this post was submitted on 03 May 2025

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MeanwhileOnGrad

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"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"

Welcome to MoG!

Meanwhile On Grad

Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!

What is a Tankie?

Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.

(caution of biased source)

Basic Rules:

Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.

Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.

Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.

Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.

Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.

Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post as opposed to arguing.

You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling! (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on [email protected] for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

On bans and censorships:

https://lemmy.world/post/31569892

https://lemmy.world/post/31368129

https://lemmy.world/post/31329952

https://lemmy.world/post/31596159

https://lemmy.world/post/30665418

https://lemmy.world/post/30876228

https://lemmy.world/post/31090903

https://lemmy.world/post/31329952

https://lemmy.world/post/31368129

https://lemmy.world/post/29490804

https://lemmy.world/post/29507466

https://lemmy.world/post/29878102

https://lemmy.world/post/29980157

https://lemm.ee/post/65494823

https://lemmy.world/post/28480760

https://lemmy.world/post/28481615

https://lemmy.world/post/28482147

https://lemmy.world/post/28480936

https://lemmy.world/post/28482273

https://lemmy.world/post/28481272

https://lemmy.world/post/28481064

https://lemmy.world/post/27674360

https://lemmy.world/post/27674117

https://lemmy.world/post/27673934

https://lemmy.world/post/27673724

https://lemmy.world/post/27577337

https://lemmy.world/post/27378634

https://lemmy.world/post/27346630

https://lemmy.world/post/27341283

https://lemmy.world/post/27288224

https://lemmy.world/post/27156418

https://lemmy.world/post/27054157

https://lemmy.world/post/27008261

Allowing altered headlines and permitting known propaganda outlets:

https://lemmy.world/post/30843744

https://lemmy.world/post/28275465

https://lemmy.world/post/27428838

https://lemmy.world/post/27416097

https://lemmy.world/post/27314050

https://lemmy.world/post/27288953

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

"concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" https://lemmy.world/post/26985447

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" ~Tankies of .ml https://lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763

Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558

Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

(page 2) 46 comments

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Lemmy.ml seems to just downvote different opinions in masse without responding with respect.

After a few attempts to engage respectfully and just getting negative interactions I just blocked them entirely.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

> dotworld user

Pot calling the kettle shit tbh

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Like it or not, we can shine a light and hope they see.

I am as libertarian (as opposed to authoritarian) as they come, and I still hope I (and others who share my sentiment) will be able to convince them the merits of a world with human rights, diplomacy, and freedom — that is not needlessly violent and forceful.

We can move past barbarism, but to do so we must define what comes next to those who have shut their hearts to the truth — especially to those who have spent arguably too much time reliving the horrific violence of the 20th century.

I don't need to boycott them, I don't feel the need to block them. Everybody is within their rights to do so though, but I will keep slowly trying to win them over to the idea of a more kind and free world.

Creating Lemmy and the fediverse is of incredible value to humanity. They provided a timely medicine to the internet — a decentralized platform that is not controlled by an American corporation and ruled by algorithms. I don't feel like it's a lost cause to do my best.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I joined Lemmy in November. By New Years I had independently figured out what was wrong with .ml and its users.

The less of that garbage, the better.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I'm kinda still new here, so thanks for the info! I think I've figured out how to block the instance, but is there a guide on blocking or something or a way to check?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Haha ok. I would never be happy sitting behind some blockade on the fediverse, unable to even see what others are saying. Its funny that you are so afraid of their opinions that you have to lock yourself in the basement. But you do you. :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

cause nobody wants to get dragged into a ten page discussion about why China and Russia are the most democratic countries in the world

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Idk, I personally find that ML isnt that bad. Granted I may be a bit biased as a leftist but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world. Furthemore whenever I see massive Transphobic spam attacks its 9/10 from world. In addition I have had far more genuene conversations on ml communities and with ml users. However I cannot say the same for world users/communities which are known to shut down discussion by calling it "tankie" (yes even Anarchist discussion). Due to that it has become abundantly clear to me that the term "tankie" has very little if anything to do with authoritarianism and everything to do with leftism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world.

What kind of censorship are you seeing? I usually don't hang there so I've only really seen their liberalist "anti-violence" suppression of Brian Thompson posting. Which honestly is enough reason to avoid, but I'm curious.

Also, agreeing from experience with the transphobia and hilarious ignorance of rabid anticommunists.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Granted I may be a bit biased as a leftist but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world. Furthemore whenever I see massive Transphobic spam attacks its 9/10 from world.

The modlog just doesn't reflect that, there's no widespread issue on .world as far as I've seen in all my time in the modlog.

What I do see from .world is a bunch of moderators doing moderator things and very little admin actions, which is what you would expect from any instance of size. It's the opposite with .ml, and that should be a huge red flag in of itself.

Are there bad mods and bad mod decisions? Sure, that's going to happen anywhere, but I don't see the .world admins in every comm across .world removing posts and comments critical of a certain agenda or to push a narrative, like on .ml.

As far as "transphobic spam attacks" that can happen on any instance, .world being the biggest (literally double in size from the next biggest) means it's going to be targeted more. And again, I see it being dealt with accordingly in the modlog, in fact that's one of the main times I do see non-.ml admin actions in there, site banning actual bigots.

Plus if .world really had a transphobe problem, ada would have defederated from it by now.

However I cannot say the same for world users/communities which are known to shut down discussion by calling it "tankie" (yes even Anarchist discussion).

Have you seriously not seen .ml tankies throw around "liberals" or "shitlibs" in the exact same way

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

What I do see from .world is a bunch of moderators doing moderator things and very little admin actions

Yeah that gets annoying when you're the moderator of a non-world community and I am. They rarely ban people and they allow anyone to make a new acc very easily.

but I don't see the .world admins in every comm across .world removing posts and comments critical of a certain agenda or to push a narrative, like on .ml

I keep seeing people say that but I havent personally seen that and I have said a lot against authoritarian regimes

I see it being dealt with accordingly in the modlog, in fact that's one of the main times I do see non-.ml admin actions in there, site banning actual bigots

I have been called a "self hating trans person" for being a leftist and had my entire gender invalided, called "fake" more times than I can count by world trolls and I have found nearly every time they were applauded.

Plus if .world really had a transphobe problem, ada would have defederated from it by now.

There are talks and serious considerations, many blahaj members want this

Have you seriously not seen .ml tankies throw around "liberals" or "shitlibs" in the exact same way

Tbh there are many times shitlib is more than justified and I see it very often. Common shitlib arguments include "we should compromise on the Israel-Palestine conflict, what if they only genocide half as many civilians?", "yeah I support Trans rights, but what if you gave up sports and trans youth as a compromise?", "yeah the system is rigged but if you dont vote blue no matter who you're not trying hard enough". Shitlib makes sense, it says you are a liberal and you are full of shit. Meanwhile tankie is just a blatant attempt to categorize the entire left as authoritarian.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

significantly less censorship than world.

Haven't been on this comm much eh?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have, I have also seen world comms ban even mild critique of the Democrats. For people who claim to hate tankies y'all do enforce blind loyalty to the party quite often.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'll go say fuck Pelosi, fetterman, and whoever else you want on world if you say "free Taiwan" on ml and we'll see what happens.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

For decades Taiwan was little more than a fascist puppet for the US, now theyre just another neoliberal state in east Asia.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Russia won ww2 get over it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse’s overall growth and outside reputation.

Those admins you say are hurting lemmy are literally the developers who made it.
Also, fuck growth. It's the cancer that drives enshittyfication and destroys our planet.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those admins you say are hurting lemmy are literally the developers who made it.

We're all well aware, just because someone does something good does not give them a license to do whatever they want. Lemmy itself is apolitical, its code for a link aggregator type of social media, nothing more nothing less.

Also, fuck growth. It's the cancer that drives enshittyfication and destroys our planet.

Growth for the *sake of profit * is cancer yes, but growth of the Lemmy-verse and the Fediverse at large means a tiny bit less traffic on the cancer that is corporate centralized Social media

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Lemmy itself is apolitical

This is an absurd statement.

Its birth was political.

Its development model, licensing and network structure is political.

Its anticaptialist financial model is political. And this is not trivial or disposable. This is why there's no ads or addiction-driven features shoved in the code. That's why it's not subject to venture capital and prone to enshittification (in the original sense of the word). That's why people and communities can host diverse instances. That's why you can join lemmy.world and block lemmy.ml. Those aren't decisions in a vacuum or ideals arising from moral purity, these are the results of choices based in ideology. And even if an instance claims to be apolitical or even contradictory in politics, or even if a fork of Lemmy does this, this does not invalidate or evaporate Lemmy's political factors, it only adds others. For example, lemmy.world is infamously liberalist, and bans people in congruence with that ideology: see Luigi discussions for a clear, well-known example, as well as being more tolerant of bigotry: see /c/conservative

What Im talking about isnt idealistic or hypothetical. To see this idea in action, see the beginning of BlueSky enshittification already forming. And look at the much older Mastodon which has resisted these same pressures. Mastodon can avoid the enshittification because its political structures are not beholden to profit and popularity, while BlueSky is pressured, e.g., to comply with Turkish state censorship to avoid losing market share.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I actually like seeing their posts on my main account. It allows me to keep up with their lingua franca, so I can more easily identify their alts on normal instances, so I know not to attempt to engage in good faith.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

I got banned to 40 days from .ml memes for arguing that the republicans were worse than the democrats or something mild like that.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They sure screech about democrats and then it’s just silence for republicans.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

In the USA their is only one party and that is the imperialist war mongering party

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

"Arguing against the far right party? That's a no-no for our leftist instance!"

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm on Mbin and started on Kbin, so I've tied my cart to a sequence of single devs. But, are there any Lemmy devs who aren't connected to ML?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think both the Lemmy main developers @[email protected] and @[email protected] are also the ml Admins. There are other contributors but none of them is doing this as their main job.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nutomic is also a massive transphobe who claimed that trans identity is western propaganda, and Dessalines is a massive cringe lord who drapes himself in the moniker of an actual freedom fighter to compare their struggle to the one he fights from his air conditioned computer chair.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I don't know, Dessalines was the resistance leader who destroyed French imperial rule of Haiti, and stopped slavery, however he pretty much immediately became a brutal autocrat that the majority of Haitians quickly came to revile.

Kinda sounds like it's in tune with their authoritarian takes on things. Not saying I don't see your point, of course, dessalines, little d, is a keyboard warrior

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (40 children)

In a recent discussion in the Matrix chat, it was mentioned that donations to support development have recently fallen off quite steeply. I mentioned my reason for not donating anymore is because I can't support anyone who runs an instance like .ml. @[email protected] said I could donate directly to him since he doesn't do as much moderation over there, but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Nutomic also said that trans identity was western propaganda and has doubled down on that statement several times.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also nutomic is a transphobe

https://lemmy.ml/post/18761554

Which is reason enough to not give them any money in my book

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Checks the screenshots. Extremely mid take regarding sports that's shared by a lot of people that aren't terminally online. Transphobe, alright.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

"biological men" is a dead giveaway. Just because a lot of people are transphobic doesn't mean it's okay.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Every time a ml/hexbear community that I might be interested in pops up on my feed, I block it, then manually search for a non-tankie version of the same thing and immediately subscribe. The amount of pro-authoritarian content I've been exposed to has dramatically dropped.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I just instance blocked them, good riddance. Too bad I do occasionally have to see posts from their users on other instances.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I just instance blocked them

How do?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

so thats why ive been seeing so much communist propaganda lately

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (2 children)

For sure, I only want to see capitalist propaganda.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Then make a .world account and look at local posts

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Capitalist propaganda, also known as reality

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Wut? Reality fits no ideology. If it did, it wouldn't be an ideology, just reality. If capitalism ever worked as intended. It hasn't been since the 19th century. And I think that's a pretty specious claim itself. Leninism hasn't made good on it's claims either. They both suck and have been disproven. Society has changed, technology has changed. Perhaps it's time to try something new?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

That's true, reality has no ideology.

But in reality, capitalist countries like America, Canada, Germany, South Korea, and so on, are prosperous.

Meanwhile, look at communist countries, Russia, China, Cuba. They all are shitholes.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

look at communist countries, Russia

Russia stopped being a part of the Soviet Union around 35 years ago. Capitalist reform (more specifically 'shock therapy') led to huge increases in child mortality, the establishment of mail-order brides and child prostitution, and the rise of its oligarchs. Things were so bad in the 90s and early 2000s that someone as horrible as Putin was considered an improvement, that's how bad capitalism was for Russia.

I am critical of China, it has serious problems, but I don't understand how someone can call it a shithole (and not say the same about America). Let alone suggesting one of the biggest economies in the world is not prosperous. It's not the 80s anymore. There are valid critiques but that's not one of them - if anything the 'communist states' are renowned for rapidly transforming multiple pre-industrial backwaters into world superpowers.

South Korea is an odd choice, given it's already up to its Sixth Republic due to various coups and dictatorships and, if I'm not mistaken, its last three presidents were impeached.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

cuba you can’t really draw any conclusions from because they continue to exist despite a blockade by the largest economy in the world

that tends to fuck you up

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"We can't trade with one capitalist country, therefore our economy has collapsed" is not a stunning refutation of capitalism.

I'm more inclined to believe that Cuba's well-documented internal economic problems are to blame rather than regarding it as necessary for a socialist state to be supported by capitalists in order to exist at a decent standard of living.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

it wasn’t meant to be a refutation of capitalism… all i’m saying is that there are significant confounding factors that have very little to do with the issue at hand, so that particular example shouldn’t be used as a refutation of communism

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