this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad

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"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
MODERATORS
 

Source: https://lemmy.world/post/27276890/15949688

Modlog: https://lemmy.world/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=13662309

Your account seems new @[email protected], sorry you had to deal with this but this is what happens on the tankie instance that is .ml

Join the .ml boycott today! No posts, comments or upvotes on any .ml comms!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Hah, I flagged that dick today because of all of the bullshit that they're posting. Clesr as day Russian propaganda.

[–] index 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Interesting, this news sound like propaganda yet they allowed it and removed your comment. Sometimes they act shady as fuck over there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

Nothing really shady about it, it's quite obvious, they support Putin and his war against the world. Do they do it for free or because they're payed operatives remains unknown, but does it really matter at this point

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Interesting. I had thought that instance was okay because when things like that happen, they are usually downvoted well into negative numbers. That’s the case in the example you linked to as well.But I never thought about the moderation problem.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Yea that's how most feel, the rest of the Tankie Triad, Hex and Grad, are much more in your face about it.

.ml aims for subtlety through admin and moderator action to avoid wider calls for defederation and also now that Lemmy is catching on to some degree, the main devs are letting the mask fall off on their "flagship" instance

[–] [email protected] 53 points 2 days ago (23 children)

I just don't understand why a marxist would cape for russia at any point in any form. Russia is MORE capitalist than even america, at least until this past January. Might as well defend pinochet since he also was a unitary executive.

Socialism is when no bread mfs look at russia like "that's pretty socialist!"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The types of tankies you find on .ml are not so much Marxist as they are anti-USA (they'll call it anti-imperialist, nevermind the imperialism they're supporting)

That means they'll support everyone that's anti-USA. They'll cheer for al-Qaeda as long as they're shouting "Death to America". And that's only slight hyperbole

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I don't even think it's slight hyperbole. They literally would in the literal sense of "literally".

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago

I have literally seen people that say that Assad was actually good.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 days ago (1 children)

In the campist brain, Russia is geopolitically opposed to the USA empire, and therefore since USA is the greatest evil, we need to "critically support" their opponents.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Is pro-China sentiment just campist?

I have a sneaking suspicion they think the CCP are actually socialist/communist. And not some sort of authoritarian capitalism. Or “red” capitalism.

[–] index 3 points 1 day ago

Two faces of the same medal. People are brainwashed in taking sides. If you are not right-winged you are left-winged. They realize their government is shit and jump into the one of their enemies. Instead of study and think they conform to a model and feed on its circlejerk rejecting opposite views.

Not everyone on .ml is foolish but their modlog can get really stupid

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[–] gigachad 49 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

Somehow I feel lemmy.ml got more extreme over the last two years. RT news is the official foreign propaganda channel of Russia, almost everybody knows this (at least in Europe)..

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

long overdue to defederate

lots of them have smurf accounts on other instances anyway these days

[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Originally, .ml was the flagship instance for a fledgeling new software project, and the devs had to try and keep the mask on as much as they could for it to be a general purpose main instance. But over time that mask slipped, and users fled to other instances. Which means the only users left on .ml today are the fellow tankies. And knowing that, now they don't seem to try to hide it anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

The annoying thing is there definitely are a subset of ML users who aren’t tankies. And just kind of obliviously joined that instance because it was recommended to them.

My first lemmy account was on ML.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

And the fact that it's run by the devs is a serious detriment. New users are going to take one look at it, and think Lemmy is tankie central. And the sane ones are going to leave.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

This is part of why I chose a Mbin instance over Lemmy. It's hard for me to even recommend Lemmy the software because of its devs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I know this probably isnt the right place to ask this question but what is mbin. I know people said it was like kbin but I have no clue what that is ethier.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's another link aggregator/forum software that uses the same ActivityPub protocol as Lemmy, Mastodon, PixelFed, Peertube, etc. Meaning that Mbin instances can talk to Lemmy, as well as any other Fediverse software.

Mbin forked off of the earlier Kbin when the original developer kinda went MIA.

https://joinmbin.org/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I set up an account will definitely give it a go.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago

I wish that they were API-compatible so that the same clients could be used, which is the big weakness of the non-Lemmy Threadiverse servers.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea 5 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I don't recommend Lemmy for largely that reason. But I'll use it while decent instances exist.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It probably has, they've spent just the last almost 2 years or so of Lemmy-verse growth since the Reddit API debacle banning, censoring and ostracizing newcomers that didn't fit in with the tankie mindset

They've become the echo chamber they always accuse .world/.ee/SJW of being

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 days ago

I've noticed the same thing. I do think part of it is .ml has been accruing users from other, more widely defederated instances like lemmygrad and hexbear.

Trolls want an audience, after all.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Why dont you just fuck back to reddit then ? You do know that lemmy is the foss project of marxists? Might be happier at stormfront / reddit

[–] gigachad 5 points 1 day ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm in this picture and was mildly amused. It is indeed a propaganda post and comments pointing that out seem to get deleted.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago

Except for one that says it is balancing out other propaganda, as if that made it any better...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The Russian war minister as world war one was breaking out thought it was going to be fought with sabers and wondered why other armies were teaching their men to fight with guns when they were so ungentlemanly

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

This feels like it has to be an urban legend or taken out of context or something. Russia had been involved in heaps of massive wars using guns before WW1. Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, 1877 Russo-Turkish War, and the Russo-Japanese War all involved shitloads of guns

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

does lemmyMl have more reach beyond their own instance because they are developers? how can we be sure?

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 day ago

We are everywhere haha

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I'd say, more tolerated. Because they're the devs, the lemmy.ml instance is considered the flagship instance.

Where new features go live first, a number of official support communities are and because it was the first, the perception that they have some of the biggest comms

The rest of the Tankie Triad (Grad and hex) don't have that so that's why they're pretty much widely defederated from, it's a much easier decision.

I say perception, because the comms there are only the "biggest" by subscriber count. If you look at the statistics by monthly active users, it tells a much different story where only a single .ml comm breaks the top 15 comms Lemmy-verse wide

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I meant like capabilities to influence the platform as a whole, like backend stuff, potential censoring past their instance

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago

Ah, it's possible, but unlikely thanks to its open source nature

It has been suspected though that .ml is running a slightly customized version to help hide their censorship, but I have only read of accounts of it happening to others and no direct evidence

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

If they do something to the source code, I'm sure someone can just fork lemmy and we just use that.

Otherwise everything is hosted on separate instances so no.

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