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 [http://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 [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 [https://lemmy.ml/modlog] of the instance looks like: [https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/6886b092-43d3-408b-ab57-2fa686f8a6c7.png] 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 [http://lemmy.ml] that I had ever participated in. Proof: [https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/9c52e470-645f-46ba-ac1d-0b7d8be17af3.png] 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 [http://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 [/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 [http://lemmy.ml] hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

Everything I hate is now tankie. We must stop this by getting them to censor what we think is tankie

  • ssj2marx@lemmy.ml
    ·
    25 days ago

    This is weird, because from lemmy.ml I can get to lemmy.world/c/fediverse, but I can't see this post. Do admins have the ability to turn off federation on a per-post basis?

    that said I really appreciate that the top comment is a picture of a .world admin.

    • MaeBorowski [she/her]
      ·
      25 days ago

      This is weird, because from lemmy.ml I can get to lemmy.world/c/fediverse, but I can't see this post.

      I have accounts on a handful of instances and this is a common thing. Even instances that are federated with each other will often not be able to see some of each other's users (or their posts obviously) and even entire communities. There are lemmy.ml comms that we can't see from hexbear. For months I couldn't see any of my comments made on my hexbear account from my lemmygrad account and there are certain hexbear users I can't see at all from my lemmygrad account and other ones I can't see from my lemmy account. (Edit: Any comments made in the last 7 months on my lemmygrad account, I can't see from hexbear.) Personally, I'd recommend that hexbears make accounts on other instances too, not just to see these things that are invisible, but also to comment and counter some of the liberal bullshit that so often goes unchallenged because it was posted by people on instances that defederated from hexbear. Like .world, and the trash they spew across lemmy, as this post demonstrates.

      • CarbonScored [any]
        ·
        25 days ago

        Isn't there something about a user has to be subscribed to another instance's comm to get them shared? I remember hearing something like that.

        • MaeBorowski [she/her]
          ·
          25 days ago

          Maybe there is something like that but I can see plenty of comms I'm not subscribed to on other instances, if that's what you mean. And for example, I can't see the c/privacy comm on lemmy.ml at all (from hexbear) to even subscribe to it to begin with. It also doesn't explain why I can't see some hexbear users from my lemmygrad account.

          • CarbonScored [any]
            ·
            25 days ago

            I mean like, I think any user on an instance has to be subscribed to that comm to get it shared for everyone.

            But this only happens if you deliberately go there via hexbear (and the only way I know to do that on a non-joined instance is to manually type the URL), like https://hexbear.net/c/piracy@lemmy.ml and then click 'subscribe'. I did it once and it claimed the subscribe was "requested" so maybe an admin has to approve?

            As for https://hexbear.net/c/privacy@lemmy.ml not showing up I have no idea though, that's weird.

            • MaeBorowski [she/her]
              ·
              25 days ago

              Yeah, that may be so. Like there has to be a first person that breaks the barrier for that foreign instance's comm by subscribing to it before posts in that comm can show in the feed for other people belonging to that first person's instance. That seems like it would be an odd way of doing things imo, but clearly lemmy can be very odd, so that could be.

              Still, I think that is a completely separate issue from what I'm talking about, as you can see with the lemmy privacy comm not existing according to hexbear. And what's more, is that certain people on hexbear are simply not visible to anyone on lemmygrad. I know of a few hexbear users who post comments all the time, but if I'm viewing the thread from lemmygrad, I never see their comments, even if I'm looking right at them in the same thread from hexbear in another browser tab. And if I try to go to their user page from lemmygrad, it just shows a "couldnt_find_user" error. If they make a post, no one on lemmygrad will know about it. If they post a comment and a ton of people reply, no one on lemmygrad will see any of that thread... despite hexbear and lemmygrad being federated. And this is vice versa too, with some lemmygrad users and their posts never showing up to people on hexbear.

              If you go to hexbear's c/literature comm from hexbear, you see a bunch of fairly recent posts, and a long history of posting in that comm in general. However, if you view that comm from lemmygrad: https://lemmygrad.ml/c/literature@hexbear.net then all you will see is 4 posts... total. As if only 4 posts were ever made in that comm. Every other post in that comm of who knows how many hundreds simply aren't visible to people from lemmygrad. And I think that often there are posts that never show up to federated instances because I've seen this happen with other instances too.

              In short: just because you're federated with an instance, don't assume you can see all the posts there and don't assume you can see all the users there because there are almost certainly a lot of each that are simply not visible to you or anyone from your instance. Edit: Also don't assume that anyone from another instance can see you just because you see them. They may not see your posts, comments or even be able to look at your user page (which will just give an error).

                • MaeBorowski [she/her]
                  ·
                  24 days ago

                  No! It's not. I've double checked that to make sure. I did user searches of the modlogs of the respective instances, and I even DM'd an invisible person about it and they had no idea why they couldn't be seen from another instance. I'm almost positive it's just a bug. Some people are simply unlucky to be affected by it. So far as I know I've never been banned, but like I mentioned, anything I've posted (granted, it hasn't been much) with my lemmygrad account in the last 7 months, is not visible from my hexbear account. https://hexbear.net/u/MaeBorowski@lemmygrad.ml shows the last comment made was 7 months ago. https://lemmygrad.ml/u/MaeBorowski shows 8 days ago. But at least my user page isn't an error where nothing can be seen, which is the case for some others.

    • goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org
      ·
      25 days ago

      Does this one work? https://feddit.nl/post/16246531

      I've found the fediverse one weird sometimes. Was surprised the first time I tried to get the link it sas the feddit.nl url not world

      • MaeBorowski [she/her]
        ·
        25 days ago

        Yeah, using that link, you're viewing lemmy.world's fediverse comm but you're viewing it from the feddit.nl instance. From lemmy.world itself, the link to that comm would be https://lemmy.world/c/fediverse. The post we're talking about is visible from those places, as it should be. If hexbear were federated with .world, the link for us would be http://hexbear.net/c/fediverse@lemmy.world, but that doesn't work since we aren't federated. Since lemmy.ml is federated with lemmy.world, the following is the link to the same comm from lemmy.ml: https://lemmy.ml/c/fediverse@lemmy.world However, you'll notice that the post in question "Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem" is not visible from that link. Which means that everyone logged in and using lemmy.ml do not see that post. It doesn't exist as far as they're concerned, since the only way to see it would be to do so from an instance that is not their own, which people are not liable to go looking for since they aren't aware of what they can't see. I don't know if instances can make certain posts inaccessible to other instances (never heard of that, but maybe?), but whether it was done intentionally or is just a lemmy bug, the effect is the same.

        I hope that made sense, and I apologize if I was just explaining a bunch of stuff you already know. Just trying to clarify the issue and explain it in case others are confused.

    • thoro@lemmy.ml
      ·
      24 days ago

      It's because that user was banned. So we can't see their posts. I'm pretty sure at least. It unfortunately happens to us often when there's drama from a banned .world or other user about .ml.