The mods of all the major communities there remove comments criticism Hexbear and usually follow it up with a ban. It's absolutely clear what is happening and it shouldn't be allowed to continue.

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[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

At some time we have to deal with this.

Keep in mind that we like Lemmy for being a federated platform.

I don't think there is enough awareness at this point. And the way we do it here, it has to come from the community. The people and mods have to become aware and make a decision to move their participation and the communities to another instance. I don't see a way around that. This will take some time, patience and effort.

I've started to do my part and unsubscribed from !Fediverse@lemmy.ml I'm now going through my list of subscriptions and find alternatives to other communities, so I don't contribute to the lemmy.ml communities being the larges ones any more.

[Edit: Wow. I've replaced 32 communities, some with substantially better alternatives, and I've found a few nice additional ones in the process. I still need recommendations for alternatives to: "Peertube", "Libre Culture", "Crawling the IndieWeb", "datahoarder", "Linux Phones", "postmarketOS", "osu!". I'm glad I did this. I think this is the way to make a change as a simple user. And now I'm not part of the problem anymore. It took me the better part of an hour, though.]

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm just blocking the entire lemmy.ml instance. I've seen consistent problems from them, and nothing worth staying connected with.

Wish I could help you find alternative communities but I'm not sure about the ones you mentioned. They'll grow over time if Lemmy survives.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Thx. I found the most important communities to me. I'm glad most of them have an alternative and those are going strong. I can live with losing a few minor ones.

Concerning "blocking them": I'm not sure. I was a strong opponent to the whole defederation and "safe-space" thing last year. Where especially beehaw.org decided to do their own thing and rigorously defederate, often preemptively and without talking to people. I think such behaviour splits the community and disconnects people. I really don't like all the drama, falling out with each other and particularism. And I think all the feud is a sure way to kill the platform before it even took off with the general public... Honestly, I'm slowly changing my mind. Give me some more time.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I agree with your general point but

splits the community and disconnects people

They aren't people like you and I. They're paid shills at best and KremlinGPT at worst. I think to survive and flourish as a platform Lemmy will have to aggressively fight back against authoritarian disinformation. As it stands, I won't even admit to anyone that I use it because it so full of propaganda.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It is a bit more nuanced than that. There are normal people there, too. It's been one of the largest instances when the Reddit exodus happened. Some of the users chose the largest and the 'official' instance. And some of them are still there.

But lemmy.ml is operated by the same people who also run lemmygrad, some moderators seem to be the same. And unfortunately the whole Lemmy software platform is developed by "those" people.

I don't mind leaning a good amount to the left. I think a few socialist values would advance society and economy. Especially in places like the USA. And I've been called a communist for that. But being a tankie is beyond my comprehension. Why would anyone like Putin, defend the CCP and what they do to people. And I'm not overly bothered with the left vs right. It's the constant yelling, being super argumentative, doing brigading and spreading misinformation.

I think things are changing. I'm paying attention now to the usernames in the comments. And lemmy.ml isn't the dominating place anymore. Most of the usernames I see come from a broad range of instances. And that's a good thing. It's still a home to some big communities which needs to change, too. And I'm also waiting for a new software to come along, written by different people with a different motivation and agenda. In my opinion that's one of the next steps to emancipate ourselves. I mean if you don't like lemmy.ml you probably don't like the people making the decisions there. Which unfortunately are the same people who also write all of the Lemmy software. And their software development decisions reflect the same attitude. But also that's going to change. A few people are working on good alternatives which strive to listen to the community, invite people to participate and also finally implement proper moderation tools and a few other tweaks to foster good behaviour.

I like Lemmy. But this platform had a hard time from the start. And it's still struggling. Mixing technological difficulties and innate problems of growing a community with drama, bad decisions, waywardness and friction within the community on many different levels is just stupid and unnecessary. But I'm still waiting for progress and a bright future. I think Federation is one of the best approaches with some potential to make that happen.

I think the solid technological basis is what I'm a bit more concerned as of now. But apart from that I agree that it is us, the community who sets the tone and we decide who we want to listen to, nice people or people with behaviour disorders and an attitude. And it's a vicious circle. At some point a platform has an image and is bound to tip and attract more like-minded people and less normal ones. And the dynamics are there and we need to actively fight for a nice place.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well said, I agree with all of that. I'm considerably more to the left as well, that's part of why I hate lemmy.ml, because they're preventing actual good growth and movement in that direction.

Hopefully Mbin or some other one of the new forks/platforms takes off soon. I'm ready to move if necessary, I love the idea of a healthy Fediverse and I hope some day I can recommend it to friends instead of being too embarrassed to admit I use it because of all the propaganda.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sure. I personally am waiting for PieFed to come along. They seem to know what's important to address and also have some good ideas how to tackle it.

I'm 100% ready to support that and focus my engagement there. I'm pretty sure just changing the software codebase isn't changing too much... But I'd like some more independence from the few people currently doing everything.

And that's also what I've done. I haven't recommended Lemmy to friends and family, yet. And I've refrained from running my own instance, too. Despite having the server ready for that.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks I'll keep an eye on it. Sad to be eager to abandon ship already, but it's not surprising that the fediverse will have some growing pains. The core value and promise of healthy social media is still there and I love it.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago

I mean the great thing about this architecture is, we don't need to abandon ship. I'm deliberately waiting for something that will be compatible with it. And it'll be the same community. Just a different software with a few much needed things on top.

And I'm kind of passionate about it in the first place, because I like this place. And we have to pay attention not to fall out with each other about details. Sometimes it's just not easy.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"Everyone I disagree with is a shill and all ideas I disagree with are propaganda"

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Mocking me instead of responding to what I said is a good indicator you have no reasonable response.

[–] hark@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

It's a good indicator that what you said was worthy of mockery. Mockery is a reasonable response for someone who thinks everyone you disagree with is a shill and that all ideas that you disagree with are propaganda.

[–] h3ndrik@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Well, they're a bit over the top and oversimplifying things in my opinion. But you're also not contributing anything of value. You could instead add your perspective if it's different. I mean I'd probably read it and it'd get us ...anywhere?...

[–] Soullioness@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I'm all for defederating Hexbear, but lemmy.ml is absolutely huge compared to Hexbear. To motivate the community to do that you'd need quite a bit of proof. Or at least something rather compelling. Do you have any proof of what you're referring to?

[–] ArmokGoB@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I blacked out irrelevant information.

[–] Hubi@feddit.de 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

This is less about the instance as a whole. The !worldnews@lemmy.ml mods are notoriously terrible. It's best to just avoid the community altogether.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

Asking for proof of what is an open secret on lemmy seems disingenuous.

I think that instances like hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml are very bad advocates for Lemmy and will most likely end up damaging it more than anything else, keeping the "normies" out.

They argue in Bad faith, say the most radical stuff they can think of, and purge anything bad said about totalitarian regimes they idolize. China, Russia, Iran, all considered victims of the evil west..

Uyghur camps > not happening
Tiannamen square > Just some peaceful protests
invasion of Ukraine > NATO forced Russia to do it

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Check my history, I called them out for the NATO one today and they threw all sorts of random shit at me that was off the central point, just looking for a mistake in my wording.

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

Yep. They were claiming that Putin invaded Ukraine to stop fascists. And that they were liberators. I was like, why would one fascist care what other fascists do? In the US, our fascist, wealthy Republicans largely supported Hitler till pearl harbor. But I did agree with them that the Soviet Union absolutely liberated many countries against their will post WWII. And that those countries still hold it against them to this day.

The gulags were mentioned and they were like, but but but America jails more! To which I told them that was bad. But the West doesn't kill millions of prisoners the way they did. And all for political dissent, reminding them of just two weeks ago when Putin had Navalny killed for political dissent.

The absurd thing is, I'm one hundred percent down for Marxism. And largely agree politically with his theory plus some modernization. So technically we would agree on a lot of things there. It's just the Engles and Lenin bullshit I disagree with, and has shown to have failed. Or caused their downfall historically. But they are primarily leninists, dedicated ideologically to authoritarians and strongmen above all reality.

[–] Paragone@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

IF lemmy.ml is admin'd by the Lemmy devs, themselves,

AND their ideology/prejudice is being obstructed by the Lemmy-verse,

THEN wouldn't it be rational for them to engineer-in to Lemmy, itself, protections for their ideology?

Breaking the Fediverse's ability to "manage" them?

or breaking the Fediverse's ability to have any alternative-ideology be its core??

I'm thinking they could either adulterate privacy, deliberately, or they could force blocking to be porous, or something..

IOW, I'm thinking that it is strategically-incompetent to allow tankies to own our core tech, exactly as it is strategically-incompetent to allow right-wing highjackers-of-our-countries to do so.

[–] Stamets@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I was banned from lemmy.ml for posting a meme about the fact that gay characters are removed from movies in China. Not even by a mod. By an admin. I'm not remotely surprised they're pro-shitheap in general

[–] dandroid@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is an admin on lemmy.ml that seems to be banning anyone who says anything negative about China. If I'm thinking of the right person, they are also a large contributor to the Lemmy codebase. That person is why I stopped donating to the Lemmy devs.

[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This kind of stuff is making me consider stopping my donations to the Lemmy project, and instead donating to the Sublinks drop-in replacement developed by the programming.dev instance admins

[–] jgrim@discuss.online 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Hey, I'm the founder of Sublinks. It's a huge collaboration of several major Lemmy instances like lemmy world, beehaw, discuss.online, programming.dev, and quite a few others that wish not to be named until the release.

Some admins are directly working on the project while others are providing other types of support. @Ategon@programming.dev is certainly a major contributor and has helped develop the new front end in many major ways. You can follow some progress updates here: !sublinks@discuss.online

We have several different teams of developers:

API / Java
Front-end / JS/CSS/HTML
Federation / GoLang
Libraries / JS
Requirements gathering and organization
Design & Graphics - UI/UX
Lemmy to Sublinks migration tools

There is an active community on Matrix where all of us chat: https://matrix.to/#/#sublinks:discuss.online if anyone is interested in joining. We also have weekly touch bases to discuss progress and next steps. There are tons of people contributing.

We are currently taking donations only through Github: https://github.com/sponsors/sublinks if you're truly interested. We're all working on this part-time in our free time and making fantastic progress.

Let me know if you have any questions!

[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 months ago

Thank you for the extra info and clarification!

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Hexbear loves to dogpile as well. I've seen a couple of raiding threads linking to other threads in Lemmy.ml making fun of whoever. But in reality they're just directing people over there to shit on someone. At least, that's what I saw last year, so I'm very distrusting of them.

That and the Lemmy.ml AMA thread where one admin was all buddy buddy with Hexabear users during their federation.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I abandoned an old account because Hexbear bullies followed me around and downvoted everything. Come to think of it, I haven't posted a single thing since then, and I had a bunch of posts with hundreds of votes.

[–] Sootius@lemmy.world -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

This literally cannot be true, because hexbear accounts cannot downvote.

[–] fuckingkangaroos@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

If so maybe it was lemmy.ml, I get them confused sometimes

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I would like to see proof of how a community doing its own thing of sharing their radical views on their instance is damaging.

I haven't seen any rampant behavior of lemmy.ml users going to other instances and dogpiling certain posts or comment section. That may be defederation worthy.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The denial of having seen it yourself, is something I don't believe. Therefore I don't believe you made your reply in good faith.

Not all of lemmy.ml is a cesspool filled with poisonous cretins, but they (tankies) control the instance at conversational, moderation and administration level. So it will not change, only get worse.

Just like we see with the MAGAts... Once you start drinking your own coolaid.. the sky is the limit.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The denial of having seen it yourself, is something I don't believe.

If it's so rampant that you find it unbelievable I haven't seen it, then it must be very easy to prove. Can you please provide a proof?

but they (tankies) control the instance...

It's their instance. That's not proper grounds for defederation in my opinion, when the damage is contained within their instance.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

As I stated in my preface, no thank you.

And if it is contained in their instance.. it does not matter that the borders are guarded by deFederation.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol -1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

No worries. I never expected you to have the proof anyways, but I wanted readers to be aware that you don't.

[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

That's fair. I think most people can make up their own minds looking at the thread, posts contents and then their own experience in the .ml scape compared to the rest of Lemmy.