I’ve been trying to make people aware of Lemmy on discord and Mastodon, but it’s always met with resistance citing “the devs are pro authoritarianism tankies.” Kbin seems to be picking up steam because of the developer baggage.
Do you feel like this negative perception will hamstring Lemmy’s growth?
Kbin is new, the distinctions between Magazine and micro-blogging creates an extra barrier to understand the system, the few instances are straining under the load, and it’s very much in beta.
New users won’t be terribly forgiving, so I feel like Lemmy’s the better option.
I never understood why questionable views from software devs might be a problem.
- It’s not a corporation, so you’re not financially supporting tankies.
- Lots of devs don’t share your values, because everyone has different values.
It’s not like I can only use software made by people who don’t eat meat, and everyone’s doctors are partially informed by science performed by the Nazis.
I have no idea what kind of world these people think they’re living in, as if everything were developed with shared values, and a pure conscience, until Lemmy came along.
Is “Magazine” just a community/subreddit/forum? I took a quick look at Kbin and found the terminology odd. I would have expected something called a “magazine” to combine communities or something, but I couldn’t otherwise find any communities on Kbin.
Yes, a magazine is just a community or subreddit. I prefer the UI of Kbin but the terminology takes some getting used to. There’s also regular posts and microblogs.
I’m still checking it out, though the services are all up and down, so I don’t have a full handle on it yet.
It is. A magazine is essentially a subreddit. I too found kbin a bit confusing at first but it’s not so bad once you get used to it. One thing I really don’t like about kbin is all of your up/downvotes, boosts, magazines you’re subscribed to, etc. are exposed for everyone to see.
Thanks for the info. I had a closer look at Kbin today, and it wasn’t apparent how visible which things were. Finding info over there is also a challenge, because all documentation/help articles are pretty much aimed at admins setting up servers, which I’m not ready to do.
I never encountered the term “Tanky/Tankie” until yesterday, here, on Lemmy. I’m just trying out a bunch or Reddit alternatives and some fediverse stuff. I mean, some of the founders of Reddit aren’t my kind of people, and I’ve been over there since it was founded. If they’re not doing something extremely horrible, then meh.
It’s a silly meaningless word
It’s niche political drama, and it doesn’t really affect the development of Lemmy.
Post trump memes to change the perception?
I mean, Mastodon face similar stigma despite huge right wing Mastodon instances existing, and Mastodon the devs don’t seem to be nearly as bad as the admins and mods on lemmy.ml
Wish I could just block all politics, especially Americans’ politics.
I think it might for a little while but not for much longer.
When the influx started, the two oldest and biggest Lemmy instances, the ones maintained by the developers, and thus presumably the flagship instances, were lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml. Tankies are definitely overrepresented in those two instances, and since the devs themselves are tankies, there’s a lot of moderation bias in favor of red fascist authoritarian regimes even in the nominally “neutral” lemmy.ml — such as them refusing to remove genocide denial or outright genocide justification, while also removing posts critical of China and so on.
You might argue that this doesn’t affect you if you just pick a different instance, because the culture of that instance will be different and so will the moderation, but the problem with that is that if the vast majority of users on a network are tankies and are moderated by tankies then that’s going to influence your experience of the network as a whole pretty much unavoidably unless you defederate with the largest instances and thereby intentionally hamstring yourself.
So even if you joined another instance, your experience of the site as a whole would be dominated by a tankie leaning culture via comments and posts, and that’s where the reputation (deservedly) came from. And it probably did and maybe still does hamper the growth a little bit. It definitely made me, a trans anarchist, think twice about joining.
However, with the more neutral and professionally-run lemmy.world taking over as the second largest and flagship instance, and beehaw as the third (iirc), as well as the overall influx of a variety of users from Reddit, I think over time the dominance of tankies in how the network is experienced by users, even from other instances, will drastically decrease, especially as many instances defederate from lemmmygrad, and so the reputation will also fade.
red fascist authoritarian regimes
Do you include Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, Laos, Nepal, etc in that? Is there a type of “red” (marxist) that you don’t call a fascist?
Nice strawmen. Nice combative response. This is why people don’t like to interact with your instance.
Huh? I asked you a real question. You’re dodging answering it?
This is not rhetorical, I want to know whether there is any kind of marxist (those of us waving red flags and organising the trade union movement) that you do not call a fascist and whether you include all of the above countries in your assessment of “red fascism” or whether you leave any of them out. Let’s put Nicaragua and Angola in there too although I would call them quite flawed in a number of ways myself. Also the Kerala district of India, do you call that fascist?
I’m dead serious. I’m trying to understand what you are.
I admit, it was a dodge. I do lack the knowledge of these countries or regions to actually give an honest answer. But IMHO your question was not in good faith as the answer was already given:
fascist authoritarian
If any of the regimes ruling the countries you provided fall in that category, OP is against it. And it leaves me with the opinion you are just trying to put OP in a bad spot and fish for a ‘gotcha’ moment in their answers, as they (and I) do not know all the details you apparently have.
But you want to know ‘what’ I am. First, I am human. Second, this is my personal opinion and I do not speak for any group: I don’t like autocratic, totalitarian, fascistic, oppressive ways of ruling.
If people chose a ‘red’ government, and they are chosen through continued fair elections with no disingenuous means or force, all the power to them. And even if your chosen way of ruling doesn’t do elections. If people want change, and you deny them that change through force and oppression. You are wrong in my eyes.
And this isn’t just for communism, this is for all flavors of government:
- I don’t like the Nazi symbology that some Ukrainian troops are displaying. Which I recently learned through lemmygrad.ml.
- I don’t like the greed we as a human race are displaying and are allowing to be displayed. More money over people and nature should have never been allowed.
- I am not a fan of what is happening in:
- Turkey
- Russia
- Hungary
- China
- Palestine and Israel
- Saudi Arabia
- America, yes even them:
- Their voting system is too easily manipulated and is actively being exploited.
- Giving corporations too much power there is affecting the whole world.
- Turning a blind eye to their own oppression of anything socialism, their history, their patriotism that is just veiled fascism.
- I can make this list very long, I hope this is enough to bring across my point.
I always voted ‘left’ and ‘green’, which might not be the ‘red’ you wave on your flag. I am not religious, but I am hoping, wishing, and praying for any power that is willing to listen, that the people of my country would vote for a different party besides the VVD (conservative liberal) and the PVV (populist) when we will vote for our next ‘2de kamer’.
But allow me to explain my hostility: I have only been a member for a very short time. And every time I see a post come up from lemmygrad.ml the comments are filled with just degenerative and reductive comments about ‘the others’, the ‘not enlightened us at lemmygrad’. I see comments being celebrated for being banned for posting shitty pig balls as replies. I see people talking down on people for having a less ‘red’ view. I see open hostility being upvoted, while voices of temperance are being downvoted. All I see is us versus them. And them are allowed to be ridiculed and made lesser of.
Maybe it is the selective behavior of the ‘all communities’ overview: that it prefers to show the controversial topics and charged comments. But it is painting any interaction that I see on or from the lemmygrad.ml instance with in that bad light. Just like I explained my view on your question asked in the first place, and you asking ‘what’ I am like I am an object.
In conclusion: I am a human. I have my biases. These biases are fed by what I see. And I have the same bias to other instances if I see them do the same shit I have seen rise out of lemmygrad.ml.
Only one of the countries you listed is a socialist country that “tankies” defend.
I listed countries that the people who accuse of being “tankies” defend. So-called tankies do not defend any of the countries you listed barring China, although we have plenty of criticisms of China as well. The only defence of Russia that we put up is that the conflict that is currently ongoing was caused by nato, and that no amount of pouring weapons into the country will save any lives, on the contrary it will in fact kill many more people. This is spun into “you support russia” by many but is an unfair characterisations of what those on the left actually believe. Yes you can probably find Z people to refute this but they are a minority. Russia is a capitalist shithole and we want to change that in the longterm just as we want to change it in every capitalist country.
If people chose a ‘red’ government, and they are chosen through continued fair elections with no disingenuous means or force, all the power to them.
What would that look like? Specifically, let us imagine a world where it is true that Cuba or the DPRK or wherever does indeed hold free and fair elections on a regular basis, but that everything else about the world was exactly as you, I assume, admit it is (such as the vicious sanctioning and libel by western powers). From where you are sitting, what would the difference be? What sort of information would you be aware of, would you receive from where you are in the world and the media you consume, that was in any way different?
America, yes even them
It’s weird how hating Russia is considered reflectively justified, but questioning anything about America requires all this hemming and hawing.
Like, you can’t just say that America has serious problems. You have to argue with a bunch of nationalists who might have hurt feelings and coddle the fence sitters because they don’t like your tone of voice.
Can’t help but think this is because we’re more reticent of people we’re neighbors with, while foreigners just don’t matter.
The other person was calling them a supporter of fascism, no sense whining about them being “combative” when that’s a serious accusation
I have some memory of you being reasonable when actually presented with arguments. I would strongly encourage you to try to actual talk to these people that you speak about in such strong pejoratives, perhaps by asking them non-presumptuous questions. I think you will find that they have more to say than you give them credit for.
The people running beehaw are extremely dishonest about this issue, citing “hate speech” as a reason for defederation with platforms that aggressively ban and remove hate speech, including the only instance I know of that actually displays pronouns with the username (Hexbear.net , which they preemptively banned).
as opposed to what? pro authoritarianistic capitalists?
fuck big money and reddit/twitter/etc is the bigger money
Probably but it’s a non issue for me. Don’t interact with it and move on. There’s shitty people in every facet of life.
I think I was having a quality discussion with some “tankies” last night about politics and philosophy. Not really sure what their thoughts on ccp were exactly as it was more a broad discussion.
I don’t condone authoritarianism. Hell I don’t condone most govt systems lol.
Join us on kbin - it’s friendly ;) https://readit.buzz
no because no normie knows what a tankie is
I literally just found out what that word means because of Lemmy
The users from certain other instances are talking about it nonstop and trying to make it a wedge issue, so it’s not surprising
To be fair, while they might not know the term, encountering someone unironically defending North Korea or such probably would still make one uneasy.
Yes, it’ll hamstring the growth of lemmy. I’m currently using kbin instead and as soon as it has an app to use I probably won’t interact directly with lemmy. All simply because of the tankie baggage and I’m not the only one.
The term “tanky” is actually new to me, and something I had to read up on. If anything, I find the way Lemmy is structured to be very appealing to anarchists, libertarians, communists, and conservatives alike.
It’s just my opinion, but the perception of Lemmy is not universal, and seems to be from whatever vantage point people want to take. Rexxitors are valuing the “not run by Spez” and elements of community driven oversight free of investors, people banned from popular subreddits/Reddit itself seem to value the diverse moderators running different nodes, anarchists love being free from any corporate control and the “wild west” mentality of some instances, and conservatives will value any instance with free speech norms.
It’s going to really amount to the instances as people learn more about it, rather than the framework itself.
Yes, it will.
I don’t think it matters. If people want to use Kbin instead, then great! It’s still a fediverse platform (even though they had to temporarily turn off federation), so we’ll still all be in the same pond.
im just shooting that down outright, what about the devs or the server they run matters? as far as I can tell the software works fine, we can fork and run what we like, its a protocol not a proprietary system.
why are people saying the culture must match the devs? do you adopt the culture of all the devs that make the software you use?
do we all need to list the OS’s and software stacks we use so politics are clear?
this is silly.
The problem is just that the lemmygrad and lemmy.ml admins and mods are giving Lemmy as a whole a bad name. The same thing has happened to Mastodon.
Im deeply out of the loop on mastodon. What happened there?
how is this different than r/<CONTRERVERSIALSUBHERE> ?
even on reddit individual mod teams have had to put measures in place to stem other communities.
If you want to stick with lemmy, use lemmy.world - they’re rising up.
have to have you try kbin on our instance - readit.buzz - ran by Universeodon.com folks
I’m on exploding-heads.com rn, and having a good time so far.
I’ve messed around with Kbin but the software’s federation features aren’t working that well, so I’m sticking with Lemmy for now.
Yay 🙌
Seems weird that more Kbin instances aren’t listed on Kbin.pub. You go there, and it seems like you have 5 choices of instances to go to.
That’s because kbin is only like a month old, so setting it up is a massive headache.
- r/TheDonald clearly had no affiliation with Reddit writ large*
proof the marketing works, reddit admins have supported right wing subs and backed brigading for years.
No, it’s proof that a community affiliated with the larger project can affect the project’s reputation, while a community unaffiliated with the larger project typically does not do so.
there is no affiliation beyond federation, are either of us here on lemmy.ml? or any of the problematic servers. what people are doing is suggesting that we are all tainted because we are on the same “network”
let me tell you about email.
this is education and marketing more than anything IMO
It’s 100% marketing, which is what this thread is about, no? Lemmy.ml’s moderation practices are bad marketing for the project as a whole.
im just shooting that down outright, what about the devs or the server they run matters?
It matterd because the servers those devs run with their heavy pro authoritarian red fascist moderation and cultural bias were the two largest instances, the flagships, both by virtue of their size and their official nature. That size means they influence users’ overall experience of the lemmy network’s culture and atmosphere via posts and comments and votes, so yeah, you can sign up for a different instance and that local community won’t have that atmosphere and those moderation problems but you’re still connected in the network to the tankies and the tankies have the largest and most dominant instances so they have the most effect on the content of the network, and you can’t completely avoid them except by deferating and basically hamstringing yourself by separating from the two largest instances.
Thanks to Beehaw and especially lemmy.world though, I think this is rapidly changing and won’t be a significant problem for much longer, although there is the remaining concern that the developers’ biases will show through in how they develop the underlying lemmy server software. For instance, unlike Mastodon, right now there is no way for you as an individual to block an entire instance, and I foresee it possibly being difficult to convince the lemmy developers to allow that, since one of the hallmarks of Marxist-Leninist ideology is a focus on mass movement building where everyone is forced to interact and join this one giant movement, even with people they don’t like or can’t get a long with, which could make them hostile to allowing more freedom of association in the fediverse. I’m already seeing tankies from lemmygrad accusing instances that defederate from them of sectarianism and endangering the “movement”, in fact.
I think it’s become an issue because the type of person to actively leave and protest Reddit will be sensitive, even if overly so, to issues like this.
This. I grew up considering myself to be on the lunatic fringe of the left. It drove my conservative mother crazy. Then I got banned from WhitePeopleTwitter because apparently I’m a fascist.
elaborate lol
if they can’t come to understand the nature of the opensource software that powers thier lives we might not be able to help them but we can work on messaging and education.
the tankies, if that is what they are, dont matter.
Oh I don’t disagree with you. It’s frustrating trying to explain this to this type of person though because they’re typically dead set on hating Lemmy by that point.
remember its a type of pre-poisoning thats being done there, people dont generally care until someone comes over pearls pre-clutched. We need to do better marketing mainly IMO.
RE: decentralization and control, we should likely be running forks for our instances rather than actual. There should at least be a few major forks to choose from too.
No, this is over blown. Whenever visited before the large influx, lemmygrad was so big it made clear who this was for. But not on the technical level. Now it just is a reddit alternative, which also has some questionable communities here and there to be dealt with.
It’s not just lemmygrad, but lemmy.ml as well that are tarnishing Lemmy’s reputation.
It is a very large instance though with different communities. It is more of a technical slog though, barely works.
This, their moderation practices have been noticeable enough that they’re scaring users away with their blatant support of historically fascist regimes
Oh, this is not good. Now, I might need to pay more attention to this. I was just getting sort of settled into Lemmy, as well.
I mean Lemmy itself is simply a program/network that connects to other pieces of itself. lemmy.ml is different to lemmy.world for example, even though they might feel or seem like one thing.
Using Lemmy is fine, don’t be afraid to use Lemmy. We’re just talking about how lemmy.ml’s practices affect Lemmy’s reputation.
Lemmy itself is fine, people are more worried about the lemmy.ml moderation practices since it’s one of the bigger instances.
Thank you for the information. Also I just found out lemmy.ml blocked my entire lemmynsfw instance, shutting me out of most of the content. I specifically did that to show support for sex positivity and not for porn. Seeing the fediverse in general tries to shut NSFW harder than big tech at times. The old, free tumblr was great.
Well, if the people around you are more interested into left-shaming for supporting an open to everyone technology (You should remember them that Truth Social is a shameless fork of mastodon code) than trying to understand the true « free speech » potential of Lemmy / Mastodon, maybe you should move on and find some more suitable friends.
Since the pandemic I kicked off those « I’m not political but » people of my life and I’m way happier now.
