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The lemmy.ml Problem
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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There are some good points here, but I think defederation should always be a last resort and especially so in this case, given that we are talking about lemmy.ml here.
Since it was the former flagship server (in activity, at least) before LW came along, there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.
That's not to say that I agree with the actions of the .ml admins, or think that opening a dialogue with them about moderation policies isn't a great idea, of course; I just think it's overall a better approach to let the individual user figure out for themselves which communities/instances they want to engage with and which ones they want to avoid.
And that, in fact, is my main concern with ml. They have lots of communties which are non-political for sure but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda. At which point the negative outweigh the positive?
And even in the non-political Communities your comments gets censored when they are not on line with their views.
So block those individual communities that post what you consider propaganda. Hell, even block the whole instance - that option is readily available to you.
With a server like, say, Hexbear, this would be an easy calculation. Defederate and what does the average user miss out on? Not a whole lot. On the other hand, .ml has a wide variety of technology, open source, gaming, hobby, etc. communities that don't even touch on politics.
I regularly visit many of them, so for me at least, it would take a lot more on the negative scale to even break even.
For sure I can block them for myself (as I have mentioned in my Post itself) but this won't solve the Problem of policing non political Communities and injecting them also with propaganda.
To what extent is this actually an issue? What examples do you have so far?
Pardon me but have you read the Post i linked? He talked about politics, granted, but banning him from non-political Communities (in fact, ALL Communities) is completely out of proportion. And that is just for reciting established facts!
Yes I have, which is why I'm asking. While I agree that the admin response was totally out of all proportion, this is not evidence of either of the things you previously claimed.
If you're going to justify defederation based on non-political communities being policed and injected with propaganda, you need to provide some concrete examples of that happening.
First and for most my main reason for defederation is that they straight up lie and mislead.
If you demand prove I will unblock ml again and will try to find it. I would have thought that you would have seen this yourself since you seem to be more on ml than I was.
I've seen it in the obvious communities like [email protected], sure. But in non-political ones? Not once.
https://lemmy.ml/post/16185014
https://lemmy.ml/post/7981013
https://lemmy.ml/post/15667300
Here are three posts from the memes-community. They got downvoted to oblivion (from the Users) and contain propaganda, but were not removed or anything from the moderators or admins. The People who posted thisdid not got punished or anything.
Here is a Comment from someone who tells about his own experience in communist Hungary. His Comment got removed for violating rule 1 "Be civil and nice.". Why does this comment of his own experience get removed for being not nice, but posts which contain propaganda and clearly insult people in an non-political Community like Memes did not?
This Comment (even though I disagree with its content) got removed for “Bourgeois Bootlicking” despite having Rule 2 in place, which states: “Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.” His Comment was as, if you ask me, maybe not totally polite but still acceptable.
The Admins on lemmy.ml are totally willing to turn a blind eye towards propaganda, Insults and lies "for their side" even in non-political communities but they will strike you down if you disagree.
Of course, I can't cover every community and I'm sure there are many people who are not like this but there is a huge trend towards this style of moderation.
PS. : Sorry for light-mode. I somehow could not turn it off on lemmy.ml.
I appreciate the effort you've put in here, but still I do not see grounds for defederation. You've just given me three examples from a single community that is obviously political.
Look, the question isn't "are there communities on lemmy.ml that are ideologically censored", because of course there are; the question I am putting to you is "is the average user going about their business and not actively engaging in politically-oriented communities affected enough to warrant the largest Lemmy instance completely defederating?" I would still say no, personally.
I see more than enough justification to defederate. Being banned from every lemmy.ml community such as the Linux community because you dared to make a critical comment about China or Russia in another lemmy.ml community is ridiculous and unacceptable.
lemmy.world should only support communities with reasonable moderation policies that do not punish users for merely contradicting a lemmy.ml moderator's political stance.
As a user subbed to multiple communities there, I never see this stuff. Ever. I stay far, far away from news and current events though. I actively seek news from sources, not aggregation platforms.
I would prefer to have the option to interact with those communities rather than have a few users brigade the admins into defederating. There's a reason one of the SCOTUS cases that is cited as binding precedent in freedom of speech cases relates to the distribution of Communist propaganda. The marketplace of ideas is meant to be freely available to all, not curated by the most opinionated or noisy.
The political content published in lemmy.ml isn't the main problem, it's the fact that lemmy.ml moderators are banning users from general interest communities, including non-political communities, when they criticize China or Russia elsewhere. This happens not only when the criticism is posted within a lemmy.ml community, but also when the criticism is posted outside of lemmy.ml.
The behavior of these lemmy.ml mods corrupts the "marketplace of ideas" that you're describing. lemmy.world should not present or promote general interest communities that only allow users to participate if they avoid making comments critical of China or Russia on the fediverse. This kind of bad moderation creates a chilling effect.
I appreciate your reply. I agree with the principals and ideals, but I just don't get worked up over every bit of outrage out there. I used to be a real worked up individual, willing to throw everything I've got at anything that didn't fit with my ideals, but I'm older now, and sometimes I want places where I don't have to fight for every inch of ground.
I don't disagree that the mod actions are worth highlighting. I disagree that defederation is the first and only solution. It reads to me like some users argued with mods about topics known to be hot-button over there, on a post guaranteed to be controversial, and a temporary ban occurred. That action and its reach is worth discussion.
I don't agree that the users should go to the biggest lemmy instance and try to soap box their POV in order to trigger user outrage in hopes that they pressure the admins to enact some vengeance on an entire instance in the form of defederation. I disagree even more since the source of the outrage is not a user at LW, and wouldn't be affected in any way by the proposed defederation. What they really want is for their subbed communities to move away from ML.
SpaceCadet coming here suing for defederation is barely different to me than the mod that banned them from unrelated communities. "Someone I disagree with did a thing I don't like and I want to flex on them," is what I see from my POV. I don't care they got banned. It seems like a foregone conclusion that would happen there, and I've known that since the first fifty posts about how Dessalines and Nutomic behave (on social media and on github) were posted.
If I follow their weird rules, I won't get banned. The implicit rules include not talking shit about topics cleansed by glorious fascist leaders? OK. I don't care. I have no interest in changing the hearts and minds behind the eyeballs on ML. I'm not on a crusade to fix the world one post at a time. I'm browsing while my game loads, or the water boils, or on the bus.
What I care about is a few idealistic users posting picture evidence of a clear power-trip ban and expecting admins to defederate. That's the corruption of the marketplace of ideas. Silencing the entire instance for thousands. For all we know, half the users on LW would like to learn more about their point of view, if only to dismiss it as wacky and untenable, but not only do they lose that opportunity, they lose the opportunity to engage with unrelated communities, of which there are several that are more active than anywhere else.
At the end of the day, its a lot easier for anyone up in arms about this to block and move on than the workarounds required for the majority who don't care and want to stay engaged in the communities they are subbed to. They'd have to make accounts elsewhere, or even at ML.
Call me apathetic, but I just don't care about this fight.
While you certainly are free to not care about lemmy.ml mods blocking users from unrelated communities for criticizing China or Russia anywhere on the fediverse, which effectively silences lemmy.world users, there are currently 1,019 upvotes vs. 92 downvotes on the "Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem" post, which suggests that most lemmy.world users who are aware of the issue do care.
Nobody is claiming to be trying to change the minds of lemmy.ml mods. We just don't want to have to worry about whether posting something mildly negative about China or Russia on a post anywhere on the fediverse that somehow catches the attention of lemmy.ml mods will cause us to lose the ability to participate in a community such as [email protected].
Condoning this censorship from lemmy.ml corrupts the "marketplace of ideas" because it distorts the discourse visible on lemmy.world to favor the political preferences of lemmy.ml's mods. This affects every lemmy.world user, whether they block lemmy.ml or not, because there is no way to opt out of the chilling effects other than defederation.
You've got me thinking about it, but I still just come back to, "this doesn't affect me." But it would affect me if LW was to defederate, which has already been discussed dozens of times in the past. If I look at the ML modlog, I just don't see evidence of what is being claimed beyond this incident. Rule 1 is being misused and a mod or mod team are being assholes. That sucks. I don't think it means that the posts and/or visibility of content of thousands are at risk in the way being presented.
I equate that more to the crowd yelling, "yeah!" more so than carefully considered agreement.
Thank you for having this discussion. I'll continue to ruminate on it. If it means anything, when I read the OP by SpaceCadet, I subbed to LW or other large-ish communities for the ones I follow at ML in hopes that they grow.
Agreed. To address this, I started this thread to see which lemmy.ml don't have alternatives on other instances: https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
Hopefully that can help people who want to avoid lemmy.ml.
I guess at the end of the day, people should be able to choose whether they go to the lemmy.ml communities or the alternatives
See, now that's a much more positive approach. Users making informed decisions and organically migrating is much more in keeping with the Fediverse spirit than admins wielding the defederation hammer, IMO.
Agreed, but let's also be honest about this:
The smaller, less visible alternative communities seldom grow. It's the classic case of the biggest and oldest trees getting all the sunlight, while the saplings in their shadow are stunted.
We saw this on Reddit, too. Alternative subreddits, usually born out of protest of the moderation on the original, popped up all the time and never grew. Some did, some even overshadowed the original, but that was rare. The algorithm and search results would always funnel visitors to the old one.
Unless there's an effort made to give more visibility to the smaller and less established alternative, there's a good chance it goes nowhere.
So in reality the user choice you're describing is less about choosing between two communities, and more about choosing between a community or a DND group that gets together once a week, but half the people flake out anyway.
LW communities are already much more active than lemmy.ml ones, there are just a few missing, I wouldn't worry too much.
Absolutely agree, which is why I would advocate against defederation. It's better to let users organically migrate away from problematic moderation than for the LW admins to preemptively make the decision on everyone's behalf.
Lemmy is still a relatively small community, and too much defederation is only going to be detrimental to its overall health.
The non-political communities on .ml are poisoned by mods who ban users based on their political opinions they voice in other communities. If you're critical of China, you will likely be banned from all communities on .ml, regardless of if they're political.
They banned the Plex mod, who was doing good work, for basically nothing as far as I can tell. Effectively killed the community. Rest in peace BrooklynMan
What a ton of people will figure out is that the fediverse has a serious problem with propaganda and moderation. They'll come check out the Fediverse, see it's full of extremist political content, and go back to Reddit.
I'm thrilled about the potential of the Fediverse to be something great, but I won't even tell anyone I use it in it's current state.
Defederating malicious propaganda instances like Lemmy.ml should be a no-brainer. It's not "people I disagree with," it's a murderous authoritarian government's tool for spreading lies.
First impressions to new users is an important factor, I agree, but is Lemmy really "full of extremist political content"?
Scrolling through the first 4 pages of Lemmy World today, I see no extremist content at all. All of the political posts are standard liberal/left-of-centre talking points and the only things related to .ml content are three posts complaining about tankies, off the back of the original post that made a splash yesterday.
I can't see anything that would be putting potential newcomers off in droves.
Yes, you're right. I was being facetious and that's not helpful in this situation.
The Fediverse is full of propaganda, but extremist content is usually limited to Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml.
Hard to forget Hexbear accounts saying they were going to murder me when they started their revolution, but that's not a generally a problem in the rest of the Fediverse.