Apparently there's an issue with some instances banning users for criticizing authoritarian governments. Is lemmy.world a safe place to criticize governments?
Apparently there's an issue with some instances banning users for criticizing authoritarian governments. Is lemmy.world a safe place to criticize governments?
fuck the orcs
hate the government not the people am i right?
and then they make movies about how genociding elven children made them sad ala orcish sniper (2014)
yea
why you calling them orcs then
What do you think the CCCP is?
lol i had the same question. did they make a typo and mean the CCP or was that Cyrillic for USSR?
Mao Zedong is objectively one of the worst people in all of human history, and his influence held China back for decades, and continues to harm it to this day.
You know, I agree that he shouldn't have collaborated with America's foreign policy following the sino-soviet split, but I don't think that even puts him as a major candidate in the running.
Edit: He also really should have given the sparrow thing a test run, and there are other criticisms to make, but these are still lesser than the original one. There was bad theory and bad practice in the Cultural Revolution, but overwhelmingly its biggest problem was endangering the revolution that Mao led to establish the PRC in the first place, something for which he deserves credit on account of poverty reduction, drastic increase in life expectancy, land-redistribution, etc. Oh yeah, and the whole "opposing Japanese and British colonialism" thing, since the KMT rolled over for that, but hopefully that goes without saying.
Thank you for letting me know. I always forget about that because I can see their replies. In any case, I'm more worried about what the people on lemmy.world think, since Beehaw has basically become a purpose-built engine of sectarianism, so the content of those replies would be a foregone conclusion.
I'll try to remember to use my lemmy.ml account in the future for this.
Oh bother.
They have comments from a couple hours ago.
i mean lemmy.world server is in germany, but the guy who runs it is dutch so probably has a pretty open policy with freedom of speech i would imagine. And i mean real freedom of speech not the dog whistle for being a dick/racist/phobe
As one of the Admins of Lemmy.World we're pretty open but if you're a dick and unnecessarily a troll we'll kick ya.
Does that mean that you find everything in this thread that hasn't yet been removed to fall within those bounds? (excluding very new stuff that you might not have gotten to)
My thought process is that if you're overtly rude and crude and lump one type of people into one group indiscriminately that's not free speech. Also this is not the US government or run by the US government. So Free Speech doesn't necessarily apply.
I'm the first one to say that an uncritical and crassly-applied "free speech" ideology is deleterious, but it's the First Amendment that doesn't apply, not the concept of Free Speech itself. Under the Constitution, you are free not to apply the concept of Free Speech yourself since the First Amendment doesn't apply to your moderation, but that does not answer the question of whether you should or not.
Of course, my answer is that some speech is worth protecting and some is not and questions of natural rights have nothing to do with that, so the chauvinistic redditors posting social credit score memes that were tired years ago and thoroughly debunked don't need a platform, but that's just my take on the matter.
Oh yeah, and the "orc" meme is clearly racist, but that's why I worded my original question the way I did.
Thank you for your time and have a good day.
Nah. I want to defederate from people sharing racial slurs, because I cba with them. If they don't consider that a 'consequence' then I don't really care.
I definitely don't want consequences for people sharing negative opinions about governments.
So I guess I just want freedom of speech + personal curation.
I think the crucial thing that's missing from traditional social media is actual freedom of association, and I think thats the underlying thing that causes all these issues around "free speech." Freedom of association is the natural counterbalancing mechanism for "freedom of speech" in any form, and without the former the latter must either become incredibly toxic and damaging or be suppressed.
One of the interesting things we've lost (up till now) compared to physical, offline communities is that if someone was being a never-ending dick or a sealion, the rest of the community could just start naturally avoiding them and not inviting them of their own individual accord, and over time that would lead to the person being excised from the group β unless there was a reasonably sized contingent of the group that disagreed with that, at which point the two groups would just split, all without totally banishing anyone.
Or you could yourself choose to leave the group and find another one, if they consistently refused to deal with or helped bad actors, while still maintaining access and contact with some people from that group, and the common social setting and contacts you and the group exist in.
In other words, you'd have a natural, gradiated, and horizontal system of social self-policing that could take care of these kinds of things in a distributed manner. There's a natural outlet besides just trying to shut someone down entirely by removing their access to any community in the area at all or trying to shout over them.
These mechanisms are very hard to implement on centralized social media because it is essentially one gigantic social group that you are either fully a part of or fully separated from. Thus any decisions made about who is and isn't part of this social group are made unilaterally for everyone, and there is no room for diversity in norms and expected behavior, because everything is technically this one giant group, so there has to be this centralized compromise set of one size fits all rules. And because of the unilateral and centralized nature of everything, you need a unilateral and centralized decisionmaking procedure, which in practice and up just being faceless top-down moderation either descending to band someone or ignoring people's pleas.
So it ends up being very difficult for social media communities to self-police in a coherent way, because the platforms operate at two coarse-grained a resolution to see those communities, and it's difficult for people to disengage from toxic stuff they don't want to interact with.
This has created all of the problems we see with speech on social media now, where people who want to be dickheads perceive themselves as being oppressed, victims of authoritarian censorship, because community policing has to come centrally from above, instead of happening naturally and horizontally by a bunch of people either telling someone to leave or leaving themselves; meanwhile people who just want to live in peace and share their joy and interests online find themselves with a very little recourse to reliably avoid such dickheads and find places that feel right for them.
Reddit has this problem to less of a degree because it lets you create different smaller subunities of the social network that all have different moderators and different rules, but it's imperfect.
I think the solution to this is partly decentralization and federation, because they allow people to naturally associate and disassociate with one another on a very individual level that more naturally mirrors how communities and social groups work in real life. Communities can form their own rules, norms, and cultures, and push people out in a meanongful way without having to totally banish them from the entire social world, and people can also naturally move between them until they find one that aligns with what they need and their values, with the right degree of openness and closedness to the rest of the Fediverse, without losing contact with everything else and thus avoiding network effects and isolation effects. The fact that instances can de-federate or mute other instances creates this really interesting ability to partially fragment the network without fully fragmenting it so that you can get truly different experiences on different instances.
[IANAL] In Germany only specific types of hate speech are criminal. These are:
Other forms of hate speech might be cause for civil suits or may oblige the platform provider to remove your speech, but do not rise to a criminal offence.
Again: I am not a lawyer.
Also this only really applies to German citizens. We saw a recent study in this when a Ukrainian diplomat went on a German podcast and denied part of the Holocaust, and no criminal proceeding followed (consistent with established law). I think the platform itself was fine because the host firmly pushed back on it with historical evidence instead of idly platforming him, though he was still allowed to express his views to his content.
You can't cite a diplomat not being punished as an example of a law only applying to German citizens.
Diplomats almost always have extra protections compared to regular residents.
Seeing as having the ability to criticize gov'ts is a fundamental part of democracy I fail to see why any social media site would think banning it should be best-practice.
That said I do take issue with some posters who seem to rant on a specific target without any sort of evidentiary data. The slide into "I don't need proof to back my opinion" is a prolific and dangerous thing these days.
There are a few assumptions here. One: Criticism (in the context you mention) implies a desire to see the object of discussion improved rather than destroyed. Two: Criticism of "governments in general" rather than specifically one's own government is vital to democracy. Three: That moderation is being done based around whether something is criticism or not rather than it being backed by evidence or not.
As applied to our situation, all of these are overwhelmingly false and one need only look at this thread to understand that.
Its always difficult separating held beliefs from personal or social identity. Evidence for or against something is rarely enough to get someone who has an identity tied to a belief to change thier opinions or not react out of a fight or flight response.
I think setting and enforcing boundaries regularly while not ostracizing or demonizing people is a better way to approach it. Its hard, takes time, and isn't guaranteed to work; but it comes from a place of tolerance and acceptance rather than condemnation.
I agree wholeheartedly that letting rants go on unchallenged is a big issue, it provides a rallying point for others with similar beliefs and pushes the boundary back away from accountability and discussion and towards emotional and fear based outbursts. Do you think there is room for healthy discussion here on the fediverse and specifically in this instance?
Do you think there is room for healthy discussion here on the fediverse and specifically in this instance?
Yes. But even just looking through this thread it seems the problems follow the same patterns anyway.
I am an ally of all persecuted groups and I ask for evidence from those who choose to state their opinions. If none is willingly provided I block them. This, to me, is the only way social media can be fairly run. Anything more than that becomes what twatter, f b and reditt have become.
Exceptions to the above will always have to be made tho, ie: direct threats, doxxing, etc. ... what mods are for.
That is definitely one of the issues with any social platform or outlet. There is always the push to form in and out groups based on unifying characteristics, behaviors, social status, etc. I do think a major thing that is missed is calling out behaviors and beliefs that are not supported by facts; e.g. giving the same weight of truth or spotlight to outlandish conspiracy theories vs. scientifically backed data (climate change is a good example)
Hopefully this place can find a happy medium that invites good faith discussion instead of bad faith actors.
Let's find out.

owning china with a minstrel show
Now this is what I am here for.
So, the latest thing that I've seen is that supporters of the CCP will label anything critical of the CCP as "racism against asians". Not sure if that's the case here, but there have been a lot of posts about the CCP, so... maybe?
Fuck the CCP.
Hey there. This instance currently follows the code of conduct and rules for mastodon.world: https://mastodon.world/about
Discussion and civil criticism of these subjects is allowed, but name calling, ad hominem attacks, and other uncivil behaviour breaks the rules.
Also remember that specific communities here may have additional rules.
It looks like we can't pin comments yet, so apologies if this reply gets buried. For now I'm going to lock this post, as the discussion has degraded and is full of rule-breaking.
Have you ever actually watched the video? Really makes you think π€
Just a couple of days I got over 800k views for posting β A MAN HAS BEEN SPOTTED PROTESTING IN LEGO CITY β . Now deleted, or maybe on privat.
Just imagine how much interesting and actually usefull information will be gone just because of a selfish CEO..
You know that a lot of subreddits blacked out or went private, right? Your epistemology is bad here.
Also, it doesn't really qualify as "useful information," both because Reddit is already well-saturated with misinformation about 10k dead and such, and all you posted was a tired meme that has been posted dozens of times before by similar "activists" and karma-farmers.
Really makes me think why you'd spend time defending a government massacre of 1500-4000 protesters, with 10,000 injured.
Unfortunately I also saw the videos and pictures of tanks grinding bodies into pulp and washing them down drains shortly after this⦠That one certainly made me think.
No you didn't, because no such video exists. No such video exists because that story -- of pulping bodies and "washing them down drains" -- is ridiculous, impractical nonsense made up by someone who wasn't even there (I forget if it was student leader Chai Ling or one of the reporters sitting in their Beijing Hotel room who is responsible for that specific gem, but both lied about witnessing things they weren't there for).
Why do you need to lie about what you have seen in order to defend your thesis? Aren't these real and serious events that deserve to be treated with gravity? I don't feel particularly inclined to speak so flippantly about the people who actually did die on June 4th -- incidentally the day before the Tank Man video, which is of him obstructing tanks leaving the square.
What would be the point. There is no points system in the federation.
It's already too late for that. Without assessing why it happened on Reddit and how it should be stopped, there is no reason to believe it would not be reproduced here. It was not assessed, let alone stopped, and thereby has been reproduced.
I was always under the assumption it was some weird alt right thing where they just pretend criticism of China gets censored.
It's funny how anticommunists and rightists seem to overlap so much, even when the anticommunist claims to be progressive.
I mean this more on an instance moderation level. It's not just "monke brain neuron activation", it is a culture of ignorant chauvinism and low-effort engagement-farming
Havenβt had any problems so far! Taiwan numbah one! Fuck Putin!
Lemmy.World and Lemmy. Ml are two different places. Lemmy ML was created as a safehaven for people from subreddits that were banned like ChapoTrapHouse. Lemmy. World is designed to be the general Lemmy Community. Lemmy. Ml was the biggest until the reddit issues but I am pretty sure Lemmy World is after overtaking them. Lemmy.ML is trying to steer traffic here because they know that their community wasn't going to be palatable to the vast majority of people. There's a wide variety here so it's very hard to pinpoint where this place's userbase stands politically.
Lemmy. ML and Lemmy.world are different places and it's for the best if we just leave each be and have our own communities in peace.
could also be Markup Language
If you check out the instance sidebar, we're basically running on the same rules as mastodon.world (presumably until such time as we need something more Lemmy-specific)
It's difficult for people to have discussions on the internet that involve disagreement without it becoming uncivilized. I don't think being critical of the CCP is a particularly divisive viewpoint everywhere outside of China. I can't imagine the conversation devolving to such a state that it has to be completely banned from being discussed.
What do you suppose Cubans think of China?
The Romans are great! They build these seriously sturdy roads and aqueducts, promote trade, and they have some literature and stuff. It's too bad that they're in the habit of enslaving people and occasionally mass crucifixions.
Huh, I didn't expect this to be controversial.
My point was, a civilization can do a lot of awesome things and a lot of shitty things. Pointing out that the Romans mass-crucified enslaved people following the Spartacus revolt isn't anti-Italian bigotry. Correctly stating that the US state where I was born was founded as a white-separatist colony is not anti-Oregon bias; it's simply true.
The government of China does some massively awful & unjust things; but Chinese people are still ~1/6 of the humans and probably ~1/6 of the awesome humans too.
My man out here living a peaceful life in 100 B.C.
I have friends from China who are very good humans.
My personal view is very similar to @Jaded5450@beehaw.org, i just didnβt say the second part.
they're not chinese, they're 'good people'!
I love China, and have a generally positive opinion about their government. I'd say 70% positive and the other 30% is because I hate oppression and censorship.
Edit: Deng was the GOAT
You can actually use https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ to get an idea of how free a particular lemmy instance is thanks to the option to show blocks. Lemmy.world seems to be the only large instance that has not been blocked by or blocked any other instances
No, it's run by the devs but there's no preferential treatment for communists, anarchists, or liberals.
A lot of those insinuations come from neoliberals who are mad that neoliberalism isn't given privileged treatment there like it is on Reddit.
So, the creators of Lemmy itself (and it's "home" instance lemmy.ml) are Marxist/Leninists (otherwise known as "tankies").
However, they have been smart enough to contain the most virulent tankie bullshit over in LemmyGrad.ml, which most big instances have specifically disconnected themselves from.
They also seem to be pretty hands-off in terms of censorship/banning/belittling "libs" on lemmy.ml and have kept it pretty open. For instance, I created a LeftistInfighting community and have been allowed to express anarchist views there. (I created it because I was immediately banned from LemmyGrad, which had its own LeftistInfighting community that I had the audacity to engage in and link to wikipedia in a comment)
That works for me. I can't think of very many the places I'd direct it. All similar to Putin though.
Directing homophobic attacks at anyone just makes you sound like a homophobe
Yes it does and is
banning users for criticizing authoritarian governments
Please stop trying to smear other instances and their operators with these lies, leave the behavior that contributed to ruining Reddit there or just go back if you insist on doing it.
They were banned for orientalism which breaks rule 1 of the instance as explained here, there's plenty of criticism of China on lemmy.ml that you can find on c/politics and c/worldnews
I think it's pretty obvious this user was asking this question because they genuinely don't know. Maybe stop jumping on people's asses and having assumptions about their intentions. You could have just said the last part of your sentence and that would have answered their question.
Cool story bro
You couldn't have cherry-picked a more inflammatory comment to defend. Truly such a shame that people who misrepresent data for the sake of their anti-trans stances have their obvious rage-bait posts removed.
It isn't high effort. It's a bunch of canned "gender critical" arguments that we've all seen a thousand times before combined with arbitrarily dismissing all of the evidence in favor of gender affirming care for kids using specious reasoning and then citing long debunked studies like the "80% desistance rate" one.
Their bias is even more clearly demonstrated by the fact that the first study they cite isn't hosted on any legitimate source of medical science, but on "transgendertrend." That demonstrates that they didn't find their data via PubMed or Google Scholar or anything, they found it by looking for cherry picked medical studies from people with an anti-trans agenda.
It's transphobia and perpetuation of misinformation disguised as a polite conversation. It's the same level of "discourse" as "blacks make up 12% of the population and commit 50% of the crime."
Edit: not only is it arbitrary and awfully convenient for cherry-picking purposes to leave out longitudinal studies of mental health, since mental health is what's at stake here, and "objective" measures are susceptible to many confounding variables and often not relevant, and standardized tests of mental health are regularly used to ascertain the efficacy of many procedures related to psychology, there are also studies that use "objective" measures such as the ones he wanted, where applicable. Here's one that's somewhat infamous due to one of the young adults getting a fatal complication from a surgery, but such surgeries are not performed on minors, and are not particularly dangerous, so it's largely irrelevant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/. Here's a list of 16 studies on this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/....
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@lemmy.world
This Community is intended for posts about the Lemmy.world server by the admins.
For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.
Any support requests are best sent to info@lemmy.world e-mail.
If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the following donation URLs.
If you can, please use / switch to Ko-Fi, it has the lowest fees for us
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Well letβs find out: Free Ukraine! Fuck Russia. Fuck China!
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