Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
Expressing concerns about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781
It has also been posted to lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/591991
Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it's important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone's politics, and I'm certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.
My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.
This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing "orientalism" as the reason for the ban.
Screenshot of my own instance's modlog, as viewed by an admin
I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in [email protected] that had been removed with the reason "Orientalist article".
Screenshot of banned user's history on lemmy.ml
Here's the article that was removed, titled "China may face succession crisis". It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having "a slight to moderate liberal bias" and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/
I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml's rules that would suggest that "orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance's front page, and not in [email protected].
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]
![Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]](https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/pictrs/image/9a5a8a2d-cfac-4658-8ef5-77a885079756.png){kind=link}
There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.
This is where I went from confused to concerned.
Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml's moderation log.
Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It's hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance's mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I've done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can't be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.
Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China's racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @[email protected] reason: Orientalism
Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don't know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn't behave like China. by @[email protected] reason: Orientalism
These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance's or community's explicitly stated rules.
Banned @[email protected] reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago
Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @[email protected] reason: Rule 1 and 2
I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml's moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It's only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.
I'd like to raise some awareness about this, and I'd like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.
I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don't share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml's rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.
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"orientalism"—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones
That's not what is meant here.
Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term "Orientalism" to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
So this would fall under the "no bigotry" rule.
Being critical of a totalitarian and Imperialist ethnostate - by which I mean the Chinese state - is not bigotry.
Calling China an ethnostate is ridiculous when we have hard examples like Israel and soft examples like Japan to compare it to.
China is none of the above outside of a definition of imperialism I think most of the newcomers here, and certainly anyone making those claims, would be unfamiliar with.
The combination of those claims suggests a highly xenophobic sourcing that has little to do with understanding China and a lot to do with a new cold war mentality that exploits Western, and particularly American, ignorance of other countries, e.g. being successfully targeted by the Western-facing Radio Free Asia government-affiliated media and/or the related complex of think tanks and hacks that get mileage not because they're well-grounded in knowledge or academic work, but because they vilify the new "enemy". This is in no way new and Westerners never seem to acquire generational skepticism, instead always getting duped into the intended hatefest, even while acknowledging they got the last ones wrong (e.g. Iraq, Afghanistan).
Those claims are also highly projecting, as many do describe many Western/ally countries and cynically draw from a misuse of the language of the left.
Imperialism, particularly as an accusation like this, is about the forcible export of capital such that capitalist exploitation becomes transnational, witg structurally underpaid labor being extracted from one country to the one exporting capital. This is closely tied to the colonialism of Europe and America, but also applies to "inter-imperialist" conflicts. China lacks the apparatus to coerce, an apparatus that absolutely is used by the US and its clients to vilify and destroy countries not falling in line, as well as accept IMF terms that neoliberalize their economies. Rather, the left critique of China on this is more often that its survival strategy (which is working) requires the exploitation of its own labor and the import of capital. Luckily, this is changing.
China is simply not an ethnostate, this is pure projection and orientalism. Chins is an explicitly multi-ethnic country snd has widespread state support for ethnic diversify and what would be described by Westerners as affirmative action programs that are more generous and effective than Western ones. Attempts to pretend that being Han is akin to whiteness are absurd and, in addition to mischaracteeizing China, bely a problematic ignorance of how white suoremacy was invented, and why it had to be invented, as those histories don't apply to the Han in China. The simplified version is: it's a condition of racialized labor divisions to feed capitalism and particularly European colonialism, and in the US, settler-colonialism. You can find a modern ethnostate in Israel, a Western forward base and settler-colonial project engaging in apartheid.
Re: totalitarian, this term means very little as an accusation and is so overused and selectively justified that in this context all one can really infer it to mean is "bad". Often, it relies on a false consciousness of coercion or societal violence that arbitrarily vilifies state violence while tolerating the private violence ubiquitous in countries dominated by the capitalist class. Example: it is "totalitarian" for there to be government censors on certain topics in [bad country], but not totalitarian for stories supportive of ruling class interests to be favored by privately-owned media (i.e. the dominant media in the West) and for those perceived as a threat to those interests to be systematically downplayed, unfunded in the first place, selectively misrepresented, and coopted and misdirected. Anyone active in, say, the George Floyd protests got to watch the lying happen in real time, with the cop-and-pricate-property-friendly "uncensored" media playing the lead role. Lazy accusations of totalitarianism are really just dog whistles for unexamined hypocrisy and a lack of awareness of the ubiquity of social violence.
China is not totalitarian nor an ethnostate, and the imperialism allegation is debatable.
Xi's policies are reintroducing Totalitarian politics into the Chinese mainstream. The State is run as an ethno-state of the Han, as exemplified by Chinesification policies applied to Colonial regions like Tibet and Xinjiang.
And China used force, violence to acquire the ethnically, culturally and linguistically distinct territories of Xinjiang and Tibet. It then carries out, to this day, genocidal efforts to destroy these indigenous cultures and subjugate them to Chinese, Han and State-Approved ideals.
From where I'm sitting, there is no good-faith argument to be made that the Chinese state is not Imperialist. If Russia's borders are founded on Imperialism, and if America's are, then so is China's.
You're just asserting stuff. What is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Edit: China has protections for minorities, including local autonomy for minority regions, language protection, and affirmative action type policies. I have seen no evidence that China is an ethnostate.
It's absurd to pretend as if the evidence for violent imposition of Chinese state policies in Xinjiang and Tibet isn't overwhelming.
And before you ask, yes, Western states are also violent and this is also a bad thing.
I don't think you know what ethnostate means.
I love it when people disavow states like the US while exactly mirroring what those states say about their enemies. Would you like to share with me some of that "overwhelming evidence" about their "violent imposition" on Tibet, especially in the current day? I'm sure you have lots of links about the poor wholesome slaver theocrats they drove out, but I've seen that stuff before.
Just say the following statement and it will prove you correct.
I Denounce the terrible treatment Xi Jing Ping has inflicted upon the Uyghurs Muslims. Slavery and concentration camps in China are wrong and not ok.
If you cannot say this, you have proven China is both totalitarian and a ethno state.
Do you know what the most common profession for members of the NPC, the national people's congress, the main governing body of the PRC, is? Industrial engineer
Guess what the most common profession is for liberal democracies? Lawyers.
I don't say this because I don't like lawyers 🤣 , I have one in the family. I say it only to point out that most of what you've learned about China, is coming through a heavy media filter, from a media who only seeks to demonize a country they're in a trade war with.
In fairness, before I walked onto Tiananmen Square when visiting China, my local guide strongly implied that we should not mention anything but weddings or vacation spots (no massacre) if we didn't want to be arrested.
Being there was surreal and terrifying. Police with shotguns everywhere. The level of authoritative oppression is worse than visiting a small town in the South.
The "heavy media filter" represents exactly what I experienced as a young&dumb tourist who didn't know about any media filter in the first place.
EDIT: More info. Every time I walked past banks, or any possibly-questionable spot... police/soldiers with shotguns. Sure it's a culture difference, but I live in the most gun-friendly country in the world and their authorities walk around packing heavy weapons. And the complete lack of public protest was noticable and staggering. All I have to do in the US to see protest is drive down any highway. In China? Nothing.
EDIT2: And hey. I've worked with dozens of Chinese expats. You know what they all have in common? They would never live in China again. Mostly because of how oppressive they feel the government is. A lot of coworkers were "rural Chinese" and were second-class citizens behind the "urban Chinese" (confirmed by expats from the latter who were friends/coworkers with the former). The former had a passport that excluded them from entering cities because they weren't "good enough". The latter had passports to go anywhere.
I read about protests in China all the time.
So I just skimmed English Wikipedia (hardly a neutral source), and they say:
The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005.[2] In 2006, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences estimated the number of annual mass incidents to exceed 90,000, and Chinese sociology professor Sun Liping estimated 180,000 incidents in 2010.[3][4] Mass incidents are defined broadly as "planned or impromptu gathering that forms because of internal contradictions", and can include public speeches or demonstrations, physical clashes, public airings of grievances, and other group behaviors that are seen as disrupting social stability.[5]
This does not at all sound like there are no protests.
Your response is fair, but I want to clarify my point. It was not to say that China is a terrible country or that my personal experience covers every inch of the largest country in the world.
It was to reject the idea that there is some "media heavy filter". The media represents what its viewers would experience with zero media intervention by visiting Beijing, or Shamien. Or (from expats' experience) hundreds of other parts of China.
And as to that, I feel I was able to hit a bullseye with that point, that is not really influenced by your response regarding protests against or in China.
Whatever filter the media is portraying is an accurate shapshot of the country, if not a complete one. I knew a single re-pat to China, and she was happy there. She could not, however, tell me that any of my concerns or experiences were invalid.
EDIT: And with all due respect, I would like to point out to readers that your post history involves accusing the West of trying to use propaganda to make everyone hate China so we can go to war with them. We can all have the opinions we have, but I feel that is a bit tinfoil extreme and not merely a "voice of reason" response like you present here.
If anything "this is what I saw when I was there" is a voice of "foreign reason" that can be taken or left.
EDIT2: (Can't stop editing). I'd like to reference you to a very wise person who said:
"Do you expect people to waste their time debunking your shit when you’re not willing to form an argument other than “I read this somewhere trust me”?" His name? @gnuhaut
Just wanted to point out, China is the fourth largest country in the world, behind Russia(1) Canada(2) and the USA(3)
Largest country by population :) But importantly, I think one could argue that China is culturally the largest country as well.
That said, where do you find USA(3)? China comes in third for landmass here.
So you cite me when I respond to a guy who just said he knows shit because he reads a lot and that's it, when I responded to your comment with an actual source? Do you think that's some great own?
I cited that you implied reading shit was not knowledge. Maybe it was a bit flippant of me, but you did quite literally try to invdalite my entire experience by quoting a random block of wikipedia about protests.
But I'm not here to argue. I gave my own experience. I am ready to move on.
I implied just saying "I read a lot" is no way to bolster an argument.
I also did not "invalidate your entire experience". I just pointed out that your experience of not seeing protests might not be representative. I didn't say anything about your other points.
There absolutely are protests in China, they happen, and this is a true fact. Until recently, it was broadly observed that such anger was directed generally at local officials and not at the CCP regime itself.
Recently, though, protests asking the CCP regime to resign have been seen. Which previously was unprecedented.
The fact that protests do happen and occasionally are tolerated in China does absolutely nothing to take away from the point that China is an authoritarian Police State. The Chinese Constitution is not respected within China.
The fact that protests do happen and occasionally are tolerated in China
Literally just inventing statistics about protests being suppressed.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime's atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn't go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.
. . .What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
-- Some guy, emphasis mine
China has 1.4 billion people. Do you really think they have the ability and/or need to "squash" protests and prevent any protest from ever happening? No. They have a healthy democracy where people are involved in voicing their opinions, and protesting if it ever comes to that. Please stop ingesting so much xenophobic propaganda and learn more about the countries of which you speak
China has 1.4 billion people. Do you really think they have the ability and/or need to “squash” protests and prevent any protest from ever happening? No. They have a healthy democracy where people are involved in voicing their opinions, and protesting if it ever comes to that. Please stop ingesting so much xenophobic propaganda and learn more about the countries of which you speak
First, China literally "squashed" hundreds of protesting students in the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. I encourage you to read the harrowing accounts of survivors about how the military used tanks to grind bodies into the ground and then hose them into the sewers.
Secondly, China is currently committing ethnic genocide of millions of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Lastly, China isn't a democracy. Elections in China occur under a political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with all candidate nominations pre-approved by the CCP. CCP regulations require members of the People's Congresses, People's Governments, and People's Courts to implement CCP recommendations (including nominations).
It blows my mind to find someone who speaks so confidently about something they know so little. If you're so confident in your proposition, why don't you fly over to China and try a little protest about Xi. I've been to China many times. They made the rules clear to me: if I involved myself in anything political I was liable for life in prison or even execution.
Actually, a lot of what I've learned about China comes from books written by Chinese people and scholars.
Since you're engaging with me, I'll ask you.
Is there a genocide in Xinjiang? I'm ready to hear your evasion and denials.
Do you expect people to waste their time debunking your shit when you're not willing to form an argument other than "I read this somewhere trust me"?
Most of the world disagrees with you, especially the middle east:
Are what those countries saying untrustworthy?
A map like that isn't really reflective of any substance. Do you know what most maps of the US look like when defining political opinions by states? It's a sea of red. But it clearly doesn't tell a valid picture of popular support. And I'm not even arguing that makes any particular opinion more valid or not, all I'm saying is that its very easily misleading depending on what narrative you want to sell.
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/E7LSY66ODVCFHEVJ7TTGJKPHSU.jpg
Clearly the vast majority of the country supported Trump based on that map...Except that's not true.
I say it only to point out that most of what you’ve learned about China, is coming through a heavy media filter, from a media who only seeks to demonize a country they’re in a trade war with.
Most of the world disagrees with you, especially the middle east
China is an important and powerful trading partner to many countries, so there is an incentive not to speak up. If you are skeptical about the western media, I think you should also be skeptical about the stance of these governments.
To me the situation in Xinjiang is very concerning because humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International speak out against the treatment of Uygurs. I think they don't have a reason to turn a blind eye like many of these governments do. And quite a few of them don't seem to be bothered by human rights violations, violating them themselves in horrific ways. Looking at you, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Syria etc.
Again, I agree that the west has a political motive to slander China. And the west also does and has done horrible things. But I don't think the same goes for humanitarian organizations.
A lot of these western "humanitarian / rights" orgs, came out of the cold war, as part of an active effort to carry out regime change against socialist states and stop the spread of communism. Amnesty international for example was co-founded by someone who worked for british intelligence, and its other founder had close links to the FBI, and even had a hand in the FBI killing of Fred Hampton.
I trust what Muslim and global south countries, as well as the Uyghur people themselves have to say about their treatment, and not these western "human-rights-complex" orgs hailing from countries who have done nothing but bomb the middle east for 60+ years.
expired
I think you're being downvoted because the general belief here is that reeducation isn't happening and that there is no solid evidence that it is. I'm also not very knowledgeable here though, so take this with a grain of salt.
expired
The downvotes are from you seemingly maliciously misinterpreting the point, specifically that it was the people in re-education that are glad they are there and not what was actually said, that the global Muslim population seems to largely support the re-education. By its very nature, we would expect very few people to be glad they are there -- especially while they are there -- but we would expect many Uighurs in the region to be glad that those people are re-educated, as the broader population of Uighurs in the region are the main group victimized by the many terrorist attacks that this crackdown was in response to. That is to say nothing of what Muslims elsewhere in the world think and why because I don't understand that topic enough.
This is the case, yes. Orientalism is the condescending and patronizing attitude (think rudyard kipling) many westerners (especially those from the US, who have been pumped full of sinophobia non-stop since the trade war began) towards other peoples they view as inferior. Anything from a Middle-eastern, Chinese, Indian, or Russian source is seen as illegitimate, evil, sinister, "authoritarian", whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc. Its 100% an instance of breaking rule 1: no bigotry, and alienates most of the people on the planet.
Side point, but I was watching a documentary from 2011 (I think inside job? about the 2008 financial crisis), before the trade war began, and its night and day. Not a single negative thing said about the PRC, and this was just a few years ago.
whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc.
No leftist has ever believed that, and it is a bad faith argument.
It's not that they "believe" it, but it's a glaring blind spot that takes time to be acknowledged and contended with.
You can go out and be the biggest leftist of all and support LGBT rights, universal healthcare, whatever, but it's not like people understand every page of socialist theory and worldview on Day 1. There are many Western leftists at this early stage who have not studied topics like the Chinese Revolution (for instance) from a socialist perspective. Naturally, they are going to tend to repeat liberal talking points until they've done that.
Sure they one can be a "leftist" who is fighting for "the right thing", but for me, I know that I have grown massively in my understanding of the world (modern and historical), and continue to do so. I assuredly have blind spots of my own that I have yet to deal with.
but for me, I know that I have grown massively in my understanding of the world (modern and historical), and continue to do so. I assuredly have blind spots of my own that I have yet to deal with.
This is basically where I am. I've learned a lot in my years to see that the world is very complex and nuanced and many assumptions I had were completely baseless. I've come to the conclusion that I am far too ignorant of the history and geopolitics of the USSR/China to really feel like I have an informed opinion that isn't influenced by cold war propaganda. And I just have not had the time to rectify that yet.
Totally, and once you get there you can and should have criticisms of both countries and how they have operated and the decisions their leaders have made. It's not that they are above criticism, but its exhausting to hear criticisms from people who obviously haven't done their homework and they let the propaganda (seated in racism/orientalism/whatever Red Scare shit) do the talking.
but its exhausting to hear criticisms from people who obviously haven't done their homework and they let the propaganda (seated in racism/orientalism/whatever Red Scare shit) do the talking.
Yep. This is why I'm really leaning more on the side of the mods and general culture on this instance (and others) than the users flinging loaded language and spreading FUD about the platform.
the users flinging loaded language and spreading FUD about the platform.
Extremely dorky to do that on a federated site. Set up an instance and federate.
Nobody seems to give a shit that all major social media is owned by sketchy billionaires who actually have the power to fuck shit up, but one FOSS developer is an ardent communist (but not known to be a member of any org or party where he could actually do anything (no offense)), and all of a sudden that somehow is an issue for just using the software (as intended by the dev!)
It's fine to acknowledge tat you don't have the background information.
Just trust the consensus and intersecting beliefs and analysis of professional academics and historians over internet tankies. Because one group lies more than the other, and it isn't the academics.
Some of the very first articles I read that pushed me toward leftism were The Responsibility of Intellectuals and Manufacturing Consent. So no I'm not apt to blindly accept the consensus of academics and Western elites without looking at it as closely as I can.
I'm not saying blind spots don't exist. What I was doing is calling out a genocide denier for using bad-faith arguments.
