I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy's massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It's been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let's say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they're what's colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn't be much of an issue if they didn't regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, ...
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to "https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs" (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren't widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the "Be nice and civil" rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn't you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: "So what, it's the fediverse, you can use another instance."
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they're not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it's rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there's nobody to discuss anything with.
I'm not sure if there's a solution here, but I'd like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
That is really the solution though, isn't it.
I don't think so. It's a bit like being bullied and your friends are being bullied, too. What do you do? Leave the room and be happy they bully your friends and not you? Keep silent which ultimately enables them? No. You're being vocal about it. You warn your friends not to go in there. And you try to do sth about it. In the end it's the bullies who should leave, not the nice people. Or the whole place is doomed and just getting worse.
Silly. The internet is full of echo chambers. Just move on. If an instance is run by people you can't reason with, why hang out there? Will you try and change 4chan too?
And am I supposed to let other people be subject to that, too? Let people like that drag down Lemmy as a whole? Shouldn't I have a nice and welcoming place on the internet for me and my friends?
Do you like echo chambers? If you want my perspective: I have until now recommended Lemmy to exactly zero of my friends. Because of things like this. Lemmy has quite some potential. But it just has so many issues to tackle and the culture here just isn't what appeals to "normal" people. If other people share my experience, that's exactly why Lemmy still is below 50k active users and super small.
Sure. I moved away from the .ml communities a few weeks ago because I think it's the right thing to do (for me). It's just dragging down everyone and making Lemmy a worse place. Like we see constantly with all the posts like this. Should we (the people who want more than an echo chamber, and want fair and honest discussions) all abandon Lemmy?
It's.... Lemmy. One instance does not represent all of it. Move to a friendlier instance. That's the beauty of the fediverse.
And in the end, lemmy.ml, like many other instances, are run by its owners, technically for the fun of it. They're absorbing the cost. Not us. They can do whatever they want with their little toy server.
Look, I'm not defending them. They suck. I'm just saying that the internet is vast. Why focus of one small corner of it? Again, that's like trying to change 4chan. Or moving to a tornado area and trying to get rid of the tornadoes.
I get you. But they're the flagship instance. At least they used to be. They shape the brand identity of whole Lemmy. And that's being tankie and having a culture that could be nice, but regularly isn't. So everyone on the internet knows Lemmy isn't really something I want to subject myself to. And if we're being honest, alsmost nobody knows the fine nuances of power abuse on specific instances. It's just "Lemmy" that this gets attributed to.
Every interaction here represents Lemmy. Some disproportionately so.
And we've established, me leaving (which I've done) is not gonna change anything about it. The communities are still amongst the largest and where most of the users are, and also attracting the new users.
Your argumantation would be perfectly valid if lemmy.ml were some small instance that's unheard of by most users. Or blocked by the rest of the network. We could ignore them then, let them do their own thing like the Fediverse does with a few nazi and conspiracy instances. But this isn't the case here.
Regarding money and doing it "for the fun of it": That's not correct. They get money for two or three full-time jobs from the NLNet fund and the EU. They could be having fun, too. But they definitely also get a substancial amount of money for it.
Concerning the 4chan example: That's on point. 4chan is the epitome of echo chamber and incel culture. That's mainly because there's no one else. They left. And now, why would anyone else visit a place like that in the first place? I'd rather not Lemmy become like that. Do you?
Wait... is lemmy.ml really the flagship instance? I thought that was lemmy.world.
Here's how I see it: an instance becomes bullshit, all the rest of the instances defederate from them. It has happened in the past, it will keep happening in the future. Lemmy self-corrects.
And if it doesn't, welp, it will go the way of Slashdot, Digg and Reddit. I'd be okay with that.
It's lemmy.ml . During the API wars on Reddit lots of people came here and lots of new instances were founded. lemmy.world was part of that and quickly grew into -I think- the now largest instance by far. But lemmy.ml is at least 2 years older and hosted by the actual developers. And due to history hosts to this point some of the large communities.
Yeah. And "Lemmy self-corrects" is kind of what this post is about (in my opinion.) I'd like to see lemmy.world and a few other instances now do it and defederate. That's how it should be, call out bullshit, be vocal and then do something about it. My point is, we're at phase 1 or 2. Now we're going to see if Lemmy self-corrects. As of now it didn't.
I think just hoping for a bright future isn't cutting it. And if you ask me, all the infighting and defederating each other also isn't healthy.
Thanks for the history lesson. I didn't really know lemmy.ml was the first Lemmy instance.