Since I was curious I checked the actual amount of upvotes and downvotes of my post on mbin. It got 56 upvotes and 66 downvotes according to them since I was curious. Seems I hurt their little ego when I mentioned blocking their instance.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
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I haven't used lemmy up until this point. They pose as a general purpose instance and are the 2nd largest lemmy instance at that. I knew the lemmy devs had their preferences but I didn't know they would let it effect their moderating so strongly.
It happens to everyone and is probably going to be the downfall of lemmy
hilarious thing is that they think banning a user is a win. Yeah you guys sure dunked on that random guy by banning him
It will definetly hinder its growth. I hope the ml instance just gets mostly irrelevant when instances that allow for more free speech can grow accordingly. They might create a stronger cesspool of likemineded tankies but it hurts the overall platform
Yeah, I got banned from some random community there for suggesting that Russia wasn't exactly the most privacy-friendly country. To be fair, this was after a lengthy discussion where I essentially suggested the mod had an unhealthy obsession with the main dev of a FOSS project (/c/privacy, and the project was GrapheneOS), but the reason they gave was for the comment about Russia.
It wasn't an instance-wide ban, just a community ban, but that motivated me to unsub from enough of the lemmy.ml communities that I'm unlikely to get banned. And this wasn't one of the big admins, just some power-hungry reddit-refugee that was disliked on Reddit for doing exactly the same thing (obsession with GrapheneOS dev, not the Russia thing).
Well, it's the best they can do. They'd prefer to ding your social credit and throw you in a Gulag to work it off
Yeah they could definitely be a bit more upfront about it. Pity the poor "libertarians" who wander in from time to time thinking FOSS=free speech absolutism
Yup, that's me, sort of. I consider myself libertarian and hoped Lemmy would be a free speech bastion (within reason, I respect healthy moderation, but any topic should be fair game for those who are considerate and constructive). But Lemmy.ml really doesn't like constructive criticism of China or Russia, and that's just not okay with me.
So that's why I'm here. I'm fine abiding by the rules of this instance, and generally speaking I don't have issues expressing well-sourced arguments that may be a bit unpopular. I get a bunch of downvotes if that opinion is unpopular (even if well-supported by empirical evidence), but I haven't been banned for it. I did get banned from lemmy.ml/c/privacy for posting a well-sourced argument that Russia may not be the most privacy-friendly country in the world.
Just out of curiosity, do you consider your ban comment to be "constructive criticism?"
The comment I got banned for? Yes.
Since I was banned and my posts removed (not sure if manually removed or just disabled while the ban was in force), I don't know if I can go find the comment chain any more. If you know of a way to search for comment replies from another user, I'd be happy to go find it.
But basically the discussion was about GrapheneOS. The mod really didn't like the lead dev and recommended people avoid the software, and my position was that the software should be evaluated on its merits, not its association with any particular individual. I agreed that the lead dev was toxic (they're autistic and very vocal, which can lead to issues), but that fact is irrelevant to whether someone should use a particular piece of software. They threatened to ban me, and I said something like, "If you choose to, that's your prerogative, I obviously can't stop you," and then they mentioned something vaguely related to Russia (I think saying they're privacy friendly because of Snowdon? I honestly don't recall), and I replied that Russia doesn't have a particularly good track record for privacy, and that's when I got the ban. All of my communication was in pretty neutral language (like I'm doing here), and throughout the comment chain I linked to a lot of sources, so I obviously wasn't trying to hide anything (the mod mostly linked to screenshots of their own posts from Reddit about their "research").
I'm not going to mention their username here because I don't want anyone to go harass them, but they were one of the mods at /c/privacy and they post quite a bit there, while the other mods don't seem to. I reached out to one of the mods there over private DM about it, and here's that message (they never got back to me). I don't recall saying anything about Israel or Palestine, but maybe our conversation briefly touched on it.
And here it is in text if that's easier (redacted usernames):
I don't recall talking about Palestine, but I did imply that maybe this mod in particular is from Russia or supports Russia and thus doesn't see the privacy issues they have over there.
Anyway, feel free to look for that comment chain. I think I messaged the mod on the same day that it happened, so the 5 months ago time should be pretty accurate. Be warned, the comments were very long because we went back and forth over various disagreements, with me citing sources and them (IIRC) basically spouting FUD.