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.

  • downpunxx@fedia.io
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    6 months ago

    try posting any pro jewish and/or pro israeli, anywhere on lemmy or kbin instances (watch the votes for this comment, lol)

    • flamingos-cant@feddit.uk
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      6 months ago

      What do you mean by “pro Jewish”? I doubt a comment like “Jewish people are human beings that deserve respect” would get you downvoted.

      • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        That one no, but there are plenty of leftists in the fediverse that can’t understand the concept of “Zionism is not Judaism.” And saying such gets you down voted because lol.

        • flamingos-cant@feddit.uk
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          6 months ago

          I haven’t seen that myself, but I’m sure some of them exist and they’re dumb for thinking that. The person I’m replying to, though, is clearly taking the position that anti-Zionism = antisemitism.

          • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Not sure if you mean me by “person you’re replying to” or someone else. I believe it’s someone else but it’s a little bit of a confusing sentence.

            Either way, it’s been a fun couple of months since this bullshit started. With all kinds of dumb takes and arguments. It’s enough to make someone say “oyvey”

    • Makhno@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Yeah cause most people on here don’t like ethnocentric genocidal states. Sorry to burst your little bubble ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

      • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        Holy fuck.

        Zionism (the political policy supporting the genocide) is not Judaism. How would I know? I’m a Jew and I abhore the Palestinian genocide. Nothing in the Jewish religion supports what is going on nor does anything in our religion say “go be ZIONISTS and kill people”.

          • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That’s possible, the statement is a bit ambiguous as to which part they are "whomp whomp"ing to.

        • Microw@lemm.ee
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          6 months ago

          How exactly can a political policy support anything? It’s the people who call themselves after an ideology who support it. Not an abstract ideology that a guy invented over 100 years ago.

          • toasteecup@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            That’s a fair question.

            In consideration, take the Jim Crow laws from the USA. These laws enforced racial segregation and allowed for abject racism and abhorrent conditions/treatment of black people. In short, they supported racism.

            Now one could say “but the people were the ones to carry it out” which sure, but then we might as well start asking ourselves how much government really matters and other philosophical questions. I don’t think the people are innocent, but to focus on your question, that’s an example of how political policy and laws can support things. The laws enable the legal environment, the people then carry it out.

    • stormesp@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      First, its obvious that anything pro israeli is going to be met with backslash when they are doing a freaking genocide. Second, downvoting is not censoring, is just people saying they disagree with you or your comment is just stupid/non helpful

    • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
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      6 months ago

      If people disagree with me and downvote my irrelevant lie they actually hate Jews fucking gottem

    • DefederateLemmyMl@feddit.nlOP
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      6 months ago

      Getting downvoted is one thing. There is definitely a certain bias in the wider fediverse community on this topic, so it’s normal that your comments aren’t received well. It isn’t manipulative and probably an accurate reflection of what the community thinks.

      What lemmy.ml is doing is more insidious though. They are manipulating the discussion by actively muzzling users with dissenting opinions.

    • dezmd@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      I’ll argue that crocodile tears deserve downvotes, as do bullies.

      Im pro jewish, Im pro Israeli, but im so anti-injustice that I’m willing to stand up to anyone pushing for or acting as a pro-war Israel supporter, or jewish as an Israeli identity when it comes to being prowarfare, when they still support what has quickly evolved into a politically strategic genocide against palestinians. Hamas deserved what it got in the immediate aftermath of October 7, but after 2 weeks then 3 weeks then a month then 2 months it showed that despite all of Israels’ military and civilian efforts of having an experienced security apparatus steeped in information warfare and threat containment, they didnt have the effective strategic competence to actually wipe out Hamas without having to constantly murder civilians.

      But they went ahead and kept on fucking killing.

      So now, they keep moving goal posts for any chance of peace. Its not a new strategy, but it has far more violent consequences and only further spreads fervor for more violence. Peace begets peace. One side doesn’t get to play that against the other like a ping pong match and expect objective obervers to fall for either side’s propaganda.

      This is all revenge without justice now.

      Take your foot off the throttle.

    • FaceDeer@fedia.io
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      6 months ago

      There’s going to be bubbles everywhere. I’ve been called a troll and downvoted heavily in various communities because I don’t hate Microsoft or AI in general, for example.