2026-10-23: This is a restructured v2 version of the original megathread and also to move it to my new main acc. The old archived thread is available here

Context on the meme image and explainer below, the megathread originally started as a celebratory post to people blocking/boycotting .ml so much that there started to be posts of people noticing that posts seemed to be upvoted much less then when posted elsewhere

Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

Dessalines - Head .ml admin - Head Lemmy Dev

(Primary tankie ideology enforcer of .ml)

"Slava Ukraini" is considered a "Fascist slogan" - https://lemmy.world/post/36065538

Pushes Russian propaganda on Ukraine - https://lemmy.world/post/47078127

Authoritarianism isn't real - https://lemmy.world/post/36750689

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" - https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/47808886 | https://lemmy.world/post/49003962 | https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

"The BBC is not a credible news source" - https://lemmy.world/post/35824465

Removes "US State Funded Media" but Russian state propaganda sites are fully allowed - https://lemmy.world/post/32426343

Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban - https://lemmy.world/post/32775563

Open declaration of support for Russia - https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

Censoring criticism of China while allowing fellow "in-crowd" user "concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" misinfo to remain - https://lemmy.world/post/26985447

Censoring when users call out propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522

Discussing winnie the pooh and/or the negatives of china is a 30 day ban - https://lemmy.world/post/35374967

Davel - .ml admin

(Secondary tankie ideology enforcer of .ml)

Spreading anti-ukraine Russian propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/48392030 | https://lemmy.world/post/34655572

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet - https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

Propagates Chinese propaganda that Taiwan isn't a country, its part of China - https://lemmy.world/post/41776158

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" - https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

Genocide Denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/52778896

Response to a valid report of "NK is actually good" as propaganda/misinfo https://lemmy.world/post/32627834

Removal of a credible article that was on the Uyghur genocide - https://lemmy.world/post/33205310

It's totally fine when Russia kills woman and children, war is war after all - https://lemmy.world/post/33224299

Nutomic - 2nd in command Lemmy Dev

(Nutomic doesn't do a whole lot of enforcement)

Their initial transphobic statement - https://lemmy.world/post/18236068

Their continued transphobia when given the opportunity to retract their previous statements - https://lemmy.world/post/29222558

Cypherpunks - 3rd .ml tankie admin

(Cypherpunks does some enforcement, but usually just keeps legit spam in check)

Supports Russian propaganda outlets like Sputnik - https://lemmy.world/post/40248324

General Tankie user behaviour

"lemmy.ml is run by Communists and Communists critically support Russia" ~Cowbee prominent .ml tankie - https://lemmy.world/post/49107777

"Taiwan is a dictatorship, South korea is occupied land by the US, Ukraine is a puppet state" ~Prominent tankie mod of lemmy.ml memes (ghost_laptop) - https://lemmy.world/post/52315729

People of Ukraine are just "waiting for [Russian] liberation" ~Cowbee, prominent .ml tankie - https://lemmy.world/post/53172386

Angry memes because people call out Russian propaganda as demonstrated by prominent tankie @hamid@crazypeople.online (Former admin @hamid@vegantheoryclub.org, instance that was on track to be the fourth Tankie instance of the Tankie triad before hamid shut it down because people were calling it out last year) - https://lemmy.world/post/49479941

Double standard of memes celebrating Ukraine losing are permitted when memes of the opposite would be removed - https://lemmy.world/post/39124833

Intentional conflation of "communism" and "tankie" terms to push the tankie narrative that they're "the only true leftists" as demonstrated by Cowbee, prominent .ml tankie - https://lemmy.world/post/49237006

"There was never a massacre in Tiananmen Square, just around it! So it's just propaganda" ~Cowbee, prominent .ml tankie - https://lemmy.world/post/49236994

Pushing of anti-voting narratives/blueMAGA by prominent .ml tankie jankforlife - https://lemmy.world/post/49198296

"Trump isn't a Russian asset" Cowbee, prominent Lemmy.ml tankie - https://lemmy.world/post/49761200

"Propaganda is good actually" - https://lemmy.world/post/36162233

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" https://lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

Biden is worse than Trump - https://lemmy.world/post/33631617

Uyghur Genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/33873969

Why am I cross-posting .ml content? And account listing used for it

The following posts need to be fixed as piefed.social seems to not have any MWoG posts beyond 5 months ago, but preserved here for later

https://lemmy.world/post/36516279

https://lemmy.world/post/36974637

Update 10/23/2026 - Start of v2 Megathread

We need an option to shadowban instances. I'm worried that these delusional twats are actually gonna switch instances and blend in with the rest of us.

I like tankies in my feed, I just wish I could find some rightoids to add, or at least a Christian feed

Lol yeah most right wingers get bullied off the Fediverse lmao. I don't even know if that DonaldMusk guy is still here

You still got the only surviving right wing instance HilariousChaos online if you want to go poke them lol

They already sort of do that, they're known to have alts on "safe" instances to rile things up, though they do tend to get banned when they get too rowdy

I think the libertarian flavor might show up, but I don't think they stay too long.

Maybe we can bring them back to sanity by separating them from their echo chamber.

do you speak spanish and enjoy ai because great news if so

This is beautiful. Let’s keep it coming. Block those chodes whenever you see them films. This is how they get silenced.

I wish there were blocklists

Nah it didn't work anywhere else, why would it work here?

You just end up getting overrun by tankies since they have nothing better to do.

That's basically what defederation does - users on that instance can still see and interact with posts and comments, but nobody on the instance that defederated them will see it.

Yeah they definitely do. Part of why im very liberal with blocking. I catch even the faintest whiff of that shit and its an immediate block.

i didn’t realize i was taking part in a boycott, but happy to find out i’m doing my part!

I recently caught a ban for criticising North Korea, very happy with that outcome

I left for months because of this. I thought (and still do tbh) that's just how lemmy works.

I still don't want to be here because of how often I'm stuck seeing their stuff or the blatant attacks from crazy accounts saying the most insane manipulative nonsense.

Plus I got this for reporting disinformation. Which is weird because why am I seeing the guys name, and who tf is Arthur Besse?

https://imgur.com/a/Z5zh0Nv

and it seems as though that guy also silently banned me or something, because I can't comment or downvote tons and tons of stuff anymore.

Idk I'm really glad to read what you've said here. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about but the instances and fediverse talk is like reading French to me so I don't really understand what you mean but it's fine. I get the jist of it I guess. I'm glad I'm not the only one with a heavy heart seeing this place looking like a disinformation factory.

Arthur Basse is just the display name for Cypherpunks, a .ml admin on the list. They're a tankie, but they're probably one of the quietest ones around. They all do tend to mock peoples reports when reporting something they view as legit (RT, Sputnik etc). Davel does it publicly in the comments, but does at least redact the user when they do it.

You can think of instances as email servers with their own rules and guidelines that all speak the same language. You have Gmail and Yahoo and AOL, they're all distinct entities, but they all speak the same language and can communicate with each other. Fediverse is the same, lemmy.ml is one instance where the admins aggressively enforce their ideology.

You can do an instance block at Settings > Block Tab > Scroll to bottom > Input "lemmy.ml"

Make sure to block :
Lemmy.world Latestagecapitalism

The mod, K1nsey6, banned me for "Not being a socialist", lol. (Which wasn't a rule.)

Now it says "multiple rule breaks"?

I thought Iwas having a legitimate conversation on what they were describing as the difference between communism and socialism. (It was a thread with Cowbee, so how legitimate could it have been?)

I was actually curious because they constantly use the argument of people using the wrong definition, or using terms incorrectly and I to be clear in my statements.

I probably really got banned because I called out the tired tankie strategy. That maybe if they weren't so toxic to people that they might have more than an echo chamber.

Just call them what they are: authoritarians.

That's why they always say "I don't believe in authoritarianism, it's reactionary liberal blah blah."

Mofo I despise centrist libs too when they work across the aisle with fascists. Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds. I've read Marx and Lenin as well. That's why I know what authoritarianism is and whenever you strip rights away, whenever you otherize and dehumanize, it always leads to failure.

MAGA silences voices that aren't conservative enough.

Tankies silence voices that aren't against western nations enough.

MAGA wants to create their own education camps because universities are "Marxist liberal factories."

Tankies want to place you in education camps to enforce Russian/eastern values to "deprogram."

You're both reactionary. One to progress, the other towards the destructive imperial capitalist warmongers.

It's all propaganda at the end of the day. You should absolutely teach mechanisms and a healthy amount of skepticism, but you can't enforce your values and ideology on another. That's outright authoritarian and will lead to revolt at one point or another. Even if you feel you're absolutely right and doing the best for humanity, the fascists feel exactly the same. Outright control is the problem, and no matter how much you read, you're reinforcing the political theory that all of you are simply 12.

They completely misunderstand Marx and Lenin because they let their disdain of american/"western" fascism blow way out of proportion. Just like MAGA having to "trigger the libs" tankies just want to do the same.

I'm sure, I know my days here are numbered (independent)

Mods can't help but bully it seems

Rightoids are my favorite to argue politics with, I enjoyed The_Donald on Reddit (R mods are no better).

I'd like to find a place with all flavors of politics and "neutral" mods, but that is just a fantasy it seems. Maybe try Twitter next but really I'd rather not.

Beggars can't be choosers

Mods gonna mod.

I'm the closest thing to a libertarian here at the moment that I've seen. Lemmy is the farthest left place I've ever encountered, there aren't even regular Democrats here.

I would think it's boring, I don't want to talk to a bunch of mes, why do they? Dunno

who enjoys AI? Hurk

There's plenty of libertarians around, just not many Libertarians.

I caught a ban for pointing out that a user was a tankie. They say they're proud tankies, yet they ban you for calling them tankies? Seems kinda weird.

Gahdamn I fuckin hate Cowbee.

Their blue MAGA talk is endlessly exhausting as well. Delightfully rich coming from a group that has more in common with MAGA than not.

The fact that they justify the Russia invasion is directly supporting a genocide. If they knew their history they would know Russian has a history of genocide in Ukraine. Anyone .ML that supports this is no different than a Zionist or US Chickenhawk.

For this one reason, ignoring facts and believing Kremlin low-effort propaganda, it should be enough to shun them until they change their tune. Until then they deserve everything they get for turning their back on humanity.