Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
I had my first ever comment, in decades of forums/reddit usage, get mod deleted because I was critical of China and the USSR. It was a fairly mild criticism. That action turned me off the whole instance.
I take issue with both the authoritarian left and authoritarian right: being an apologist for Soviet Russia as well as being an apologist for the USA is not OK in my opinion.
I find it futile to take a position on which is worse because that just gives space to be an apologist for one that’s “less bad”. I see this happening in this thread right now.
Should I defederate from both lemmy.world and lemmy.ml? Of course not. In fact, I find both to be more tolerable and cooperative than reddit today.
Enlightened centrist found in the wild
Are there people that don’t know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that’s why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.
Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it’s run by “Marxists” (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).
it’s run by “Marxists”
Lemmy isn’t run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.
You’re right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
It seems like they have some strong say when it comes to their own instance. According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
I’m only a 1yr Lemming myself, but I never saw such a critique aimed at any other instance, hence why I’m skeptical that the devs don’t have influence over how the software is used.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
That isn’t an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That’s them using their own property as they wish.
It’s more than just that IMO. It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
Yes, you may say that ML is of course free to screw with their own instance, but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances, and 2) they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
What’s the point of leaving oppressive, commercial social media only to run in to the same kinds of abuse of power on a supposedly transparent, user-run, P2P social network?
It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
I’m not convinced that this is in conflict with the aim of federation. The whole point is to give people the power to create their own instances with their own rules instead of having to rely on a single central authority. The network isn’t necessarily distributed — it’s decentralized. An instance can administrate their content as they see fit. An instance cannot alter the content produced by any other instance. An instance can only manage the content originating from itself.
but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances
Would you mind being more specific?
they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
Hm, well, it depends on your perspective. The whole point of the Fediverse is to give people the freedom and power to control how they interact with the service. A server has the freedom to associate with the users that they wish in the same way that you have the freedom to consume what you wish. The spirit of the software is to enable people to have this freedom that otherwise wouldn’t exist with a large central service. The way I like to look at the Fediverse is where each instance is like a country, and each community is like a regional/state/provincial government within the country, and federation between instances is like cross-border policies between nations.
a supposedly transparent […] social network?
I’m not sure what you mean by “transparent”.
a supposedly […] user-run […] social network?
It is user-run, in that any user can create an instance.
a supposedly […] P2P social network?
It’s not P2P. A P2P network would be distributed. The Fediverse is decentralized.
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.
It’s one of those things where the very tankies you’re talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there’s the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.
They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they’re assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.
You’re beating a dead horse with this one
I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time.
If that’s the case, then that may be a bug. I advise you to report that.
It’s standard, unfortunately, I’m not the only one
What do you mean by “it’s standard”? As in that is the intended functionality? It shouldn’t be — the whole point of blocking instances is for the user to be able to, well, block an instance, ie content originating from it no longer shows up.
Your apparent antagonism towards the lead Lemmy developer is sensationalist and non-constructive. If you dislike their moderation then the solution is simple: leave their instances and communities. If your user does not reside on their instances then its admins cannot silence you. If you do not participate in their communities, then their moderators cannot silence you. If you do not wish to see their users then block their instances (though, I would still advise against this). Your argument is founded upon the premise that you don’t like their opinions, so just don’t listen. Don’t taint the Lemmyverse’s image with your false alarmism. Be the change that you wish to see. Start an instance with administrative rules that you think are better. Start a community with moderation rules that you think are better. If one finds that they are needing to resort to ad-homenim to gather support, then I would advise one to critically analyze their position and arguments.
EDIT (2024-06-07T19:25Z): From your other comments in this thread I see that you are advocating for the creation of new communities and for people to individually distance themselves from lemmy.ml, rather than defederation. I agree with this. I still disagree, however, with the approach and tone that you used in your post. I think the same end can and should be achieved without ad-homenim attacks.
Why is criticism never accepted?
Why is it “leave” instead of addressing the issues brought up?
There is no issue with either. I fully support civil criticism and discussion. And I also support users moving to a place where they feel a better sense of community. I think it’s wrong to force people to interact with those that they don’t wish to. This is why the fediverse exists — to remove centralized control over the discourse.
And I also support users moving to a place where they feel a better sense of community.
How about supporting users who want to improve their community instead of finding a new one?
How about supporting users who want to improve their community instead of finding a new one?
I support that as well. My initial point was from the perspective of users not originating from lemmy.ml being annoyed with how lemmy.ml is administrating itself. If the users of lemmy.ml wish to stay to try and improve it, then I fully stand behind them, but, at the same time, I still support lemmy.ml’s autonomy.
Are people on Lemmy.ml advocating to improve their community, or is it just .worlders wanting to change .ml?
It’s likely both. The ratio, however, I’m not sure of.
