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.
I’m curious if you’ve ever pushed back against the grain of lml or if perhaps your opinions already align? lemmy.world is a big tent so you’ll get a bigger diversity of users. LML skews heavily in one narrow direction so they have to contend with more outfielders and by default need to cater to their own insularity.
It’s possible that your experience has been positive so far. The reach of this post alone which started this thread shows how much of an existential challenge LML is. How many threads are there on LML about being banned from lemmy.world? This one is like the 3rd or 4th i’ve seen (just from this month!) about being banned from LML.
I’m curious if you’ve ever pushed back against the grain of lml or if perhaps your opinions already align?
I never post about communists and stuff, I post about horrors that are happening in Ukraine (not the ones that are committed by Russia, but by Zelensky’s regime with support from the west), and I guess it so happens that it aligns with their narration of anti-imperialism/anti-USA (that’s why I’m not censored and generally agreed with there), but it totally misaligns with heavily left-leaning views of lemmy.world and similar instances who think they are the good guys and are helping Ukrainians instead of slaughtering them (and that’s I’m censored and generally disagreed with and even called fascist here).
How many threads are there on LML about being banned from lemmy.world?
I guess being banned/censored from left-leaning communities is so not surprising anymore that people do not even see a point in doing so? I see no point in creating such a thread. But that’s just my opinion.
I post about horrors that are happening in Ukraine (not the ones that are committed by Russia, but by Zelensky’s regime with support from the west)
Any chance of a link? Just out of curiosity.
Sure, and not just one!
Here is a collection of footage of people being kidnapped from the streets, put into vans and sent to die: https://uadraftmuseum.ch/
Here is a recent news (in ukr, so please use a translator) that now they will be breaking into people’s homes to do the same: https://focus.ua/voennye-novosti/650441-mobilizaciya-po-novomu-voennaya-policiya-smozhet-zahodit-v-zhile-i-voznagrazhdat-za-pomoshch
And a few more links about how people are trying to survive this hell, and how people are dying trying to escape:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ukraine-urgently-needs-soldiers-but-some-men-are-desperate-not-to-fight/ar-BB1naQUE
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-russia-war-recruitment/32310040.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66542065
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/15/bribes-and-hiding-at-home-the-ukrainian-men-trying-to-avoid-conscription
Your statement sounds like: “being banned from left leaning lemmy.world is so common we don’t even bother talking about it over here at lml”. Ok, I guess? Not much for me to contend with there.
I don’t want to take the bait about your Ukraine stance, because it’s a peculiar insertion at this point but ok. Suffice it to say it seems like you already agree with the de facto LML stance: west is evil. I push back against statements on l.world every day and I’m not worried about being banned. I push back one time on one thread on lml and the rest is history.
I do take umbrage with your stance on Ukraine, however (bait taken): That the US is a giant military industrial complex pulling the puppet strings from the shadows and sending Ukrainians to the slaughter. This is also a typical LML position that I hear often and seems to fall apart pretty quickly when examined a little better. This position seems to divorce Ukrainians of any agency in determining their future. Are they not entitled to defending the sovereignty of their nation? Who are you (or I) to tell them under what circumstances they should be allowed to push back against an invading force such as Russia? They are a sovereign nation that agreed to the Budapest memorandum and regardless who supplies them with weapons they can determine for themselves their destiny. It isn’t for us to adjudicate from some kind of moral high ground which parts of Ukraine should be sliced off to the highest bidder even if the bullets they fire are made in capitalist imperialist evil America.
Suffice it to say it seems like you already agree with the de facto LML stance: west is evil.
Yep, that’s correct. (btw I definitely do not associate myself with communists, it’s just that we agree on this particular point)
This position seems to divorce Ukrainians of any agency in determining their future.
It doesn’t! Those who want to fight, should definitely fight, and I don’t argue against west supporting those who want to fight with weapons, training, and whatever else. It’s actually the west that is not giving Ukrainians any choice in determining their future (see text below).
Are they not entitled to defending the sovereignty of their nation?
Again, they absolutely are! I totally support right for self-defense.
Who are you (or I) to tell them under what circumstances they should be allowed to push back against an invading force such as Russia?
Absolutely correct again and I totally agree with you, nobody should be able to prevent people from “pushing back against an invading force”.
They are a sovereign nation that agreed to the Budapest memorandum and regardless who supplies them with weapons they can determine for themselves their destiny. It isn’t for us to adjudicate from some kind of moral high ground which parts of Ukraine should be sliced off to the highest bidder even if the bullets they fire are made in capitalist imperialist evil America.
Again, totally agreed.
The thing that I’m trying to say, and the thing that I’m getting called a fascist for, is that it is not “west is supporting brave Ukrainians who want to defend their nation and fight Russia to regain the occupied territories at all cost” it is “west is supporting Zelensky’s regime (which I also consider absolutely illegitimate and authoritarian, their terms have expired, they ban all the opposition, they refuse elections, etc.) which forces people to fight by forbidding people to leave the country (which has already lead to many deaths of people who tried to escape this hell by crossing rivers/mountains and not making it), and kidnapping people on the streets, putting them into vans and sending them to the frontlines to die, and making the rest fear of going out” (you can find footages and sources for all of that if you visit my profile’s comments, but lemme know if you want me to repost it again here).
