don’t think you might be wrong then you’ll likely never find out you are.

    • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      That’s not what’s happening here. Not all marxists are okay with covering up Tiananmen Square or supporting the CCP. I used to be part of a Trotskyist org and they wouldn’t be caught dead supporting either Stalin or the CCP. Anarchists certainly aren’t okay with it, and they are further left than you are. Stop pretending all your enemies are liberals.

      • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
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        7 months ago

        Liberals aren’t my enemies though? I’m not pretending anything. Liberals are very high representation in lotsa comms and they are who i’m talking to seeing how this is a thread with a liberal complaining about me. Capice? Let’s not fight, let’s just chill today

        • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          Bro your the one supporting genocide denial, that’s the reason people are fighting you. Stop doing things like that and maybe “the liberals” and everyone else will leave you alone. In fact no one actually mentioned liberals until you did. You are the problem here.

  • whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    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.

  • Audacious@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    Sad to see. Feels like Lemmy has no bright future with people in charge of it thinking russia’s and China’s government is good and ban difference of thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.