Didn't know it's possible to view who the acting mod was. And I'm not surprised about the account
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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297 users here now
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
founded 2 years ago
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It was originally designed to be that way, but when they changed it ig they only changed it on the Lemmy frontend, some UIs will still show it like (I recently discovered) photon and the Voyager app will show it to (iirc only if you're a mod somewhere)
Oh no a troll got ban 😔
I find most communities on lemmy.ml are fairly reasonable though. Lemmygrad or Hexbear on the other hand... Holy crap! I don't know what the hell bubble those folks live in, but the nonsense they will aggressively barf in your face and the outrageous revisionism is nothing short of astounding.
Those two instances are the only instances where I was told totally seriously that I should "read history" and realize I've been brainwashed about North Korea, and it's actually paradise on Earth. And then when I told them they might be slightly messed up in the head, I was promply banned from that community and 15 others I had never visited before preventively for being a dangerous reactionary 🙂
lemmy.ml is positively tame and civilized compared to those two cesspits.
That's intentional, they opt to censor like this to prevent their threads from getting crazy in order to avoid larger calls for defederation like what happened with Hex and Grad. But the mask has been falling lately as the Lemmy-verse grows and their instance becomes more and more irrelevant
Well, if I'm honest, I couldn't give the tiniest shit about whatever happens to them as the Lemmyverse grows, and I suppose being banned from most communities on those two instances is proof that my though processes are still sound 🙂
I'm just genuinely wondering where those people got brainwashed - or brainwashed themselves - to such an extent. It truly is fascinating to witness people who are so far off basic realities and common sense and plain don't seem to realize how nonsensical what they claim is. That's kind of why I keep reading their tripe. It never ceases to amaze me.
Can someone explain this whole instances thing for me like i was stupid?
Sorry I misunderstood your question.
Think of instances as servers. Unlike Reddit, which is - as far as you're concerned anyway - one server and one company running that server, Lemmy is a collection of small and not-so-small servers run by individual people to organizations, that synchronize one another's contents.
But some servers are run by people with certain convictions, or certain moral codes, or certain rules, and they refuse to synchronize with certain other servers. For example, many servers that carry outrageous porn aren't synchronized by other servers, so the local users of those servers aren't subjected to the non-synchronized content.
Those servers that aren't synchronized by other servers are said to be defederated by those other servers.
The ultra-weirdo Stalinist instances are defederated by a lot of other, more reasonable instances for a variety of reasons. For instance, Sopuli - which is run by a Finn - doesn't federate Lemmygrad and Hexbear because the Stalinist shit really isn't up the Finns' alley for obvious historical reasons.
So which instance should i host my profile on if i don't want anyone else to decide which instances are blocked for me?
You're already on lemm.ee which is the second largest instance on the fediverse and generally tries as much as possible not to defederate from anyone, even these tankie instances
SDF - the one I'm on - is one of the few that won't defederate any other instance on the ground that you can choose what to block yourself. That's why I chose it. The flipside of SDF is that it's regularly dog slow, and goes down more often that I would like. But I have other accounts on other instances when that happens. But those instances won't show everything SDF shows.
...or you can host your own!
I am not really interested in becoming an IT guy.
I just wanted to get away from reddit, but i am starting to think Lemmy is both a little too complicated, and lacks the amount of users that made reddit interesting.
In general, you don't need to worry about instances, provided you're part of a decent one. You are, so you're good. Stop worrying about it and enjoy the content.
Ha, yeah it's not for everyone.
Like in a general sense or in the "on going issue" sense?
In general, think of instances like email providers, you sign up on one and you can access all the content from the other providers
But your provider can block or blacklist it's server from accepting content/users/voting from another provider. This is known as "defederation". It's intended to be used against toxic instances like lemmy.ml, Hexbear or Lemmygrad similarly to how email providers will filter another email providers email if it's gained a rep for spam
It's growing, but outside sentiment of Lemmy being a "Tankie hideout" is also growing and that could ultimately harm that growth and maybe even reverse it if it gets bad enough.
I've already seen such comments out in the wild
Honestly, I would say Lemmy's tankie reputation is greatly reduced compared to what it originally was. I remember back in '23, I absolutely refused any Lemmy instance because the tankie reputation was immense (I moved in on Kbin - RIP).
When capitalism has ruined most of the life we’ve lived thus far, one takes to a different understanding of history and intent when rereading it while under the yoke of massive social problems.
so do you just blame capitalism for stalin and mao and kim?
Capitalism is totally broken and is now hurting most of the world much more than it does any good at this point. And it probably needs to go and be replaced by something better. But that something better isn't the communist regimes of yesteryear (and today, in the case of the DPKR). That's fucking crazy. And those who think it's not fucking crazy need to read Solzhenitsyn.
The solution to the capitalist problem lies elsewhere. I freely admit I don't know what the solution is, but it sure isn't the fantasy rosy view of comrade Stalin and Dear Leader Kim peddled by the crazies on Lemmygrad and Hexbear.
Don't let extreme capitalist craziness push you into the arms of extreme communist craziness.
Tbh it's also false to connect those regimes to communism
I'm aware that Stalin's, Mao's or Kim's regimes aren't what Marx had in mind, and communism has nobler ends. But here's the thing: each time pure, fair and kind communism was tried on any society, it descended into dictatorship very quickly and without fail.
So it doesn't matter how noble the idea of communism is: it's simply incompatible with humanity, because human beings can't resist greed, the urge to grab power and hurt others. Therefore, let's not try it again becasue we all know how it's going to work out.
Communists get intervened by capitalists and fascists.
Dictatorships on the other hand don't descend, it's always their main purpose, and the use of leftist ideas is just empty marketing to gather support from the population
I can agree that many comms made on .ml are benign and just duplicating the same communities off Reddit to continue that kind of posting; buuut the admins of the instance also like to swing their dicks around all over the instance removing anything they personally dislike even if it's not political.
Defederation needs to be considered, honestly. I don’t want to be separated from their userbase but the extreme level of censorship is just toxic at this point.
The amount of funny comments I get from Lemmy.ml in neutral instances would be missed though.
A major code fork needs to be considered as well. There was a Java rewrite that started in good faith, but that would never appeal to many admins, I am afraid.
The biggest issue I see is that all of the support for Lemmy is basically centered around .ml and potential admins have to wade through a sea of ideological stuff to get support.
Cross-instance bans are a thing as well. What I mean is that non-tankies will get ml instance banned for comments in other communities on other instances. (Me. But whatever.)
Admins on other instances have to treat lost tankies with kid-gloves or they will get banned on ml and lose support, I speculate. (I am not an admin and am not aware of any specific cases like this. It's hypothetical.)
It's all a shitty situation.
Wait can you elaborate on cross-instance bans? I haven't heard of this. How and why does it happen?
If you have an account on .ml they can ban you from posting on communities from sopuli.xyz
First, it is bad wording on my part. Sorry.
If admins from ml don't like comments you make on other instances they can, and will, ban you on ml if you have ever participated in any community in ml. For example, this is the list of bans that happened to me due to comments on another instance. (While this is within the rights of any admin to ban for any reason this is a bit uncouth, IMHO. Then again, I usually don't hold back with my opinions. Whatever.)
Oh gotcha I misunderstood what you were saying.
A fork helps literally nothing in any ways. They are not injecting the code with their politics...
The biggest issue I see is that all of the support for Lemmy is basically centered around .ml and potential admins have to wade through a sea of ideological stuff to get support.
Are you sure? https://lemmy.ml/c/lemmy_support seems free of ideological stuff.
Saw this on the yepowertrippingmods
I think this was a reasonable bait-provoked response. You can't go into another community and troll them about their moderation policy and expect not to get booted
When you hold up shit like this it makes it seem like you're just drama farming