In advance, this is NOT a complain, but just myself looking for some opinions, views and experiences around this topic. Also, the screenshot is marked as NSFW because it contains language that might be sensible for some people (and that’s also present one time in the post itself).
I’ll start it short: I’ve just been banned for 14 days from the memes community on the official Lemmy instance (!memes@lemmy.ml).
Why?
Apparently, just critizicing chinese state and authoritarism in front of some China’s authoritarism deniers (and, maybe, some CCP infiltrators [I have to I must clarify that the latter is just my speculation, but the possibility is not zero and does not seem low, and as a hypothesis I think it is sufficiently solid]), it seems like pointing up chinese’s government authoritarian character is sinophobia and “not being sufficiently polite” (as it shows in their modlog).
Censorship and FLOSS
This raises me a concern. I can’t say that happens in all of Lemmy.ml communities or that’s anything that they are condoning that; I understand that they give autonomy to the moderators of each community and everything else, and I also do not want to attack the moderators of that community with this, or anything similar. But, seeing that I have already seen several similar cases being reported throughout the Threadiverse, and that the majority of the Fediverse tends to the left (which is not necessarily bad either, I myself am center-left), I have noticed a growing radicalization and a growing polarization within the Fediverse, and that worries me because that was exactly one of the things that attracted me to it, outside of the obvious fact that it is Free, not proprietary like shit in Silicon Valley.
And with that, I increasingly notice a greater spiral of silence here. I’ve been lurking on Lemmy for quite some time, but I only recently created my account on Disroot when I felt ready to start socializing and I felt like I understood the fediquette well enough, but being banned for not thinking the same as the rest of the pro-Chinese people there doesn’t give me a good taste in my mouth; It doesn’t bother me so much that they insult me (in fact, they can do it all they want, I’ll just laugh in their faces and move on xD) and that they don’t let me express myself freely, especially when I live in a country where freedom of expression is a luxury and there is a humanitarian crisis of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of political prisoners and tens of thousands of deaths for precisely that reason.
I really can’t say that they want to censor me since it is one of my first interventions there and it is the first time they have banned me, it would be drawing conclusions too hastily, but I am still worried about this ideological homogenization. Mainly due to the asymmetrical application of that rule, since I never insulted or denigrated anyone and they constantly did. Probably the only failure that would justify a ban is the fact that I wished the death of all the politicians and governments in the world, but it is difficult not to do so when my country is hell on Earth and I can barely trust in any of them. What raises my concern more than anything is the fact that they do it without even having notified me beforehand (really, I never received a notification where they warned me, or any warning, or anything like that, and I have moderator notifications activated by all means in my client, not a message, nothing like that), which makes me feel very arbitrary, especially when they only vaguely mention “Rule 1” in the moderation logs.
I would like to know what you think; Is it just my paranoia and trauma, or is there really a culture of conformism that tends to silence ideas that are foreign to their ideological views, creating a spiral of silence?
.ml that’s your problem.
Not a single blade of grass touched between the entire lot of them.
Classic ml. They’re just CCP MAGA over there. Way better at reading than maga, but completely unable to self reflect or see through their own propaganda.
There’s an “official” Lemmy instance?
Calling .ml the “Official” instance is a disservice in my opinion.
Yes, I only called them that way as a saying, and because in practice they operate as a de facto one, similar to how mastodon.social holds the title in Mastodon.
point of order: tankies are no more “left” than russia and china are
There may be a broader discussion to be had here about censorship on Lemmy and perhaps the internet as a whole. But I will say that Lemmy.ml is the worst and most censorious instance most people are likely to encounter. Just don’t visit their communities and you’ll reduce this issue by a good 90% already.
In a way, I’m a little sorry that the actual situation ended up being “.ml gonna .ml”, because I do think there needs to be a talk about how we (that is, the Fediverse) approach political discussion and censorship overall. Not that this makes the actual answer here any less valid, but I’m sorry that bigger talk isn’t happening.
Yeah I just wasn’t sure if OP was wanting to have that conversation or just talk about .ml specifically. And also I wasn’t sure I had the energy for the bigger topic as it’s complex, contentious, and I don’t feel totally confident of my viewpoints either.
Yes, I was thinking about the broader discussion; targeting more .ml because that is where it is most visible, but it is not as if it does not happen in other instances or even in other Fediverse spaces; I had to go to fsebugout, poast and veenus.art on Pleroma for the same thing, and I’m doing pretty much the same thing on Fediverse in general. It’s a shame how it’s evolving, even if in theory you can just migrate to another instance or create your own, it won’t actually be a solution if everyone defederates from your instance and then you isolate yourself, because that will create another echo chamber on your side; That’s how 4chan started and that’s how any tabloid starts.
The bigger talk happened and the fediverse was invented precisely to allow multiple ways of discussing politics instead of one approved way for everyone that is then universally policed
Oh yeah, almost forgot, this is their first rule: “Be civil and nice.” Just that:
block the community and use another one. thats how I do it.
A lot of those types on Lemmy are quite toxic, politically speaking. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or the left. I said in the past in a YouTube comment that I’m openly center right (better than far or alt-right) due to me being anti-Jesuit (boy do I make Catholics and Jesuits on Lemmy hissy).
Despite that, however, the biggest issue has to do with how dumbed down most Lemmings sadly are. I’m probably one of the only 140+ IQ individuals on here (120 IQ as a base, but ~22-25 points higher using AI with adverserial collaboration), and talked about it in this post: https://lemmy.today/post/44452910 (Yes, it’s a Lemmy Today link, as that’s the instance I use)
Being an intellectual is jarring and infuriating for those on Lemmy or elsewhere on the Fediverse, as if you have a higher IQ, people should just… not understand you. I learned that while using the Fediverse myself, so I get this struggle.
Ranting and raving about how Jesuits and Catholics are related to every topic doesn’t make you smart, it makes you mentally unstable and needing of therapy, dude.
You are very smart
Repeating CIA propaganda kinda does get you banned from a lot of places in the world given the massive damage CIA propaganda has done. Once you step outside the Western bubble that you’re used to english-speaking websites having, you’ll find this attitude pretty much everywhere.
As to how it relates to FOSS, you cannot realistically both believe CIA propaganda, and also support communist ideals like Free and Open Source Software. Those two things are ideologically incompatible.
The issue is that OP was dissing both sides, not just the MSS (Chinese intelligence) and CCP shenanigans. This was something I caught almost immediately when viewing the image provided.
Of course. I always say this: I’m polliticaly pessimist, and although I tend more to center-left, I have many points in common with left, right, center and center-right equally. My basic axiom is that all politicians, parties and governments are bad, not one is good; at much, you can find less bad governments, but that’s far from being good.
IMO governments are just baskets. It’s politicians that have a short shelf life.
The biggest issue, I think, has to do with not realizing that we can be free by seeing our potential as fractals of infinite consciousness.
