Following the news that Lemmy world has decided to defederate from hexbear without consulting their community and before hexbear even federated with anyone, I'd like to make this announcement to settle things once and for all about us "scary tankies" who apparently don't tolerate free expression or whatever.
Lemmygrad has been around since the very beginning of Lemmy as a project, we are one of the oldest instance with lemmy.ml.
In that time, we have never defederated from anyone except in three cases:
- troll instances (usually inactive and unmoderated, with free account requests, that trolls used back in the day to bypass their bans). We usually refederate if they start being moderated again.
- outright fascist instances such as exploding heads or powerballs or whatever before the admin deleted it (which you're welcome, it's because there's communists on Lemmy that there's so few fascists)
- and, the fringe case, the couple specifically NSFW instances that we instantly defederated from because we don't want to host porn on our database and our rule 5 prohibits porn anywhere on Lemmygrad.
Otherwise, we have no reason to defederate from anyone. Holier-than-thou liberals can be difficult and irritating, I'm not denying that or implying we're somehow above it all, but to defederate would imply we are scared of what they have to say. We're not, because what they have to say is stuff we've all seen for ourselves and used to believe too.
You can see our blocklist here for yourself: https://lemmygrad.ml/instances, we only block around 40 instances, which might seem like a lot, but then compare to lemmy world which blocks 141 instances, or beehaw which blocks 765 instances.
Nobody is born a communist. Nobody is born a liberal either, but we become one through the self-reproduction of culture. From our earliest age we're exposed to liberalism (the ideology of capitalism) to the point that we integrate it. Did you have a model UN in school and vote for class presidents?
So really we can't be scared of anti-communist arguments because we've heard them all before. It's especially weird when people say we "buy into old propaganda" around Stalin or whatever, when anywhere you look, Soviet historiography in academia amounts to little more than "Stalin was paranoid and acted like the Tsar but called himself a communist". Like we went to public school too lol, we had a unit on the USSR lol.
Anyway, all defederations that happened on Lemmygrad come from other instances themselves, most of them pre-emptively defederating us before they even saw a single post from us. If beehaw, or shitjustworks, or lemmy dot whatever wanted to refederate, they could do it instantly and we'd be federated again.
And on that topic, let's talk about bans. We don't ban people who ask questions in good faith. But we will instantly ban anyone who comes to Lemmygrad solely to troll, as all online forums have done since time immemorial.
Likewise on blocklist issues, we poll our community very often for their input and allow them to propose changes. You can look at our !lemmygrad_court@lemmygrad.ml to see some things we've included the community on. We try to practice democratic centralism where applicable.
It goes even further; we allow communities and posts that some both on Lemmygrad or outside might disagree with, on the principle that we see ourselves as a more generalistic ML instance. We allow users to have their own community and moderate it however they want (respecting sitewide rules), and generally the removal of a community goes through an admin chat and might even go to a community feedback session. We have meme communities, we have religious communities, we have shitposting communities, and we also have serious discussion communities. And a plethora of personal communities for users who want to post in their own space like a blog.
We also have exactly 6 rules and no lengthy code of conduct or other documents one needs to read to participate here. This is helped by the fact that as we're all communists and more specifically mainly marxist-leninists, most of us already behave the expected way around comrades and don't need to be told how to conduct themselves.
So let me ask this; who is really censoring who here?
We're confident enough in our views that we're not afraid of being exposed to opposition.
I wish I could block an instance, like either the posters or the instance from appearing in my feed. I think lemmyworld is garbage and wanna defederate it from my feed
So let me ask this; who is really censoring who here?
There's a youtube video I watched 3 years ago, by a Chinese content creator about the great firewall. His closing comment was a prediction that over 5-10 years we'd see China slowly reduce its internet censorship and 'other nations' start to build their own. It's looking more and more like that's going to be the case, and it's happening even faster below the national censorship level. The pattern of who's defederating from whom is another facet of that.
Truth is a powerful ally.
Let them hide. Their users know where to find us when they get curious about what's on the other side.
Let them hide. Their users know where to find us when they get curious about what’s on the other side.
I come from white country bombarded by nato decades ago and destroyed by Germany in WW1 and WW2 (easy to pinpoint). People casually wear t-shirts with Putin, not so much as support for Russia as much as statement against nato.
And was talking with progressive-liberal-anti-capitalist from Germany. He got mad and could not understand why we don't support nato, us and germany.
I got scared shitless from that conversation imagining what normal capitalist, hard right Germans think of us. Crazy. Hate and racism is so strong in Global West, they can not even hide it anymore.
Point is: they will get curious, I just hope we can avoid another war.
Speaking of the firewall in China, the reason they have it is to help create their own tech solutions instead of relying on US Silicon Valley apps, which is the right move for software.
On top of that, the Chinese government is very careful about not letting their population become racist or bigoted against foreigners (specifically the West in this case) and letting them get access to the wider internet (which they can easily through a VPN, though it's an extra step most people don't care enough to go through) would expose them to all the hostility they receive. Like step into the shoes of a reddit lib who, on the one hand, screams "Fuck CCP all Chinese eat bats and dogs" and on the other, tries to smugly say "hey I just want Chinese people to be free and have access to the internet". Why? So they can see all the racist trash remarks people say about them? How is that productive?
The truth is people in China don't care about Wikipedia and Facebook, and to think they would is something only liberals entertain because they can't place themselves in someone else's shoes. There might even be some nationalist pride in it because how dare China not consume our all-American slop?
Like go on douyin right this moment, and then go on tiktok -- you can access both from your browser right now. Douyin has educational and cool video content, and TikTok is an attention sinkhole that pulls you into the screen for hours where the only design consideration behind a video is "will people watch this long enough that I get to make money off of it?". There's no rage-baiting videos or content farms on Douyin.
But overall the firewall protects the west more than it does China lol. They have more people than the imperial core (Western Europe+USA and Canada), libs are not ready for the deluge if the gates were opened. They seem to think "reasonable" Chinese people would side with them into hating their own nationality but Chinese people highly support the CPC by far and this becomes evident to anyone who actually visits China.
The sinophobia started going off the charts as soon as the great posting wall started to come down too:
Show
I find this chart is even more telling cause you can see how all of a sudden the chart flips
Show
Depressing how effective western propaganda is. Its an art and they've mastered it. One of their last exports.
It shows charts for a bunch of western countries measuring positive and negative views on China. The opinions basically flip around 2017 in most of them. This shows how easily public views can be manipulated once the media switches to China bad mode reporting.
It also shows how every one of those imperial core countries + Japan had a favourable view of China in 2002, back when they thought they weren't posing any threat to liberalism or the imperial way of life, and they thought they could still control China for their own interests.
Yeah, I think that's exactly what it is, there was this idea that the CPC is just using communism as branding and once they start getting integrated into the liberal world they'll just fall in line. Then back around 2017 it started dawning on the libs that China has a legitimately different system and that it's not going to be liberalized. On top of that, China managed to integrate itself with the western world economically creating a situation where the west is now dependent on China for many essentials. That's when the panic started.
Ohhh that makes sense. Thank you for your response.. I used to believe the lies myself.
you really have to go out of your way to step out of the propaganda bubble unfortunately, kudos on finding your way out of the hall of mirrors
Yeah you really do. It helps when you watch how your lgbt peers are treated by those in power. Really draws the curtain back. Same with other groups too
Western hegemony propaganda is a hell of a drug. I've believed all sorts of racist and fascist lies at one point or another in my life. It took plenty of time and introspection to see through all the garbage. Glad you also made it out.
But overall the firewall protects the west more than it does China lol.
And the West decided to firewall Lemmygrad convinced I was an actual CPC bot
reminds me of the people on Discord who jokingly add "This user is a registered extremist, please read Discord's Safety Guidelines for more information" and some people actually believe it lol. 0 critical thinking.
And the West decided to firewall Lemmygrad convinced I was an actual CPC bot
I live in the west and I can still access Lemmygrad
The liberal instances will literally be like "Commies like Lemmygrad don't support free speech!" then block every instance that threatens their echo chamber.
Beehaw, arguably the most liberal instance, blocks far more instances than we do by a longshot. But liberals on Lemmy's platform still act like we're the ones who're block-happy.
Well, they heard it on the internet, so it must be true. I think what annoys me more than the censorship complaint though is that we're anti human rights. Americans tend to think that unless you can post all the racist garbage you want to, then your rights are being infringed. Probably because that's about the only human right they have. I consider human rights to be more along the lines of having food, shelter, water and medicine. That sort of thing that the American government seems to think are some sort of luxuries. I think that those basics are what every human needs to survive. I'm not even listing things like a basic standard of living and egalitarianism.
But that also bleeds into the whole authoritarian garbage. Not even counting the amount of ethnic cleansing that the US has done, the majority of Americans by a long shot actually support increasing the minimum wage. Why isn't it being increased? The people want it. Could it be that the people in power don't work for them? What would you call that?
Part of this is lack of basic human rights education. If all you know is what the media tell you and they only screech about free expression, that's more-or-less the extent of your conception of human rights. Any engagement with human rights literature will highlight all the essential problems: they're always limited by 'legitimate' reasons; they're always in conflict internally and with other rights; there are tiers of rights, only some of which are (mildly) enforced in liberal democracies (even though they agree 'in principle' to second and third tier rights. On the rare cases that HRs problems are discussed, it's in the most binary way possible. The people we're arguing with often haven't even had a very good liberal education (there's a reason for that), so Marxists have to start before the beginning, so to speak. You can't jump to a dialectic class analysis of human rights if the person you're 'arguing' with doesn't actually know what their own liberalism says of human rights.
we only block around 40 instances, which might seem like a lot, but then compare to lemmy world which blocks 141 instances, or beehaw which blocks 765 instances.
The "I totally hate Nazis but will not only defend their right to speak, but will dedicate state resources (police) to protecting their public rallies" crowd, folks!
very interesting how the "i hate nazis but they are still human and deserve to have a voice" crowd and the free speech absolutists never cover it for commies 🤔
Outside of a small, small group of true free speech absolutists, the liberal ideal of free speech has never been sincere. Even the ACLU purged communists from its ranks.
Yeah at this point I'm convinced that "free speech" is nothing more than a thinly-veiled dogwhistle for "how dare you not let us openly spew hateful diatribe". I can't help but to just roll my eyes whenever someone even mentions this.
It would be tragic if it was not so funny.
Liberal ideals are incompatible with liberalism.
They've been struggling with this conundrum since at least the 1800s. Even back then, Marx had to take Mill & Co to school. Liberals still haven't learned their lesson. They think that just because liberals haven't figured out the implications of their shit philosophy that nobody has.
This is what I mean when I occasionally say that 'liberalism offers zero tools to cope with or resolve [its own] contradictions except for curious philosophical thought experiments'. Liberals will be pondering those thought experiments trapped in Plato's Cave until the end of time.
Liberals, follow the logic of your own philosophy to its logical conclusion pleeease.
I've been half joking about the theoretical basic idea of liberalism of not infringing upon freedoms until those freedoms would infringe over yours (or however that goes) is completely treaded upon by the liberalism adherence to the primacy of private property...
So the only really liberal ideology is in fact communism 🤓
And thus the chapo is vindicated.
We're seeing the classic liberal inconsistencies in action:
- Freedom for property-owning euroamerikkkans, slavery, indentured servitude, and prison for colonial peoples and the poors.
- Free speech for white supremacist euros and corporations, censorship for communists and anyone who doesn't support our yanquiTM values.
Sadly this is exactly what they are doing and how it feels to join any discussion over there.
Likely instances we've received troll waves from. You can see in the first two they're inactive test servers and quite old (for Lemmy). Glasgow seems to have it under control so we might look at them more closely to refederate. You can see though there's only one user who posts there, there's no comments or upvotes, but 23 accounts -- most of them are likely trolls who tried using it as a staging ground to come on lemmygrad through.
I remember logging in months ago to find the feed populated by uncensored gore. IIRC (and I may very well recall incorrectly) that was users coming from unmoderated instances. What I do recall, correctly for sure, is that by the time I put my kettle on and made a cup of tea (milky but with red highlights when held just so in the sunlight, probably), the mods had cleared up the whole mess and there was no trace of it. Rapid action.
It's because this kind of thing happens on other sites so frequently and without a response that I avoid almost all other social media. As you might imagine considering my online-ness, it's quite a feat for other platforms and sites to have deterred me so thoroughly.
What lemmy.world admins are afraid of if they don't "pre-emptively" defederate:
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1FM4y1M7R3/
We also have exactly 6 rules and no lengthy code of conduct or other documents one needs to read to participate here.
The rules is lberal (in sense of welcoming, permissive). The rules say nothing about liking or disliking Stalin etc. You can even be an Anarchist, reading Bakunin und Kropotkin all day and it would still be ok to be here. No trolling, chauvinism and anti-communism. This rules include so many point of views. As long as you follow the rules, you will maybe get downvotes, if someone doesnt like your opinion. Maybe a communtie will ban you, if you are way to annoying to them (Not following community specific rules), but thats all.
I think lemmygrad is well inclusive.
Whoever defederates from lemmygrad will also miss all the pictures of my pigeons.
Sorry for mistakes, I reached my daily free DeepL limit.
What’s your native language? Your English was fine and easily understandable
Thank you. I speak German and Russian native. I learned english in school, I can understand english quite well and read political theory. But since I dont have any practice, I get nerveous writing in english and it feels odd.
If you want to laugh about something, take a look on this letter which Lenin send to his Mother on May 1895. I swear, some germans still behave the same:
I am making use of a two-hour stop at a small Austrian town (not far, now, from my destination) to fulfil my promise to write on the way. This is my second day of travel abroad and I am practising the language; I have discovered that I am weak at this and have the greatest difficulty in understanding the Germans—or rather, I don’t understand them at all. I ask the guard on the train a question, he answers and I don’t understand him. He repeats the answer more loudly. I still don’t understand, and so he gets angry and goes away. In spite of this disgraceful fiasco I am not discouraged and continue distorting the German language with some zeal.
Well said comrade. If other instances admins are afraid of having their viewpoints challenged so much so as to defederate, then that's their prerogative and they're doing a disservice to their community and users for creating an echo chamber.
Hopefully a few libs will read this, and actually read it.
Otherwise, we have no reason to defederate from anyone. Holier-than-thou liberals can be difficult and irritating, I’m not denying that or implying we’re somehow above it all, but to defederate would imply we are scared of what they have to say. We’re not, because what they have to say is stuff we’ve all seen for ourselves and used to believe too.
Nobody is born a communist. Nobody is born a liberal either, but we become one through the self-reproduction of culture. From our earliest age we’re exposed to liberalism (the ideology of capitalism) to the point that we integrate it. Did you have a model UN in school and vote for class presidents?
So really we can’t be scared of anti-communist arguments because we’ve heard them all before. It’s especially weird when people say we “buy into old propaganda” around Stalin or whatever, when anywhere you look, Soviet historiography in academia amounts to little more than “Stalin was paranoid and acted like the Tsar but called himself a communist”. Like we went to public school too lol, we had a unit on the USSR lol.
This part in particular is just something it would be nice to get through lib's heads. We didn't pop fully formed out of the earth one day, we were all libs at some point in our lives, before realising that liberalism doesn't actually explain anything, and is more in the business of explaining away things, and using distraction and simplification instead of proper understanding of a situation.
When they come in here with their "Stalin bad man, million billion dead" or "Kim Jong Un evil dictator!" or whatever, they don't understand that we also used to believe those lies, before becoming better educated on the subject and actually examining a different point of view from our own. Hopefully they choose to do a bit of that too.
The problem is that they think we're QAnon style conspiracy theorists. They won't even entertain the idea that all of this stuff that they've been told their whole lives is bullshit. Even when you present the CIA doc where they planned it. The lies are just too big to comprehend, even though they are pretty well documented.
This is extremely frustrating because there are real conspiracies that the "conspiracy theories" distract from. Just like you were saying, most of it is well documented, probably because the US built its intelligence agencies using Nazi intelligence officers.
Bear with me now, this is going to get meta-conspiratorial: I wouldn't be surprised to find that the people doing the real conspiracies spread the fake conspiracies to distract people and to make it seem that 'conspiracy theorists' are always wrong. Makes it very easy for people to dismiss claims about 'hidden' atrocities (even if they're not even hidden).
I miss conspiracy theory spaces before QAnon showed up I ain't even gonna bullshit
I hate to break it to you but those 'older' conspiracy theories were all based on racism, usually antisemitism. Dig enough into them and it is just rehashing Theosophy. Check out DeCamp's Lost Continents for an accessable history. I don't have my home library right now but there was a collection of academic essays published around 2012 that lamented the crackpots who show up to lectures and also included the POV of someone who was drawn into it. My working theory is that conspiracy theories are so popular because we don't teach a real explaination of the world, we teach a myth and an easily falsified model about liberal democracy and capitalism/"free markets", because teaching historical materialism in 'the West' is verboten.
It was pretty funny on that lemmy world thread when some people said "Criticising NATO is playing right into Russia's propaganda".
A. You'd have to explain why NATO Propaganda is more desirable than Russia's propaganda.
B. You'd have to explain why we have to buy into this NATO Propaganda to the point where we can't say things that align, even if by pure luck, with Russia's line.
C. You'd have to explain why, when communists have been against NATO since its inception, we suddenly can't talk about it because someone else picks up the same line.
D. You'd have to explain why I give a fuck about Russia and Ukraine fighting some 3000km away. Putin isn't at your doorstep he can't hurt you.
E. You'd finally have to explain why Ukraine could not defend itself if NATO didn't exist. Could the US magically not send ammo if it's not through nato? Do they think these weapons and vehicles materialize out of thin air in the NATO factory?
But they will never find any real explanation beyond "Putler bad mmkay" because there's none. It's all deflection. They stan for NATO (whose achievements include irreparably destroying Ukraine with cluster bombs and depleted uranium ammo, invading Libya and bombing Yugoslavia) and they will find any bad faith argument to defend their beliefs. It's not rational or sensible, it's belief.
Also with that thread, we've actually got several people requesting accounts on lemmygrad. We accept them.
Lurkers think more than the libs who post regularly I say, at least there are dozens of us!
My understanding of the modern form of the term "conspiracy theory" is that it was consciously developed to be a term that shuts down all conversation and immediately makes a person think that the case being presented is so inconceivable so as to be dismissable without thought. IIRC this modern use came about after the JFK assassination, the circumstances of which had many people asking very serious questions.
They need to use conspiracy theory style logic to keep us in the "crazy conspiracy theorist" zone though. By using sound logical arguments and showing that we are not conspiracy theorists, we can reach those who are actually willing to listen. That's why I'm saying I hope they actually read this stuff.
The ones who come here to just "own the tankies" or whatever are beyond help. We should dunk on them nonstop. But some of them come here prepared to dunk on a "crazy conspiracy nutter" and then realise that we aren't like that, and hopefully start to examine what we're actually saying.
outright fascist instances such as exploding heads or powerballs or whatever
It was wolfballs. I remember there being a bunch of drama over master of balls trying to convince people to check out that instance in comment sections in lemmy.ml. You even had a bunch of angry lemmygrad users going after nutomic for dragging his feet with the ban hammer.
Oh yeah i remember, few people including me was calling nutomic for banning comrades for being uncivil but not banning the fascist trolls and western supremacists.
And in the retrospect, look where lemmy now is :(
What would really be killer is if we get a meme domain that's like "censorship free federated instances" and pretend to be the authority (I say pretend because it's subjective what it really means) on who is censorship-free. Basically just have a simple page calling out other instances and warning users that they aren't getting a full experience. And also list the ones that respect free speech and play nice.
Something like that, if shilled occasionally, would go a very long way into getting users thinking critically about federation, even if a bunch of libs get pissed off in the process (they can't argue so they just seethe). And the longer such an "infamous list" is up on the internet the more impact it will have. Source: trust me bro i'm a web developer and i'm terminally online.
There are already tools that do this, I forget the links but you can browse instances and look at who blocks them.
