this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Crosspost: Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem (self.feddituk)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by GreatAlbatross to c/feddituk
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I felt this might be worth the community discussing.
Happy for people both on and off-instance to weigh in, though it is about this instance's interaction.

It's made doubly fun by the fact that the main owners of the lemmy project are admins on there. (If I understand correctly)

Title was brought over during the cross post.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

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.

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[–] rah 19 points 5 months ago

Yeah the tankies seem like a crazy bunch. Literally.

The only thing to do is to disengage. Just ignore/defederate/whatever lemmy.ml.

So it's rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there's nobody to discuss anything with.

On the other hand, if you don't participate outside of lemmy.ml then nothing outside grows and you just give more power to lemmy.ml.

[–] flamingos 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's amazing how this comment didn't break the 'be civil and nice' rule (also weird that hexbear doesn't block non-admins viewing removed posts, imo Lemmy should do this by default).

I don't know what we can really do about this, other than warn new users about ml's campism and tendency to remove criticism of anti-Western governments.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 5 points 5 months ago

what we can do

We can defederate. Lemmy.ml is clearly intended to spread disinformation, it should be cut out of the Fediverse network.

[–] JohnSmith 9 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What goes on in lemmy.ml should in my view not be a concern for feddit.uk as a community, unless they start somehow substantially interfering with this instance in a concerted and prolonged way. A few individuals here and there commenting and being the twats they are does not count.

Feddit.uk members can already disengage from communities and instances they don’t like or are offended by, and create new communities where they see a need. For me these are sufficient remedies for all but very exceptional circumstances. I understand that it may be hard to get a new community going, but them are the breaks (to quote a twat I despise with a passion).

Personally I find a level of perverse entertainment in reading some of the tankie discussion, in a similar way I found Trump being the US President and Boris being the UK Prime Minister having definite entertainment value. Macabre, perhaps, but we all have our kinks.

[–] wewbull 3 points 5 months ago

The thing is we're not discussing the users. If it's just the users (as hexbear seems to be from what I've seen) then I don't really care.

We're discussing the mods, and the fact that they are basically they are engaging in the equivalent of holocaust denial.

[–] mannycalavera 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are we suggesting defederating everyone on lemmy.ml? Or just certain users that break feddit.uk's rules? Sorry I am not up to speed on how to defederate. I would say defederate single users (if you can) who break the rules but also track how many you need to defederate per instance to decide if it's just not worthwhile and instead defederate the whole instance. For example if you end up defederating 10 users a month then... meh... that's not so bad. But if you need to do 10 a day then fuck that. You decide what the appropriate numbers are, mine are hypothetical.

If they're not breaking our rules then forget about them. It's a losing battle to change their minds so just workaround them.

Having said that, I do also think we should stop calling them tankies as a pergorative. If we are complaining that they don't have basic respect for their users then we should probably set an example and not stoop to name calling.

Feel free to call me a cunt 😜.

[–] Emperor 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You're a cunt. Happy?

Are we suggesting defederating everyone on lemmy.ml?

I don't think anyone is suggesting anything, yet.

Personally, In see no need to defederate as their actions aren't having an impact on this instance. We usually defederate on the grounds of noncery and occasionally when an instance is full of toxic trolls (or temporarily if they are having technical problems that impact our server). I'd just suggest monitoring the situation for now.

And on the issue of popular communities being on there: it's the Fediverse, find a relevant instance or a general one (preferably not lemmy.world - we need to spread the love/load) and start a new one.

Today's lesson: don't talk Politics on tankie instances.

Having said that, I do also think we should stop calling them tankies as a pergorative. If we are complaining that they don’t have basic respect for their users then we should probably set an example and not stoop to name calling.

I refer you to my first sentence.

[–] rah 5 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

occasionally when an instance is full of toxic trolls

Isn't that exactly what we're talking about? I get constant lemmy.ml lunatics jumping on threads, name calling, talking nonsense, posturing, telling me to "go away" (this is the Fediverse looney, you're only viewing my comment by your own consent), etc.

I've already user-blocked hexbear and lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is the next candidate for me.

[–] Emperor 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Isn’t that exactly what we’re talking about?

No, that initial post is about a user's bad experience posting on lemmy.ml's communities where they disagreed with the Mod's decisions.

I get constant lemmy.ml lunatics jumping on threads, name calling, talking nonsense, posturing, telling me to “go away” (this is the Fediverse looney, you’re only viewing my comment by your own consent), etc.

Does that happen on here? If so, report it. I see all reports from feddit.uk and ones about or by our users, so I get a reasonable idea of what is going on here as well as snapshots of events across the Lemmyverse and I haven't seen this behaviour outside of lemmy.ml and adjacent fellow travellers. If that is happening here then that's an issue we'd want to shut down and if it was lengthy and persistent or organised trolling then we'd look into defederating if we could get the other instance Admins to sort their mess out. If our members are being harassed on other instances by l.ml users then we'd want to know so we can talk to the relevant Admins about getting their house in order.

[–] rah 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

No, that initial post is about a user's bad experience posting on lemmy.ml's communities where they disagreed with the Mod's decisions.

Right, I see.

Does that happen on here?

I'm not sure what you mean by "on here"? I'm using feddit.uk to read and post, is that what you mean? The communities are not generally not on feddit.uk though.

If so, report it.

OK, will do.

[–] Emperor 2 points 5 months ago

I’m not sure what you mean by “on here”? I’m using feddit.uk to read and post, is that what you mean? The communities are not generally not on feddit.uk though.

Ah yes, federation does make lines a bit blurry.

What I mean is: does it happen on feddit.uk communities? Although Admins can perform actions on other instances, we tend to only do that if there is serious spamming or trolling going on. Otherwise, we tend to leave decisions up to the More of those communities and the Admins of the instances they are on.

If there are issues on those kinds of communities, it is worth reporting as we get to see then here as do the relevant Mods and Admins of that community. So if there are issues they can get addressed. If they aren't being sorted out then we can have a chat with the relevant Admin about it.

[–] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip -2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Honestly I dont understand this experience. I haven't had any bad interactions with .ml users at all, they seem largely normal people stuck on the flagship instance. What/where are you going to get them riled up like that?

I only blocked (not defederated) hexbear and lemmygrad, this way I can at least still interact with their users outside the instance, and ml users have not given me any reason so far.

Defederating should be a last ditch effort, not the first thing people demand when they disagree with another instance. Block the instance client side if you dont care for their content.

[–] rah 4 points 5 months ago

What/where are you going to get them riled up like that?

Anywhere I join any kind of socialist thread. No one place in particular.

[–] spacedogroy 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I think defederation should be used as a last resort - specifically, I'm talking about an influx of tankies breaking feddit.uk's code of conduct. I think actions supporting a protest of lemmy.ml should be left to the individual, as to whether they want to continue participating in those communities. Ideally, the communities move themselves to a different instance that's less politicised, but that's not the world we currently live in.

[–] flamingarms 5 points 5 months ago

I would tend to agree with this approach. And if defederation is used, I wonder if it would be a good idea to defederate for a set period of time until a set date where the defederation will be reevaluated. I think everyone needs an off-ramp for their behavior to change, and that communicates that we're open to interacting as long as they do so in a way that respectfully meets our code of conduct.

[–] Emperor 3 points 5 months ago

That's my feeling on the matter, we try not to defederate if it can be helped and I agree, the solutions are in the hands of the users.

[–] ilovecheese 5 points 5 months ago

Would be a shame to defederate and lose the good communities.

The couple of niche game communities I use on .ml have very little participation as it is, and would likely not survive even a few users moving to c/'s on other instances.

Not that I have any better suggestions, other than just blocking the troublesome political c/'s on .ml.

[–] Emperor 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Here is the feddit.uk link to the post if you are on here and want to interact with it:

https://feddit.uk/post/12926383

[–] GreatAlbatross 5 points 5 months ago

Thanks, I've updated the link at the top.

[–] Emperor 4 points 5 months ago

If anyone is looking for non l.ml community alternatives then check out:

https://feddit.uk/post/12952230

[–] blackn1ght 2 points 5 months ago

I'm literally in this picture and I don't like it :D

Jokes aside, the extreme politics that stem from some instances will only hurt the the growth of the fediverse.

I don't think we should defederate from lemmy.ml but I'd certainly recommend users adding it to their list of blocked instances. Hopefully less people end up using the communities on the instance and its significance in the overall fediverse dwindles.

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I feel like defederation is the only effective solution

[–] Emperor 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Are Hexbear?

[–] jabjoe 2 points 5 months ago

I think there are a certain amount of users that are paid shill or trolls. One person full time can be many accounts doing a lot of bad faith voting and comments. So it's not expensive to make a flood pushing some narrative.

Bad mental health that can make people act the same unpaid.

I don't have a solution. We know what tech companies do, use it as an excuse to collect more user data to claim user verification. Doesn't seam to help much.

Least here, there isn't recommendation algorithms driving people down crazy holes.