The administration of lemmy.ml routinely abuses its rule 1 anti-bigotry policy to conduct political censorship, deleting documented facts regarding the ukraine invasion, holodomor, and xinjiang abuses under false pretexts of imperialist propaganda, misinformation, and nazism while leaving pro-Kremlin talking points untouched.
Verifiable public moderation logs prove this systemic shielding of state propaganda, down to moderators inverting standard geopolitical context, such as noting that fringe extremist units do not make an entire democratic nation fascist, to ban dissenters under the explicit excuse of being a Nazi.
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=25800386 and https://lemmy.world/modlog/446?page=1&actionType=All&userId=20355358.
The Europe community moderator (https://lemmy.world/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml), who focuses exclusively on criticizing the West and never Russia or China, banned me as a Nazi.
I decided to block the lemmy.ml instance entirely to avoid any further interaction.
I see that there are dozens of relevant posts; you can find the relevant report posts here
- https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
- https://lemmy.world/post/5697017
- https://lemmy.world/post/50302822
- https://lemmy.world/post/13238608
- https://lemmy.world/post/43978041
Log screenshots
A lot of instances are curated, they're the supreme mods after all. Some delay your posts until they can curate them, and some just remove them. It's the way it be.
This isn't said and understood enough. Instances on the Fediverse aren't free-for-all, apolitical places without ideology. Some try to be (with varying success) but being active in the Fediverse and especially running an instance is in itself a fairly ideological and political act. So chances are instances reflect their owners' ideology. And that is great because one has places to be if an instance doesn't suit them, unlike corpo platdorms where one ideology drives most of them.
The only thing that bugs me about it is that the largest instances can control what most people see.
True. It's definitely not a perfect, problem-solved thing. Merely an (significant?) improvement from the corporate status quo.
The great thing about lemmy's design is that that's not really true. I'm seeing this criticism of .ml despite being on .ml, because most of the posts that I see on lemmy are not on my home instance. At least half the time, I'm having discussions outside of my "home turf."
When you have a space that agrees on certain base assumptions, it becomes easier to have more in depth and thoughtful discussions, because you don't have to focus on just proving or advocating for those basic assumptions over and over again, and watching every word you say to make sure it can't be twisted or misinterpreted to paint you in a negative light. By contrast, sharing a space with ideological opponents often means people tend to dig in and just make snipes at each other, everybody's just grandstanding and trying to get owns in, and the level of discussion is brought down to name-calling and accusations.
At the same time, yes, echo chambers are a concern. If you're never exposed to opposing viewpoints, obviously that's not great either. We can see that happen on any number of subreddits. And if we were on different subreddits instead of on different instances, I wouldn't be seeing this criticism, and you wouldn't be seeing my response to it.
The way the fediverse is designed inherently addresses both of those concerns. You can have a space where the discussions assume a shared ideology allowing for in depth discussions, but then you're also federated with other spaces with different shared assumptions. The "tankie" creators of lemmy designed it this way on purpose, for that reason. To allow minority views (including but not limited to their own) to have spaces for discussion, without becoming isolated. To allow for higher level discussions with shared assumptions while also allowing for interactions between groups with different assumptions.
This is why all this hand-wringing over .ml's censorship is kind of silly. Because people on .ml are constantly seeing content from other instances with completely different policies, and that is not in spite of what the .ml's admins want, they literally designed it that way on purpose.
The only censorship that really matters on the fediverse is defederation.
Literally nobody has ever claimed that users on Lemmy.ml are not allowed to see content on other instances - this is not merely a strawman argument but an absolutely ridiculous one.
Please don't bother to reply to this if this is the level of content that your messages will contain.
For anyone else that is curious, the complaint is about the lack of transparency in describing what content is vs. is not allowed - a community of people discussing FOSS comes nowhere close to mentioning that you are not allowed to come close to criticizing Russia, China, or North Korea - e.g. it is not allowed to state that Ukraine is not the aggressor and that rather Russia is, or to state that Uyghurs are being killed by China.
I really really really really really really really really wish that Lemmy would implement a true instance block so that I did not have to spend time reading such comments as this. But for some reason that option is denied to me. Go figure.
It's not really a strawman in that I never claimed anyone said it. It's just that people talk about "censorship" and "echo chambers" and "they have to remove things to keep their users brainwashed" or whatever nonsense, ignoring the fact that the structure of the fediverse, as designed by the .ml admins, makes that more or less impossible.
OK, fair enough, they could afford to clarify the rules somewhat. But I don't really consider that a huge deal. I've been banned from communities on .world for things that aren't enumerated in the rules too. I don't see why rules have to cover every possible thing.
Your argument that lemmy.ml cannot be an echo chamber due to it allowing other machines to store content that it disagrees with is noted. Btw nobody ever said that it was for that reason, so once again ridiculous.
Your second whataboutism is also noted (counterpoint: 2 things can both be true at the same time) - and expected. Once again I reiterate that I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wish that I did not have to be subjected to this level of argumentation. But it seems that as long as I continue to use Lemmy, my only option is to block each account individually, over and over again, ad nauseum.
That's one way to describe "designed a website where it's virtually unavoidable to encounter opposing views." At that point, you could describe me replying to you as me "storing content you disagree with on another machine" which makes your complaint about my reply existing sound just as silly.
Btw, I never said that anyone said it was for that reason, so you are once again being ridiculous.
Whataboutism is when you uphold consistent standards and expect others to do the same, understood.
If you hate the fact that the devs structured the platform to force everyone to encounter opposing views and prevent echo chambers so much, I kinda have to wonder what you're doing on the platform at all. The federated structure is literally in the name, fediverse. It's like going to Burger King and being outraged at seeing burgers on the menu. Is it really that hard to find an echo chamber somewhere with only mainstream liberal views? That's not really something the fediverse is designed for.
and those other instances can also moderate and delete comments and posts for all other instances unless archived or crossposted. If a lemmy.world mod deletes a comment in a lemmy.world post, I won't be able to see it from over here in db0
Tbf this is true for all instances - it is simply how the ActivityPub Protocol works. The home instance "owns" the content, so if e.g. a Lemmy.world user submits a post to a community on Lemmy.ml, then other LW users won't be able to see it if it gets removed, but the same is true vice versa if a ML user submits a post to a community located on LW.
Why are you writing tankie in quotes?
Because I disagree with the term. The admins are not "tankies," they are Marxist-Leninists.
What makes someone a "tankie" is that they "defend" certain states. In practice, "defending" often includes just refuting misinformation, for example, if I refute that "everyone in North Korea gets the same haircut" then I'm "defending" it and therefore a "tankie." It can also mean acknowledging accomplishments, saying any good thing about any socialist state, like, "Cuba had a very successful literacy program," which is just an objective historical fact. "Tankie" is supposed to mean someone who blindly supports everything a socialist state has ever done, in practice, it means someone who supports anything a socialist state has ever done.
Before it was "tankie" it was "pinko," and before that "red." That kind of red scare bullshit has allowed blatant misinformation to run rampant, because even rational people avoid pushing back on it for fear of being labelled a "tankie." As stories about how all communists eat babies or whatnot run rampant, it has in turn hurt the reputation of both leftists and liberals, because it literally doesn't matter how hard you try to distance yourself from the far-left, you'll still get associated with it. Joe Biden got called a communist for Christ's sake. To put it another way:
That is why I put "tankie" in quotes.
Lol the admins for .ml are %100 tankies, calling them Marxist-leninists is just a kinder term for "western children who excuse the authoritarian actions of dictators they agree with". Trying to change history because it doesn't put russia or china in a good light or trying to call the shit they do as "western propaganda" is just being a tankie.
End of the day, you tankies want to be the ones sending others to the gulags and think you'd be in power in your coming revolution. To bad you're a microscopic portion of the population that agrees with you and your authoritarian logic.
You're just the "left" wing version of maga, ignorant and will excuse your dear leaders of any wrong doing while sticking your fingers in your ears shouting fake news.
the left version of maga are the democrat die hards.
never met a war they didn't support when it was team blue doing it.
Naa tankies are just as bad. You excuse the invasion of Ukraine by russia and all the other countries russia wants to attack... looking like Latvia is next on putins list, and I'm sure you'll suggest they deserve it as well. You're just as war mongering as maga is.
Anyone who opposes any war will always be accused of supporting the other side, and as the other side is always painted as the aggressor no matter the conflict, those most opposed to war will always be painted as the most aggressive warmongers.
It's no different from when I was labelled a "terrorist sympathizer" or seen as "supporting 9/11" when I opposed war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Opposition to building more tanks is literally the defining characteristic of a "tankie" for that reason, because if you don't want to build more tanks, it can only be because you want the enemy to win. Meanwhile, those who support building and deploying tanks are seen as "peaceful."
Real "war is peace" hours.
So that was a lot of words to say nothing.
Do you think Russia is in a right to invade Ukraine?
It's the most clear cut conflict in the world at the moment, anyone supporting Putin's aggression has lost themselves to propaganda. Ukraine unfortunately didn't get enough support early on, this conflict could had cost half the lives lost to date.
It's miles apart to be against an aggressive occupational force with no clear goals, and not support a country's right to defend itself.
No. No more than I "supported" Al Qaida and 9/11 by opposing going to war.
I don't believe countries have an inherent right to defend themselves, and if I did then I would say that the DPR had the same right.
Somehow, the extreme anti-war stance of not supporting even "defensive" wars makes me a bloodthirsty warmonger, a "tankie," while you're the one arguing that we didn't build and deploy enough tanks. Exactly as I described: "war is peace."
It's not the Donbas war I'm questioning, there's a reasoning chain that's understandable. Both geopolitically, strategically and culturally.
It's the full scale invasion of 2022 I'm questioning. There's no chain of thought leading to that invasion, other than greed and lust for blood by Putin and his inner circles. The nationalists were not in power by the time they began their invasion. They had already gained control of the region, Donbas, that wanted to be Russian.
There's just no way to argue the full scale invasion should ever have started.
Your endgame argument is national states shouldn't exist, but today they do. As long as they do exist, national governments should be able to defend against other nations attempt to gain control over them. Because if we do assume, at one point we get a global government and abolish the national states. Then it's whoever carries the most power (that's war machines), that'll be able to decide the values of such a government. And by extend shape the culture that'll impact everyone.
What are you talking about? The DPR requested Russian military assistance. If the DPR was legitimate and had the right to defend itself, then Russia sending troops in at their request was legitimate.
Disagree.
So we have to feed the largest war machine on the planet because otherwise the war machines win?
Yeah, no. It's not a fight over having war machines or not, it's a fight over which war machine gets fed certain minerals. I have no real stake in that.
That has nothing to do with the full scale war. They're two different conflicts.
That's complete and total nonsense.
That's not how war works and not how it has ever worked or will ever work. If a war is justified, then it is justified to not only repel the enemy troops from your borders, but to counterattack within their borders in order to reduce their ability to continue fighting. That does not make it "a different conflict" when you do.
I can't believe people are still dragging out the same absurd talking points that social democrats used a century ago when justifing throwing bodies into the meat grinder of WWI. "We are only fighting against defeat" they said. As if, in their minds, once the German lines were broken, the Allied forces were going to just stop at the border! It's completely and utterly delusional. Or rather, it is bad faith, because they knew, and you and I know, that's not how anything works.
This. Just imagine if all of Lemmy was like one instance or another. The whole point of the fediverse is that there can be multiple instances, and you can just gravitate towards the ones that align with your own views.
Except it would be nice if the instances were honest about their rules, or at least that they would be described somewhere written down, rather than people having to continually find out the hard way (such as OP).