• @janNatan@lemmy.ml
    157•11 days ago

    The developers who created Lemmy are leftists, and they run the lemmy.ml instance. The lemmy.ml (.ml is for Mali, btw) domain was allegedly chosen because ML can also stand for Marxist-Leninist.

    I’m not an expert on the subject, but lemmy.ml users are known for being tankies. People don’t like that.

    However, some of you whipper snappers don’t know that those of us with really old accounts joined back when lemmy.ml was the most popular instance. I just like FOSS things.

    Edit: added “allegedly”

    • Jo Miran
      53•12 days ago

      I’m on ML because it is the dev’s instance, that’s it. Also, I dislike how .world is run.

    • @Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
      30•12 days ago

      Also a lot of people just join a random popular instance at the start before looking into political shit like this, and they don’t want to switch later on.

    • EpheraEnglish
      29•12 days ago

      Yeah, and them being trigger-happy with the ban hammer is why Lemmy exists at all today. All Reddit alternatives back then were Nazi hotpots, because pretty much only folks who got banned from Reddit joined the alternatives (and back then, Reddit moderation primarily concerned itself with Nazis).

      They would show up on dev.lemmy.ml, too, and “just ask questions”, like if an immigrant did a certain crime, would you want them deported?
      These questions served no point other than to drive the conversation tone to the right.
      And yeah, I was glad that the admins were always vigilant about that and immediately banned anyone asking such ‘questions’, even if it may have thrown legitimately curious folks under the bus, because it allowed proper conversations to exist.

      Of course, I have survivorship bias. I don’t concern myself with China or Russia nearly enough to have specific opinions about them.
      But when someone is not being intentionally intolerant, I am of the opinion that talking to them is worth it and the only way to help center opinions which one might perceive as extreme.
      But well, I also don’t concern myself with my admins nearly enough to have specific opinions about their opinions either. I don’t have to agree with everything they think, just because I’m on their instance, so I don’t care nearly as much as some other folks here.

      • @chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
        -2•11 days ago

        That doesn’t follow. Truth Social exists, is full of fascists, and is way bigger than Lemmy.

        If it weren’t for Reddit deciding to turn against their users in a very dramatic way, Lemmy would still just be a tiny leftist community rather than what it is now: a larger, but still small, mostly leftist, but slightly more centrist, mix of communities that fight all the time.

        I came over with the initial wave of Reddit refugees. Lemmy was quite bad back then, with a lot of crap I had to block. It’s better today but it still has a very long way to go.

    • @gigachad@sh.itjust.works
      18•12 days ago

      I cannot support an instance where criticism of countries like North Korea or Venezuela is sanctioned with 30 day bans, even defending the Russian invasion of Ukraine is tolerated. I love open source software and it breaks my heart, but I completely blocked .ml after multiple incidents I witnessed or was part of in the news and worldnews communities.

      Also I cannot really understand the argument of having an “old account”. All it means on Lemmy is having a year and a month in your profile. It is even a good idea to switch your account from time to time to stay more anonymous.

    • Banana
      17•12 days ago

      At this point I’m not sure if they are tankies, or whether they’ve just been called tankies by people who call all leftists tankies.

        • Banana
          11•12 days ago

          This makes sense.

          I do think “tankie” is the wrong word, as “bootlicker” sounds more apt since Russia hasn’t been communist since '91.

          As in, these devs are definitely authoritarian, but communist? Absolutely not.

      • Diva (she/her)
        3•10 days ago

        I’m an anarchist, these people are the kind of genocide appreciators who call all dissenting leftists tankies

        • @cm0002@lemmy.world
          -1•10 days ago

          Nope, clear definition:

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

          Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

        • @MotoAsh@lemmy.world
          10•11 days ago

          I don’t think you know what communism is supposed to be if you think it is as evil as capitalism… (note I said supposed to be, not what ever language an authoritarian decides to couch their takeover in)

        • Banana
          19•12 days ago

          Good to know, I totally thought it was a pejorative term for people who supported Kruschev’s use of tanks, and I rarely see people talking about that so I was very confused.

          Note: this comment is dripping with sarcasm

          • @humanspiral@lemmy.ca
            -15•12 days ago

            While those event was certain to cause some resentment of USSR/Russia, that hatred needs to persist long after Russia gave all of those countries liberation peacefully, and that all lies and diminishment becomes morally justified.

            Neo-Tankyism is all reality opposing maximization of Russophobia and Sinophobia for CIA/US empire subjugation of those who could benefit from non-US subjugation. It is a projection in protecting their programming no matter how evil the US is, or actively directly attacking them, because their programming has no factual defense.

    • @remotelove@lemmy.ca
      9•12 days ago

      I am confused now. I was just called a “leftist Nazi” and “liberal right wing nazi”. Lulz.

      My point is that I think the terms “leftist” and “liberal” have been redefined again, just as a heads up.

      • @foggy@lemmy.world
        7•12 days ago

        It’s a weird situation. Billionaires successfully dissolved the left into factions of people who all in-fight over whether or not you’re allowed to say retard, or the n word (hey look I must be one of them). Identity politics. Really unimportant nonsense.

        They also successfully got the right to worship billionaires.

        Not to get too tin foil hat, but at this point I think it’s safe to say reddit was a psyop.

        • @Stovetop@lemmy.world
          5•12 days ago

          Billionaires successfully dissolved the left into factions of people who all in-fight

          I think this goes all the way back. Leftist groups have been competing basically as long as there’s been a right and left. Going back to the OG “Left,” the French Revolutionaries, you see the Jacobins seize power from the monarchists, after which they start to eliminate competing revolutionary groups who have some ideological differences. In Russia, you’ve got the Mensheviks being eliminated by the Bolsheviks, and then the Trotskyists being eliminated by the Stalinists.

          Wherever there is a small difference in ideology and people willing to die for it, the left will always be at each other’s throats.

          On the other hand, I think the right keeps succeeding precisely because of identity politics: they unify under an identity instead of an ideology, or I guess maybe more specifically they succeed at turning identity into ideology. Identity politics are pushed by the right as a way of forming out-groups so that the majority can remain unified and always have a “them” to distract from what the ruling “us” is doing.

          • @Jarix@lemmy.world
            2•12 days ago

            Wherever there is a small difference in ideology and people willing to die for it, the left will always be at each other’s throats

            I’ve been aware of this since i learned just how fractured religions get when they get enough followers.

            The human race is just not good with handling competing ideas and seemingly never has been.

            I think that’s why great unifying events/people captivate so many of our narratives

      • @mmddmm@lemm.ee
        3•12 days ago

        Those terms don’t have definitions. People use them twice on the same phrase where each occurrence has a different meaning.

    • @MotoAsh@lemmy.world
      3•11 days ago

      Tankies aren’t real leftists. They’re morons who honor authority over freedom to the point they’ll suck off authoritarians from history. Basically (very, very basically), they’re the authoritarian “left”… as much as anyone who is rightly left honors undue authority…

      • @surph_ninja@lemmy.world
        4•10 days ago

        The problem is that y’all believe, that acknowledging many of the claims about those countries to be CIA hoaxes, is also somehow a declaration of approval of those countries policies.

        You may not like those countries, but you’re taking that to mean you have to personally adopt the position of defending the bullshit lies you’ve been told about them.

    • @GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
      1•11 days ago

      The lemmy.ml (.ml is for Mali, btw) domain was chosen because ML can also stand for Marxist-Leninist.

      Do you have the developers actually claiming this, or only second hand information? I was under the impression that they chose .ml because they were handing those domains out for free.

      • @janNatan@lemmy.ml
        4•9 days ago

        I have not verified the validity of those claims. I’ll edit the post to reflect that.

  • @WhatsTheHoldup@lemmy.mlEnglish
    39•10 days ago

    As someone brand new to Lemmy I’m now learning a lot of horrible new info on myself based on arbitrarily signing up for a random instance.

    I didn’t realize I was supposed to psychically know about lemmy lore before ever using it.

    • @octopus_ink@slrpnk.netEnglish
      13•10 days ago

      FWIW, I left .ml after about a year (and around a month ago) because there were just enough threads shit flinging and just enough posts like below, and just enough people who would dismiss any argument based on seeing .ml that it annoyed the shit out of me.

      Not for how anyone at .ml ever treated me. (And FTR I’m not a communist)

      So I’d say how much you worry about it is up to you, but switching instances is also pretty easy.

    • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      7•10 days ago

      Just drop them like it’s hot, lose nothing of value. There is probably an instance local to your nation or you can use .world which is a generic nonspecific Lemmy except they defederate from Hexbear and Lemmygrad because those instances spam so much bot content trying to convince users to off their families and neighbors.

    • Diva (she/her)
      7•10 days ago

      didn’t you know that signing up for an instance is actually evidence of thoughtcrime?

      • Eugene V. Debs' GhostEnglish
        1•9 days ago

        Every person who signed up for my favorite instance is gold, everyone who signed up for the one I dislike is actually a troll and must be de federated.

    • @Dogyote@slrpnk.net
      4•10 days ago

      Don’t worry much about your instance. .ml is fine, but Lemmygrad.ml in particular is a very strange place. Have a look if you want to read what non-religious people hostile to the United States/West think. Sometimes they make good points but they’re such fundamentalist assholes about everything.

    • @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      4•10 days ago

      Most of us don’t judge users but we are internally vocal about our own social challenges.

      .ml is a big instances and people coming from the old web find such attractive, it feels like “the official one” we are well aware.

      The have been attempts to advertise avoiding those but were not exactly a well coordinated organization.

      Regardless the ideology of .ml and others big instances pose a problem in centralized power. Lemmy works best as many tiny servers organically building a network of content and ideas.

      All of Lemmy is accessible as long as your instance is federated (almost all) however some may defederate from those problematic big ones, limiting the posts you can see.

      You wont lose much by changing instance right now. There is no karma or rewards associated with your account. You can also make multiple on different instances with the same user name so you have a backup if your main instance goes down.

        • @webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
          6•10 days ago

          The main problem with centralisation

          If the majority of user and communities live on a the same instance, and that instance goes down or becomes to toxic to keep federated then fediverse loses a large chunk of its whole. While if it a tiny instances that dissapears only a few people and communities need to migrate.

          General i also think its beneficial if the owners of an instance are the same people from the communities its hosts. The role of general use instances should be more like a backup mirror

        • @cm0002@lemmy.world
          3•10 days ago

          One example is the lemmy.ml problem. You see the rest of the Tankie Triad is pretty widely defederated from, but lemmy.ml isn’t despite doing much of the same things, just a bit more subtlety.

          Because lemmy.ml is such a big instance and has a few of the biggest comms (By subscribers only, which means a bunch of dead accounts boosting the numbers, by MAUs a much different story unfolds) many instances admins are hesitant to defederate from them

          Big instances carry too much power and influence and if you’re a toxic instance like .ml, it can be used to basically bully other instances into remaining federated with you

      • Diva (she/her)
        -1•10 days ago

        the ideology of .ml and others big instances pose a problem in centralized power.

        it’s not centralized, .world is considerably bigger and way more conservative, like it even has a splinter /c/196 populated with everyone who thought neo pronouns and basic levels of respect were too hard

    • @CalipherJones@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4•10 days ago

      Just remember that a lot of people on here also used to be the most annoying redditors. Their opinions are worthless.

    • @Nalivai@lemmy.world
      1•10 days ago

      You can always move to another instance. The instance I joined first is very lovely but they’re a bit heavy on defederation, so half of the comments are unavailable. It’s actually very nice, but fomo is too strong with me. When I feel depressed by humanity, I switch back to that one again and feel better, not seeing all the bullshit.

    • @Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1•10 days ago

      It takes nothing to create a new Lemmy account. And there are tons of instances that don’t have authoritarian admins.

  • @ClipperDefiance@lemmy.worldEnglish
    35•12 days ago

    Okay, so for some context .ml is run by the Lemmy devs and the devs are openly tankies (authoritarian communists). .ml, along with Lemmygrad (also run by the devs) and Hexbear are known as the Tankie Triad. While not as bad as the other two, .ml still has a lot of tankies compared to instances that aren’t part of the triad. Additionally, .ml used to be the recommended instance (until .world came along), making it one of the more populated instances. Most other instances defederate with Lemmygrad and Hexbear, but not necessarily .ml.

    Basically, there’s a lot of extremely opinionated and often combative people there and provoking them (intentionally or not) is very easy.

    That’s my understanding of the situation anyway.

  • @cm0002@lemmy.world
    27•12 days ago

    Basically, .ml Tankies (I don’t consider all .ml users to be Tankies just because they’re a .ml users) are authoritarian bootlickers “communists” pretending not to be who routinely deny the human rights violations of the CCP/Russia and hold them up as the gold standard. They refuse to recognize China, Russia and even NK as being authortarian regimes or if they do, its OK/Neccessary because it takes down the west/capitalism. If you have a historical fact that puts any of those countries in a bad light, they’ll probably deny it happend or is just “western propganda.”

    So they believe and spread things like the Russia narratives on Ukraine (When it happened they were parroting the whole “special military operation” thing, the current thing is that it was “just a diplomatic maneuver to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table”)

    Hex and Grad are very in your face about it, but .ml tends to be more subtle, often opting instead to remove dissenting comments and ban users before letting threads get out of control. So, as a result many instances defed from those 2.

    .ml is run by the head Lemmy devs who are, unfortunately, hardcore Tankies themselves and tend to enforce the Tankie mindset throughout with more subtlety through mod/admin action. Or allowing known propaganda outlets to fester

    You can check out !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works if you want to see some documentation of their actions, words and censoring. What I’ve linked here is but a mere sampling of what’s been collected there

  • @remotelove@lemmy.ca
    20•12 days ago

    Many (not all) ml users are fairly rabid when it comes to their own flavor of propaganda. If you ever casually chat with them on Lemmy, just understand that they have a completely different world view so don’t mention things related to politics, country borders, history, government structure, major battles during WW2, sparrow populations or what color the sky is and you should be fine.

  • @Allonzee@lemmy.world
    19•11 days ago

    Because even as the Earth burns and the Fascists march directly due to the capitalist’s class conquest, domination, and occupation, even many Americans who believe themselves to be politically leftwing think they can dunk on socialists and communists for their “silly” ideologies based in social cooperation and mutual social benefit where… Gasp… You can’t grind yourself to death under the toxic aspiration of attaining immoral levels of wealth to live larger than is reasonable within the finite shared habitat known as Earth.

    They of course conveniently forget all the military actions the US has taken over the last century to destabilize nations that wanted to become such societies in order to keep their resource markets open to our capitalist’s exploitation.

    Oh, and get ready for the hottest summer of your life… So far! 🔥🌎🔥

    • ☂️-
      9•10 days ago

      this graphic is missing brazil in 1964 its missing literally every other country that isnt listed.

      now that i think of it, it would probably be easier to list the countries the US didn’t destroy in central and south america.

    • @finitebanjo@lemmy.world
      -2•10 days ago

      Some of these events were egregious and deserve condemnation but tbh 56 “events” in the span of 59 years doesn’t seem all that bad. It’s not like they’ve conquered any of them. Even the Panama Canal was treated as working relationship and eventually the US pulled out of operating it.

      US Military Bases are all over the world because those actually do stabilize the regions against outside threats. Without them, some of these smaller nations would not exist today.

  • @calcopiritus@lemmy.world
    11•10 days ago

    You can see it for yourself.

    Write a comment/post critical of china in any community from the lemmy.ml instance.

    For example about the Uyghurs or the mass surveillance or whatever is your topic of choice.

    See how much time it takes for them to ban you/remove your comment under their rule of “no xenophobia”.

    • Wren
      3•10 days ago

      I think the admins call it “Rule 1.”

  • @Tieas@lemmy.mlEnglish
    8•11 days ago

    Wow that’s super interesting. I just signed up for Lemmy last month and I just googled what to sign up for and .Ml was the first one that came up. Fuck tankies and fuck commies so I guess I’m definitely going to get lumped into them for now. Oh well

  • @Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7•11 days ago

    Something else I’ve not seen mentioned here is:

    It’s pretty easy to see how the admins rule all of the communities while the moderators of those communities seem to be nothing more than flaccid ineffective grunts that do nothing but let it happen.

    For evidence, check the modlogs and see that the bans/removals from .ml are always done by the same two people. Then, note how those two people don’t even moderate the communities the comments/bans were issues from. This is not a bias. It’s verifiable by simply checking the logs.

    Then, note how most of the bans/removals don’t even violate the rules, but seemingly only hurt the feelings of the aforementioned admins.

    They are a walled garden of propaganda-riddled rhetoric.

    Additionally, many of the kids that habituate that place come in to other instances and stir pots, debate-troll people, and generally shit all over everything, and then cry and accuse everyone of bias when they get moderated by ACTUAL moderators.

    The evidence here, lies in the modlogs of all the people complaints about how shitty .world and other instances are. Check for yourself. See that I’m not lying.

    Lastly, I’ve not once ever posted, or commented in a single community of .ml, so unlike them- my bias is driven by real-world evidence, and not anecdotal reactionary temper tantrums.

    • Elrecoal19
      1•10 days ago

      So, hasn’t there been any discussion about unfedding from lemmy.ml and similar toxic instances?

      • VindictiveJudgeEnglish
        5•10 days ago

        Most places are defederated from grad and hex already. ML is essentially considered too big to fail so most sites won’t defed from them.

    • @ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
      -6•10 days ago

      I am not banned nor downvoted for telling people when they romanticize USSR or how USSR fucked my country.

      I think I got banned from some trans group for calling their arrogance that I should care about every Dick and Harry enough to ask them about their pronouns.

      I don’t give a fuck, will call you whatever you look like, and if it’s neither you’re gonna be called petal.

      I have no clue where do you find the people you write about. Also, like most lemmy users I picked this instance at random.

      • Diva (she/her)
        4•10 days ago

        if you can’t even muster up basic respect for other people do you think they should respect you or your sensibilities?

          • Diva (she/her)
            4•10 days ago

            I think I misread, I thought you were complaining about being down voted/banned for being negative about the USSR

            either way you should still respect other people by gendering them correctly. it’s really not hard and if you expect them to be respecting you in the conversation then it’s the bare minimum you should do

            • @ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml
              -1•10 days ago

              I think you still didn’t understood me correctly. I’m not against calling people what they ask me to call them, I’m against the idea that I should be proactively gathering that information.

  • ☂️-
    4•10 days ago

    at this point i think you would be better off checking it out for a while and seeing if its for you. the answers here are extremely biased so far.

    • @cm0002@lemmy.world
      3•10 days ago

      A “big fuss” with a whole lot of documentation:

      From censorship, bans and bias towards their “in crowd”:

      https://lemmy.world/post/27674360

      https://lemmy.world/post/27674117

      https://lemmy.world/post/27673934

      https://lemmy.world/post/27673724

      https://lemmy.world/post/27577337

      https://lemmy.world/post/27378634

      https://lemmy.world/post/27346630

      https://lemmy.world/post/27341283

      https://lemmy.world/post/27288224

      https://lemmy.world/post/27156418

      https://lemmy.world/post/27054157

      https://lemmy.world/post/27008261

      To altering headlines and permitting known propaganda outlets:

      https://lemmy.world/post/27428838

      https://lemmy.world/post/27416097

      https://lemmy.world/post/27314050

      https://lemmy.world/post/27288953

      That spew Russian talking points like Ukraines invasion just being a “negotiating tactic” https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

      To general hostility to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

      To their open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines) https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

      To even "concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren’t that bad https://lemmy.world/post/26985447

        • @flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1•10 days ago

          So your reply to… 20 links, is to complain that someone is documenting well (“obsessed”) and then make one claim against the entire instance with one supporting link?

          I have a massive problem with .world. There’s a reason I’m not on it. But the .world liberal problem doesn’t undo the .ml tankie problem. Two things can be true.

            • @flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2•10 days ago

              Those three links were posts of screenshots of mod actions? If I was doing a big, hyperfocus-style, documenting-things kind of thing, I wouldn’t link directly to the modlog for a lot of reasons. I’d link to a screenshot of the modlog. That way, people can see the thing I want to point out, and then if they want, go verify that it’s in the modlog.

              Normally I wouldn’t wade into this obvious shitshow, but I have a massive pet peeve of a person dismissing another person’s argument with, “There’s too much evidence.” I get not wanting to comment individually on each and every thing they posted, who has the time, but for “I don’t want to engage with all this content,” there’s the option of not commenting at all. Telling someone that their point is invalid because they have too much content is really really really frustrating for me. That might be my neurodivergence but…

              But, “your point is wrong because there’s too much evidence and I don’t wanna read it” isn’t a counterargument to the original point being made. And making a counterpoint of, “but here’s MY argument and MY evidence and I want you to engage with THAT” is… not what good faith debate should look like. If you can’t be bothered to engage with the original point being made, using it to pivot a discussion to your own point is… rude.

              • @IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
                -2•10 days ago

                They have no evidence. They link questions to Liberals who ask rhetorical questions, such as “how can anyone in good faith support China and Russia” and then paste generic propaganda their post which all apply to America a thousand times more.

                These are deeply unserious people who do nothing but concern troll on asklemmy. Spouting nonsense and putting a question mark after it.

                And likely alt accounts of cm002 as he always complains about Hexbear and Lemmygrad while we cannot even see their posts on .world

                • @flicker@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  1•10 days ago

                  I have to say, I read your comment, then went back and actually looked at the first three links they posted. None were rhetorical questions. Are you looking at something somewhere else that I’m not aware of?

                  But it doesn’t… Like I’m not actually interested in your fight. I just have a massive pet peeve about someone coming in, seeing a wall of links called ‘evidence,’ and choosing to ignore all that to start a different fight.

            • @cm0002@lemmy.world
              2•10 days ago

              Looks like the issue was with the source and the comm you posted it in (worldnews is for articles not comics)

              And it was expressly stated if you uploaded the comics to an appropriate comm without the tainted controversial source it would be perfectly fine. Have you tried uploading them to !comicstrips@lemmy.world ? Was it removed from there?

              In any case, JordanLund is not an admin so worst case they’d just be a rogue mod, my evidence directly points to admin (e.g. dessalines and davel) censorship, mandates and propaganda pushing which is far worse. It speaks directly to the Tankie agenda they’re using their instance for

              • @IndustryStandard@lemmy.world
                -2•10 days ago

                Please read the linked comment and down from there. For more context on why the specific site is brought up read up slightly.

                Also please state whether you believe the comics are antisemitic.

                • @cm0002@lemmy.world
                  3•10 days ago

                  Please read the linked comment and down from there. For more context on why the specific site is brought up read up slightly.

                  Still, it’s a bad moderation decision, not nearly as bad as having instance admins actively push a narrative and their personal political agenda like what is going on with .ml

                  Also please state whether you believe the comics are antisemitic.

                  I do not, from what I’ve seen they’re rightfully critical of the Israeli government and it’s policies and mere criticism of a religion is not anti-Semitic and in fact all religions should be openly criticized

    • @Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
      -1•10 days ago

      Again, this is another perfect example to my earlier point that the majority of people whining about .world go there to stir the pot, violate the rules, get their shit removed, and then misinform the reasons. It tracks right along with their political ideology.

      Modlog for reference.

        • @Rhoeri@lemmy.worldEnglish
          -2•10 days ago

          I hope everyone can see from this what I mean. These bots are programmed to side-step any factual accusation pointed at them and attack the accuser with false rhetoric.

          Doing this is supposed to derail and distract from the fact that they have been proven to be what they’re accused of, and instead to put the accuser on a defensive.

          Then they go after everyone else in other instances and communities, and cry about how they are censored and biased against.

          Recognize this for what it is- and don’t let them do this.

          Modlog for reference.

          Call it out.