cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
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.
Cowbee is notorious for not actually answering questions, just throwing up the same articles to read and asking people to DM them to continue the conversation. Make what you will of that info - are deeds done in the light of logical discourse inherently “better” than those done in darkness, i.e. are facts that can stand up to scrutiny somehow more “correct” than those that can only be whispered in the dark to those most vulnerable individuals still living in the cave?
You’ll note that I did end up continuing the conversation publicly in this thread. I have only once actually taken a conversation into DMs, with Blaze, whom they can probably back me up on. When I say “feel free to DM if you have any questions” regarding theory I have linked, it’s because I don’t expect anyone to immediately buzz off and read a book or article and then get right back, it’s an open offer to continue the conversation at any point in time.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by not actually answering questions? In this thread you can see it’'s the exact opposite, I am curious what you mean by that.
Finally, when I make my arguments and leave links for supplemental reading, it isn’t a requirement to continue conversation. It’s supplemental, in case they have doubts or wish to learn more beyond a simple Lemmy thread. If it’s necessary reading, I usually quote a relevant paragraph and link the main work.