One of the biggest topics of these days is that of mods in lemmy.ml banning and censoring people because they’re Tankies. This has had a rather sizeable discussion of people agreeing and even arguing for defederating ml. I’m sure a lot of people are arguing from good intentions, but there’s also bad faith actors among them, as I will try to show in this post. The original post was based on the moderation history of the ml instance so I respond in a similar fashion.
I browsed through the discussion for a while, and stumbled upon a comment of someone who had created an instance in response, namely de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone The original post in about the moderation in ml has to do with the Tiananmen Square Massacre, so I decided to make a few posts in this new instance about other historical facts which are less discussed, but that we should remember too, namely the Bengal Famine and the US support of fascism in Spain.
Initially these posts were well received and had some upvoted, but after a while I got a notification that one of them had been banned. To my surprise, I looked at the mod log of the instance and found this. So, both posts being about historical atrocities committed by capitalist countries were either banned or locked, and I had been banned from the community altogether for the reason “commie?”
I checked through the admin’s history of comments and found this.
Is this admin, who censors posts that talk about historical grievances committed by capitalism, who pins “fuck Tankies” to the instance, really a person without an agenda trying to protect a community from a supposed malignant moderation, or is it someone with an agenda trying to call everyone to the left of centrism a Tankie?
We should, in my opinion, be careful with accusing and polarising one of the biggest communities in Lemmy away, which is full of non-political content, and really examine what’s going on and what agenda there is behind it.
All yall political obsessed ppl have no business running any social media lol
If anyone wants proof that this post is in absolutely bad faith and malicious, read ops comments defending USSR. The criticism of the other server could may as well be valid but it is impossible to know if your posts were taken down because the were critical of US or because it was obvious it was an alt for tankie propaganda. I do wish the admin of the instance knew the difference between commie and tankie though, as the first one does not warrant a defensive response and the other has an immoral agenda. Too bad many modern western communists totally swallow the authoritarian pill.
Hehe, you reminded me of this amazing song. Thanks. And no, I didn’t reply to the wrong thread. But at the end of the song she says “beware of me”, which is quite fitting for this thread, I feel.
really a person without an agenda trying to protect a community from a supposed malignant moderation, or is it someone with an agenda trying to call everyone to the left of centrism a Tankie?
this is a weird false dichotomy. if they have an agenda, why must it be “everyone left of center”?
I have absolutely had anti-tankie comments deleted on Lemmy.ml. I literally just said something like “Hexbear is a bunch of tankies” and it got deleted.
That being said, I wouldn’t support defederation just because they have some annoying mods.
Edit: a couple other points. OP has a 3 day old account that isn’t from ml but is named in reference to Lenin. They posted anti-US imperialism stuff to a community dedicated to complaining about ml and tankies. Thats just off topic and spamming a community. I suspect OP might originally be from ml
Read their comments. It is obvious they are a hardcore propagandist.
Yeah, even just in this post, they started engaging in bath faith arguments about how they “found an empty community” and all they did was “make a post.”
.ML already defederated from my instance, they did my work for me
Lucky
Politics is endangering the whole Lemmy, with instances defederated because of their political views and a lot of censorship.
Calm down folks! This is a web forum, people should be free to share what they think (without harassing anyone) without being censored, creating a biased platform.
I’m not into non-free-speech instances (like lemmy.world), but I do understand and respect their decision because it MAY decrease harassment between users. But please don’t defederate with everyone otherwise it would still be a biased platform. Let people choose what to see and just ban spam and real harassment (I’ve used too much this word).
I’m not into politics myself and it drives me crazy that we can’t rely on fine communities because they are on instances defederated by big instances because of their political views.
People should be welcome and free to discuss just about anything, authoritarian governments and their propagandists should be kicked the fuck out.
I’m not into politics myself and it drives me crazy that we can’t rely on fine communities because they are on instances defederated by big instances because of their political views.
I didn’t realize genocide apologia and using admin powers to push it was such a minor concern.
Indeed, defederation as the instance level should really be a a last resort, especially now that we have user-level muting of instances.
I’m not into politics myself and it drives me crazy that we can’t rely on fine communities because they are on instances defederated by big instances because of their political views.
To be honest it’s not always politics, Beehaw didn’t defederate for political reasons but lack of moderation tools
To be honest, when I saw the title of the community, I knew something like this was going to happen
This doesn’t tell the devastating story I think you were hoping it would tell. Your posts there, while not wrong and not even necessarily disagreed with by the people there, were off topic and obviously just an attempt at whataboutism.
Whilst we’re on the topic of bad faith actors, you seem to be intent on drumming up drama by posting things that you know are off topic, that you know are likely to get you removed and then cry foul about it here. Yes, the term “commie” as a synonym for tankie is wrong and a little concerning, but you’re not making a strong case here.
Maybe they are some shitbag centrist, who knows. That doesn’t change the fact that the tankie instances are doing tankie things completely consistent with the behaviour of tankie mods which are notorious to anyone with experience of them either here, on reddit or elsewhere.
Your posts there, while not wrong and not even necessarily disagreed with by the people there
They were the most upvoted posts in the community, so no, they weren’t disagreed at all
were off topic
How can it be off-topic? There’s no declared purpose of the community in the sidebar other than a few rules, and were literally the first posts of the community
and obviously just an attempt at whataboutism
Making an entirely new post in an entirely new community is an attempt at whataboutism? I happen to be Spanish and to take the issue of fascism very seriously, since my ancestors suffered it directly and I still suffer its consequences. What part of making a new post about it is whataboutism when I’m not even comparing it to anything??
posting things that you know are likely to get you removed
Wait, a post about fascism in Spain, and a post about a famine in India, are going to get me removed? Do you realize what you’re saying? People aren’t allowed to talk about other international grievances for how long exactly after the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre without getting accused of whataboutism, being Tankies, and getting banned? Do you realize how anti-communist discourse works?
the term “commie” as a synonym for tankie is wrong
That’s not what they did. They banned me for being a communist, not a tankie, they didn’t use it as a synonym.
the behaviour of tankie mods
I’m not here to argue about that, that’s a topic that has been discussed a lot already in the original post, I’m here to talk about bad faith actors jumping in the supposedly anti-tankie reaction to ban anti-imperialism content and anything that smells of communism.
They were the most upvoted posts in the community, so no, they weren’t disagreed at all.
I just want to point out that you have said in another comment that they were the first posts, so it’s not exactly surprising that they were the most upvoted at least at one point in time.
Beyond that this is such transparent concern trolling and your posts were so obviously off topic, and your attempts to feign ignorance so woefully unconvincing that they don’t even bear responses. Anyone who thinks this is a scandal is already a tankie like you, volodya ilich, meaning they can’t see this for the transparent bullshit that it is. That kind of credulity is a requirement for becoming a tankie in the first place.
I cannot imagine anybody being convinced by this.
a tankie like you
…and there we go, the magic word to end all discussion in this platform. You guys keep disregarding any and all criticism of capitalism and accusing it of whataboutism and tankieism. Again, how many days have to pass from whichever commemoration of a heinous act committed by a communist project until people can discuss the problems of capitalism and imperialism without fear of being accused of being tankies?
Now you’re conflating tankies with anticapitalism in general, another classic tankie trope. You don’t have a monopoly on the concept, although you love to pretend you do because the only way your ideas could have any legitimacy is if it is literally a binary choice between neoliberal capitalism and what amounts to state capitalism. Just like in your mind it’s a binary choice between US imperialism and red imperialism.
No thanks, I’ll take my actual anticapitalism and anti-imperialism instead of a red flag any day.
You don’t seem to have much self-awareness about this, so I’ll just repeat it: you are not convincing anyone. Let it go. Take the L. I’m sure any attempt to rebutt this will just be you showing your butt all over again. I doubt you’ll listen to this because myopic, tone-deaf self-righteousness seems to be another tankie trait, but at least I tried.
your ideas
My ideas being “stop doing supporting fascist dictatorships and stop creating famines in Bengal”, right? Because what else do you know about my ideas from the post?
Just like in your mind it’s a binary choice between US imperialism and red imperialism
Again, you’re making things up and accusing me of things I haven’t said, and accusing me of being a tankie because you assume my ideology to be a given one. You may think I’m tone deaf, you may think my critique here is not legitimate, and all of that’s cool, but how am I a tankie?!
Holy shit, you’re still pretending you’re not a tankie. Not a tankie, but you chose the name volodya ilich, which is a deep cut about Lenin’s childhood nickname.
And you’re still pretending you don’t understand what was wrong with your posts. Who are you saying this for? Do you actually think anyone believes you? Is this an elaborate troll? I wish I knew but this is beyond parody. If you are doing parody: you didn’t make it obvious enough. I’m so sorry.
If you think a reference to Lenin makes you a Tankie, you have no idea what tankies are and you’re just blatantly anti-communist, that’s the issue here. Thinking that Lenin is an admirable Marxist theorist, doesn’t mean you support tanks invading Hungary, and you’re either mistakingly or willingly conflating communism with authoritarianism, which is absolute bullshit.
You guys keep disregarding any and all criticism of capitalism
Spend three seconds on Lemmy and you’ll see how wrong this is.
You posted where you and your content were obviously not welcome, and you got banned. I don’t think that is the work of a bad faith actor at all.
As explained in my post, the community had no content prior to my upload.
This is where the nature of federation really shines. .ml is one of the biggest lemmy communities? It doesn’t have to be. In fact as lemmy is still so new and various situations continue to shake out I would wager that in a few years time the top current communities will be replaced. And later on those will be replaced. Censorship resistance is built into ActivityPub by virtue of its decentralization.
And I fully agree with that, it’s good that the platform is resilient against censorship. I just disagree with jumping on the bandwagon of the people who accuse people of being tankies and then proceed to censor anti-western imperialism historical posts.
I agree with you! These guys are destroying lemmy.
Fucking hell lmao y’all need to go back to reddit this is straight up high school drama behaviour.
Grow up, I’m serious. Of course you’re gonna get banned for brigading into a community and going “muh tiannamen square???” like that meme hasn’t been run into the fucking ground already.
Make a new community on a new instance, it really is that simple! and if people have issues with the moderation on lemmy.ml (they clearly don’t, beyond a few people who demand everyone listens to their concern trolling) then they’ll move, but otherwise you’re gonna have to accept that people really don’t give a rats ass about the united states foreign ministry and its opinions.
