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?
That post seems to be missing.
octopus_ink 27 points 2 years ago
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 4 points 2 years ago
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?
Cowbee 34 points 2 years ago
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.
octopus_ink 14 points 2 years ago
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.
teawrecks 14 points 2 years ago
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 -1 points 2 years ago
OP wants to feel like a saviour of us all from tankies.
givesomefucks 22 points 2 years ago
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.
agamemnonymous 70 points 2 years ago
CheapFrottage 38 points 2 years ago
Father of the gulag, founder of the Beatles
ImplyingImplications 25 points 2 years ago
"Imagine no private ownership of the means of production, I wonder if you can"
givesomefucks 14 points 2 years ago
It's crazy to think about, but even after all these years, people insist he was bigger than Jesus
octopus_ink 26 points 2 years ago
terally named after Karl Marx and John Lennin
Lifecoach5000 12 points 2 years ago
Been here an almost year and literally just learned that from the above post.
redcalcium 4 points 2 years ago
They probably mean the .ml part.
PrettyFlyForAFatGuy 19 points 2 years ago
Yeah, like linus is a known cunt to work with, i'll still update my kernel regularly though
nickwitha_k 4 points 2 years ago
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.
nickwitha_k 3 points 2 years ago
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.
cloudless 18 points 2 years ago
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
realitista 18 points 2 years ago
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.
rwhitisissle 17 points 2 years ago
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.
rwhitisissle 2 points 2 years ago
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.
StupidBrotherInLaw -3 points 2 years ago
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 -2 points 2 years ago
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.
Iceblade02 13 points 2 years ago
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 5 points 2 years ago
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.
deranger 111 points 2 years ago
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.
realitista 29 points 2 years ago
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.
fuckingkangaroos 2 points 2 years ago
They learn from who they are worshipping pays them and might disappear them if they say the wrong thing.
Speculater 5 points 2 years ago
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. 
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.
Saik0Shinigami 16 points 2 years ago
I looked at your downvotes because I see you at -2... Wear this like a badge of honor!
Most of the downvotes I see are lemmy.ml users. Which I find funny. Rice exists in so many countries outside of china, but because it reminds them of China it's instantly bad since you're using is negatively. It's absurd.
Speculater 7 points 2 years ago
LMAO!! Thank you! I've got them blocked but the fact they're even voting me down is silly. It wasn't even an insult because if I was even mentioning "ricing" it was the better of two options.
Saik0Shinigami 7 points 2 years ago
Host your own lemmy instance. Or use Kbin(shows up as likes).
For some reason they decided that even though other activitypub services can see it just fine, lemmy will not show these things to normal users.
squid_slime 1 point 2 years ago
Apparently its to do with a sport car scene where the Chinese couldn't afford such luxuries but still want to participate and westerners or Americans would call these vehicle mods ricing
Now with linux theming we call ricing and that carries a racist connotation. How racist it actually is I am unsure but either way thats the reason people get upset.
GenderNeutralBro 97 points 2 years ago
Regarding lemmy.ml: yes, you should avoid it. It does not make sense to create politically-neutral communities on a politically-oriented instance.
Regarding Dessalines: The great thing about Lemmy is that I don't need to give a shit about the lead developer's politics, because he's not in control of how Lemmy is used, and if he ever tried some kind of heinous cross-instance power grab, it would get shut down before it got started.
Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦
sushibowl 8 points 2 years ago
Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦
One of the tenets of Marxism-Leninism is that a dictatorship is required to guide the proletariat to communist society (which would be completely stateless). So the dissonance is inherent in Leninist dogma 🤷
Cowbee 37 points 2 years ago
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This is used in contrast with Capitalist Liberal Democracy, which Marx called the Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. It doesn't refer to a literal Dictatorship as we commonly understand it, but instead to whichever class controls the state, Capitalists or Workers.
Lenin didn't invent the concept of the DotP, that was Marx, and was his way of advocating for violent revolution, which in Engels words is "the most authoritarian action one could take" in his essay On Authourity.
As for Communism being Stateless, yes, technically, but as a long result of elimination of contradictions. Marx didn't see the state as an "evil" so much as a tool that would eventually just be unnecessary, same as Money, not a temporary sacrifice for something eventually greater. This is outlined in Critique of the Gotha Programme.
sushibowl 5 points 2 years ago
All well and good, but the term dictatorship here still refers to a situation where the state apparatus has complete control over the means of production, in other words a total centralisation of power. Indeed in Marxism-Leninism the dictatorship takes the form of a vanguard party forming a single party state. Whichever way you look at it, practical power resides with a very small group of individuals.
The contrast with the eventual stateless communist society, in which power would be completely decentralised, is quite striking. It's not quite clear to me how Marxist-Leninist theory envisioned the transition from one to the other, although it seems to me there was a general feeling that central economic planning and industrialization would fairly quickly lead to the end of scarcity altogether, which in hindsight seems... very optimistic.
If you ask me, the ideals of communism mostly died around the same time as Lenin. Pretty much all communist states that have existed (and currently exist) are mainly interested in maintaining their own power structures rather than actually working their way towards the idealised communist society. Which pretty much just makes them dictatorships in the classical sense.
Cowbee 22 points 2 years ago
Yes, Marx and later Lenin argued for complete centralization of power in the hands of the proletariat, and in Lenin's case, an additional group of well-read proletarians dedicated to leading the revolution.
A common misconception is that a non-ML revolution wouldn't have a vanguard, Lenin is literally just referring to whoever is the most advanced and leading the revolution. A vanguard may be a group of Anarchists trying to lead the revolution, even if they don't use Democratic Centralism like Lenin did and advocates for in State and Revolution.
Marx also didn't believe there would one day be a state and the next it would collapse, same with Lenin. They believed that over time the Material Conditions would lessen the need for a state until it "whithered away" over time. It wouldn't be a relinquishing of power, but a shrinking.
Complete statelessness would have the same centralized power as Socialism, just without a state. This centralization becomes a decentralization, in that the Proletariat can democratically operate the Means of Production, which they cannot under Capitalism. If this sounds confusing, Marx makes this clear in Critique of the Gotha Programme. You refer to the state as an "other," distinct from the workers, when it is an extension of them and made up of them in Socialism, according to Marx. There would still be a government, just no means by which one class oppresses another.
Marx was not an Anarchist, who instead believe in free association and networks of mutual aid.
I don't believe Communism has died. It may seem that way if you see systems as static, and not as ever-changing and evolving along with humanity and technology.
Cybermonk_Taiji -20 points 2 years ago path: 0 10482488 10484846 10485618 10488865, hotness: undefined, score: -20, children: 1
SpaceCadet 1 point 2 years ago
It's basically the underpants gnomes meme
- Dictatorship
- ???
- Utopia!
kersplomp -3 points 2 years ago
Regarding the cognitive dissonance required to A) value decentralization of power, and also B) support the CCP: 🤦
It's simple: People who gain from misinformation create platforms that empower bots and sockpuppets.
fuckingkangaroos 1 point 2 years ago
Bingo
Allero 94 points 2 years ago
As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.
It's neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.
Doesn't mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don't need to deny that either.
We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream "blah-blah-blah" and pretend it never happened.
China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.
Doesn't mean this didn't happen in a capitalist world, and doesn't mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.
Cowbee 67 points 2 years ago
Are there people that don't know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that's why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.
blackn1ght 56 points 2 years ago
If you're new to Lemmy then it won't be common knowledge at all.
blackn1ght 25 points 2 years ago
But they may not know the history of it or why it was made before joining. I certainly didn't, it was more about a decentralised alternative to Reddit, I just joined and explored.
fuckingkangaroos 16 points 2 years ago
Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it's run by "Marxists" (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).
fuckingkangaroos 2 points 2 years ago
You're right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.
blackn1ght 21 points 2 years ago
The way comments and users are purged from ml would make Stalin proud!
Swedneck 0 points 2 years ago
technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.
what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?
Cowbee 9 points 2 years ago
What separates Marxists from Tankies? I've seen dozens of definitions of tankie.
It's important to recognize that Marxist-Leninists far, far outweigh the number of anti-Lenin Marxists. You don't have to agree with Lenin to acknowledge that at this point he is almost as relevant to Marxism in a geopolitical context as Marx himself.
SeattleRain -4 points 2 years ago
Kind of but not really. They're state capitalists.
boredtortoise 3 points 2 years ago
Exactly. They're the left sect of fascism, and have "purged" communists in the past
SeattleRain -26 points 2 years ago
Bruh, Lemmy is a federated clone of Reddit. And tankies did not come up with the Fediverse or Reddit. If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss). Users have no control of any community no matter how much they contribute. I guess since tankies are state capitalists anyway they feel right at home.
Cowbee 31 points 2 years ago
No, Marxists did not create the fediverse, but Marxists did create Lemmy.
Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist. Having managers does not make something Capitalist, lol.
xigoi 0 points 2 years ago
Explain how Free and Open Source, federation-based communities are more Capitalist than Marxist.
The ability to choose what platform to use seems closer to the principle of voluntary exchange than to authoritatianism.
SeattleRain -2 points 2 years ago
And Stallman was the person that invented FOSS, and he's stated over and over he was not following any type of Communist principles. In fact FOSS programmers explicitly retain private property rights of software. It's how they enforce the share alike clauses. If FOSS was built on some type of Communist principles it wouldn't allow the bourgeois to build billion dollar enterprises on software they pay the writers nothing for.
SeattleRain -4 points 2 years ago
It does EL-0-L when the managers do not answer to users who create the actual value. And surprise surprise you have widespread complaints about heavy handed censorship on tankie run instances on anything that hurts their feelings.
Cowbee 16 points 2 years ago
When the users can create their own instances or even fork the entire project for free, the dynamic is different. Plus, calling discussion "value" is kinda goofy.
Lemmy.world has censorship too, just see return2ozma's recent ban for criticizing Biden and not posting pro-Biden content as well, literally admitted by the admin in an official post.
Kalcifer 3 points 2 years ago
If anything Lemmy is closer to a classic capitalist structure with the communities being owned by the admin (boss).
Personally, I like to think of instances as countries, where federation and defederation is akin to trade policies across the borders, and communities are like regional/state governments.
otp 65 points 2 years ago
I'm glad that this is the controversy on Lemmy, and not things like Reddit had with r/JailBait.
I'm perfectly fine with just avoiding interactions with lemmy.ml communities. They can exist, even if I disagree with them. And if I wanted to participate, I'd probably be welcome so long as I follow the rules. Unlike r/Conservative, which required proving yourself to the mods to get a pass to enter or something...lol
But yes, it's definitely good to know what the .ml stands for, and to keep that in mind whenever one sees Lemmy.ml.
BarbecueCowboy -13 points 2 years ago
lemmy.ml was one of the targets in one of the larger reddit migration waves before we found out how heavy handed the censorship was there at the time and there's a few large communities that cling to it. And, it's fair, the communities there don't typically generate anything where they would reasonably expect to be affected, but still if you block the whole instance, you basically just have to go without as there frequently aren't similar communities to fill the void.
ksynwa 1 point 2 years ago
As far as I can tell, .world is great for the reddit emigres. There have been disagreements amd drama (as is tradition with online communities especially federated ones) but the instance is doing fine it seems.
BarbecueCowboy 1 point 2 years ago
If you're talking about the API blackout, there is evidence that it was broken briefly, but there's nothing indicating it was purposefully disabled for any reasonable amount of time.
There are even posts from the lemmy.ml admins about how difficult it was dealing with the users who had migrated and how difficult it was to deal with the new users. Maybe you're talking about a different migration, but I have no idea where you got this idea from.
ksynwa 2 points 2 years ago
I don't know about this API blackout. I am talking about something else entirely. When Reddit migration was at its peak, registrations on this instance (lemmy.ml). The reason given was that the devs did not want to overwhelm themselves with the abruptly increased administrative and moderation responsibilities. At that time, Lemmy (the software) was facing significant performance issues as well, owing to the fact that that many users had not used Lemmy concurrently before that.
On the other hand, I tried to find the announcement post for this. (I remember one existing.) But I couldn't. Have I hallicinated an elaborate scenario? I am not sure. Will try to look again.
redcalcium 58 points 2 years ago
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won't affect other instance.
haui_lemmy 54 points 2 years ago
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@lemmy.ml especially is a tremendous help for the open source community.
But of course you‘re entitled to your opinion. Have a good day.
fuckingkangaroos -7 points 2 years ago
Yes let's all just pretend their propaganda is actual opinions held by real people.
haui_lemmy 2 points 2 years ago
- how will you prove they’re not „real people“?
- you‘re using a platform made by them
- the post itself is also propaganda since it pushes for a „solution“ against „tankies“.
fuckingkangaroos -3 points 2 years ago
Hold my hand and we'll go visit their house and ask them
Creating something doesn't give them the right to spread lies, and they probably funded it specifically in order to spread propaganda
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 1 point 2 years ago
I‘m not saying you cant be right. I still dont agree with your assumptions. Have a good day.
fuckingkangaroos 1 point 2 years ago
I don't think Marxists are brainwashed at all. Can't you contribute without putting words in my mouth?
southsamurai 51 points 2 years ago
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.
It's one of those things where the very tankies you're talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there's the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.
They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they're assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.
You're beating a dead horse with this one
rickyrigatoni 26 points 2 years ago
That horse fucking deserves it though. He knows what he did.
MacNCheezus 12 points 2 years ago
I mean, we should probably care at least enough to make sure they're not smuggling in any backdoors that would allow them take over the entire Lemmyverse.
I know it's open source so that's somewhat difficult to accomplish but not impossible (see the recent stealth attack on SSH/OpenSSL). At the very least, it requires people from outside their echo chamber to regularly review commits being made made before admins begin rolling out new updates.
southsamurai 8 points 2 years ago
That's a valid point, imo.
But there supposedly are people doing just that. Been too long since I ran across it here, but when the last big version change happened, some of the instance running folks looked over the code, and found nothing hinky. I know my asshole cousin has his own instance, and he said he scanned through it a little out of curiosity and "it ain't the prettiest" was the worst he had to say about it. Which, second hand info like that is like toilet paper, but it serves okay for a casual conversation like this.
MacNCheezus 4 points 2 years ago
I would hope so, since it's THEIR hardware it's running on (or in case it's rented, responsible for).
But as long as they don't put anything iffy into the code and leave their political opinions separate from that, they can certainly run their own instance however they please. That's the whole point of Lemmy after all.
i_ben_fine -1 points 2 years ago
Jesus christ.
MacNCheezus 11 points 2 years ago
I'm not sure if He knows Rust well enough to do that, and having some sort of background in infosec would likely also be helpful.
randint 9 points 2 years ago
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares
The 730 people who upvoted this post do care.
The problem is that lemmy.ml hosts too many popular communities. There are people who want them gone from their feeds but also don't want their Lemmy experience to become empty and boring.
Jayjader 8 points 2 years ago
The problem is that lemmy.ml hosts too many popular communities. There are people who want them gone from their feeds but also don’t want their Lemmy experience to become empty and boring.
The solution is to build up more attractive alternatives of those communities elsewhere, not endlessly campaign the existing users to just drop them. I understand that awareness of why people want alternatives is important for those alternatives to have a chance at attracting users, and being discovered in the first place. I just have yet to actually see these alternatives receive the care they (imo) require to justify switching to them.
The current fedidb stats, to me, state that 488 people is, colloquially speaking, nobody.
Maybe it's too soon to make such a judgement call, we'll see over the next few days as people get the chance to see this post.
randint 2 points 2 years ago
The solution is to build up more attractive alternatives of those communities elsewhere, not endlessly campaign the existing users to just drop them.
Agreed. Maybe I should try creating and managing a community some day. (hopefully this didn't come off as sarcastic)
The current fedidb stats, to me, state that 488 people is, colloquially speaking, nobody.
This is a wildly misleading and unfair comparison. Let's take the Trump verdict as an example. The most upvoted post about this had ~2700 upvotes. But that's only 6% of the MAU! Is that "nobody"? Obviously not. 2k upvotes is a huge deal on a rather small community like Lemmy. How often do you see posts with more than 3k upvotes?
~500 upvotes is already a moderately large number of upvotes. You need to compare this number with how many upvotes a post typically gets.
southsamurai 4 points 2 years ago
Fwiw (our disagreement aside), moderating a community anywhere online can be a very rewarding, and very thankless job. And it really can be a thing that feels like a job if the community is active enough.
But I would still recommend at least trying it for a few months to see if whatever subject matter you make it around draws users. That's when you get a real feel for moderation, and have the best chance at helping the overall fediverse work well.
I also think that moderating a big community would change your mind at least partially regarding vote numbers as a measure of anything significant. There's behind the curtain stuff that usually gives a better indication of how a given post/subject is being received by the individual community. It depends on the tools available, and lemmy is a wee bit scant on tools to help moderators gain understanding of the population of their C/; but it's still eye opening.
The biggest thing I think you'd notice in comparing people interacting with a given post is that most votes happen because of a title. People scroll past, see a title, and vote based on that. And that's the ones that bother to vote. A lot of people don't. They'll click a link, maybe open that post and read comments, but just not care enough to do anything else at all. Back on reddit, that was a majority of posts, and I know it was the case on other forums back in the day.
So, yeah, disagreement about the numbers in this case aside, if you're this interested in how a vote using forum works, moderating your own would be a very cool experience on top of diversifying the instance/community balance.
Jayjader 3 points 2 years ago
I didn't necessarily think you were being sarcastic, but I appreciate the clarification.
You're correct, that was a rather shallow comparison for me to make.
I don't think raw upvotes give the full story either. I'd be interested in seeing, for example, from which instances the voters are distributed.
southsamurai 3 points 2 years ago
Votes mean as much as the shit I just took.
nickwitha_k 0 points 2 years ago
No. The shit that you took is more meaningful than fake Internet points.
southsamurai 1 point 2 years ago
True, it was a very healthy bm ;)
randint -1 points 2 years ago
Usually I'd agree with this, but on this post, the upvote count is a direct representation of how many people care about this issue (out of the number of users who saw this post). That is meaningful.
fuckingkangaroos 7 points 2 years ago
I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time. Defederation is the best solution for dealing with an instance that's designed to spread propaganda.
And no this isn't a dead horse, there's are other discussions ongoing about defederating Lemmy.ml
southsamurai 1 point 2 years ago
Your last sentence is contradictory with the meaning of "beating a dead horse" with the usage of the phrase I'm aware of.
To beat a dead horse isn to waste effort at an impossible or pointless goal.
When I used the phrase, it was with the second meaning in mind, but the first partially applies if op wanted anyone to do anything about the situation because the dev team isn't exactly open to some kind of takeover. The most that could realistically happen is that everyone leave lemmy entirely. Except for the tankies, obviously, why would they leave?
Since anyone that has spent enough time on lemmy to be called a regular user has run across the whole issue at least once, that means that if OP was wanting to raise awareness, the post was also pointless in that regard because it's kinda impossible to raise awareness past common knowledge and achieve anything useful.
Now, maybe our usage of the phrase "beating a dead horse" isn't the same. Language is funny like that. Maybe you just disagree that the post has no point, or that the point it does have might achieve something useful. That's cool, no worries, disagreements like that are healthy and fun.
I will say that in the first part of your comment, you actually echoed the point that I made; it is trivial to minimize/block instances in one way or another, including defederation. Defederation is an instance decision, not a personal one. But it is also a personal decision which instance/s we use to interact with the fediverse. There are instances that do not federate with lemmy.ml, and there's a ton that don't with lemmygrad.
So, based on that, I would even argue that, since we have the freedom to choose our instance (with the consent of the host of the instance of course), trying to get an instance that doesn't already defederate from lemmy.ml to do so approaches pointless since all of the major instances have been around for a while now, and have already taken part in that debate. Maybe you could change someone's mind with yet another rehash of the same debate, it does happen. But, again, all the major instances have had this debate multiple times, and the hosts don't seem open to changing just because someone brings it up again.
New instances? Absolutely have to decide if they want to federate with any of the "iffy" instances. And every user has to decide if they'd rather stick with a given instance that doesn't match their preferences regarding federation. But, uh, the instance this was posted on isn't new. The user that posted it isn't exactly new either. So the fact that they haven't already made a choice, but instead decided to beat a dead horse (again, using the "pointless" rather than "impossible" usage of the phrase) seems a bit meh.
fuckingkangaroos 2 points 2 years ago
It's standard, unfortunately, I'm not the only one
Kalcifer 1 point 2 years ago
What do you mean by "it's standard"? As in that is the intended functionality? It shouldn't be — the whole point of blocking instances is for the user to be able to, well, block an instance, ie content originating from it no longer shows up.
kilgore_trout -3 points 2 years ago
And no this isn't a dead horse, there's are other discussions ongoing about defederating Lemmy.ml
It's a non-problem. No one forces anyone to interact with lemmy.ml
fuckingkangaroos 3 points 2 years ago
Malicious propaganda isn't a non-problem. I'd like a social media platform that doesn't have any governments openly pumping their lies into the conversation.
kilgore_trout 1 point 2 years ago
There is always a bias.
gofsckyourself 33 points 2 years ago
I had never heard so much about "tankies" before I joined Lemmy.
Before, I had heard it so sparingly that I couldn't remember what it meant.
Perhaps there may be something more to this correlation. Why are people with this worldview so common here? If it's not more common here than anywhere else, why is it brought up so much more frequently?
Cowbee 37 points 2 years ago
Lemmy was made by Marxists, along Communist principles, both the format and the devs attract Marxists and Anarchists.
There is a lot of conflict between leftists and liberals on Lemmy because there are close to no conservatives.
It's kind of like a Disco Elysium situation, even though non-Marxists can enjoy it and use it, there are going to be more Marxists enjoying it and using it as a proportion, and fewer conservatives.
fuckingkangaroos 3 points 2 years ago
Why are people with this worldview so common here?
Plenty of them aren't "people," they're simply anonymous accounts used to spread and promote propaganda. Some content generated by people, some from LLMs.
They're common here because they can run their disinformation campaigns without a corporation interfering. Tik Tok isn't the CCP's only attempt to influence people through social media.
Gigasser 1 point 2 years ago
If you're claiming they are bots, I don't think that's the case. Judging from the little threads I've been reading throughout this post, it seems as if Lemmy was created by some diaspora of Marxists from reddit after reddit banned their stuff. If this is true, you're not interacting with bots, you would be interacting with actual Marxists. People.
fuckingkangaroos 1 point 2 years ago
Some are regular people, some are paid shills, some are bots.
Gigasser 0 points 2 years ago
That's the thing, I think they're all just regular people with more radical views on politics. I feel as if this recent fad of "dead internet theory" which posits the majority of the net is filled with bots, is really an attempts by certain groups to dismiss certain online communities/dismiss the idea that these communities are indicative of some sort of wider trend within society, which is really what I think is an attempts to gain control of what is seen as consensus reality online, dehumanize the other side, and justify the suppression/repression of certain ideas, opinions, and groups.
HobbitFoot 0 points 2 years ago
Lemmy was developed, in part, to be a tankie community and they are around if you go outside of lemmy.world.
PastryPaul 2 points 2 years ago
Tankie á la .world = anything left of center.
HobbitFoot 0 points 2 years ago
No, it is the Soviet Union did nothing wrong in 1956 definition.
beardown -1 points 2 years ago
The United States exterminated Native Americans and currently is a systemically racist country that murders its dissidents - see Kent State and Ferguson. It also has the largest prison population in the world.
filister 31 points 2 years ago
You will be surprised how much of the open source software out there is written and maintained by lefties and tankies.
Sadly conservatives seem to have either lower education and are not notorious for their sharing and selflessness.
ashok36 33 points 2 years ago
Denying historical events and refusing to come to terms with their causes and repercussions is not a left or right problem.
You can be as communist as you want but pretending that events with photographic evidence didn't actually happen put you in the same category as moon landing deniers in my book.
filister -5 points 2 years ago
And yet so many people believe in religion without a single scientific proof. But yes, I got your point.
For the record there are a lot of shameful events in your history too, but I am sure your own government has done its utmost to hide those facts.
Just that in the US there is a massive anti China and anti Russia propaganda. Do not get me wrong, I don't disagree with a lot of their policies, but the US isn't also spotless and a role model in a lot of ways.
ashok36 8 points 2 years ago
The US has so much red on its ledger it will never be balanced. And there are plenty of apologists for atrocities in our history. They're just as bad as the Chinese or Russian (or pick whatever country you want because they're all guilty to some extent) when they do it.
manicdave 10 points 2 years ago
Right wing free software users love from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs until you point out what it is.
Then you get whatever this lemmy-wide tantrum is.
I disagree with Dessalines about some stuff but the guy is a don.
archomrade 29 points 2 years ago
Anyone else seeing the irony of objecting to ml politics being discussed on a platform built by a ml for discussing and organizing around ml politics?
cloudless 15 points 2 years ago
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
Blisterexe 4 points 2 years ago
They're going to change it soon.
Source: I asked them on matrix
StupidBrotherInLaw 7 points 2 years ago
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.
Illuminostro -55 points 2 years ago path: 0 10476246 10476400, hotness: undefined, score: -55, children: 5
sylver_dragon 19 points 2 years ago
As a worker in the Cybersecurity space, it's absolutely fantastic for job security.
stevedidwhat_infosec 23 points 2 years ago
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
Linkerbaan 27 points 2 years ago
You should know /politics and /news ban anyone critical of israel and Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
RagnarokOnline 25 points 2 years ago
What are you implying here? People don’t use Lemmy because of this guy’s politics? Do we know the politics of other developers?
originalfrozenbanana 55 points 2 years ago
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 14 points 2 years ago
Oh nice, thank you. I didn’t realize they were an admin and mod too. I thought just a developer.
PrettyFlyForAFatGuy 9 points 2 years ago
Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instances
Buelldozer -3 points 2 years ago
Only of their own instance, they cant do this shit on other instance
They can when they bake it directly into the lemmy code.
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.
PopOfAfrica 10 points 2 years ago
Right, but Lemmy is open source. It can be forked.
Their political ideologies that are anti-capitalism are actually Lemmys greatest strength.
originalfrozenbanana 7 points 2 years ago
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 7 points 2 years ago
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.
stevedidwhat_infosec -2 points 2 years ago
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
stevedidwhat_infosec -1 points 2 years ago
Talk about over simplification of a problem lmao
WhatAmLemmy 21 points 2 years ago
And people believed they'd escape the days of power-tripping mods by exiting Reddit.
At least with the festive there are no alternatives.
Saik0Shinigami 1 point 2 years ago
Even more interesting with admin powers of your own instance. You can reverse shitty mod decisions locally and make your own decisions on evaluating if what they said if it's actually a problem or just overzealous moderation. Also means you get to see what mod took the action. Also looking at votes (which you could see as a kbin user).
WanderingVentra 6 points 2 years ago
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.
PopOfAfrica 4 points 2 years ago
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 3 points 2 years ago
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 1 point 2 years ago
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.
Blaze 23 points 2 years ago
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
DragonTypeWyvern 15 points 2 years ago
I'm sure it's just a coincidence that topics like this made the rounds in several subs at the same time.
Block the instance if you've got a problem.
Greg 14 points 2 years ago
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.
Greg 7 points 2 years ago
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 -4 points 2 years ago
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.
stevedidwhat_infosec -7 points 2 years ago
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 11 points 2 years ago
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 -1 points 2 years ago
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
Xylight 14 points 2 years ago
No problem. Of course, you can always change the instance to something else if you dislike the default.
Edit: the first time I tried Sync it replied to the top level post instead of what I actually replied to.
toaster 13 points 2 years ago
I take issue with both the authoritarian left and authoritarian right: being an apologist for Soviet Russia as well as being an apologist for the USA is not OK in my opinion.
I find it futile to take a position on which is worse because that just gives space to be an apologist for one that's "less bad". I see this happening in this thread right now.
Should I defederate from both lemmy.world and lemmy.ml? Of course not. In fact, I find both to be more tolerable and cooperative than reddit today.
Churbleyimyam 13 points 2 years ago
I've seen a few posts and comments made by 'tankies' (I had to look up this term, as I've never seen it outside of Lemmy) and I don't think there should be such a moral panic about them. It implies that everyone is so impressionable that they can't be exposed to a minority fringe political opinion without being instantly turned into a rabid and dangerous extremist.
See something you don't agree with? Ignore it. Downvote it. Block it if you really want to. So many people seem to come here just looking for a fight with other users or to get some general outrage out of their system, whether it's 'tankies' or 'anti-tankies'. Just relax. Lemmy is diverse and ever-expanding; there's loads of fun, interesting and positive stuff to see and talk about here.
I will mention that smaller, niche communities have way more harmonious and interesting discussions. This suggests to me that the majority of aggro comes from people who are just logging in and scrolling down the 'front page' for something to do. It's worth putting in a bit of effort to find specific topics you're interested in and then looking at the feed of your subscriptions. It's a much better experience for everyone.
Edited for bad grammarring.
blind3rdeye 12 points 2 years ago
To me it is weird that every day on lemmy I see new posts complaining about all tankies... but I never actually see any of the content they are complaining about. And outside of lemmy, I never see or hear the word 'tankies' used at all. I've asked a couple of people I know in real life if they ever seen discussions about it in their parts of the internet, and none of them people I've asked have ever heard the word before.
So... like I said, I find it weird. It's like some kind of lemmy boogieman.
_haha_oh_wow_ 9 points 2 years ago
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.
kilgore_trout 8 points 2 years ago
Who cares. This is pointless drama.
cqst 7 points 2 years ago
Maybe political repression and the mass killing of protestors and the internment of ethnic minorities has very little to do with a countries mode of production. Maybe you guys can advocate for an alternative mode of production without defending genocide and using the military to crack down on protests? And maybe liberals can do the same when Western Capitalist Countries do it?
please... :(
ZombiFrancis 7 points 2 years ago
This whole endless debate always just feels like three Dean Brownings in a trench coat.
coolasbreeze 7 points 2 years ago
I mean... What is your point here? This is the internet no?
stevedidwhat_infosec -2 points 2 years ago path: 0 10476714 10477651, hotness: undefined, score: -2, children: 0
mryessir 5 points 2 years ago
My lemmy client is able to locally block anything I do not want to see. And I do not want to live in a bubble, so I didn't block .ml. There are many quality post and comments so I would advise against a premature defederation.
But what do I know
therealjcdenton 4 points 2 years ago
We can't just oust them from developing sadly but we can spread the news that they are not a good person
Saik0Shinigami 3 points 2 years ago
We can’t just oust them from developing
Well you could fork and run your own blackjack and hooker emporium.
Facebones 4 points 2 years ago
Here's an idea, block .ml and SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY.
It feels like 30% of all Lemmy use is capitalists whining that they don't have a central anti leftist authority to block everyone they don't like, by linking the same two fucking posts from over at least 1 year ago or posts where they "argue" by shouting "fuck you Tankie" and it didn't go their way.
If you don't like how its run, leave. THATS THE WHOLE POINT. If you want a central authority thats gonna be strongly pro-capital, go back to Reddit. Either way:
SHUT. THE FUCK. UP.
Cosmicomical 4 points 2 years ago
...and?
oce 4 points 2 years ago
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.
Kalcifer 3 points 2 years ago
Your apparent antagonism towards the lead Lemmy developer is sensationalist and non-constructive. If you dislike their moderation then the solution is simple: leave their instances and communities. If your user does not reside on their instances then its admins cannot silence you. If you do not participate in their communities, then their moderators cannot silence you. If you do not wish to see their users then block their instances (though, I would still advise against this). Your argument is founded upon the premise that you don't like their opinions, so just don't listen. Don't taint the Lemmyverse's image with your false alarmism. Be the change that you wish to see. Start an instance with administrative rules that you think are better. Start a community with moderation rules that you think are better. If one finds that they are needing to resort to ad-homenim to gather support, then I would advise one to critically analyze their position and arguments.
EDIT (2024-06-07T19:25Z): From your other comments in this thread I see that you are advocating for the creation of new communities and for people to individually distance themselves from lemmy.ml, rather than defederation. I agree with this. I still disagree, however, with the approach and tone that you used in your post. I think the same end can and should be achieved without ad-homenim attacks.
Fidel_Cashflow 3 points 2 years ago
Wtf based??????
blackn1ght 3 points 2 years ago
I don't know why the lemmy.ml admins don't just defederate from everyone but lemmygrad and hexbear. It's clear that only their extreme views are allowed and they must spend a lot of time banning "libs".
It would do everyone a favour really. We'd have less instance politics and hopefully more content, and make it the fediverse more attractive to the average person.
Cowbee 9 points 2 years ago
Then defederate from Lemmy.ml. Lemmy.ml is a FOSS and Privacy instance run by Marxists, the admins aren't interested in gatekeeping that from the rest of Lemmy, but if other instances don't like that then they can defederate.
blackn1ght 10 points 2 years ago
I've added it to my blocked instances and I'd recommend others who have an issue with the way the communities on that instance are moderated and the way it's managed to do the same.
Fortunately there are alternative instances and communities that are less authoritarian with their moderation.
fuckingkangaroos 1 point 2 years ago
Then defederate from Lemmy.ml.
Agreed, this is the best option.
snek_boi 5 points 2 years ago
We'd have less instance politics
How is "defederat[ing] from everyone but lemmygrad and hexbear" not instance politics? Politics, at its core, is the way we distribute political goods, such as physical goods, access to information (including instance posts), and legitimacy, to name a few of the options. What is your definition of politics?
blackn1ght 8 points 2 years ago
Maybe politics was the wrong word, what I mean is drama.
bloodfart 1 point 2 years ago
“We’d have less drama if the people I don’t like would just go away.
Why yes, I could go away instead, but they should be the ones who have to take action to please me…”
It’s astounding watching people come in and expect communists leave or fundamentally change the space they built to escape liberals because liberals don’t like being subject to communist communities.
Cursed 2 points 2 years ago
Judging from other threads on the matter, a lot of people don't even know what "tankie" means.
So here's a pro tip: replace "tankie" with "dipshit" and the meaning remains the same.
YSK: lemmy.ml is managed by dipshits, and lead lemmy developer is a dipshit
Potatos_are_not_friends -1 points 2 years ago
That's not a really good example. You can replace "dipshit" with "potato" and it will mean the same too.
pewgar_seemsimandroid 1 point 2 years ago
path: 0 10496181, hotness: undefined, score: 1, children: 0
cloudless -1 points 2 years ago
path: 0 10479423 10479494 10479540, hotness: undefined, score: -1, children: 3
blackn1ght 17 points 2 years ago
There's a lot of [Citation needed] tags on a lot of those claims. I'm not denying they exist but it's also a bit of a flimsy source.
i_ben_fine 5 points 2 years ago
The main source for this is Amnesty International page 76. The relevant text:
In an effort to improve cost-efficiency, Chinese provincial authorities are introducing mobile execution vans in which convicts are given a lethal injection, replacing the traditional execution method of firing squads. Eighteen mobile executions vans, converted 24-seater buses, were distributed to all intermediate courts and one high court in Yunnan province in 2003. In December of the same year, the Supreme People’s Court in Beijing urged all provinces to acquire execution vans “that can put to death convicted criminals immediately after sentencing”. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. Once the needle is attached by a technician, a police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe injects the lethal drug into the prisoner’s vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver’s seat and can be recorded if required.
And I think barsquid's point is that China is keeping their imprisoned-per-capita low through executions. Even if that's incorrect, China does use execution more liberally than the U.S. And execution is evil.
prototype_g2 0 points 2 years ago
I've seen the label "tankie" be thrown around to describe so many different things to the point that it has lost all meaning to me. I've seen it used to describe fascists, I've seen it used as a way to discredit someone's argument without engaging with it, I've seen it used used to invalidate arguments because they were to the left of the person throwing the label.
The definition presented uses the word "authoritarian" which, in my eyes, falls on a similar category of "used on so many things it lost all meaning". (Example)
Using the words authoritarian and communist simultaneously doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me: As far as I am aware, a communist society is a stateless society. However, Wikipedia defines "authoritarian" as
"Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of democracy and political plurality. It involves the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting."
Notice the words "strong central power". Isn't that a contradiction of what communism is? Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
I've seen in the comments people saying that de-federation is not an option because of .ml's large communities, but, in my eyes, that doesn't make much sense. .world is a big instance, just recreate the communities from .ml that you don't want to miss out on. Everyone on .world will be forced to use them, since they can't post on the .ml version any more. If .ml is as awful as people make it out to be, everyone will de-federate and move to the .world alternatives.
prototype_g2 -2 points 2 years ago path: 0 10504344, hotness: undefined, score: -2, children: 1
Catsrules -3 points 2 years ago
As long as the developers don't force their political views on people using the software I really don't see an issue.
You could argue they aren't doing it today but what about tomorrow?
Well I would say everything is open source. If something does change that you don't agree with you can just take the code and build your own. (Obviously with blackjack and hookers)
octopus_ink -8 points 2 years ago
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.
octopus_ink -8 points 2 years ago
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 12 points 2 years ago
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 -5 points 2 years ago
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)
octopus_ink -1 points 2 years ago
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 10 points 2 years ago
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"
octopus_ink 3 points 2 years ago
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 1 point 2 years ago
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.
PopOfAfrica -3 points 2 years ago
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 1 point 2 years ago
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 2 points 2 years ago
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.
hark -12 points 2 years ago
YSK: There are countless posts by "concerned" users shrieking about tankies. What is the point of these "informational" posts? Looking to stamp out opinions you don't like so you can turn the fediverse into astroturfed-to-hell-and-back reddit 2.0?
thoro -15 points 2 years ago
The FUD spreaders continuing to spread FUD. You know what's great for Lemmy, this platform you're using that was developed by that Dev you're coming for? Inter instance drama, surely.
Cold War 2 bullshit.
electric_nan -18 points 2 years ago
YSK: you will never see more pathetic whining than people on Lemmy constantly complaining about "tankies". Full disclosure: I have been called a tankie one time in two years on Lemmy. I commented on a post that was basically jerking off to the idea that Japan would repeat its atrocities against China in the event that there was a war over Taiwan. I expressed doubt that it would go very smoothly, for which I was banned and labeled a tankie.
queermunist -22 points 2 years ago
Another astounding revelation from Reddit.world 😲
reagansrottencorpse -65 points 2 years ago
I'm glad to have devs with principals. Go back to reddit lib.
goferking0 -7 points 2 years ago
You say that like world or others instances don't do that
beardown -1 points 2 years ago
.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
stevedidwhat_infosec 3 points 2 years ago
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 14 points 2 years ago
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.
Saik0Shinigami 4 points 2 years ago
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.
This logic doesn't make sense. The government with a great firewall isn't controlling media to restrict this one particular groups views? Even though they have no trouble with every other group?
AINeMyot 1 point 2 years ago
They're international, their HQ is in Deerpark, NY.
This video (and its second part) give a good overview of Falun Gong and their media presence.
stevedidwhat_infosec 3 points 2 years ago
Really? Because I remember reading from the UN that this was taking place in the uyghur camps?
Edit: actually it’s both. So…
AINeMyot 1 point 2 years ago
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.
reagansrottencorpse -2 points 2 years ago path: 0 10476273 10477712 10479599, hotness: undefined, score: -2, children: 1
stevedidwhat_infosec 5 points 2 years ago
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
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
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
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