Not only are they heavily censoring content and comments, they do it at the database level so there's no mod log of the events, and users are unaware that their content has been removed.
You can still see that your comment has been removed, but you can't see the biased mass removals of content, like mass purging all China critical comments from a post, unless you're quick enough to screenshot the modlog.
They're purging the modlog somehow. I received a message from an admin of another instance who let me know that he happened to see my comment disappear, but he couldn't figure out how it was removed because there was no record of it. When I went back to the comment to check, it looked like it was still there to me. So, I'm not sure exactly what they're doing, but they're doing something funky.
I had the same thing happen. The comment was clearly removed and I could not see my comments from another account, but no modlog entries existed.
Do it defederate the bloody bastards. Admins are now banning people from all .ml communities for disagreeing on a different community. I believe some guy got banned from all .ml communities for posting things .ml didnt like about tianamin square.
I believe some guy got banned from all .ml communities for posting things .ml didnt like about tianamin square.
That was me, yes.
Damn lemmy small af lol
And defederating only makes it smaller, unfortunately.
Who cares rip off the bandaid
I also got banned from all communities on .ml that I had participated in after making a joke about how Tienanmen Square was like a glue trap for tankies. Really bad image for Lemmy. Considering we're growing as a community, I don't see why we should allow authoritarians to participate. Allowing that will just ingratiate their standards into the culture of the platform.
Please defederate from lemmy.ml it's pretty much the new hexbear.
I absolutely agree. For the sake of the Fediverse and it's potential to be great, cut out the malicious propaganda machine Lemmy.ml.
its* potential to be great.
Ooooh lemmy drama
Calling to defederate merely on the basis of political opinion might be premature. However, I suspect defederation will happen for legal reasons: they host users who openly support terrorist organizations designated as such by the EU. LW is subject to Dutch law - hosting such content is more of a gray area than CSAM, but still very much illegal in most countries.
The reason I'm not pushing here with examples is because I have not yet contacted the mods/admins to remove said content. They may have simply not been aware and I'll give them that chance. But even seeing that content has a chilling effect on users who would contribute - even in unrelated communities.
Like in the other comment, it's not their view on politics what is the problem. Its that they straight up lie. They try to rewrite history and deny well established facts. And if you try to call them out, they lie even more and ban you.
It's not defederating on the basis of political opinion. It's defederating on the basis of extreme intolerance towards and censorship of people who have different, non-fringe opinions that aren't even controversial in most parts of the world.
Right now, the instance hosts a lot of let's say mainstream, non-political communities, purely because lemmy.ml was the first instance and so "popular" by default. The way the mods over there behave, it's clear that they're not suited to be a mainstream instance for these communities. Unfortunately due to network effect, people won't just move.
The only way to dislodge these communities and move them to more neutral instances is if larger instances like lemmy.world start defederating lemmy.ml.
Defederation is a tool of last resort. Before taking that step as a community we should attempt to engage the admins to align them towards more acceptable behavior. Migrating communities away from instances with petty and abusive admins is always a good idea, and this absolutely qualifies.
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.
there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there
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.
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.
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.
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
let the individual user figure out for themselves
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.
I think dissenting views is helpful in a community, even crazy psychotic and editorialized views.
If instances defederate just because they have different viewpoints is going to get really lonely in the fediverse.
A more generalized rules of cooperative federation would be a better solution then doing a case by case debate. I.e.
Instances we federate with must have a clearly defined moderation policy at the instance level
Any user banning at the instance level must follow the published moderation policy
Just the basics.
It's not so much that they have dissenting views, but rather that they throw the ban hammer around for anyone remotely suggesting that they have a really skewed perception of history and that they are actively disseminating propaganda and engaging in historical revisionism. The post that OP mentioned illustrates that very well, and those are things that have happened on .ml for months now.
I agree about the instance level moderation policy, and I'd like for the LW team to take it up with the ML admins. But at the same time, we should seriously consider defederating in the case that they are unwilling to compromise.
This is why federation should have a standard that needs to be followed. Been saying that for a year now.
Instance level administration/moderation has an effect on the democratic system that is the backbone of the entire federation. We can choose not to federate all their actions, but it still has an effect on instance A when something isn't visible on instance B and instance B visitors can not not vote on it. It skews the outcomes for everyone.
So there should be a standard for federated instances to administer and moderate fairly and honestly, in line with established and public rules.
It's not that their views are diffrent they straight up lie. And if you call them out, you get banned from all communitys and silenced in any way possible.
They do not have a clearly defined moderation policy, they are flagrantly banning any dissenters to their political views from communities unrelated to the posts in question. Allowing them to grow more power in the space by keeping them federated with other large instances is a bad thing imo.
No, crazy psychotic views are not helpful to a community.
It's not "dissenting views," it's authoritarian propaganda.
I'm with roflmasterbigpimp here because I mean look, strongly-worded letter format
This guy fucks
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