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.
Lemmy.ml, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, has consistently been accused of improper Federation practices and many instances have decided to ban one or both of the latter by default, with many individual users having already gone further to block the former as well. However, many individual users on lemmy.ml seem unaware of the accusations of the practices of their admins, and some people go so far as to see lemmy.ml as a sort of default instance on the Fediverse.
This discussion promotes wider knowledge of the situation and what might be done about it in the future, in order to e.g. not turn away new potential Federation members (Fedizens?:-) that could otherwise associate what happens on that instance as something relating to the Fediverse as a whole.
for general-purpose ones - arguably the best approach - visit a site like https://lemmyverse.net/ to see those that have the most activity on them and might be closest to you.
Do NOT get mislead though by the community / instance descriptions, e.g. midwest.social says that it is for “leftists in the Midwest USA”, but what it means by “leftists” is not the common usage (especially for people in the Midwestern USA, who would interpret it like “progressive liberal” or some such) and rather more extreme forms such as full-on communism. Similarly, hexbear.net never bothers to enforce their own Code of Conduct (the only time they remember the human is when you say something they agree with - any other time the human is fair game to be dunked on!). But it is like watching Fox News: regardless of what they say, pretty quickly you get a sense that something is a bit “off” when you visit these places:-).
lemmy.ml is much harder to get a read on though, hence the linked discussion. It does not say that it is leftist, or even has any instance description that I can see - they just call themselves “Lemmy” as if that is sufficient, with no disambiguation between it and the software that runs on it or any acknowledgement that the rest of the Fediverse exists. Ironically lemmygrad.ml is doing better these days at more accurately portraying what it is about, with a communist flag and manifesto - that honesty is appreciated, by me at least, as it shows an intellectual capacity to realize that other viewpoints exist and thus to distinguish self vs. nonself, unlike what lemmy.ml does (not).
I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don’t know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).
My comment above is pretty much my recommendation.
I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don’t know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).
For the transfer of communities, there is a tab in the user settings to export your settings (including subscriptions) to a JSON file. You can then import it to your new account.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works
I have hopped around a lot myself - @Blaze@reddthat.com is there a particular post to recommend reading in this regard?
My suggestion at this point might be to:
Do NOT get mislead though by the community / instance descriptions, e.g. midwest.social says that it is for “leftists in the Midwest USA”, but what it means by “leftists” is not the common usage (especially for people in the Midwestern USA, who would interpret it like “progressive liberal” or some such) and rather more extreme forms such as full-on communism. Similarly, hexbear.net never bothers to enforce their own Code of Conduct (the only time they remember the human is when you say something they agree with - any other time the human is fair game to be dunked on!). But it is like watching Fox News: regardless of what they say, pretty quickly you get a sense that something is a bit “off” when you visit these places:-).
lemmy.ml is much harder to get a read on though, hence the linked discussion. It does not say that it is leftist, or even has any instance description that I can see - they just call themselves “Lemmy” as if that is sufficient, with no disambiguation between it and the software that runs on it or any acknowledgement that the rest of the Fediverse exists. Ironically lemmygrad.ml is doing better these days at more accurately portraying what it is about, with a communist flag and manifesto - that honesty is appreciated, by me at least, as it shows an intellectual capacity to realize that other viewpoints exist and thus to distinguish self vs. nonself, unlike what lemmy.ml does (not).
I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don’t know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).
My comment above is pretty much my recommendation.
Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn’t work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works