this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad

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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"

Welcome to MoG!


Meanwhile On Grad


Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!


What is a Tankie?


Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.

(caution of biased source)


Basic Rules:

Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.

Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.

Apologia(Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.

Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.

Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.

Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.

You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

On bans and censorships:

https://lemmy.world/post/28480760

https://lemmy.world/post/28481615

https://lemmy.world/post/28482147

https://lemmy.world/post/28480936

https://lemmy.world/post/28482273

https://lemmy.world/post/28481272

https://lemmy.world/post/28481064

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

Allowing altered headlines and permitting known propaganda outlets:

https://lemmy.world/post/28275465

https://lemmy.world/post/27428838

https://lemmy.world/post/27416097

https://lemmy.world/post/27314050

https://lemmy.world/post/27288953

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

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

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[–] walden@sub.wetshaving.social 84 points 1 day ago (39 children)

In a recent discussion in the Matrix chat, it was mentioned that donations to support development have recently fallen off quite steeply. I mentioned my reason for not donating anymore is because I can't support anyone who runs an instance like .ml. @nutomic@lemmy.ml said I could donate directly to him since he doesn't do as much moderation over there, but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.

[–] fiddlesticks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 76 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Also nutomic is a transphobe

https://lemmy.ml/post/18761554

Which is reason enough to not give them any money in my book

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[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I could donate directly to him since he doesn't do as much moderation over there

I'm in the modlog a lot so I can confirm that that is true, however, like @fiddlesticks@lemmy.dbzer0.com mentioned, he shares a transphobic flavor of their mindset sooo yea

but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.

LMAO "Donate directly to me and you won't have to worry about it! Butttt it'll still go to the exact thing you're opposed to."

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 33 points 1 day ago (3 children)

@nutomic@lemmy.ml said I could donate directly to him since he doesn’t do as much moderation over there

Having observed a few different types of small team dynamics in my time, my speculation from a distance is that nutomic is the sensible one who does the bulk of the actual work, and dessalines is the other one.

He kind of has my sympathy and I do like Lemmy as software and it is clearly a good thing, but at the same time, at this point in the world if someone on your team is working to silence anyone who talks about Russia in unflattering terms, you can go fuck yourself as far as I am concerned. I am happy their instance is failing and I hope it keeps on failing until they stop doing legwork for murder, tyranny, rape, and torture. Honestly, “I wish my internet place had more users and people didn’t make fun of me so much” is a pretty mild negative consequence to experience from that.

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Nutomic is .ml, not doing much moderation is an excuse probably because he has underlings to do it for him.

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Switching accounts will result in the same for many of these grubworms, as they will simply be blocked at the individual level when they start saying shit that nobody wants to hear.

There's a lot of clueless users though, it'd be good to have them join the rest of us outside that shithole

[–] M1ch431@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Like it or not, we can shine a light and hope they see.

I am as libertarian (as opposed to authoritarian) as they come, and I still hope I (and others who share my sentiment) will be able to convince them the merits of a world with human rights, diplomacy, and freedom — that is not needlessly violent and forceful.

We can move past barbarism, but to do so we must define what comes next to those who have shut their hearts to the truth — especially to those who have spent arguably too much time reliving the horrific violence of the 20th century.

I don't need to boycott them, I don't feel the need to block them. Everybody is within their rights to do so though, but I will keep slowly trying to win them over to the idea of a more kind and free world.

Creating Lemmy and the fediverse is of incredible value to humanity. They provided a timely medicine to the internet — a decentralized platform that is not controlled by an American corporation and ruled by algorithms. I don't feel like it's a lost cause to do my best.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (8 children)

I got banned to 40 days from .ml memes for arguing that the republicans were worse than the democrats or something mild like that.

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 55 points 1 day ago (4 children)

"Arguing against the far right party? That's a no-no for our leftist instance!"

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 29 points 1 day ago

TheY'rE bOTh tHE SamE

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago

I find it time and again.

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[–] Jmdatcs@lemmy.world 40 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I actually like seeing their posts on my main account. It allows me to keep up with their lingua franca, so I can more easily identify their alts on normal instances, so I know not to attempt to engage in good faith.

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[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think the whole "saying anything different from what we like? You're banned" thing is also playing a good part.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 36 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think they really have no idea how unpopular their viewpoint is. If you ever go and look around at "Lemmy" based on how it looks when hosted on .ml or Hexbear, it looks pretty dramatically different. I think part of the reason the mods are so aggressive with this kind of censorship is that it creates a really surprisingly effective illusion that a lot of the world agrees with them. You can find off-instance communities where people post a counter-narrative if you search, but that's easy to write off as "the lib instances" or something. I think they have no idea how far in the minority they are.

The name for the cognitive bias involved is "what you see is all there is." Your brain doesn't take account of content which is hidden from you, so if 90% of what you see is pro-Russia, and everyone there is of the opinion that anything outside of that is weird Western propaganda and distorted and fake, it's pretty easy for your brain to run with it. And once you're in that box you have no idea that you're in the box. And also, a lot of propaganda frameworks like that are self-sustaining (describing any contrary information as deliberate lies or giving this huge emotional emphasis to reasons for discounting them, so it's really hard to bootstrap yourself out of the box.)

I'm not trying to make excuses for the people who are running the operation, I have to assume that they know better. Although, maybe not. Maybe they have some other kind of dysfunction and really think they are standing up against US imperialism or something. I do also think that professional troll farms are also involved in creating the impression, too. My point is, I think the average users may be genuinely confused by these events and see them very differently from the rest of Lemmy does.

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

"What do you mean people don't like us supporting imperialism? We made up our own definition of imperialism that excludes imperialist countries we like."

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 21 points 1 day ago

Among the things that George Orwell absolutely nailed was the power of redefining words when you are creating a propaganda framework.

I remember seeing a news report after not watching the American news for a while, and I was so confused when it talked about the American troops fighting against Iraqi troops... like it seemed like an uncommonly honest presentation, and also, what they were saying just didn't make sense. I couldn't parse the sentences. Finally after a moment I realized that they were talking about US troops plus "Iraqi troops" (our friends), together, engaging with some kind of unspecified enemy.

Who were the troops they were engaging with? No one really knows. Just some enemy. Not "Iraqi troops," though. They would need to have some kind of specific label attached to them so everyone knew they were the bad guys, and "Iraqi troops" didn't fit that, so they definitely wouldn't say anything like that.

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[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago
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