It's not really a strawman in that I never claimed anyone said it. It's just that people talk about "censorship" and "echo chambers" and "they have to remove things to keep their users brainwashed" or whatever nonsense, ignoring the fact that the structure of the fediverse, as designed by the .ml admins, makes that more or less impossible.

For anyone else that is curious, the complaint is about the lack of transparency in describing what content is vs. is not allowed

OK, fair enough, they could afford to clarify the rules somewhat. But I don't really consider that a huge deal. I've been banned from communities on .world for things that aren't enumerated in the rules too. I don't see why rules have to cover every possible thing.

Was anyone hiding being a "tankie"? I mean I don't really use the term I just call it Marxist-Leninist but if that's what you want to call it I'm fine with that. I mean I'm clearly not trying to hide my political views if you look at my username. Not sure what you needed "evidence" for. But more power to ya i guess.

yeah everyone knows this

Anyone who opposes any war will always be accused of supporting the other side, and as the other side is always painted as the aggressor no matter the conflict, those most opposed to war will always be painted as the most aggressive warmongers.

It's no different from when I was labelled a "terrorist sympathizer" or seen as "supporting 9/11" when I opposed war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Opposition to building more tanks is literally the defining characteristic of a "tankie" for that reason, because if you don't want to build more tanks, it can only be because you want the enemy to win. Meanwhile, those who support building and deploying tanks are seen as "peaceful."

Real "war is peace" hours.

I mean, you shouldn’t. “XiJinpingStanAccount” is a glorious handle. I salute you, comrade.

can someone explain why the .ml people hate piefed so much?

My opinion is that geneva_convenience has been going off the deep end, getting worse and worse lately, and definitely should be removed as a mod, honestly just banned. He's an edgelord who's taking things to unreasonable extremes and trying to pick fights with everyone.

Your argument that lemmy.ml cannot be an echo chamber due to it allowing other machines to store content that it disagrees with is noted. Btw nobody ever said that it was for that reason, so once again ridiculous.

Your second whataboutism is also noted (counterpoint: 2 things can both be true at the same time) - and expected. Once again I reiterate that I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wish that I did not have to be subjected to this level of argumentation. But it seems that as long as I continue to use Lemmy, my only option is to block each account individually, over and over again, ad nauseum.

lol thanks

You arent really a lemming until you've told Cowbee to go fuck himself.

Your argument that lemmy.ml cannot be an echo chamber due to it allowing other machines to store content that it disagrees with is noted.

That's one way to describe "designed a website where it's virtually unavoidable to encounter opposing views." At that point, you could describe me replying to you as me "storing content you disagree with on another machine" which makes your complaint about my reply existing sound just as silly.

Btw nobody ever said that it was for that reason, so once again ridiculous.

Btw, I never said that anyone said it was for that reason, so you are once again being ridiculous.

Your second whataboutism

Whataboutism is when you uphold consistent standards and expect others to do the same, understood.

Once again I reiterate that I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really wish that I did not have to be subjected to this level of argumentation. But it seems that as long as I continue to use Lemmy, my only option is to block each account individually, over and over again, ad nauseum.

If you hate the fact that the devs structured the platform to force everyone to encounter opposing views and prevent echo chambers so much, I kinda have to wonder what you're doing on the platform at all. The federated structure is literally in the name, fediverse. It's like going to Burger King and being outraged at seeing burgers on the menu. Is it really that hard to find an echo chamber somewhere with only mainstream liberal views? That's not really something the fediverse is designed for.

No, many people know this; but there are virgin minds born every day. Consider XKCD's classic Ten Thousand. Part of the vigilance means doing the documentation, and on a social media platform, that means periodic updates as content. Few people take up arms on a fight that nobody can see.

This person is doing good work 😋, even if the conclusion is unsurprising.

Stated answer: bc it is "opinionated".

This is actually true - it already has been and is getting more strongly biased against "social media" type of content (as opposed to more serious, less emotional discussions) all the time. e.g. lately it will reject additional votes beyond a daily quota, which is applied even to people on Lemmy (or Mbin, Friendica, nodeBB, Mastodon, etc.) - for the stated reason that votes are not meant to make people feel good and instead that somehow is indicative of "vote manipulation", when you, you know, upvote content that you would like to see more of.

The trick though is that it doesn't bother telling people this, in anything remotely resembling a transparent manner, so it is a type of shadow-censoring people's offered contributions. Also, this anti-feature, forced over the objections of most people in the community, is enabled by default, and was barely announced, leading multiple instance admins to express surprise at the new behavior of their machines after the relevant update. Several migrations of people and entire communities to PieFed were cancelled as a result.

Real answer: tribal Lemmy love somehow must imply hatred of any "competition".

People made a bunch of shit up, it got disproven, but nobody seemed to relent and people still spread the disinformation about it. Like saying that things were "hard-coded", when not only was that not the case, but (unlike the shadow-censoring mentioned above) they were even opt-in, i.e. disabled by default.

There are several valid reasons to prefer Lemmy over PieFed - like a more polished UI, and a superb search functionality, or just being too lazy to move once already established. But some people like to create drama, it would seem, and don't care whether their battle cries are based on actual facts or not.

Counterpoint - if we were on .ML these people would be blocked - they're exercising their freedom.

We're not on Reddit, Facebook, or X and you'll find whole communities of haters for those sites, too.

Believe it or not, negativity tends to spread further than positivity in general as we are a risk-averse species, and it's one of the documented harms of social media in general. You're probably gonna find some version of this style of bitching no matter where ya go, it's a human thing.

They aren't truly communists. They are leftist MAGA. Russia, China, and North Korea are nowhere close to either communist or socialist.

Correct about the deranged part tho - no notes there.

Who also absolutely refuse to separate funding for future development of the Lemmy software vs. operating costs of the Lemmy.ml instance.

Also if you study its modlog, the amount of time they spend each day curating that content is high, to say the least. Not every dollar (or ruble or whatever) spent goes towards the latter, but it seems that a goodly portion of it does.

The devs themselves are the very ones tying the development of Lemmy with the operation of Lemmy.ml - this is not hidden in the slightest.

And don't forget the alts they make on other instances, which they then proudly mention in certain spaces (like on lemmygrad) how they evade such instance bans and user blocks.

They are very proud of their ability to remain not only ungovernable, but people who willfully remain insensitive to others needs as well.

tyvm for the insight.

what a strange world we live in.

Good point.

i agree, can't stand them either and it's only been getting worse

they have been doing that, maybe you dont visit thier posts often. hexbear, lemmygrad, and ml are all super tankies. others ones you may want to avoid is dbzero, or equivalent, startrek website comm, and some of blahj ones.

imagine you mentioned the tianamin massacre, it would get thier panties in a wad.

they are mirror-image conservatives, they use the same buzz words, talk the same language.

I only really saw it for myself when I said, "I'm completely opposed to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel. I don't have a problem with Jews existing," and they responded by accusing me of being a "liberal Zionist" and "supporting genocide" and then blocking me.

I remembered Cowbee saying something about them before, I just looked it up and I gotta give props as always because he was calling them out 9 months ago for not reading theory of doing praxis and just watching Bad Empanada, and for apparently calling Hexbear "transzionist" and accusing them of defending Contrapoints' stance on Israel, which is just bizarre.

So that was a lot of words to say nothing.

Do you think Russia is in a right to invade Ukraine?

It's the most clear cut conflict in the world at the moment, anyone supporting Putin's aggression has lost themselves to propaganda. Ukraine unfortunately didn't get enough support early on, this conflict could had cost half the lives lost to date.

It's miles apart to be against an aggressive occupational force with no clear goals, and not support a country's right to defend itself.

XiJinpingStanAccount honestly sounds like a parody handle, I'd expect the likelyhood of such a user to actually favour Xi Jinping rather low.

Personally I don't understand why we'd want less democracy, instead of more of it. Citizens assemblies is the logical move, for anyone wanting more power to the people - But I guess my views are closer to anarchist movements than anything, I don't want to alter everything. I just want to kill intergenerational wealth.

What we need is co-directional migration between Lemmy and PieFed. I need this for my instance, but having it for users is an important first step.

It must be me not following any community where those tankies are too active. Or maybe not being actively interested in discussing with them.

I don't ban any instance on my one-user instance, so it's clearly something I am missing here since I never had issues.

I am also not much interested in politics either, so maybe it's that.

I see...
Maybe time to move to piefed then? I was tooling the idea to switch on my instance but never did.

Looks like trump himself is a Putin mouth so, maybe he also has a user on .ml

Well it's sort of a parody but the other way. I am parodying stan accounts by making one about Xi Jinping, who I do like, and who is not the typical recipient of a stan account. Also, speaking about democracy being 'more' or 'less' is odd. I think it's impossible to do so. Because nobody can agree on what makes things more or less democratic. For example, I think China is more democratic than the US. Not less. Why? Because my metric for the level of 'democracy' in a nation is how closely that nations policies match the will of its people and how happy the people are with its policies. Others may say what makes something more democratic is simply more chances to vote on things. Or perhaps they would say the less seperation from the final decision the better. (direct vs representative democracy). So, like I said, a hard thing to discuss without causing confusion by using the same words to mean different things.

Defederate lemmy.ml

You may find this illustrative:

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example, I think China is more democratic than the US.

Both countries are a clusterfuck from a democratic/people decides perspective. The way both countries are ruled is quite similar. They're two sides of the same coin.

Because my metric for the level of 'democracy' in a nation is how closely that nations policies match the will of its people and how happy the people are with its policies

This is really hard to gauge for China specifically, because there's as you noted no electorally elected officials.

Furthermore it's an authoritarian leadership, known to punish dissidents. It's a very complex topic to go into who benefits and who don't, from the current Chinese policies. Chinas economy is as much, if not more, dependent on gig labour as the US is. The gig labourers are not in better conditions in China, than they are in the US.

It's not unheard of that parents pay for their adult children's medicine, because the only income their child could get was from a poorly paid delivery gig.

There's an issue globally with the elites having grown more greedy, especially in the past four decades. I think one of US, UK, China or Russia is going to see their elite lose power and fall to a popular uprising. Before any other oligarchical society, at which all oligarchs are going to give crumbs back to the people.

Just like European royal houses gave more wealth and power to their commoners as a response to the French revolution.

What is this thread even. Blocking an entire instance, because a single community member annoyed somebody? I mean, sure, go ahead…

ML simply happens to be the instance hosted by the developers of entire Lemmy, so they spend the bare minimum on post moderation, because they have the bigger picture to focus on.

Now the screenshots show that a “mod” took action. A “mod” can be literally anybody appointed by the current mods of a community. Anybody can create a community, just like on Reddit, so this could literal have been anybody.
You’ll encounter similar bans on other instances in time as they grow too, because people are free to make sub-rules to their communities, essentially each “mod” having their little dictatorship.

There needs to be a list of instances that defederate lemmy.ml by default. It's not just a single community, it is at the admin level.

Need... more... pixels....

You might be thinking of lemmygrad?

LOL, startrek.website? IIRC the whole hubbub about them was that they defederated from dbzer0 in the first place.

Nah, they're tankies, they have an agenda.

is that not what any good forum needs?

everyone already knows this, it's their instance and they aren't being racist so who cares?

They're literally defending imperialist nations that tread human, and particularly LGBTQ+ rights with their feet.

Anyone who is pro Russia is anti LGBTQ+ and pro Imperialism.

Piefed still can't show me my upvoted and down voted content on voyager and Alexandrite. I need to test this on pylova.

Supporting the heavily anti LGBTQ imperialist state of Russia is not liberal.

Anyone who supports Russia is explicitly anti LGBTQ. You cannot be pro LGBTQ whilst supporting and defending a fascist government that treads on LGBTQ rights.

Neither is it liberal to claim that supporting the existence of Jews, whilst explicitly denouncing the genocide state of israel is a "zionist stance", which geneve_convenience, the mod mentioned in this post literally verbatim did, and then banned someone over.

Super liberal, basically stating that Jews as a people, regardless of any individuals opinion, don't deserve to exist, just because many of them are zionist. By that logic members of every major religion, as well as every single cis white male don't deserve the right to exist as a people.

This is nothing new under the sun.

An individual could block .ml instances, but I choose not to so I could keep calling out their bs. It's not win an argument and stoke my ego, but it is for any would reader to see how nonsensical .ml users themselves and their ideas are.

My agenda is already booked with useless meetings unfortunately

can people not have pride in their nationality?