PSA: Alternatives for the most popular lemmy.ml communities
from barsoap@lemm.ee to fediverse@lemmy.world on 07 Jun 13:22
https://lemm.ee/post/33981721
from barsoap@lemm.ee to fediverse@lemmy.world on 07 Jun 13:22
https://lemm.ee/post/33981721
For all your boycotting needs. I’m sure there’s some mods caught in lemmy.ml’s top 10 that are perfectly upstanding and reasonable people, my condolences for the cross-fire.
- !memes@lemmy.world and !memes@sopuli.xyz. Or of course communities that rule.
- !asklemmy@lemmy.world
- !linux@programming.dev. Quite small, plenty of more specific ones available. Also linux is inescapable on lemmy anyway :)
- !programmer_humor@programming.dev
- !world@lemmy.world
- !privacy@lemmy.world and maybe !privacyguides@lemmy.one, lemmy.one itself seems to be up in the air. !fedigrow@lemm.ee says !privacy@lemmy.ca. They really seem to be hiding even from another, those tinfoil hats :)
- !technology@lemmy.world
- Seems like !comicstrips@lemmy.world and !comicbooks@lemmy.world, various smaller comic-specifc communities as well as !eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
- !opensource@programming.dev
- !fuckcars@lemmy.world
(Out of the loop? Here’s a thread on lemmy.ml mods and their questionable behaviour)
threaded - newest
Interesting list
For another thread on this topic: lemmy.world/post/16235541
About !privacyguides@lemmy.one, I posted on !meta@lemmy.one: lemmy.world/post/16273266, the instance and community might be a bit abandoned.
For comics, isn’t !comicstrips@lemmy.world an option?
privacyguides does seem to have a decent number of active users, comicstrips seems to be more specialised than comics.
I agree, that’s what I mentioned in that thread. But still, we might want to see if the instance is still managed, or if it will go bust like lemmy.film or iusearch.fyi
!comicstrips@lemmy.world content is very similar to !comics@lemmy.ml.
The more specific one is !comicbooks@lemmy.world
Sounds reasonable, edited a bit.
Nice, thanks!
We getting one of these a day now?
If you don’t like it, petition your admins (via posts on your own instance) to defed.
If they don’t want to, find a new instance that does, or stay and block their instance so you don’t see their subs.
If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they’re more active.
I just don’t see the point of these posts when most Lemmy users have been around for a while and know what lemmy.ml is like by now.
Be the change you want to see, post in those communities yourself instead of these daily announcements threads on an instance that’s already defederating apparently
Where has LW announced that they would be defederating?
Which is what they are trying to achieve by promoting those communities in this post?
People kept saying it one of the recent daily threads people have been making.
You think posting repetitively here is the same as:
How does that make sense?
But if you want to move discussion off their communities make posts in those alternatives. That would actually do something.
These posts are Susan G Kommen levels of difference making…
Lemm.ee will not defederate over tankie mods, there’s a specific policy. As to the change I want to see: Guess what I did just before I posted the list, go through all my subscription and clean it of lemmy.ml.
I very much doubt there’s going to be one a day, these kinds of things tend to ebb and flow. Also it would’ve been much faster to ignore this thread than to reply.
Ok?
So if you disagree with their policy enough, you can change instances.
Or you can stay, and build up those alternative communities instead of asking people to do it for you.
Like, the logic behind this isn’t difficult, and I thought you’d be able to grasp it.
That’s why I bothered to reply, instead of just blocking you. Same chance I gave some of the lemmy.ml subs before blocking their instance.
You’re handling it about as well
I don’t disagree with lemm.ee’s policy.
Not everyone wants to block the clowns. I enjoy the show.
Oh it’s givesomefucks, the other clown!
You can move your home instance where you log in? Explain how. That was going to be one of things I suggest you could do in future updates.
Not that I would move right now. I’m happy on Lemmy.World but I’d like the option.
I mean. Since you asked so politely…
You can export your settings in a .json file, then create a new account on a new instance an import your settings.
But like, you need to try and be better when you’re asking people for help.
<img alt="" src="https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/39b26764-c559-45fb-be24-f6d68c8ae419.mp4">
reddthat.com/signup
But…why? Whats the advantage of reddthat over lemmy.world?
Also, when I saw Homer I thought it was going to be him saying “Oooooooooo!!! Explain how!”
Which nobody seems to have gotten my reference…the other guy even got offended.
I see the same article posted about 15 times for three days, maybe that’s the same thing going on here.
I got here about a month ago. I only found out what lemmy.ml was like BECAUSE of these kinds of posts.
You should read the sidebar’s at least, they’re heavily biased, but upfront about it.
It’s been their safe space longer than most other instances have been around. It’s also a good idea to look at modlogs when coming across a new sub/instance.
Not everything shows up there though. Like if someone is banned and has all their content removed, it won’t all show up in the log. But when individual comments are removed, it’ll show you what was said.
Don’t just assume everyone online will be upfront about their biases
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Feel free to be the change you want to see. You are telling OP to stfu about their issues and simply move on rather than complain, yet you seem to be doing the opposite of that yourself, hrm…
If you meant something otherwise, it was not explained well imho.
OOTL on this one, what happened on lemmy.ml?
lemm.ee/post/33872586
Criticizing China on lemmy.ml goes about as well as evangelizing crypto on awful.systems. Join an instance that shares your values or roll your own. Know your audience or get the hammer.
It’s like a huge chunk of the population out here has never experienced a forum before.
Agreed. But to be fair, there’s never been a forum like the fediverse before. People are still learning how to navigate this complex, multifaceted space. It’s not just one audience, it’s many different ones.
It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.
Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, edit: where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.
“Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.
The sad part is that this situation was entirely predictable a year ago.
The Lemmy devs (who also run lemmy.ml) made no secret of who they are and what they believe. Especially dessalines.
I do think they have made a very good piece of software. And I think we’re better off here than on Reddit. At least it is more difficult for one asshole to ruin everything. We have tools to block people and instances, so it doesn’t matter as much even if they’re in charge.
I worry that if lemmy.ml continues to be run the way that it is, then it will bleed over into the software side, and we would be forced to fork Lemmy. So far though, despite running lemmy.ml like assholes, the actual development seems fine – not too different from any other open source project (I only remember that one issue where dessalines completely failed to understand why a user would want to block an instance).
The irony is that, despite creating a tool with what seems like very socialist principles (it gives users & communities a lot of power, and doesn’t centralize that power with one person), those principles are often lost on the devs in favor of authoritarianism. Hence the term: “tankie”.
Oh he knows why, because he IS why. He wants to pretend he doesn’t because he knows people will use it to block the instances that force the politics he enjoys. Nobody is fucking trying to escape star trek lol, it’s him and his ilk and he knows it, and since their goal is evangelism (they have to save our souls with authoritarian dictatorships!) he doesn’t want the evangelism machine shut down.
Fascism is quite capable at achieving its goals - seeing as how it is not limited by any of that pesky “morality” that slows others down.
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I don’t even admit to anyone that I use Lemmy, too much political extremism and propaganda.
Within a couple weeks of signing up for Lemmy I was told I’d “get the wall”, and had to abandon an account because Lemmy.ml users followed me around and downvoted everything I posted (mostly funny memes).
But after I blocked hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml, I started to forget that all of that was even there, though I internally made a kind of automatic mental block for Lemmy.ml too (like WHAT!? oh nvm it’s from them…). I shouldn’t forget though, that that is what a new user would see… thus it would be quite unfriendly for me to bring fresh meat to the fascist audience for their amusement.
Listening to instance admins, I just don’t know why they refuse to see those campaigns of brigading as you described happened to you (can you prove it btw, like if the account still exists, and you find a way to view downvotes - does Mbin let you? I tried but maybe it needs a login to do that and it appears greyed out to me without one…), and they say things like “they don’t affect our users” (bullshit, you just perfectly described a situation that I suspect happens all the time where it does), and basically act like bullying and intimidation is not a thing that exists in the world. Like, if you ever say anything to anger someone on lemmy.ml, then that’s your fault and you deserve whatever comes your way after that!?
Tbf, there are instances - e.g. reddthat.com - that disable downvotes entirely. But I don’t want to simply become insensitive to everyone else’s disapproval around me - rather I want the system to work properly so that I am only getting disapproval from people who I either respect or at least are neutral, i.e. not fascists who abuse the system bc they are allowed to by inattentive admins.
If there was an instance somewhere that had defederated from the Big 3 Axis powers - hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and lemmy.ml - I would likely join it, and promote it, and recommend Lemmy to people irl again. Otherwise, I will either leave the Fediverse if it gets too bad, or far more likely simply block lemmy.ml but then only enjoy the Fediverse privately rather than as something I am allowed to share bc of how poor and off-putting the initial user experience is.:-(
It is extremely sad how heavily this aspect hinders our continued growth - even if Reddit does something annoying like finally kills off old-reddit for good this time, are people really going to want to come here, so that instead of being exposed to the right-wing propaganda over there, they can be exposed to the fascism-disguised-as-leftism over here? Fascists are controlling everything, everywhere!?!? But we were supposed to be different, here. At least that’s what we told ourselves.
Yeah, well said. I’m not sure about seeing where downvotes come from, if I could it might be worth getting back into my abandoned account to provide more evidence that defederation is warranted.
Same. I want a system where everyone has an equal voice with limited censorship and a zero tolerance approach to governments or corporations spreading agendas.
The problem with “equal voice” is that those who are okay to resort to unethical behavior - like spinning up 1000 bots - can “win”, over those who constrain themselves to more ethical routes, of speaking or voting one-by-one. Obviously nobody is perfect, but game theoretical analysis shows us that the more unethical someone allows themselves to be, the more they can “game the system” - which DOES work, at least in the short-term.
iirc, blocking someone also prevents them from downvoting you. Though I’m not positive that that works when you, as an individual user, block an entire instance. So if there was lets say 10 people that follow you around downvoting literally everything that you do, blocking them would mean that either you would have put a stop to that, or else they would have to spin up additional bots to continue - which at least forces them to put in additional effort. Unless its an instance user block, in which case you no longer get notifications from their replies, but you can still see their comments, reply back to them, I think vote in either direction, etc. b/c that kind of blocking basically does very little to separate you away from them.
It seems to me that posting is inherently an unequal activity, compared to voting, b/c whereas when we do the former we expose ourselves to criticism, but others who use solely the latter can hide behind anonymity when they vote. Thus the system inherently is not “equal” at all, unless we could either post anonymously, or else if we could see who is doing the voting. I might not even mind if I got 40 down-votes, all from hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and lemmy.ml - I probably would wear that accomplishment as an achievement with pride:-) - but in that case I would want to know that that is the case, as opposed to 40 downvotes from non-brainwashed masses.
Yeah, I see equal voice as an important goal to strive for, but realize that’s difficult on anonymous social media. It seems like it’ll only get worse as LLMs improve.
You need to take a step back. You can’t see the forest for the trees. Our strength is in our diversity.
Hexbear defederated from us as we were discussing whether to vote on defederating them, which was a foregone conclusion. Our users can’t walk into their communities, because they are scared that we might poke a hole in their bubble. Perhaps these boogeymen that you envision are less interested in taking over the world, and more interested in simply having their own space on the internet.
It’s not nice to put words in someone else’s mouth. I will always protect my users against being brigaded. Hence why we were about to defederate hexbear before they beat us to the punch. But we aren’t being brigaded by lemmy.ml.
You actually believe Dessalines is taking money from the Chinese government? Come on dude, that’s absurd. Occam’s razor: he just doesn’t like when people say shit he doesn’t agree with, and petulantly bans them. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just an internet moderation saga that has played out a million times before.
You people are so lost up your own asses, you will never find yourselves. Conspiratorial nonsense driven by your McCarthyism 2.0 with a complete lack of self awareness.
But I guess I shouldn’t expect anything more from a NATO funded user and instance, right? The Heritage Foundation and CIA signing the checks over here?
Very worrying indeed.
Just going to address your first paragraph: I sincerely doubt that the devs are receiving money from a fascist government. I simply don’t think Lemmy is big enough yet to be on the radar of e.g., the Chinese government. Yes, maybe there are some Wumaos on here. My understanding is they get better training and autonomy these days, so it’s certainly possible. But most of the comments look more homegrown. I just doubt the Chinese government (or any similar government) would care to the point of trying to pay off devs, and it’s not their MO anyways.
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But you’re happy to spread this rumor around.
Doesn’t seem very responsible to spread that indeed.
It may have come from a hole in the ground. It may have come from the Pentagon. It may have come little green men from Mars. What are you smoking?
What kind of moldy McCarthyite garbage is this? If my Grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
If my Grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike.
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Thanks!
Some people got really butt hurt because of some mods in lemmy.ml
To be fair I did have a decent run in with some mods on .ml as well and I am not a fan of their practices.
I do however think the public shaming and calling for boycott is so wrong its not even funny. We‘re still talking about the people who made this here possible. Especially the derogatory use of the word „tankie“ is unacceptable imo.
I‘d prefer if people started debates and tried to find common ground instead. For the reason of decentralization I would like less popular „versions“ of the communities to thrive.
But the mods don’t allow that kind of discourse, that’s the whole problem.
Also, tankies are advocating for a society where I and those like me would be killed. If that’s not worthy of a derogatory term then what is?
Nothing is. Shaming and harassing others is not the solution. Instead we should let them advocate for whatever their ideal is. The same we let nazis have their own little „reich“ in their own homes. If they start breaking rules they get the same backlash as anyone else. Dont make it about „identity“.
Its dehumanizing and leads to hate and violence. Same as with psychopaths, narcissists, pedophiles, etc. These people are living creatures just as we are. Some of them are sick, some of them are dangerous. That does not mean they can be treated as lesser.
But that’s what’s happening now? They broke their own rules - not merely removing comments, but also mass-banning from communities people have never commented in before, and then deleting the mod log entries afterwards. The former is not ideal but expected, the middle is… extremely excessive and warrants all of this right there alone, but the latter bumps the whole matter up significantly to be outright disingenuous, so that “that side” making its case is no longer expected to yield any results, given the not only manipulative but outright deceptive practices that have been (allegedly) proven.
I do worry about the use of a pejorative term though. In thinking about it more, I waffle back and forth between it should never be done, vs. whether someone can “earn” that badge not by holding a belief but by their actions?
We should definitely respect their contributions to the code and actually I would guess that they may legit believe that what they are doing (supporting China by suppression of alternate viewpoints, using any means necessary including ones that violate and abuse their own code of conduct) is right. But that does not make it so.
I agree that if that happened (which I dont have the time nor the nerve atm) its very scary.
Most likely, as always on the internet, the truth is they have certain beliefs which are problematic and triggering, and they are programmers, not weathered social workers who can solve heated conflicts.
And then comes the most important part: they have not engaged in these alleged practices all the time so it is likely that bad coincidences came together and brought on the perfect storm on them/us.
I stand by my initial statement. We can condemn the actions, we can harshly disagree on ideology but we should refrain from dehumanizing them.
Have a good one. :)
Well, more to the point, it’s too late for us to test this all now. We’d have to spin up our own instances, watch all of the signals coming out, and compare those signals to what they used to be vs. then become. As someone did - with screenshots demonstrating the before vs. after. But we cannot now go back in time to confirm that particular instance, we’d have to catch a future occurrence.
Unless you meant the mass removals - but people have been complaining about that for quite awhile now iirc? This is not an isolated incident, by any means. For months now I have been defending Lemmy.ml to various random commenters across the Fediverse, citing how different it is from lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net (and truthfully, the situation is quite different, here being isolated more if not exclusively to the admins), but lately I have given up b/c the collective weight of all of these actions seems indefensible to me now, as a pattern of behavior.
I actually have compassion for them - as you say they are programmers not social workers, and if they truly want their goals of FOSS acceptance and socialist world-views to be exported around the world, then they are working against their own goals but do not see that. Put another way, they may truly believe the local Chinese propaganda, but in order to export their ideals to a global audience, it needs to be tempered with a greater mix of acceptance that people exposed to more Western-style media are accustomed to (where we are allowed to watch things like videos rather than be forced to read state-sponsored bulletins telling us what to believe).
But anyway, the removal reason is far from the point - it is the manner of the removal that concerns us so greatly. But sure, start up a dialog with them if you wish - you sound like a good person to initiate such, since you go to lengths to understand their POV:-).
Btw do you have any suggestions as an alternative to “tankie”? I am not 100% convinced that it is fully “dehumanizing”, but I do see where it is somewhere along the spectrum towards that goal. Would “fascist” or “authoritarian” work better?
This is also far from the first time .ml has been accused of manipulating the mod logs or federation database. It’s really just the first time they’ve been caught red handed, but I have definitely found a handful of my band not showing up in mod logs for whatever reason, but didn’t get a screenshot of the original log entry.
Thank you very much for sharing that history - that really helps me understand why people are not taking this seriously. If they “feel like” they have heard it all before, then they give their rote responses from the past, not realizing how things have changed.
And too there’s GIGO, where people that should have been banned were banned, but it’s still not a terribly persuasive happenstance to convince people who cannot handle the subtleties involved between the outcome vs. the method by which it was arrived at.
Google at one point was not evil, and people warning us not to put trust in them to make Android were solidly ignored. Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, all of it was the same. And look at us now. FAAFO. Well, now we’re seeing firsthand some very few glimpses of how bad it could ultimately get, for those companies.
But for lemmy.ml we are still in the early stages, where people are saying “but they write the code” (irrelevant), and “they aren’t evil” (we have proof, NOW), and “the Fediverse is still too small, let it grow first” (a horrible idea - for one thing it won’t grow as much this way and for another if it did then having so many communities held hostage on that instance would be even more difficult to fix than now). Oh, and another one I hear quite often is “lemmy.world has problems too”, which I’m not even going to dignify with a comment about. But the big ones are “only the admins are bad - not the users” (partly true but not entirely and quite frankly… if YOU want to ignore all the warning signs then that doesn’t mean that *I* should be forced to stay behind with you as well - particularly when user-level blocks are NOT the same as instance-level ones); and “but some of the biggest communities are there” (I mean, so what, go back to Reddit if you want that but… okay it is a more fair objection tbf).
I doubt many places will defederate lemmy.ml right now… but on the other hand, I see preparations paving the way for that to happen by removing the existing roadblocks, most notably reddthat.com/post/20197120. Though that too will require more than a little effort reaching out to each and every single community group of mods to begin the discussion about moving their communities, one by one. This fight against authoritarianism will be long, costly, and may never truly be won - e.g. even if Lemmy.ml gets defederated, the users of hexbear, lemmygrad, and it may simply hide out as alts elsewhere? - but it seems to me to be worth fighting? Though I may need to find at least one instance that actually does defederate from those Big Three Axis powers to use in the meantime.
Thank you 🙏 for your own efforts in combating these (mal)practices.
They’re still doing it now.
If you hear of an instance that has defederated from them, I would be interested to know. Otherwise, this OP at least seems to be helping prepare people for that eventuality even if not yet happening now.
So moderating their instance?
Where’s the evidence for this? I didn’t see that in the original post.
You are correct that it is not in the OP wording itself, but it came out as part of the discussion i.e. it is in the comment section if you want to read through that.
It is now getting significantly harder to find the comments I saw originally as lemmy’s UI decides now to hide comments by default, bc there are so very many on that thread, but to get you started, one is lemmy.world/comment/10461570, and another is lemm.ee/comment/12369094.
Even if the former issue was the result of that new feature being tested out on Lemmy.ml first (and perhaps having bugs causing issues with the mod log), the other issue remains that the modding in such occurrences is accused of being rather… “over-zealous”. As in why remove someone from a meme community, if they merely made a comment about China in a political community somewhere else on the same instance? What does someone being (potentially) incorrect in their facts have to do with being able to interact with people in a meme community that they have (reputedly) never commented in even so much as once? (presumably they must have interacted with it somehow, according to the wording of the new mod feature, so probably they did vote)
I acknowledge that tankies are humans with rights but I don’t acknowledge that those rights include not being called an accurate but slightly demeaning term that they don’t like. Particularly because their preferred terms for themselves are inaccurate.
Like I’m not going to stop calling fascists by that name even if they prefer to be called freedom-loving patriots or something. And I personally see the two ideologies as having a lot of similarities.
I agree with you on both accounts. Their preferred choices arent the same as pronouns and I think both authoritarian ideologies are similar and dangerous.
My point was solely that namecalling, derogatory words or slurs arent doing anything for anyone. They‘re just helping others hate us and us do unspeakable things to them and vice versa.
Dehumanizing is a precursor for genocide for a reason and that is why I think its a bad idea. Of course its just my opinion and I‘m perfectly fine if you disagree with it.
No, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and I do not fully disagree. But I think context matters. I like tanky because it helps people understand the dangers of the ideology more than other alternatives like communist or Marxist-Leninist or whatever. Is there more danger of violence against tankies or that their ideology may grow and cause violence against others? Right now I perceive the latter to be a bigger issue, and I don’t see any real risk of harm coming to them, at least in the social circles where my words have influence.
If there was a movement that sought to do physical harm to them (outside of a defensive context) then I would weigh that appropriately in my language. The term is a tool of persuasion and I deem that persuasion more important than any risk of dehumanization, which I do oppose and recognize as harmful.
I can see your point. Sadly we have ample evidence that others have thought the same about such terms and they have a bad precedent.
So thanks for discussing this in good faith. I like the way we discussed this as it often isnt what happens with others.
Have a good one. :)
Nice discussion
Where and why would you be targeted by them?
When they seized power as happened in Russia, China, and many other countries, they consistently murdered or enslaved dissidents. And they defend such practices to this day. I am an outspoken dissident in my current society and surely would be in their imagined future as well.
Not a fan either.
Are you on !fedigrow@lemm.ee? That’s a topic we discuss quite often there
Yep, the mod got way overboard in the situation that started all this shit. Banning a user in almost all lemmy.ml communities is too much.
It’s still going on.
There is no non-derogatory use of the word tankie. It’s been derogatory since the Prague and Hungarian uprisings, when it was coined.
Even if one were to come up with a new term that does not have negative connotations it would immediately soak up such connotations because it refers to counter-revolutionaries.
Tbf if I don’t call them “tankies” I’m going to call them “authoritarian evangelist pieces of human shit.” They can take their pick I suppose.
You can’t debate with .ml mods. They ban you if you disagree.
Thanks for sharing your opinion. I have made different experiences. You can debate them and they wont ban you if you act like an adult. What most mods (me included) wont accept is excessive drama, aggressive behavior, etc. obviously people make mistakes, some are outright dicks. But the generalization seems very far fetched.
I’ve seen the modlogs. There are mods there that ban people and use “Lib” as a reason. And other just use “rule 1” as a reason- which as we all know, is just a vague catch-all for “shit we don’t like.”
Besides that, a mod was recently busted banning people from communities they never even posted in. Just as recently as three hours ago- one of the idiot mods there banned someone from 45 communities.
That place is a shithole. I stand by it.
And thats your right. I dont object to that.
I‘m saying thats not a general rule for these or any mods/admins. I have personally had discussions with them and with some I‘m not on the best of terms. Yet I haven’t been banned anywhere from posting. Furthermore, i have seen a lot of posts and comments „just pointing out“ stuff and using derogatory words and populist language. I cant say I‘d watch that indefinitely myself.
Btw stating a rule as a ban reason does not seem suspicious to me. Feel free to disagree.
Okay man. I’m not going to argue with you. You can check the mod logs yourself if you wish. Nearly everyone that gets banned from there is banned for the reason “rule 1” and no other explanation.
It’s not there to be disagreed with. It’s a fact of the matter.
to me it was more the straw that broke the camel’s back. every rude and unreasonable interaction i have in here is with someone from .ml. it’s not even about their politics or beliefs, they’re just not pleasant to have around.
the second you try to engage them they throw the real arguments out for pedantry about definitions and using that to call people dumb instead of actually having meaningful discussion about ideas. they’re the worst kind of “it’s not my job to explain it to you, Google it” people too. like, i get the mindset, but it’s just not going to change anyone’s heart or mind. it’s not how you actually win an argument.
every person on Lemmy.ml argues like an annoying 14 year old atheist that just discovered Internet arguments and the think whole Internet is Christian. they’re just shitty to be around and basically never add anything meaningful to a discussion other than “you’re wrong and dumb”
Fair enough, is definitely not my experience and I have an account on .ml for about 1 year.
I could argue that I see more trolls on lemmy.world than any other instance, but that obvious: is the larger instance but probably the ratio troll/normal people is more or less the same than any other instance.
That’s a behaviour that I do not see ever on the communities that I participate(basically technology and linux)
I wonder if where you have your account affects how you notice where the trolls are from? Like I don’t notice trolls coming from .world much because I just see a username, where a troll from .ml is
username@lemmy.ml.That makes a lot of sense.
Maybe they see your ml account and hate you by association because of abuse they’ve suffered from other ml accounts
yeah, I’ll agree. the tech communities in there are not like that. it’s the political ones.
an example: they’ll say something off the wall about the Ukraine war and American support for it, you’ll reply with something that mentions the Americans that support and don’t support it among many other things, they’ll dog pile you for using the word “liberal” with the common American definition because apparently linguistic drift is illegal. theynever get off the subject and then never actually tell you their definition and how it differs.
that’s every political discussion with anyone from .ml involved. if it was just their own communities it would be fine, but it’s that they go out and do that with every community that doesn’t defederate.
imagine it this way; what if “the Donald” had broken off Reddit later and made one of the largest lemmy instances. they were perfectly cordial when you were in their funny dog pictures community, but they constantly act like trump supporters in every political thread.
obviously we’d all defederate with them. very few world even question that at this point.
that’s what this is. they’re just loud, and extreme, and annoying on this one subject. we’d rather not see the Linux main community hold us captive against excising the problem.
Brilliant. I’m saving this imagery for later.
My experience has similarities and differences - I don’t find .ml users as a whole to be shitty, but if there’s a shitty user, chances are pretty good that they’re from .ml rather than one of the smaller instances, World, or Kbin. And they’re almost always evangelical in nature - as a former evangelical, I recognize the type. The preconception of ultimate and indisputable correctness - they’re often willing to explain and honestly discuss their views, but not acknowledge any serious possible fault or flaw in them. The scriptures are holy, after all.
They swapped the opiate of the people for some synthetic Stalinist stuff.
Lemmy.ml is developed and admined by tankies. Recent allegations are that someone is censoring accounts that have previously made posts critical of China by moderating them across various magazines
I mentioned elsewhere but here’s a copy and paste:
It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.
Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.
“Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.
This weeks drama.
Didn’t we do this yesterday?
I guess this more a top 10 list than our extensive thread
I think it’s good to have regular outreach. I just subscribed to the linux community from this one.
The other post also has me considering moving my account to a different instance. There were some compelling arguments against centralizing on lemmy.world. (I don’t strongly disagree with the moderation here but I do somewhat disagree with centralizing admin power like on reddit.)
I wouldn’t mind seeing these regularly. But maybe it would be nice to have someone make specific accounts for that purpose so you can easily block them out of your feed.
Feel free to join us on !fedigrow@lemm.ee
Done! Thank you
I like to think of .world as a introduction point for the fediverse. I think it should be trigger happy with defederation to keep the instance approachable by the mainstream then let people choose other instances based on what they offer.
I moved to lemm.ee cos they d9nt defederate from many people and that aligns with my whole ideology on free speach.
Are our accounts portable yet? Until they are most people (especially contributors used to the fake internet points system) are going to stick with their first account with fake internet points.
U can export and import pfp and followed communities etc but not votes or posts.
Cool, TIL, just curious about what happens to the posts you’ve made, if you delete your old account?
Its the fediverse nothing ever gets deleted its shared across all federated peers its the one downside to moving away from centralisation.
Export/import subscriptions in your settings
There is no karma on Lemmy, no reason to stay attached
Yeah this is post 65534 on how lemmy.ml is bad, centralizing on lemmy.world is best. Two more and we’ll get a nice round number!
OpenMW’s official Lemmy community has been on lemmy.ml since 2021, way before lemmy.world existed (and most other instances, too), and way before there was any inter-instance drama. It’s becoming increasingly likely that it’s not going to be a suitable long-term home, but we’d be much happier if we could migrate the existing community rather than start from scratch with a new one. Is there any way to do that yet?
Migrating content over should be doable by a sufficiently tech-savvy admin, subscribers, I don’t think so.
Community migration is coming in future releases of Lemmy but right now it’s not possible.
Principally it is possible if you can iterate over all the posts and comments and inject them into the database of their new home.
That wont work at all. Each subscriber needs to get the update which is not a feature of Lemmy at the moment. Simply injecting posts will only copy over content.
I think the suggestion in whole was “do that specifically for the content, and for the users make a post on the old instance linking to the new, pin it and lock the community so the users have to migrate themselves, since dragging them with you is impossible currently.”
I had a look at your community, do you want to save post and comments?
If not, the easiest way is to announce on the current community where you are going to move, then lock it, so that people indeed move to the new one.
I did it from !casualconversation@lemmy.world to !casualconversation@lemm.ee, it worked quite well.
IMO organizations should self-host their official communities. If you’re going to move, it ought to be to something like !openmw@lemmy.openmw.org.
In addition to the obvious benefits of having admin control/being able to avoid moderation drama imposed by others, it also means you could have more than one community: maybe !openmw for general discussion, plus !modding, !development, etc.
+1, larger community projects really should try to spin up their own Lemmy hosting on whatever infra they already have for message boards
Rather !announcements@lemmy.openmw.org, !general@lemmy.openmw.org, !bugs@lemmy.openmw.org, … etc.
So much more flexibility for organizations to build structured communities!
We love to be the home of smaller communities, but for sure, any larger ones should look into running on their own setup. If you need help, drop us a line!
!openmw@lemmy.ml has less than 150 subscribers, so it’s definitely not large. We’re already swamped with infrastructure work for the stuff we already self-host, so I don’t think we’ll be running our own Lemmy instance any time soon.
Makes sense!
I enjoy OpenMW and I’m happy to host if you want, although my instance is basically just me and a few friends right now.
Please dont use lemmy.world alternatives. World is a much bigger problem in terms of centralization.
Are you on !fedigrow@lemm.ee? That’s a topic we discuss quite often there
I didnt know about it. Thanks for mentioning. Subscribed.
Nice, unfortunately you don’t have the comments on your instance but here’s an example thread about LW centralization:
reddthat.com/post/17950502
I will probably get the comments at some point. Its a matter of federation I guess. Thanks for the resource. Will check.
I don’t care how big .world gets because it’s the same thing with mastodon.social or pixelfed.social. Coming from primarily centralized services, people will always be looking for a “main” instance because that’s what their brains are used to and that’s what will help adoption. The ones who care will use another instance. As long as fedi has the users and not the proprietary alternatives, it’s fine. We can manage.
You’re partially right, but it would be better if users were evenly spread on many instances.
Imagine if one instance becomes so big and then they de-federate. For normal users, nothing would change, but then we would have created the new R*ddit
Haha, soviet union at its finest I suppose.
Is it possible to migrate my account to another Lemmy instance? Or would I have to start over?
You can migrate your subscriptions in the settings (import / export as a JSON file, easier to do on a computer).
You would lose your comments and posts history, but you can refer to the old account on your new account so that people curious would know it’s you. Also, if you keep the same name and avatar, most of the people wouldn’t notice.
The views of .ml mods have not affected me. I don’t really check my subscription feed, only /all or /top->day, therefor im still exposed to all those other communities.
The only instances that I’ve noticed are missing are porn related, and as an asexual, I don’t have an interest in them. If I did, I could just visit a different site, like pornhub or w/e
Not all .ml users are tankies, or communist, or foss enthusiasts. I’m just a guy who likes memes and tech
It affects people who think that Lemmy.ml is the default instance, as it says itself and people say that any instance is fine to join.
It also affects people in the batshit insane comments that come from people on that instance, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, that occur with noticeably higher frequency than from other places.
It also affects people on that instance who talk as if into a void with many people blocking their instance but they don’t even know that. And that effect will increase over time.
It lowers traffic on the Fediverse, decreasing overall engagement, and drives people away from it altogether. It also lowers the likelihood that you can recommend to people irl to check out the Fediverse - when THAT stuff (e.g. defense of genocide) is seen it tends to turn people off who aren’t used to it or who are tech or culture savvy enough to know how to handle it.
So it does affect you, I promise, even if not directly, and over the next few months will do so increasingly as your instance turns into more of an echo chamber than it has been in the past, as more people block it either individually or at an instance level.
Agreed that many of the users are regular people who are just innocently getting swept up in all of this due to the actions of the admins. Just like users of Reddit were when spez did his power flex moves.
You might want to at least make an alt somewhere else so that you get some experiences that your .ml account increasingly will start to lack.
I hear you. When I first joined .ml, they were pressing for people NOT to join it. To create their own instances so that .ml didn’t become a central entity, and get overwhelmed with users. The latter did occur during the reddit exodus.
I also agree that they can curate and manipulate the instance to their ideals, which will limit casual users and their reach.
I don’t feel like I’m being secluded, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I have seen hate for .ml users and hexbear users, and I really don’t get it. The fediverse shouldn’t be segregating users based on what instance they’re in. That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.
I agree with you for Lemmy.ml
I’m not so sure about hexbear, people don’t randomly end up there
I did. I stumbled upon a post to chapotraphouse while browsing the All feed from startrek.website that had not defederated it at the instance level. And similarly I found a politics (or maybe it was a memes) community on lemmygrad.ml that same way too! It seems neither of those are defederated from that server still. And on discuss.online while lemmygrad.ml is defederated, hexbear.net is not.
Probably you meant people don’t sign up with a login on those instances randomly, but I thought I would add the above perspective at least - that anyone across the Fediverse can get there randomly, if the defederation is not at the instance level.
You probably aren’t… yet, but you will become thus, increasingly over time.
For the past half a year I have defended lemmy.ml, saying that its users are nowhere near as bad as hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml (just… visit them, you’ll see fairly quickly what they are all about). And that much is still true - the users are quite often innocent.
Though not 100% so, and now this with the admins, I will block lemmy.ml soon. I have already started blocking some of its communities, like all the politically-themed memes were simply not fun to keep appearing in my feed, unlike the many other meme communities scattered throughout the fediverse. I am missing out on basically nothing but contention, which has noticeably improved my experience of the Fediverse.
Yes, I am throwing out some babies along with the bathwater, but I am okay with that. The point is to foster a sense of enjoyment and peace, rather than constantly argue with people who are not engaging in good faith to begin with. I left Reddit for good reason, and believe it or not I would have left it regardless of all of spez’s bullshit.
Imagine my dismay when coming to the Fediverse, I make the mistake of ONE comment in chapotraphouse, and I got like a hundred replies of the most batshit insane, derogatory, bad-mannered and bad-faithed “arguments”, which lasted for WEEKS long after I stopped responding. I was being “dunked on”, which they LOVE, and which - apparently, much to my dismay upon finding out - is the literal purpose of that community. I almost left the entire Fediverse after that.
Well, it did not help that I made the same mistake upon replying to a comment in some political community on lemmygrad.ml. It was those two events together that almost made me leave. However, fortunately for me Lemmy v0.19.3 came out just as I was mulling that issue over, so I blocked those two instances, and now I am as happy as a clam. Honestly this issue with Lemmy.ml is nowhere near as bad as those two instances. But it’s still not great, it still impacts people - e.g. it will impact you far more than me - and it will hurt all of us if we cannot recommend to irl people to come to the Fediverse, b/c they are likely to see that stuff and be put off by it. And therefore all the content that they may have offered for our consumption is gone along with it.
An analogy might be: how much fecal matter is okay to appear in your food? We can spend a large amount of time curating our own experiences here to avoid that, but how likely is a non-Linux-using average person who might want to leave Reddit and come here to be even willing to do that, before they can start enjoying their interactions here? That “shit” demeans us all.
I suggest a different analogy instead. Crime in the USA in general has gone down substantially in recent decades, but let’s say that you wanted to walk the streets of NYC in the 80s-early 90s. It’s not “just b/c they are there”, but rather “crime is MUCH more likely to occur there, than other places”. If you choose to go there, you are making a probabilistic bet that you will survive the encounter. Maybe you will… or maybe your child will become Batman after you get brutally murdered in front of him, but either way, past some threshold it becomes a foolish bet to have chanced it, in return for what gain even?
You and I do not get to decide upon the preferences of others. Many will leave Lemmy altogether, rather than put up with this stuff. I at least will block Lemmy.ml, but that leaves the newest and least aware and therefore most vulnerable people to still have to deal with it. In the meantime, we are conversing about it, letting people know about the problems that we all face, together.
I have noticed the high level of political memes and threads and don’t care for it. I didn’t understand why they were so common, I thought we were all trying to get away from politics.
I will try a different instance and report back.
Possibly a good comparison could be memes@lemmy.ml vs. the two alternatives mentioned in the OP - I really wanted to keep the former, but politics kept creeping in and just made the experience un-fun so eventually I blocked it all. I thought perhaps the mods were simply lazy, I had little idea of the systemic issues across lemmy.ml altogether.
So I decided to go to sopuli.xyz. Viewing their all/hot is not much different than what I have now. However Sopuli is closer to what I expected .ml to be. There are some instances with zero defederations (completely unsensored), but I’m happy not seeing porn, discrimination, or ads in their feed. @Oka@sopuli.xyz
First of all, why would you think that? Second of all, everything is political so that is literally impossible. And third of all, only centrists who want things to stay exactly as they are, because they feel they are are benefiting from the status quo, ever say such things.
Right, so we should unblock the nazi instances like exploding heads because they have one cool guy there maybe?
Wait, you need a passport to leave .ml and make a new acct, and have to endure a long process and spend thousands of dollars to become a citizen there? Oh so it’s a lot less like people trapped in the US than you thought I guess.
Man I’m gonna level with you, I’d prefer if most people on those instances weren’t assholes causing problems everywhere on lemmy since all they are is brigadiers, but since they are, you will be associated with them by being one even just in name. Unfortunate, but human nature.
If an instance is full of authoritarian propaganda and extreme censorship then actual users should leave.
Subbed to them all, thanks for this outreach.
.
I keep seeing posts about ml recently. Is it time to migrate off? I joined it because it was like the only instance available during the start of the reddit migration and it says “FOSS and privacy enthusiasts” which I am. I didn’t even care to know what a tankie was until my all feed started to fill up with so. much. politics. including from lemmygrad and hexbear for the last few months. Fellow ml users seemed normal too.
Idk friends I just want to wear linux knee socks and engage with my niches. I didn’t expect all the hail china or seeing “removed” all the time or to end up being grouped in with lemmygrad and hexbear by users from other instances.
Sounds like programming.dev might be a good fit, or perhaps dbzer0?
Those seem indeed good choices
Last I checked, dbzer0 is unfortunately still federated with the instance where if you name it everyone from it will start calling you a Nazi b/c you don’t want to lick Stalin’s feet. It’s not as much of a problem here, but it’s still something to consider.
Edit: getting targeted by tankies illustrates my point beautifully, so TY everyone who is making my argument for me.
To be specific, we are defed from grad, but not hexbutt or lemmy.marxist-leninist unfortunately.
There’s few enough that I can get by blocking everyone with an account from hexbutt. Haven’t gotten a personal message telling me to kms or a shock link since I moved my main account.
Same here. I will say though, I wish we damn would defed hexbutt lol few or not it’s too damn many.
So just block them.
More like CCP and propaganda enthusiasts
.world liberals are on a propaganda crusade to close off their Zionist echo chambers.
“Yo ho ho evEryBody I don’t agree with is a Zionist yo ho ho”
Kony 2012, amirite Linkerbaan?
I just block the users who need blocking.
Enjoy segregating all the communities…I guess
Happy Lemmyversary!
I’ve had more people talk about this account changing age, then my actual birthday.
At least it’s something I guess
Happy (belated?) actual birthday then.
I do not know what you think is going on here, but that’s literally the fucking point of all the Lemmys.
I disagree. The decentralization is thought through at an instance level, not community level. If it was thought through at a community level we’d have tools to aggregate different communities. The current solution is the equivalent of having multiple steering wheels on a car, nobody thought how you’d actually steer the car so you were given the option to steer each wheel separately. It might make sense on a superficial level but if you thought about how users actually use the thing you’d know it’s not the best way to do things.
People have the ability to block communities as they see fit individually and also follow whatever communities they want and only browse their subscribed list. (steering wheel)
But when popular communities are on an instance that is very much “get on board or get out” to the point they ban users from every community on their instance for having differing political views, it is very much reasonable to try to start or promote communities run on different instances controlled by better admins. (where the roads go (ok, so building roads is a bad analogy, it is more like when a place has terrible sidewalks so people walk through the grass and they wear in those little dirt-path short cuts and eventually no one uses the sidewalks))
You missed to point. Compare instances to communities.
Instances are not isolated. It doesn’t matter much which instance you join because as long as your instance is federated with other instances you can still participate in the communities you want to participate in. If you don’t like your instances, you can join a different instance and as long as that other instance is federated the same way you can get get the exact same experience on a different instance. That means instances are decentralized.
Communities are isolated. It matters which community you join because each post and comment is contained within that community. If you join a small community and there’s a bigger community elsewhere you won’t be able to participate in the bigger community. If you dislike a community and join a different community you can’t get the exact same experience because you can’t interact with the same posts. All of that means communities are centralized.
The reason we have popular communities in the first place is because communities are centralized. Centralized communities also work against the decentralization as your example also pointed out, because instances can leverage their communities.
This is also what I alluded to my steering wheels analogy. We don’t have tools to decentralize communities. We have a steering wheel for each community instead of one wheel for all communities that are essentially the same.
I’m with you, although I’m coming close to booting .ml, and I did block hexbear because that shit is insane.
So, I’ve been on lemmy.world since I joined last year and everyone’s saying it’s too big. Lemmy.ml is the next-largest so I’m conflicted. What do?
lemm.ee has been great, very level-headed administration.
Praise the sunaurus!
Lemm.ee is the second by monthly active users
fedidb.org/software/lemmy
Quite happy on lemm.ee
Best instance
2nd best reporting in.
People say lots of stuff, i am happy on world. As long as we don’t only take part in local communities i don’t think there’s much of a problem really.
Join a smaller instance. You can still see posts on lemmy.world, and you might find a niche you’re interested in in the process
Smaller instances are also less likely to get defederated by other instances, so unless your admins or mods are quick on the defederation, you get to see everything the fediverse has to offer. Not everyone likes that, of course, but it can be a good perk depending on the user and their admins and mods.
I also really like the idea of interest based instances. I hope we see those grow bigger rather than everything being put on .World and .ml. I need to post and comment on instances like programming.dev or ttrpg.network more.
Join literally any other server.
That’s the point of distributed networks they’re supposed to be distributed if 80% of the content is on two servers that’s not distributed. People should move off ml and world regardless of their politics simply because it’s not a good idea to have everything all in one place.
Join a server that fits your geographic location. That would lead to a better balance than what we have today.
Love seeing this happen. That shithole needs to be defederated. The mod logs are FULL of butthurt mods banning people over and o Ver again for violating the Don’t Post Shit We Don’t Like rule, or… “Rule 1” to everyone else.
Isn’t the point of lem.ee that you get as wide an access to the fediverse as possible? I agree that lemmy.ml is run by terrible people, btw, I’m just wondering why you chose your instance.
I chose it because I liked the name. Not everyone means something.
That’s fair.
“Asklemmy.ml” just asked about if anyone had been at any important event televised events.
Mmmm. Guess what.
I mentioned Tiananmen Square 1989: INSTA-BAN!!!
It would be funny if it wasn’t such a horrible thing.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/82c73469-4825-4905-8e8d-c1221ab2439d.png">
You do realize that mod logs are public, right? That’s not why you were banned
Doesn’t matter, it’s witchhunt season and the mob found a witch. Yalla!
I’m not sure how to access monologs, and the Voyager app doesn’t support them. Give a noob a quick tutorial?
I go to the web to a post on the user’s instance and click Modlog on the bottom. From there you can sort by user and see their banned posts as well as the ban reason. (The commenter’s reason is because of Spam)
Is it the stated reason or is it legitimate? I didn’t check but I assume they iterate through arbitrary reasons
Don’t check, keep your assumptions intact.
You told me not to check but I was a bit naughty and did check it. They got banned for “botspam” for writing one comment. Make of it what you like
Your friend is spamming lemmygrad too.
No entry in their modlog at all
I guess their mod policy is not arbitrary enough. reddthat.com/u/corymbia
In the modlog, I only see one deleted comment. Don’t know why the others got deleted
They got banned for “botspam” for writing the same comment twice on two different posts, completely off topic. And that exact same comment was spammed by another account.EDIT: Filter the mod log by users “reddthat.com/corymbia” and “lemmy.today/jobby”.
EDIT 2: they were banned before the actual spam, my bad
I wrote a single comment and it was deleted in minutes so I went nuts.
That’s actually fair, you did get banned before the spam and the timestamps were too close when I first checked. I can’t see the context because the asklemmy post is not available anymore, but from the reaction to the ban and the spam from multiple accounts I can’t feel that bad for you :P
Thank you for understanding
.
How did you go nuts, i thought you were already banned? How were the mods able to delete your spam if you were already banned?
Also quite obvious that your initial comment was just a troll to provoke a mod action, why get all mad about it when it happens?
Maybe I wasn’t banned. I just got fucking angry and posted what could,
You can access mod logs on Voyager. Go to your profile, it’s under “Moderator Zone”.
Is that me? Ha ha
Naw lol the one you posted is at least a nightwing/starfire thing, it’s related. But you’re cool too!
I meant whoever posted the one about the comet passing earth a little while back haha.
Also, did you check !fedigrow@lemm.ee ? As a regular poster, that might interest you
Just subscribed!
Nice! There is this post about being the only one posting to a community that might interest you: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19187513 (and if you want the full version with 90 comments: lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11491827)
Thanks I’ll check it out! But also I’m not the only poster there, there’s you, Jordan, and a few others too! It’s a small community but it is a community haha. I’d like to see it grow but I’m also thankful for you guys who are already there!
Indeed!
You’ve never seen superfans print out and bind a webnovel, huh 😛
Lol technically correct, the best kind of correct!
Naw for real though I just think personally that stuff belongs in comicstrips or one of the more apt communities for it, and comicbooks is specifically for Comic Books proper (not just Marvel/DC but also Image, IDW, DSTLRY, Massive, etc, the more creator owned and independent side.) I think this because quite frankly “Comic Books proper” doesn’t really fit in those communities dedicated to strips, and I’d like a space for it specifically when I’m looking for that stuff specifically. My opinions on the matter are far from “the rules” though, it is certainly allowed to post them.
This is also not to say I don’t like strips, I do very much and am in most of those communities as well! It really just boils down to organization for me lol, may be slightly OCD.
The world news community on .ml is just Russian and Chinese propoganda.
And .world is liberal amerikkkan bs then?
(not saying that either one is right btw)
Clearly the American point of view is neutral, the default, and the truth, so it doesn’t count as propaganda.
mbmb forgot the USA is the universal truth in nation-state form at the centre of the known universe/“international community” lmao
Why are you being downvoted? Is it not obvious enough that your comment was sarcasm?
I had to do a double take because this sentiment is prevalent throughout lemmy.world and other instances.
It’s not even about which view is right or neutral. On .world posts and comments critical of the US aren’t mass censored like .ml does with posts critical of China, Russia or the former USSR.
That’s true to some extent. I don’t agree with hard censorship like that, but there is also the risk of getting astroturfed and brigaded like reddit, which had a clear example as far back as 2013 where Eglin Air Force Base, FL showed up as “most addicted city”. The goal of censorship is to give your own opinions more space, so I’m not exactly upset if other instances are moderated in a different way when there are plenty of other instances moderated in a different way. The fediverse offers plenty of space.
There’s also all of these communities on Reddit if you’re truly unhappy that the volunteer owned and run social media you signed up for isn’t being astroturfed with US-Israeli state press releases.
Everyone should defederate from lemmy.world, the Reddit of Lemmy.
Elaborate?
Feel free to create an elaborate post on !fediverse@lemmy.ml or !fediverse@lemmy.zip
I’m sure people would read it with great attention
I like to think that a lot of the more “Reddity” Reddit refugees from .world, those who tend toward pearl clutching theatrics like these posts, will eventually head back to Reddit. Maybe they’ll find their perfect alternative, where there are no dev or admin issues and everyone has a comforting (for them) center-left to center-right, Western ideology driven political stance that never challenges their preconceptions.
It feels like .world is going to defederate soon, which will likely result in a multipolar Lemmy. Leftists and Leftist-aligned communities, and Liberals and Liberal-aligned communities, with hands-off communities like Lemm.ee being visible on either.
At this point, without any active Marxist communities, and defederating from almost all overtly Marxist instances, it is pretty obvious .world is anti-Marxist, so I doubt Marxists will stay with .world accounts.
Considering .world has a far less leniant defed policy it might just collapse on itself and the user base go back to Reddit, but that won’t be a rapid process.
Also this isn’t even about Marxism or Leninism as-such. This is about the good ole attempt to expand democratic centralism to a population which is actually revisionist in itself because it either ignores that Lenin conceptualised democratic centralism as a discipline for a party, or because it wants to forego with the vanguard position of the party and expand it to the populace, take your pick.
Plenty of anarchists on those instances you call “liberal”, tankies won’t be missed.
I didn’t imply all Leftism is Marxist, .world doesn’t much care for Anarchists either. Hexbear is largely Anarchist and was blocked before they even had a chance to federate, and dbzer0 is largely on strained terms over “piracy concerns.”
Not really sure what you mean by spreading “Democratic Centralism” by saber rattling about Lemmy.ml, but that’s your right.
It is nice that you admit that all Marxism is tankie, that’s refreshing. Most pretend to draw a distinction, but ultimately decide only Marx himself is somehow not a tankie and everyone got his words wrong.
Oh he definitely leaned that way for most of the time, all that vanguard stuff I mean and not to mention Engel’s infamous (and absolutely gaslighting) “On Authority” (I’ll lump the two together), but in his final works he was way more amenable to Anarchist modes of organisation, as a reflection on the Paris Commune.
The “expanding democratic centralism to the whole populace” is basically Stalin’s invention. Lenin wanted the party unified and not bogged down in constantly questioning already-made decisions, fair enough, it’s quite a different ballpark to expand that kind of unity to a whole population. And that’s where I draw the parallel to lemmy.ml’s moderation policies: While you only see the whole deal on lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still very much up there when it comes to “We said there were no deaths during the Tienanmen incident, we decided it, it’s not to be questioned, no we don’t even care for you quoting the CCP itself to contradict us enjoy your ban”.
His reflections on the Paris Commune weren’t that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can’t simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.
Lemmygrad’s very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they believe there were no deaths, 300 may be low but is certainly higher than 0. Maybe you’re referencing the bit where they say the killings didn’t happen on the Square itself, and you took that to mean no deaths at all? An understandable confusion on your part, but not accurate to what even hard-line Lemmygradders say.
Well he pretty much stopped railing against anarchists being good for nothing idealists who are inherently incapable of getting things done or organised. The Paris Commune made mistakes, also readily acknowledged by Anarchists, but it was also very much run to a significant degree on anarchist principles.
Mao was the one going on a “What was wrong is that they didn’t have a vanguard party” rant. I guess Yugoslavia would be a good example of Marx’ late positions actually put into practice, without all that Bolshevik revisionism.
Honestly I was just pulling the details out of my ass to circumscribe the pattern.
Yep, he softened his bite, but ultimately there are still an extremely small number of successful Anarchist movements compared to Marxist ones. Anarchists can get things done, but usually a lack of organization leads to struggles.
Yugoslavia was supposedly nicer to live in, compared to the rest of the USSR, but I wouldn’t say the Bolsheviks were revisionist. They saw their conditions and acted accordingly.
Fair enough to admitting that Lemmygrad bit, but it’s an extremely common talking point here that Lemmy.ml “can’t admit it happened.” Not even Lemmygrad believes it didn’t happen, it’s deliberately bad actors putting words in people’s mouths at this point.
If by “successful” you mean “took over a whole state, sustainably” then there’s zero (both Rojava and Chiapas are mere territories), but then the only ML states left are basically Cuba and Vietnam, the USSR collapsed, China has richer billionaires than plenty of liberal democracies, etc.
If with “successful” we also mean “feed the poor, organise the disenfranchised, and punch Nazis” then there’s uncountably many. It’s all predominantly prefiguration and avoiding liberal democracies to regress, in line with more recent theory.
See I’m an anarchist, revisionist is not actually an insult to me. But it surely does rile up MLs if you point out that they’re ever so slightly disagreeing with previous canon so I might be using it more liberally than them :)
China is still Marxist-Leninist, just with a strategy of welcoming international finance while maintaining a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to keep the bourgeoisie in check. They saw what happened to the USSR and opted to make concessions, staying intrgrated with global Capitalism while trying to subvert Lenin’s idea of Imperialism. Whether or not this pans out in Socialism’s favor is unknowable at this present moment.
I do believe feeding the poor, punching Nazis, and establishing Mutual Aid is fantastic, and I agree that in the Global North, Anarchists are more effective than Marxists have been. I still don’t see any actual long-term success or movements in Anarchism’s favor.
I wasn’t calling you a revisionist, I understand that you’re an Anarchist. I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. Deng absolutely was a revisionist.
…and you have to have billionaires for that? Also, heck, the GDR was integrated into capitalism and they had a mostly (asides from the trades) planned economy. They built industrial robots which then churned out cars in Wolfsburg, and stomped a silicon industry out of the ground to keep competitive in that area. Western mail-order catalogues were full of GDR washing machines, fridges, etc.
What’s the cutoff point for how much a Capitalist should own? A good amount of China’s top companies are state owned, and there is a good amount of planning too, so I am just curious at what point becomes too much.
I am all for good critique of China, but it’s the strategy they have stated, and we can only wait and see how it pans out over time.
Once it has systemic impact. Turn their company into a foundation, put them on the board, rest of the seats go to workers and something like the local university, allow that their kids two generations down the line are rich enough to never have to work a second in their life (if they manage to not squander), but definitely don’t allow inheritance of that kind of capital which is what China does. Interesting paper especially about the inheritance thing, ultimately that alone is sufficient to curb concentration of wealth:
How would that impact China’s goal of luring in investment if it scares off Capitalists?
This is about Chinese billionaires. No foreign stock-traded company would ever care that Chinese can’t inherit fortunes.
They would. If China cracks down too hard too quickly on Capitalists domestically, Capitalists may start to pull out.
Are they? The only post I found is lemmy.world/post/16233963, and there is clearly no consensus nor communication from the LW admins.
I said “feels like,” the communication from Dessalines is that .ml will not defed, so it’s either .world does or it doesn’t happen yet. Given that .world has already defeded from Hexbear and Grad, the sliding target is now on .ml, and will probably continue on to dbzer0, etc.
For people curious, I found Dessalines comment: lemmy.ml/post/16523224/11490454
.ml still have a lot of niche communities, hexbear and lemmygrad didn’t. Ironically, if they were to defederate, that might push people to move to other instances, especially now that migration is built-in. Last time, when LW blocked !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, it was not the case.
Nobody is talking about marxists or leftists here, tankies are a breed of their own
What Marxists get the “not a tankie” pass? Marx and Engels both called themselves authoritarian.
Council communists, definitely, functionally that’s the same as Syndicalism. Some Trotski and Tito fans. A lot of Cubans, over there authoritarianism seems to be more and more a habit than principle.
So nobody that has actually succeeded in putting theory to practice in hundreds of years, got it.
Don’t you think it might be that you’re predisposed to not liking any AES countries at all because it’s easier to denounce real attempts for not being “authentic enough” than it is to truthfully acknowledge what went right and what went wrong in them?
I’m actually quite positive when it comes to Cuba, and Vietnam might follow suit. The rest range from falling to capitalism to falling to fascism.
Anyhow this wasn’t about the success or failure of “AES” countries but making clear that not all Marxists are tankies.
The Marxists you called not Tankies were the ones that haven’t done much, except Cuba. Cuba would probably count as Tankie to you though because Che was a Stalinist and Castro has stated that China post-Deng is Socialist.
That’s the thing, judging countries not by their purity to Socialism but by how they stand against Imperialism and for their own people is how they should be judged. China absolutely isn’t a shining beacon, but it’s less Capitalist and far less Imperialist than the US, for example, yet people love to say we should support Biden over Trump while denouncing China more than the US.
That’s what I am referring to.
Che was highly critical of Stalin’s authoritarianism and cult of personality. The, you know, defining factors of Stalinism in modern parlance.
And I have no idea why you’re bringing up the US or how it’s relevant to anything, are you American or something they love to do that, all self-important.
With regards to imperialism: Do you know how I earned my permaban from lemmygrad? As a, quote, “NATO propagandist”? By telling them that Russian imperialism evil. I don’t even like NATO, short of it being a vehicle to keep the US somewhat on a leash. The month ban from !worldnews@lemmy.ml was for pointing out that Ukraine does not in fact lay claims to Russian territory Ukraine describes as “Historically Ukrainian-speaking”. Because they don’t. As the article that OP there linked said itself.
As are many. He still openly supported Stalin and read Stalin:
“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context. I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Series of things that are very good.” -Che Guevara
I think it’s a bit hypocritical to wash the words of revolutionaries you claimed were good Marxists. Of course he was critical of Stalin, everyone is. He banned homosexuality, was generally a brutal person, and ended up building a cult of personality that partially helped lead to the collapse of the USSR. Che still supported him.
The comparison to America was because people can easily find nuance within liberalism but only accept the purest and most righteous of Socialism, even if it ends up never existing. It loses its revolutionary potential and becomes Idealism.
As for your bans, I don’t really have the full picture. Based on what you have claimed and that alone, I believe they went too far, but I would also like to see it from the mod’s perspectives.
I never said “Che was one of the good ones”. I called Cuba promising (as in: On its way to proper democratic socialism) and I called Council Communist essentially Anarchists.
If you want me to say something positive about Marx we’d have to talk labour theory of value or such.
See from the anarchist POV most Marxist-type socialisms are idealism, down to mostly two factors: a) no means/ends unity, making failure inevitable, and b) trying to foresee the future. We, at our current level of understanding of human nature and society, influenced by various material factors holding us back in terms of even imagination, cannot possibly craft plans that would be appropriate for our grandchildren: The revolution must necessarily be gradual because that’s the only way that our descendants get to put us up against the wall for being counter-revolutionary. Without those things there cannot be theory of revolution that’s actually material.
Alright, fair enough. You express support for the direction Cuba looks to be going down, not the figures and movements that allowed that to happen, got it. It’s more consistent with your other views, at least.
As for your last statement, I really don’t think it makes any real sense. Taking Cuba as our example, Marxism guided the revolution, and it hasn’t seemed to fail yet, and in your own words looks to be going down a promising path. Is this not what you are hoping for, or is it a freak accident?
Secondly, if Anarchism is an ever-evolving theory that hasn’t really seen any large-scale results, would it not make sense to concede that Anarchism can play a valuable role outside of Revolutionary change while Marxists actually change the whole of society? It seems Marxists have a far better track record in changing the Mode of Production, while Anarchists do a lot of good charity work that is also valuable.
The Cuban revolution was not a Marxist one, it was a war of independence and once Batista was toppled and Castro got to make hour-long speeches at the UN, the USSR wasn’t his first choice of ally, but the US. The revolutionaries were generally lefties, yes, but far from unified Stalin-admirers. They absolutely would’ve gone with a vaguely socdem “between New Deal and Europe” like thing with the US as an ally: Workers’ rights, unions, yes expropriate the slavers but that doesn’t mean we can’t have capital in the country. The US wanted to have none of it, just having lost its colony, I mean think of the United Fruit and Bacardi campaign contributions.
As such, when Cuba adopted Marxism-Leninism as a prerequisite of being an USSR ally they adopted it with Cuban characteristics. On their own terms, generally from first principles, without a forge-welded vanguard at its core.
There’s parallels of that in Vietnam, of course, also a war of independence.
No, it wouldn’t. Because a priori there’s no reason to believe that a proper revolution is materially possible when you insist on going for “large-scale results” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), and a posteriori there’s neither. See means/ends unity. Materialism doesn’t care about your impatience. To quote Adorno: Actionism is the anti-intellectualism of the left.
And, no, MLM states didn’t change the mode of production: State capitalism is still capitalism. Again, Yugoslavia would’ve been a better example. Sometimes I do wonder how the world would look like now had Stalin sent another assassin and then Tito his single one.
Castro and the other revolutionaries were Marxist-Leninists. What would be a Marxist revolution in your eyes, if not a revolution against Imperialism by Marxists? Marxism isn’t a static dogma, but a tool to be applied to material conditions. Of course it would have Cuban characteristics, that’s the point of Marxism.
Secondly, I truly don’t see what the purpose of advocating against change is for, is that just a way to say that Anarchists don’t actually need to make consistent progress as long as they continue to perform mutual aid and help people? Sounds great for a charity, but not for liberating the workers.
The USSR was Socialist, this is silly. A worker state where the workers collectively own production is what Marx advocated for. There were numerous struggles and problems with the USSR, but being Capitalist is not one of them. There was no competition, no M-C-M’ circuit resulting in accumulation among borgeois actors, no tendendcy for the rate of profit to fall. You can argue against the effectiveness of the USSR without saying it was actually Capitalist, the mode of production was entirely different from Tsarist Russia.
The usual way they happened were a) a vanguard capturing a spontaneous revolution, followed by brutal authoritarianism, or b) a coup of some sort by a vanguard, also with brutal authoritarianism.
Me neither. Why do you think I’m doing that? Have some Malatesta in the context of how anarchism is necessarily gradualist:
I know, I know, it’s hard to get rid of the spooks. But that’s what materialism looks like.
…so Lenin lied when he spoke about the system being state captalist, not communist, and now somehow capitalism was “really existing socialism”? It’s a bunch of rhetorical smoke grenades to obscure the fact that power moved from the nobility to the nomenklatura.
No, there was the exact same thing just with corruption.
So because Castro and the gang weren’t brutal authoritarians, they weren’t Marxists? This is getting sillier.
As for your quote from Malatesta, believe it or not, is the Marxist-Leninist stance. The most radical among the Anarchists are a sort of Vanguard. All a Vanguard is is a group of radicals that are helping organize the revolution, at the forefront.
If you’re trying to say that everyone should be equal in terms of theory, in terms of purpose, spontaneously before a revolution is possible, then this is pure Idealism.
As for State Capitalism, Lenin was purely referring to the NEP, and had this to say: “The whole question is who will take the lead. We must face this issue squarely—who will come out on top? Either the capitalists succeed in organising first—in which case they will drive out the Communists and that will be the end of it. Or the proletarian state power, with the support of the peasantry, will prove capable of keeping a proper rein on those gentlemen, the capitalists, so as to direct capitalism along state channels and to create a capitalism that will be subordinate to the state and serve the state.” State Capitalism was not meant to describe the whole of the USSR.
Please explain how there was competition, accumulation among bourgeois elements competing in markets, forcing prices lower and thus rates of profit, with private corporations. This is silly.
Noone’s organising the revolution. We’re organising society such when the revolution happens it won’t be hijacked by vanguard fucks attempting, yet again, to take power from the people. Also, in the mean time, chocolate pudding.
…conveniently forgot to mention that he was crushing worker’s councils with that move. He was taking absolutely nothing from capitalists, he took it from the workers.
The way in which influence and backrubs were traded mirrors capitalism, which shouldn’t be too surprising because capitalism is essentially legalised corruption.
I would just like to digress by pointing out that I found your discussion interesting and that .world defederating .ml would kill potential future ones like it. It also seems to me that rejecting ML impulses, say by disassociating the .ml and .world users, would not contribute to organising society in a way that would allow for the revolution you speak of.
MLs do not go away by ignoring them. One of their main tenets, which they are to be admired for, is precisely their obstinancy to making themselves heard. If I understood you correctly as a proponent of a solution that is yet to be evolved, why reject the input of MLs? I am personally curious about learning more about anarchism, that is if the theory is not so weak it would but all be destroyed by the breath of a ML.
I’m on lemm.ee… and I never said anything about defederating, I think that’d be silly. The whole post was about making it easy and convenient for users from all over to not be subjected to lemmy.ml mod policies.
If this conversation was on grad, it’d have been silenced ages ago… in fact it wouldn’t even have started as I’m banned there so gradists can’t see me. It may or may not have survived on lemmy.ml.
The theory is absolutely deep, though I can see how it might seem otherwise when all you ever see is people writing short essays about specific things or aspects, we have quite little of that “big, grand, theory” stuff going on. That said though, Anark recently made a synthesis of pretty much all cornerstones out there, video (there’s three parts) and script.
Oh, as to “why reject them”: Because it’s like talking to a TV that makes up shit on the spot. Because they’ve killed off multiple revolutions, often while allying with fascists. People defending that line of thought are generally one of two things, and that is naive to the actual history and experience of revolutionary movements at large, or they’re assclowns who just want power. Anarchists very much try not to be naive and want noone to have power over nobody so that’s some rather crass incompatibility, there.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
video
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Someone is organizing any revolution, otherwise it just won’t happen.
The Soviets formed the basis of the Democratic process of the Soviet Union. The Worker’s Councils weren’t killed and forgotten, they were replaced.
It’s cool if you want to deviate from Marx’s analysis of Capitalism and go for a vibes-based approach, but people who take Marx seriously can plainly see that even if the USSR was flawed, it was Socialist.
History tells us otherwise. You might be confusing revolutions with coups.
In the beginning of the Russian revolution, they had power. Come the Bolsheviks and they ceased to have power, they became mere propaganda appendices of the party.
The USSR was most of all one thing: The continuation of Russian imperialism with a new coat of paint.
It does not. Revolution occurs without prompting, yes, but there will always be a group of the most radical within the larger group, the group taking the majority of the action.
As for the Workers Councils, yes, they were replaced with the Union system.
As for Imperialism, I absolutely agree that it was expansionist, and follows the Liberal definition of Imperialism. This isn’t good! However, if you’re focusing on Lenin’s definition, Castro had this to say: “if the USSR was imperialist then where are it’s private monopolies? Where is its participation in multi-national corporations? What industries, what mines, what petroleum deposits does it own in the underdeveloped world? What worker is exploited in Asia, Africa or Latin America by Soviet capital?”
The reason most Marxists accept Lenin’s definition of Imperialism as a sort of bourgeois/proletarian relation at international scale, is because countries in the Global South can’t become Socialist until they throw off the thumb of Imperialism, and Imperialist countries won’t become Socialist until they stop being Imperialist.
Again, liberal meaning of Imperialist? Yes, absolutely. Expansionist? Yes, absolutely. Marxist definition of Imperialism? Eh, closer to no than yes.
The USSR absolutely wasn’t perfect, it was highly flawed, just as we should expect the first major Marxist state in history to be. We can learn from what worked and what didn’t.
That certainly wasn’t the Bolsheviks in Russia. They weren’t the sailors of Kronstadt, they weren’t the workers in the factories.
If the Mongol empire was imperialist, then where are its private monopolies?
Are you saying that before capitalism, there could not possibly have been empires, or imperialism? If that’s the case, then, again, that’s rhetorical slight of hand, serving nothing but the confusion of the masses instead of their radicalisation.
…also just as an aside much of Russia is absolutely underdeveloped, and yes that’s where the natural resources are.
Oh and by golly did Anarchists learn from it. For one, that you should never turn your back to a Marxist-Leninist.
The Bolsheviks were a revolutionary party, yes. Among the entire revolution, they were among the most radical. In any revolution, there will be a group that is the most radical and moving the most, even if they don’t formalize it. Do you expect everyone to be an Anarchist before the revolution?
As for the Imperialism bit, you’re being even more dishonest than usual, haha. I explicitly said that it was expansionist and Imperialist in the liberal sense of the word. That doesn’t mean wrong! This is silly, the rest of your paragraphs are nailing down on a point I never made.
As for the jab about Anarchists, Marxists can’t trust Anarchists either, infighting is always a 2 way street among leftists. You may be interested in reading this meeting between Lenin and Kropotkin. Kropotkin criticizes Lenin, and Lenin criticizes back, it’s a really interesting meeting and neither makes themselves a fool IMO.
“radical” in what sense? As in “fuck over everyone who brought about the February revolution, do a coup in October and call it a revolution?”
…yep, Anarchists back then hadn’t yet understood that there’s no way around power getting to ML’s heads. Maybe not individually but structurally it’s going to happen one way or the other. I do acknowledge that Lenin said that under no circumstances must Stalin be allowed to be his successor – he still became his successor. That’s why centralisation of power is inherently counter-revolutionary. Power corrupts, and power attracts the already corrupted. What you’re left with is a mess.
No, as in the ones pushing the revolution the hardest, and typically the ones with the strongest level of understanding of leftist organizational theory, be it Marxist or Anarchist or even whatever else.
You’re free to make that critique, I would just hope that you can actually make concessions just like Marxists do when it comes to unifying theory and practice.
I already made that critique: If your means employ authoritarianism and domination, then your ends will never be a classless society, for you are fuelling the very beast of domination and oppression. Giving it another coat of paint or another justification does not change its character. It’s like saying “but my anger is righteous!” instead of realising that anger is always blind, unproductive, irrational, self-destructive to the individual and society. You’re much better off taking a step back, take breaths until you’ve collected yourself, and then start to strategise with a cool head.
It’s why I gave (dunno if in this conversation but definitely in this thread) Council Communists the non-tankie pass. I think they’re a bit uptight, just like Syndicalists, but whatever that I can deal with.
By your definition all states are authoritarian, it doesn’t matter if I want a democratic state or not, that’s authoritarian in the eyes of an Anarchist.
Council Communists get a pass because they are relegated purely to academia and never to praxis, seemingly.
The anarchist definition of state is a very different one from the Marxist and also from the dictionary one (“people, organisation, territory”). You can usually freely replace “state” in Anarchist texts with “hierarchical power”. I myself don’t like and don’t use the anarchist definition as there’s better terms it’s just unnecessary confusion. Has its historical reasons, but we’re usually not ones to pray to ashes instead of passing on the fire so why should we be doing it there.
And, sorry, but no, it isn’t Anarchists who are couping liberal democracies. That’d be Bolsheviks.
Council communists would have a better track record if they realised that they are Syndicalists, which have plenty a track record. Until that happens, it’ll continue to be methadone therapy for recovering MLs.
Surely the problem is that people are bringing politics into forums which clearly don’t require it. Like, why would the political stance of someone matter in a technology forum?
It’s a tech forum run by Marxists, there are other Tech forums run by Anarchists or Liberals or even conservatives.
Nobody in the replies mentioned it, but you could easily sign up to an instance that federates with both .ml and .world.
Will automated account migration be the next big feature?
Could be.
Either way if .world defeds, I will probably stick with .ml, I’d rather not deal with what will become of .world if they succeed in becoming both the largest instance and one of the least federated with other large instances among the major instances.
Ah yes Lemmy.world should be a giant monolith. Great defederation plan.
I’m completely lost. Can someone fill me on what the hell is going on?
New users to Lemmy.world are surprised Lemmy.ml has Marxists, so they are saber rattling yet again. This time they may actually go the full length and defederate, but that remains to be seen.
Just a disclaimer for normal ppl:
What op is referring to as “Marxists” are (what the irl leftists call) revisionists who think that Marxism is somehow compatible with bourgeois counter revolution (PRC after Deng, under whom the crackdowns in Tiananmen happened btw) and “anti-american” imperialism (what Russia and modern-day China are doing militarily (mostly Russia) and financially (mostly China))
Nobody believes the PRC is economically Socialist, just that it has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and keeps their bourgeoisie in check, which is in the eyes of the CPC a safer option than shutting out the entire world like the USSR did, leading to its collapse. I don’t think anyone is calling the PRC full Socialism, not even the CPC itself.
As for Imperialism, most people talking about it are using Lenin’s definition, a sort of International Bourgeois/Proletarian system, not just expansionism or international trade.
lmao
Which part?
There is no DoP left in the "P"RC. At best it’s social democracy combined with one of the most brutally efficient capitalist systems of exploitation to date (which from a purely liberal economic pov is quite impressive, but so is Japan)
(following quotes are not meant as an appeal to authority, but rather me using wording which put it better than I ever could)
Mao Zedong also pointed out:
This was directly levelled at Deng Xiaoping, whom he assessed as follows:
Yes, I’m aware, Deng is absolutely a revisionist. I was explaining what most Marxists at least on Lemmy believe about China.
Personally, I understand why they went down that road after the fall of the USSR, but it remains to be seen if this will actually end up being the correct play. I think it would have been better had they taken a more hard-line stance in favor of Marxism than Revisionism, but we are now so far from that point that the entire last 35 years of global history would have been completely different.
yeah, alt-hist stuff isn’t all that productive
the thing I meant was, that the ppl who defend China as well as China itself, have forsaken Marxism and should not be called that
it means a complete revision of the understanding of class struggle (being replaced with class collaborationism and often the CPC taking up the role of the bourgeoisie) and thus dialectical/historical materialism
which is why I am referring to them as “social democrats at best”
100% agreed on Alt-History, no questions from me on that.
However, I do want to flip this around just a bit, for the sake of a thought experiment. For critical supporters of the PRC, it seems that opposing US hedgemony and creating a multipolar world is the primary means by which Lenin’s Imperialism can be fought in our present moment, even if we lack any hardline Marxist powers.
In your eyes, what should these Marxists instead be supporting? The US? It seems everyone is agreed on supporting the Global South, but when it comes to countries with any real influence on global geopolitics, are all of them bad and unworthy of even critical support, generally, or is there a force you believe is on somewhat of the right track, as a Marxist?
This isn’t a gotcha, I am genuinely interested in this conversation.
I’d say that you don’t have to support either side in an inter-imperialist conflict.
Just because China’s ruling elites have virtually no military bases abroad (compared to the USA), doesn’t mean that they aren’t imperialist. Only that they are “smarter” in that regard.
To use Jimmy Carters words (about the “smarter”-part):
China might be a so called “social democracy”. It is, however, - in contrast to the European model - in large parts funded internally: most prominently the coastal cities and their SEZs (special economic zones), which host abhorrent labour/environmental laws, red-tape-cutting corruption and whatever else international investment capital needs (or be it internal one, like the allowing 996 culture at Huawei or Chinas tech sector in general)
To quote Michael Parenti:
I’m not sure whether an integrated periphery constitutes imperialism., their export of financial capital, however, definitely does! (eg. their debt traps and following decade-long leases)
So yes, from my POV the Global South or rather the periphery in general, (unfortunately) have no strong advocate on the geopolitical stage
(Please bear in mind that I do not claim to have studied the addressed topics in proper detail and all this being my ad hoc take)
So it seems to me that we are in agreement that the PRC is certainly not full Socialism, and definitely has more internal than external funding. In this instance, in a contradiction between US and PRC hegemony, would the Global South be better off with the PRC or US as the global superpower? I understand that we do not fully support the PRC, as it is revisionist in many ways and does enact some level of Imperialism, but in contrast to the US it focuses on Peace and internal development, rather than forever wars.
I guess if we can both agree that neither are good that’s a step forward, but I see the PRC as a lesser evil in the global context. It certainly isn’t a strong ally for the Global South, but seems to present fewer challenges for the Global South to throw off the reigns of Imperialism themselves and transition to a Social Democracy, or even Socialism outright.
I really do think that’s the point here with the PRC vs the US.
What are your thoughts on that?
Imo just bc the subjugation is financial instead of military in nature, does not mean that it’s preferable, since it remains subjugation nonetheless.
Idk if that analogy makes sense, but whether you are beat till you collapse, or get the rug pulled from under you, you still end up on the ground.
I also think that it’s important to keep in mind that social democracy is not a step towards socialism, but away from it. It is the temporary grant of concessions of the ruling elites towards the working classes. It is one of the defense mechanism of capital to keep the masses complacent, always at the cost of the exploitation of others. The other ones would be fascism or post-modern individualist neoliberalism (the latest stage of the US model which is essentially gaslighting the working population psychologically instead of using material means to keep them complacent. Ofc those are fluid and capital often combines various aspects of them).
But I digress…
I think it’s similar to WW1 or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: internationally, Marxists shouldn’t support either side of inter-imperialist conflict and domestically employ revolutionary defeatism where possible
Also I’d disagree that China has (so to say) “taken a detour from the socialist road”, but entirely abandoned it. The only thing that is left is the hammer and sickle, and the red paint… (even the text of the Internationale is too radical for them, as they only seem to play the instrumental version at the CPC congresses)
tl;dr: I’d rather not pick between “the lesser” of two hegemonic evils, but reject any form of (neo)-imperialist/-colonialist subjugation.
(again this became more like a rant and I am not that well read in general)
also I welcome the change of having a good faith interaction with a more or less like minded Marxist on here :)
I want to start this off by reponding to your closer, I agree entirely, this is a good-faith convo I appreciate among fellow Marxist comrades, and I do enjoy it!
I ageee that it isn’t ideal to pick between the lesser of two evils, but I believe one can support a lesser of two evils between 2 evils while supporting good revolutionary or corrective movements within.
As for the bit on Social Democracy within the periphery, I know it isn’t Socialism and will never be Socialism, but third world Social Democracies do help focus on domestic nationalization and throw off Imperialism from the Global North. Those movements against Imperialism in my opinion are much better than going along with it, as they increase the revolutionary potential in their neighbors and former Imperialists.
It’s like a multi-layered level of support, there are very few truly hard-line Marxist movements, so we have to work with what exists presently. We can advocate for better while also critically supporting movements that would better allow better movements later.
Kinda like supporting Palestine. Even if Hamas is reactionary, Palestine will never move forward socially until it throws off its oppressors, which is why supporting Palestinian Liberation is straightforward.
I appreciate your thoughts!
I must admit that I am not well informed enough about Hamas to form an opinion of them specifically. For that I would have to verify claims of genocidal tendencies. Though the Palestinian struggle against settler-colonialism is a most important one, it is a shame that it is not even led by a vaguely progressive force.
But as you said we should take what we can get. I also concur that social democracy in South America (or the pink tide as it is called sometimes) like in Bolivia, Venezuela or recently Brazil are a generally positive development in weakening the imperial core and might also improve the material situation of millions.
However, even more socialist movements like the Bolivar one have class collaborationist tendencies, which go faaar deper than e.g. the temporary Maoist compromise with the national bourgeoisie. IIrc even the CPV (of Venezuela) has broken with the PSUV in the era of Maduro, despite having staunchly supported it (and it’s presecessors) in the Chavez era before. The PSUV even initiated a party coup recently through a Venezuelan court, reinstating a collaborationist CK in the CPV…
I am torn in the sense that reformism (read: so called “democratic socialism”) has failed time and time again to make an honest switch to socialism. But that it either was never even genuine to begin with and thus converted back to social democracy or was destroyed by either internal reaction (through not having class struggle in favour of the working classes, allowing for reactionary ones to initiate an overthrow), international reaction (spearheaded by the likes of the CIA) or both. Tho “democratic socialism” never truly challenges the bourgeoisie in the first place. (only nationalizing key industries and somehow magically hoping the oppressors will give power up voluntarily.)
I fully understand that material conditions from massive economic and diplomatic pressure lead to shortages and shortcomings, leading to some kind of compromise. It would be “forgiven” imo (idk if that is the right wording, sounds weird tbh but I hope it makes sense) if they’d compromise from even an approximately Marxist position like Cuba, but they don’t never truly overcoming capitalism.
But as I said, their struggle for sovereignty and against (us-)imperialism is commendable.
And often is a progressive step forward.
However, I simply can not hold China up to the same standard. Not with it’s size and weight, it’s former influence and dedication (despite a complete cut of soviet support and massive pressure, I might add. Under which it is “acceptable” for geopolitically “weaker” movements to deepen compromise).
After the counterrevolutionary coup of Hua (in favour of Deng) it has only been regression after regression. From a bastion of revolutionary Marxism to a bourgeois state of a new type.
Don’t get me wrong, the CPC succeeded in what the CPSU failed to do: preserve the caste of party bureaucracy in the transition to capitalism, with them partially taking up the role of the bourgeoisie; although in a far more (sometimes also ruthlessly) efficient form. (I mean sometimes more ruthless than the South Korean, Singaporean or Japanese models from which they partially drew their inspiration. In terms of the treatment of the working classes regarding the “work ethic” for example)
Same to you! Constructive discussion with fellow Marxists helps improve ones pov. Unfortunately, thanks to the infestation of the likes of Hexbear and Lemmygrad, the occurrence of those is limited considerably…
I don’t believe social democracy or democratic socialism are enough, but if they are baby steps against Imperialism then I think it’s a good move, if only to later hope for a Marxist revolution. That’s really my core point, I suppose.
Thanks for the discussion!
Lemmy.ml is full of tankie creeps, and there’s a big debate about defederating from it. One of the big talking points is that ml has a bunch of popular communities. These are alternatives to them.
Are people actually that serious about defederating from Lemmy.ml?
Yes. I avoid Lemmy.ml communities like the plague, but because I don’t feel there’s intentional hostility from the community towards outsiders, unlike Grad or Hexbear, I don’t think I’m in favor. I do understand the underlying thought process. It’s difficult to ‘join hands’ with a community, however otherwise normal, which is run by genocide deniers who very clearly use their power over the community to push a narrative of genocide denial.
You are the premier genocide denier I’ve run into on this platform, you’re more concerned about the Democrats election chances than the people they help kill.
People who use Palestinian bodies to push their political agenda are co-opting genocide. Fuck all the way off.
.
.
what?
I think I made it pretty clear, but when it comes to Israel’s genocide the above poster is outspoken defending the Democrats supporting it, but when its US state enemies they’re getting extremely mad about anyone not repeating the US state department line on things.
Ah ok so this was more about post history. I don’t want to get involved there :D I just didn’t get it without context
Because I want less genocide instead of more? How curious.
Are you planning for voting for any political parties which are directly aiding active genocides in the near future?
Biden is the only one circumventing congress to get bombs sent to Palestinian refugee camps so far
The thing is, as far as users and communities go lemmy.ml is pretty much a general purpose instance like lemmy.world, but it is controlled by political extremists who are using their admin position to put their thumb on the scale to push discussion in a certain direction.
Pug Jesus summarized it well enough. I didn’t think I’d have a stronger stance on it, but I am strongly in favor of defederating. I also have a very strong personal opposition to MLs in general, since I essentially regard them as traitors due to the faction’s pattern of conduct.
Pugjesus is Joe Bidens strongest warrior though, everyone’s a tankie by that guys standards.
Yes anyone that doesn’t throat putin’s cock is a liberal, we get it.
That got weirdly sexual pretty quick - are you trying to be homophobic?
Since when is throating cock only a homosexual act? That’s actually kinda bigoted to suggest.
And yes, metaphor can be very difficult to understand. I’ll try to speak more literally so you can keep up. Not defending an authoritarian dictator doesn’t automatically make someone a liberal.
When you use it in the context of being an insult it’s pretty easy to conclude you’re trying to be bigoted. Last I checked Ukraine was the one with a coup government and suspended elections.
Read this thread: lemmy.world/post/16211417
@barsoap@lemm.ee might be interesting to mention the thread above in the OP, as people might be out of the loop
Done.
Thanks!
Thanks. Clear up a few things.
How brave…
The way that I see it, the issue with lemmy ml’s administration and moderation is not quite political in origin. It’s about transparency; and I think that this wall of text that I wrote about how lemmy dot ml handled ani.social shows it well, as the dispute in question was not political in nature. (I can abridge it at request.)
With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”. I don’t have anything against LW’s administration, but I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation. That instance is already 40% of the MAUs, and hosts the largest comms using Lemmy.
It’s where big replacement communities happen to be, that’s all there is to it. Avoiding centralisation is a good thing in general but “tired of .ml mods? Here’s alternatives” isn’t the right time to go for it I think. Maybe the admins can come up with a scheme to round-robin disable community creation or something, to spread things out. Also, community migration is in the pipeline software-wise that would help a lot.
I’m thinking that perhaps the community could/should go a step further, and create another instance to talk about open source and privacy. That would be IMO the best scenario - it would be a great counterpoint to .ml, and it would avoid centralising Lemmy around .world even further.
(I also feel like this might be better even for the devs. Administrative work isn’t exactly pleasing, and if I had to take a guess they mostly maintain that instance because they need it for the software. But that’s just a guess, don’t trust me on that.)
inb4: yes, I know - easier said than done. But I feel like it could be a good option.
FYI, a post on !fedigrow@lemm.ee about a !privacy community: mander.xyz/post/13928027
Lots of good suggestions there. It would be great if @barsoap@lemm.ee mentioned at least !privacy@lemmy.ca and !privacy@links.hackliberty.org in the OP.
FYI, an update on the !fedigrow@lemm.ee post on the !privacy community: lemm.ee/post/34088759?scrollToComments=true
Long story short, !privacy@lemmy.ca is a nice option, it even has more active users per week than the LW equivalent (376 vs 346)
Added
Thanks!
It defeats some of the points of federation, but there are still a lot of reasons why federation is still worth doing even if there’s essentially one dominant provider. Not least of which is that sometimes the dominant provider does get displaced over time. We’ve seen it happen with email a few times, where the dominant provider loses market share to upstarts, one of whom becomes the new dominant provider in some specific use case (enterprise vs consumer, mobile vs desktop vs automation/scripting, differences by nation or language), and where the federation between those still allows the systems to communicate with each other.
Applied to Lemmy/kbin/mbin and other forum-like social link aggregators, I could see LW being dominant in the English-speaking, American side of things, but with robust options outside of English language or communities physically located outside of North America. And we’ll all still be able to interact.
Well it’s really both. The issue is the combination of a number of factors which on their own would be fairly easy to deal with, but put together they are very problematic:
This prominent position of lemmy.ml is the fundamental difference with the hexbear or lemmygrad situation. Those instances can easily be contained at the user level: most people can just block and ignore them entirely because nothing interesting happens on those instances for non-extremists. Not so with lemmy.ml, which hosts a number of large bona-fide communities.
So I think it’s necessary to make a concerted effort to reduce lemmy.ml’s prominence in the fediverse, so that political extremists can’t put their thumb on the scale to nudge discussion in a certain direction. Part of that effort is raising awareness about lemmy.ml’s nature, which is what this PSA does, but that likely won’t be enough due to network effect. It will take more to get people to move their communities to other instances. If other large instances, like lemmy.world, would block lemmy.ml that would provide a real stimulus for a large amount of people to move away from lemmy.ml.
I agree that spreading out more would be desirable, but on the other hand “just use lemmy.world instead of lemmy.ml” is a very simple and practical suggestion to move away from ml.
The onslaught of fediverse karen posts about lemmy.ml continues.
I mean it’s obviously run by Russia so anything that makes people realise you can’t trust anything that comes out of it is good.
This is just xenophobic
i thank Stalin for embedding bullshit detectord into all his subjugated people (excluding Russians) and trump for improving it✨😊✨
“Everything I don’t like is Russian or Chinese.”
cs-rin-ru
“Here you see one of the prime examples of a lemmy.world liberal turned xenophobe. Swallowing up the hate towards current enemy of the USA and projecting it onto everything they don’t like”
Like I don’t think the .ml admins are remotely in the right, but politically illiterate libs seeing ghosts everywhere is funny af
(or at least it would be if they didn’t generalize everything evil in this world on Russians or Chinese and dominate one of the largest Lemmy instances)
- Yours truly, an actually Russian person with a migration background <3
!de_ml@lemmy.blahaj.zone for more
!anime@ani.social for Anime community
This may sound cheesy but this list is the healthy way to solve the issue people had with Lemmy.ml moderation. Thank you for compiling it, I didn’t reliaze there were instances for programming and anime. Glad to see a solution where we didn’t have to go through the adults (admins and mods in this case).
Also, it’s healthy for the fediverse to see communities spread on to many instances but it does make Lemmy harder for your average redditor to understand (but long term goal of a healthy fediverse is more important).
Also !greentext@sh.itjust.works is a bit more active than !4chan@lemmy.world
Has too much lemmy.world. Downvoted.
(Half kidding. I hope it’s obvious which half.)