Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ?
Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ?
Asking as there has been a few comments mentioning this with the new [email protected] taking over [email protected]
[email protected] for additional context on those recent events if you are interested
Also, an older post for more context on how lemmy.ml is managed: https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
Curious to hear other thoughts about this, as I'm trying to keep [email protected] active, but might suggest to move it elsewhere if a lot of people prefer not to interact with lemmy.ml communities
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Well, I'm here and I don't know what you all are talking about. And this is sincere, truly don't understand what's the issue, could you point me to some of these controversial situations/discussions/measures?
I have a feeling that, if you ask for any specific instance, you'll get people complaining and blocking that instance for their own reasons. So, I'd let my users decide whether they block or not a user or a whole instance. For example, I don't like some of the communities in lemmy.world and I complain about it because it just feels the same as being in reddit, but having access to a different point of view is very valuable to me, so I don't block them.
I also have to add that I use lemmy with the voting system completely disabled. I hate the voting system because it shapes people's opinions to fit in some specific communities. This is why I think blocking instances should only be used as a last resort against things like blatant spam, boycotting, CP, hate speech and the likes.
.ml is kind of Hexbear or Lemmygrad-lite. On occasion when they notice, they'll ban you for criticising places like North Korea. I got it once for saying Dengism isn't socialist.
I still use it, because it's mostly normal, and "we're secretly the bad guys" isn't a very dangerous conspiracy theory.
https://lemmy.ml/post/21552785?scrollToComments=true
As mentioned in the OP: https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
Ah, I see. Well, I had a discussion in that thread too and it felt off at some point. I replied about a similar crime backed by the CIA and some people accused me of whataboutism, while the other guy assumed I was denying the Tiananmen Square massacre. That was not the case.
I used to participate in a subreddit where a permanent set of people, including moderators, would downvote you to oblivion as soon as they read a divergent opinion, though, the subreddit wasn't about a specific ideology. It wasn't about arguments, it was systemic. They would eventually ban you if you insisted on your points of view. Both things are shitty, in my opinion, and while one is more permanent than the other, the banning felt at least more straightforward to me.
What I find excessive is the instance ban.
Not all instances should defederate from lemmy.ml. However, it is an issue that everyone commenting on every post across every community on that whole entire instance must essentially conform to all of their ideals - or else be banned from all of those communities, not merely the one with the "offensive" statement. You cannot say anything truthful about Russia, China, Ukraine, Uyghurs, Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, etc.
Imagine if we were on Reddit and could not say "fuck spez", or we were on Linux but for some reason were still forbidden to say "I prefer not to use Windows today, so thank you but no thanks". Those communities on Lemmy.ml are held hostage to people if not agreeing then at least going along with whatever party line BS that the admins want to uphold. Moreover, at any time they could add whatever their wanted to that list.
Perhaps there will come out a fantastic Linux distro that would revolutionize Linux accessibility - but if they say no, then nobody can access any of the communities there unless they (at the very least tacitly) agree to not so much as mention its name, or that it exists, or anything else about it. This is a hypothetical but I hope you also see the connection to irl: it doesn't matter what those admins are banning people for, it matters that they have set themselves up as the arbiters of "truth(iness)", and decide what can or cannot be discussed in their platform. Regardless of which community it is in.
Most of us came here to get away from such, only to find that it is here as well.
Do as you please, but I hope this helps explain just some (and this probably isn't even fully half of it yet!?!?) of why people are judging the instance. Over time, more and more communities will move off of the instance - the main reason it hasn't happened yet I think is that version 0.19.3 (iirc?) promised to allow user blocking, which people see now how weak it is plus with 0.19.4-5 it actively got even weaker. Only defederation is left to even consider. Which won't happen quickly, but e.g. dubvee.org and lemmy.cafe both have already done so, and I imagine others will follow suit before too awfully long, with the amount of vehemence people feel about the situation.
This was pretty informative, thank you. As I said, these instance-bans are just too much, so I mostly agree with your point of view. Would like to read what these admins have to say about the situation.
They have said things like they ban "agitators" and "misinformation". They do not provide a listing of what those things are. I recall one story from someone who has actual Uyghur family members living with them and they were describing the genocidal practices that they escaped from - BAM, banned.
Facts are political these days, I suppose. Most people don't get to choose which set of facts they have to live out, day by day.
But obviously the admins are not insane - from their POV, they are doing the rational thing, of protecting their userbase from "misinformation". Well, keep your ears open I suppose, and you'll learn more. Hopefully you don't get banned yourself as a result, but you may want to have a backup plan just in case.