Ah, I see you said something controversial, like "Theocracy bad" or "Imperialist capitalist state bad". The tankies don't like those positions for some reason.
Bruh I poked the hexbear once when a dude was arguing over exactly how to classify the Uyiger genocide. Something about how "it's not a genocide, but just an ethnic cleansing" they really didn't like when I pointed out just how weird of an argument that is. Fascists usually short circuit pretty fast under redicule
I had one argue "the Soviet space program did amazing things without the benefits of imperialism", which is a statement I can only ridicule. Then, to prove how not imperialist the Soviet Union was, he proceeded to explain how much imperialism the United States did. Yes, I'm quite aware of how much imperialism the United States did. That's not the issue here.
If you simply choose to embrace the same euphemism for genocide as them and also pretend that having a euphemism excuses the genocide, then you could get along.
My experience on lemmy is vastly improved after blocking lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, hexbear, beehaw, and pawb. Wiped out vast swathes of degenerates from my feed.
Sure, occasionally poking them with a stick can be funny, but if you don't like your scrolling punctuated with muttering "oh fuck off" under your breath every few minutes -- it's nice.
I can't remember why I blocked them exactly, to be honest, but I remember thinking they were almost as annoying as hexbear users, and I can't be bothered to go have a second look now to see exactly why. Clearly, I was annoyed with them enough to block them, as the ones I listed above are the only instances I have blocked save for lemmynsfw (which is just because I don't care for porn in my feed).
I did say something controversial (apparently) on grad and simply asked what I said wrong and having an open mind showed that they can interact normally.. But Hexbear is just straight up poisoning me lol
Beehaw and pawb are peculiar blocks but .ml can be a bit trying. Many users have been swept into, what they believe to be, militant communist zeitgeist. Their opinions exist within an echo-chamber surreptitiously safeguarded by their extremely banhappy admins. Mind that it would be acceptable if they were to openly offer their rule list, including “do not criticize communism, communists, communist countries, China, Russia, or the war in Ukraine” but they refuse to do so given how unpopular and weird that would be if it were visible to their users. If you care to verify, post a picture of tank man or suggest that Russia should leave Ukraine in one of their communities and enjoy your two week vacation from .ml.
Users range from confused and corralled to militant and chronically angry and many don’t understand why. Frankly, most .ml users are fine but their communities are breeding grounds for frustration, delusions, and misinformation. The prime example of admin sanctioned crazy goes by the name of yogthos if you, once again, wish to verify.
I've never been able to figure out the basic ideas behind their opinions. It's something like US conservatives, where it's something stupider than you can even guess at, but less predictable.
Understand that some or most of the key posters there are literally pawns of Russian or Chinese intelligence. Troll farms, wumao, what have you. Whether they are literally government employees or contracted through a third party, their purpose is to astroturf positive optics of their employer and negative optics of the US/the West as a whole. A more sinister interpretation, they are trying to destabilize the West by doing things like trashing Biden, now Harris, hoping to secure a chaotic and inwardly destructive Trump presidency.
Anything they say is to service these goals, anything they believe is mutable to these goals, and nothing they argue is in good faith.
I don't buy that at all. Lemmy is far too small for foreign agents to be posting propaganda. Why would they try to convince people who don't need convincing?
Tankies already suckle foreign propaganda, ain't no need to directly influence them.
I've been there, but I mostly just do it anyway. Fuck it, I said what I said. Half the time you don't even get anything all that cutting, it's just png salad. Every now and then, you'll get a coherent response that isn't a death threat, and those end up being good reads more often than not.
Eh, more often than not their longer posts are just "actually Stalin/Putin/Mao/Kim dynasty/Trump good because <5 page essay>"
Edit: also the classic "comparing Stalin to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial" and in the same breath calling everyone not in their vatnik bubble a nazi or fascist lmao
And of course, if you don't address every single point in that 5 page essay, along with doing all of their required reading, then you're clearly acting in bad faith and a shitlib and are now going to be dogpiled by 27 other Hexbear users.
I got banned from hexbear and lemmygrad like a year ago without ever even posting in either community, just for arguing with some of their users under a post on lemmy.ml
Oh I have been banned from lemmy.ml like 6 times but only temporarily. Lemmygrad and hexbear just went for a permaban for just arguing with their users on a separate instance.
It was great. They made a whole event about how they will dunk all of Lemmy and fill every thread with their spam... Just to realise they're not in a safespace anymore and they defederated themselves in less than 24 hours.
.ml is the same way. People were getting deleted left and right for posting about Maduro fixing the election in Venezuela. Not realizing it's freaking .ml. Even when told, "the mods are just enforcing the instance rules" they didn't get it.
There’s a few mods that bans people just for being liberal there. What fucking clowns man. Then their little minions come to .world and whine about how they’re treated unfairly when they troll.
So before I knew shit about the fediverse I was trying to find and instance and I thought "oh neat I'm a leftist," and created an account on hexbear. I was not prepared at all for that. I didn't know what a tankie was and I was just legit confused for a minute.
As Goat has said, this platform (Lemmy) is comprised of instances, some, like Lemmy.world, are general instances, and some have a specific theme or type of content they cater to. There's one for furry porn, one for regular porn, for example, and one for utterly insufferable Internet communists who make a point of behaving badly in other communities.
The Fediverse is much more than just that. You just described the Lemmy (and kbin?) part of it. The Xitter alternative Mastodon for example is another part of the Fediverse among many others.
Communists are somewhat like collapsniks. I don’t want to bully or torment them, life kicked their butt already. But tankies, damn they deserve some bullying from time to time for all the stupid shit they say.
I'm fine and usually agree with people who are economically left. I find I usually disagree with people who love state capitalism so much they will excuse whatever human rights abuses occur under it.
Looking at the online places some people lost their faith in liberal democracy. At least in the USA looking at the voting and political system there it really isn’t the most… healthy. So I very much understand the desperation.
In other places it is going strong and no one sane would want to drop it. It merely needs some tweaks and fixes that are a subject of constant battles in the parliament.
This is the problem of us centric internet. Whatever I say it is always taken in the context of America. I got to know so much about that single country out of 195 whether I wanted it or not
Defederate them for having a different political worldview? Defederation is supposed to be for extreme circumstances. There's not a problem that .ml communities cause of people breaking the rules here. I'm not saying there aren't toxic people from lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml, there definitely are, but there's nothing to justify defederation.
If instances just start defederating other instances for hosting a lot of communists then the platform's gonna fall apart lol.
You can block instances if you don't like them. You don't have to decide what the best experience for all us other lemm.ee users is.
It's not about an ideology. It's that they make it their identity. If someone founded a server and community for lemmy.fascists I wouldn't blame a lot of people for not wanting to Federate with it as well.
While they like to talk to talk. They'll do anything but walk the walk. Ml governments have been some of the most brutal and repressive in existence. And this is not a defense of anyone else. just a critique of them. There's plenty of criticism to go around. However Leninist are particularly hypocritical, bad faith, and specifically not worth engaging with when it bleeds over into every other discussion.
The irony is, yeah, the tankies on hexbear and ml are bad. But the rest of lemmy is bad as well. Everyone is completely indoctrinated these days. It's just complete polarization and extremism. Everyone just reads their corner of the news and needs to believe one side or another.