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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[–] kbal@fedia.io 4 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Rule 1: Crushing people with tanks is fine so long as it's our side doing it.

Literal fucking tankies. I wonder if they will ever come to their senses. Oh well, it's not as if there aren't Nazi instances somewhere on fedi as well.

[–] themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago (8 children)

A hexbear in that thread is literally claiming that "the soldiers did everything they could to avoid hurting him" when there's a photo of him lying dead on the street after the tanks have gone through. They don't think it's fine, they're saying it didn't happen (curious)

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago

That photo (I've seen it circulate on the internet myself) is a photoshop. Every reputable source says that no one knows what happened to that man, and we have no evidence whatsoever of him getting run over.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Was it actually him? I was under the impression that history did not relate what happened to him afterwards, nor who he was. That's not to say the CCP did not murder a couple of thousand people during the crackdown regardless, because they did, but I have never seen a verifiable claim that a picture of any particular corpse actually was the Tank Man. There are numerous theories I've seen floated over the years alleging what may have happened to him afterwards ranging from him being caught and imprisoned, executed, living anonymously in China, or fleeing to Taiwan. All of them are unverified and, of course, mutually exclusive.

The tank operators absolutely did attempt to (and succeeded at) avoid running him over. That much is plainly visible in the video. Whatever happened after the video ended is undocumented and pure conjecture. Plenty of well documented atrocities actually were committed that day, before and after that moment, so there's not much sense in inventing new ones and bickering over details we haven't actually got.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Of tank man? The guy in the famous photo?

Where's the picture of this? I've never heard that before. It doesn't appear in his Wikipedia page, it just says there nobody knows what happened to him after.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man

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[–] wahming@lemmy.world 4 points 3 months ago (43 children)

I've been banned from .ml for being a 'racist' for being anti-Xi, despite the fact that I am Chinese, and pointed out my ethnicity as such in the discussion. I guess antisemitic Jews aren't the only weird accusation getting thrown about nowadays.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

I don't think any of this is even real to them. The same way that a majority of the white-nationalist 4-channers are just roleplaying and losing themselves in the storylines, as a species we tend to do that, we just get lost in a narrative because it explains how we feel.

The tankies are doing the same exact thing. They're not impacting policy, they're not marching for anything, they're not taken seriously and it's just another in-club that has its own language and imagery and secret handshakes and a unifying message to rally behind (America bad!) and instead of turning that criticism into actionable plans for changing representation and making anything better, they put on WW2 Russian Tanker helmets and have erotic fantasies about a communist uprising that will never happen.

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[–] aleph@lemm.ee 3 points 3 months ago (10 children)

I've defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.

1000001794

It's troubling behavior for anyone with power.

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[–] Speculater@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

They specifically obfuscate which mods take what actions so you can't appeal or even defend.

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[–] kuato@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Only admins can do site bans. What you're seeing is a hacky/temporary feature of the upcoming Lemmy v19.4, of which lemmy.ml is running the pre-release: when an admin bans someone from the site (temp or otherwise), it also automatically bans them from any community they have ever participated in. Lemmy.ml has always been the "beta" instance for new releases.

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[–] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

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.

Did that months ago; defederated completely when they turned into Lemmygrad-lite. At first I missed some more active FOSS communities, but since then, others on different instances have become more active. programming.dev has a lot of communities that overlap with some of the bigger FOSS ones on .ml so maybe check out what they've got.

If there's a community that only exists there, be the change you want to see: create it somewhere else, nurture it, and give it time to grow. You're not the only one making this complaint about .ml, and you probably won't be the last.

Related: I genuinely feel that ml being the official or at least de-facto flagship instance is turning people away.

Edit: Oh yeah. Didn't recognize your username at first, but I was looking at the modlog the other day from my LW account, and saw a bunch of individual community bans from Dessalines and wondered what was up. Figured it was something exactly like this, and it was. Thanks for sharing.

[–] Blaze@reddthat.com 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If there’s a community that only exists there, be the change you want to see: create it somewhere else and give it time to grow. You’re not the only one making this complaint about .ml, and you probably wont’ be the last.

Maybe we should open a thread on !fedigrow@lemm.ee about this

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 3 months ago

TIL that community existed. thanks!

[–] boredtortoise@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Is it possible to see who is behind a mod action? I've figured something like world news on ml has some compromised fascist actors as mods but if it's the main creator doing this then that's crazy

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 3 months ago

There's an instance level setting to hide moderator names from unauthenticated and/or non-mod users. They probably have that enabled. Those actions federate, though, so the mod names won't be hidden if viewed from an instance that doesn't hide the mod names.

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[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

as a communism sympathizing leftist, i hated these mods on reddit and i hate them here. the behavior is idiotic

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[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

People are naive if they think the .ml admins and devs don't intend to keep their thumb on the Lemmy scale. More instances need to take this threat seriously and defederate from .ml, and possibly even fork the Lemmy repos for when the devs inevitably decide they want to start building quiet exploits into the code. There are serious cyber security implications here that people are sleeping on

[–] Skepticpunk@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Yep. Something needs to change if we want Lemmy to be something besides a place for Soviet simps to hide from criticism. Authoritarianism cannot be tolerated.

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[–] viking@infosec.pub 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Tankies gonna tank. Just block their shit instance and move on with your life.

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[–] pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

made a community rn !de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago

Amazing.

[–] StaySquared@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Semi-O/T

There's censorship just for having a different opinion. When you challenge someone's belief in any subject... or just simply have a disagreement, you're getting banned. Lemmy is following in the foot steps of Reddit in the sense that it appears that the left/progressives want to be segregated and keep the division. No dialogue, no meeting in the middle.. just ban anyone who threatens their bubble.

[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I am one of the removed comments and just found out about it here. Does the Lemmy standard really not send direct messages to users when one of their messages was removed? If it was an actual Rule 1 violation (which of course, it wasn't) I'd like to know.

[–] SorteKanin@feddit.dk 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There is no "lemmy standard". There is ActivityPub though. Lemmy could maybe implement something to send an ActivityPub message when something is removed but this has not been done yet. I think there is an issue for it on GitHub though?

[–] Microw@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

Yes there is an open issue on Github for moderation notifications (Get notified when you've been banned, your post has been removed, etc): https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/4572

[–] figaro@lemdro.id 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm all for defederating from tankie instances. They suck.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 months ago

Yes, we should all recognize that Lemmy.ml is a tankie instance.

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No, we want EVERYONE to feel welcome.

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[–] Aux@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Tankies are modding many communities here as well. The solution is to fight them tooth and nail.

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[–] 33550336@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Tankies warming up to call you and Lemmy.World fascists in 3, 2, 1...

[–] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Tankies: The word 'tankie' is meaningless because it gets overused by disingenuous people on the right.

Also tankies: Everyone who criticizes my position is right-wing.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 1 points 3 months ago

Every word used by disingenuous people on the right becomes "useless" - freedom, patriot, Christian, help, law, order, justice, democracy, Constitution, agreement, good, bad - you name it, they twist it into a 100% polar opposite of what it used to mean before they got their hands on it.

So at some point, I think perhaps they should not be in charge... of what words "mean"? :-P

That said, 'tankie' is pejorative so perhaps we can find a better one for that different reason. I don't know what, or for sure that a pejorative is bad, but maybe "authoritarian", totalitarian, or fascist seems accurate - as in not beholden to "principles" so much as whoever holds the power gets to do whatever they want.

[–] el_bhm@lemm.ee 1 points 3 months ago

Pretty sure they are creating alt accounts on non-tankie instances.

[–] whoreticulture@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago (2 children)

lmao get back to me when the mods on lemmy.world stop deleting every comment that is critical of Biden. STFU. There is no recourse for mods on Lemmy and they can use their powers to delete any comments they want. The only recourse you have is to find a fediverse that caters to your weakass centrist views.

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[–] Darkpepito_tux@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

As a marxist, I'm myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism. And I don't even understand how people can stay with "Stalin was not so bad", knowing that he never planned to apply the last state of the Communist theory, and even if it did, massacre are not acceptable (sounds obvious), same applying with China and their open market.
In my country (France), Stalinism isn't a thing, all communists are against what happend in USSR, and most are anti-china.

[–] Drivebyhaiku@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

As a Socialist that subscribes more to the historical strain of Saint Simone and Robert Owen that broke out and away early from Marxism to become the Chartist movement and the history of American non-Marxist socialism ... I am often tired of how one note Tankies are. They seem obsessed with a sort of internal purity which denies a rich history of socialism other than Marx and Engles. Once one of them goes off about Stalinism or Maoism I basically just disengage because at that point they are basically so enamored with the aesthetics of communism that they aren't going to be listening to anything. They want to be devout to the ideology while whitewashing the bloodstains of past failures. I understand a collectivist mindset is more or less what Marx aims to cultivate in his work but it seems often at the cost of tolerance of any level of apostasy.

The flattening of a mass of political thought into cardboard cuttouts to snipe at and sneering at the range of Socialism hybrids with No True Scotsman flavour condescension as political ideologies simply not complete worldviews in their own right has got me rather depressed in dealing with the average Communist on here. People in general often just seem to want to find something simple and easy to hate.

[–] finder585@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

I’m myself tired of how tankies deals with criticism.

It's because tankies are just contrarians that use communist ideology as a vehicle to be anti-west / anti-United States (anti-liberal democracy). Tankies will defend any cause or ideology that is against 'the west' even if that means happily ignoring the blatant homophobic, genocidal and repressive authoritarianism.

[–] Lianodel@ttrpg.network 3 points 3 months ago

And capitalist regimes. The Russian Federation was literally founded by a betrayal of a reformist movement in the USSR, and China consulted with Milton Goddamn Friedman on their economy, ending up with billionaires. I even saw .ml users crying about Russian *oligarchs" having their assets seized ("stolen," as they said), and unironically citing Matt Taibbi. Not even "back in the day" Taibbi, but literally The Twitter Files. Using bought & paid for corporate propaganda to make their point.

They're just campists. I don't want to run afoul of a "No True Scotsman" situation, but fuck, for people who seem to think they're the Only True Socialists, they're willing to drop socialism in an instant if it means they can be edgy dickheads on the internet.

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