Hi everyone. Another refugee from reddit here. What's the drama with the Lemmy teams politics? I've seen a few people warn that they're not great, but the only example that I actually saw was an argumentative back-and-forth in a github issue about filter lists for slurs.
If you look at the main dev's profile pictures, they are pictures of Fidel Castro as a young man. They are one of the only new big instances that hasn't blocked lemmygrad.ml, which is basically a tankie pro-CCP pro-Russian-invasion instance, and it is rumored that they mod them with their alts, and that lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml are hosted on the same IP address. Lemmy.ml being the biggest or one of the biggest instances, and also the main developers being the leaders of that side, it makes sense to worry a bit.
But as others have said, just don't give them money, sign up elsewhere and you're good.
Wait, the instance you sign up on can block you from seeing whole other instances? I thought it didn't matter where you make a account so much cause you can see the other instances. I'm not a tankie so didn't make my account at lemmygrad, but I still had planned to visit their communities.
Starting to seem like going to need multiple accounts to really use lemmy.
Wait, the instance you sign up on can block you from seeing whole other instances?
Yup. Go to any instance.url/instances (here it's https://lemmy.fmhy.ml/instances) and you can see what instances they federate with and which they block. You'll notice even here lemmygrad is blocked x). It is banned on any "respectable" instance because honestly they're morons but yes, what you say is true.
You can see what the lemmygrad community thinks about this topic here: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/706060. They are aware that most instances have blocked theirs, are planning on moving to lemmy.ml and are all like "ohhh free speech" (when they would host a public central square book burning party to destroy anything that disagrees with communism)
I especially love the last one because it's all like
"well, we used to censor them because that was good, they "poison public discourse", but now they censor us, but that's because we're better at debates than them" lmao 🤥🤡
Their thoughts
(comment#445674)> They call it “trolling” or “human rights abuse denial” if you disagree with the american narrative. (referring to the fact that they support Russian invasion, deny a few genocides here and there including the Uyghur one and other related topics)
(comment#444777)> My conjecture based on disagreements I’ve had with them, their goal is to draw in libs so that the marxists actually have people to educate. Without them it kinda became an echo chamber.
↓↓↓↓ My favorite ↓↓↓↓
(comment#447092 )> Look on the bright side: for most of the history of the Internet socialist states had to block out the flood of lib content to keep it from poisoning public discourse.
Now the tide is turning, and liberals are blocking communists out. On the English-speaking internet we’re still a minority, but they’re scared that if they let us freely compete in their marketplace of ideas, we’d be punching well above our size. Truth is a powerful ally, and their suppression of it is failing.
I thought it didn’t matter where you make a account so much cause you can see the other instances.
Half true. MOST as in, all but lemmygrad, are shown here. But yeah any instance can block any other instance and you're left out, means they won't share posts & communities with each other.
I’m not a tankie so didn’t make my account at lemmygrad, but I still had planned to visit their communities.
You can do it. Just go to lemmygrad.ml. It's open access and free to view. You can even open an account and talk with them (warning: they will ban you if they disagree with you).
I believe you can still visit the community, even if it's blocked on your home instance. Instances can blacklist other instances from their /all feed though.
There's a hard coded filter that won't let you say the n word. I hope such evil communist censorship will convince you to use something other than lemmy.
It's not a rumor and they don't use alts. @desalinnes is the head mod of lemmygrad and lemmy.ml, and also one of the two head devs. There is no conspiracy. Lemmy was created by MLs for MLs. Stop using the evil tankie software if you disagree.
Basically it illustrates their intent to remove "orientalism," aka critique of the Chinese government from any western sources, from any community on lemmy.ml. It's not a great look, but at the end of the day with how the fediverse is set up, they can only control things hosted on lemmy.ml, not any other instances. It's one of the few reasons I signed up here instead of there. If their politics are a deal breaker for you, all you have to do is not interact on that one instance.
I'm not really concerned that any particular instance is really going to impact my usage of the fediverse, but thanks for the info. It's good to be aware that a particular instance may be biased.
Yeah I ended up in the same boat pretty much. I'll likely still participate in some lemmy.ml communities, but if discussion of politics comes up I'll just keep in mind that the community has a certain bias.
Or you can simply use pleroma or something. Even if you pretend not to care now, later on down the road we're gonna have to listen to your kind whine about the "tankies" ad nauseam sooner or later. Get off the tankie software.
I've used lemmy since long before the reddit drama. The creators of lemmy are Marxist-Leninists, lemmygrad.ml is hosted and moderated by them. It is also one of the oldest instances. The ml stands for Marxist Leninist. I suggest you move on if you find all this repulsive. This honestly reminds me of when western expats would fly into asian country and complain that nobody speaks english and that "there are so many minorities here". You're on a communist forum, it's run by communists gasp.
As in the creators of the inital lemmy? Do the hold any power onto the whole lemmy? I understand that the idea of the fediverse is that no one has that kind of power but still would like to ask the stupid question.
It is interesting to see people flock here to celebrate values that they don't politically espouse. I am not a marxist myself, but I don't think we would have anything close to this product without such an ideology, and it's just as ironic to see a few alt-right instances floating around. The human experience is complicated, to say the least.