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

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

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

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?

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

Proof:

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

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

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

  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
    15·
    6 months ago

    I honestly disagree that blocking works the same. Social media relies on a network effect, and if they keep being allowed to operate popular communities then they will have that network effect in their favour, and new users that don’t know any better will keep joining.

    Defederation is an important tool to turn certain instances into pariahs for bad behaviour, and individual blocks don’t achieve that.

    • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
      91·
      6 months ago

      This is a lot of the problem with gen z, especially among the left. Everyone is quick to smash the block button, which in aggregate just makes everything worse for everyone else.

      • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
        71·
        6 months ago

        It’s not a generational problem, it’s a platform problem. It’s a disempowered person problem. Generations are mostly made up anyway.

        Hitting the block button is fine to deal with harrassment, it just doesn’t solve the wider issue.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
          12·
          6 months ago

          I think zoomers are far more prone to refusing to engage with things that make them uncomfortable than previous generations.

          And just because something isn’t clear cut doesn’t make it imaginary. It’s a useful but fuzzy categorization.

          • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
            4·
            6 months ago

            Well I’d be fascinated to see how you arrive at that conclusion but until then I’m going to have to disagree on the basic principle that the generalisations people make about generations are usually pretty useless.

            • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
              12·
              6 months ago

              If you truly don’t see any difference between Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials then I think our views of reality are so wildly different we might not be able to have any sort of communication.

              • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
                5·
                6 months ago

                Okay, but you brought it up and then when asked about it instead of explaining you fell back on the idea that it’s self-evident, which I think I’m right to not be convinced by.

                To the extent the generations appear different I think is easily explained by the difference in material conditions that each has grown up within and the necessarily different ages of each group at any given time, and nothing to do with the inate characters of the people involved.

                I see zoomers intensely involved in the issues that affect the world and any extent they feel the need to check out I think is 100% valid given the bleak world they have been born into, much bleaker than at any earlier time.

                I see a hard-nosed pragmatic awareness of the need for hope in the face of our grim reality because it is the only way we can find a path through. I have heard that message from people of all ages, but also from zoomers.

                Again, I don’t think there’s much difference and one thing that absolutely hasn’t changed over millenia is bemoaning the state of the “kids these days”.

                • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  12·
                  6 months ago

                  To the extent the generations appear different I think is easily explained by the difference in material conditions that each has grown up within and the necessarily different ages of each group at any given time, and nothing to do with the inate characters of the people involved.

                  Well, I mean…yeah. Of course. I don’t think anyone is saying there’s like a BIOLOGICAL difference between generations.

                  much bleaker than at any earlier time.

                  I do disagree with this. In my lifetime, the great recession was much much worse than now.

                  • Excrubulent@slrpnk.netEnglish
                    32·
                    6 months ago

                    You fell back from the motte to the bailey then went ham on a strawman because the actual argument was getting too much for you.

                    You accused Gen Z of some specific behaviour and when I asked you about it you fell back on some vague notion of the generations simply being different.

                    You were clearly implying some difference of character, but when I point out that that’s pretty weak you pretend I was talking about biology, which I never mentioned.

                    If you think Gen Z is more likely to block, check out, whatever, explain where you get it from. If you’re not going to do that then I will just continue to believe that you’re basing it on your own biases and move on. You clearly aren’t very disciplined about your thought processes.

                    Oh but you had it worse as a kid? Also something we’ve been hearing for millenia from intellectually lazy entitled assholes.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          6 months ago

          When you block someone you cede the conversation to them. When lots of people block someone, fewer people push back against their bullshit. Because the people most able to push back against it no longer see it.