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Lemmy.world Support

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The lemmy.ml Problem (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Dear Admins and Users of lemmy.world,

I am writing to express my concerns about the impact of lemmy.ml on our community. It has come to my attention that lemmy.ml frequently disseminates propaganda and engages in historical revisionism. Moreover, there have been instances where their admin privileges were used to suppress dissenting views, reminiscent of the already defederated lemmygrad instance.

While personal blocking of lemmy.ml is an option, it does not address the broader issue of new users potentially being influenced by misleading content. It is crucial that we protect our users from a continuous stream of biased information.

To illustrate these concerns, I have provided a link to a detailed post on the Fediverse that documents these issues comprehensively [Here].

Given these points, I urge the admins to consider a defederation from lemmy.ml. If their users wish to remain part of Lemmy.ml, that is entirely acceptable, but we should take steps to prevent the propagation of harmful misinformation, especially in their comment sections.

Thank you for your consideration.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Ok so I'm no one here and not on the .world team.

So don't take what I'm saying personally or anything bc I'm not meaning it in any kind of angry or combative way. Not trying to argue with you or anyone.

I'm not of the same beliefs that .ml or the developers are. So I guess you can say you and I agree that yea their messed up I get it.

But that's the issue with the whole fediverse thing. Even though I do agree with you about .ml

People are allowed to do whatever they want and believe whatever they want. That's not up to you. Don't Take that as an attack, I'm not meaning it as one.

Think of it this way:

It's like .ml making this post but about your personal beliefs (they probably already do)

OR

let's pretend lemmy was heavily conservative instead of liberal making this exact post. You'd think wtf ?

You get what I'm saying ?

But that's not up to them to get what I'm trying to say ? Yea it's fucked up but ppl are allowed to believe whatever they want. Even if what they believe is shitty. The thing is, one person doesn't and shouldn't get to make that call for everyone else.

No one person knows what's best for everyone

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

let’s pretend lemmy was heavily conservative instead of liberal making this exact post.

I think you misunderstand the issue, so as you mentioned conservative, let's illustrate it with an analogy.

The situation with lemmy.ml right now, and apologies for the reddit analogy, is the equivalent if on reddit the batshit crazy mods of formerly /r/the_donald or /r/conservative could ban you from /r/linux because you said something bad about Trump on /r/memes. At that point it's not about dissenting opinions, it's about them wielding power they shouldn't have over those dissenting people.

An instance that operates like that shouldn't be part of mainstream lemmy and host general purpose communities. The only way to take that power from them is to shun them, i.e. defederate.

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

No one person knows what's best for everyone

But we do know what isn't best for everyone, and that's lies and disinformation.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank God you're not in charge of anything important in real life lol

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

so... you think lies and disinformation is good? what the hell is wrong with you?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So.....you think youre in charge of what everyone gets to believe πŸ€”

Get the fuck outta here 🀣

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

someone has to be. with retards like you walking around...

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

Someone who believes they should control what others believe and think by managing social media typically exhibits *authoritarian or controlling tendencies, and have developmental issues such as a lack of empathy, an overdeveloped sense of superiority, authoritarian personality traits, insecurity and control issues, poor socialization, low emotional intelligence, cognitive rigidity, and moral absolutism

That ends up leading to a problematic worldview where they feel justified in imposing their beliefs on others undermining individual autonomy and stifling diversity of thought.

That type of developmental background results in poor interpersonal relationships and ultimately harming societal harmony and personal freedoms.

Might wanna seek mental assistance

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

Calling to defederate merely on the basis of political opinion might be premature. However, I suspect defederation will happen for legal reasons: they host users who openly support terrorist organizations designated as such by the EU. LW is subject to Dutch law - hosting such content is more of a gray area than CSAM, but still very much illegal in most countries.

The reason I'm not pushing here with examples is because I have not yet contacted the mods/admins to remove said content. They may have simply not been aware and I'll give them that chance. But even seeing that content has a chilling effect on users who would contribute - even in unrelated communities.

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

It's not defederating on the basis of political opinion. It's defederating on the basis of extreme intolerance towards and censorship of people who have different, non-fringe opinions that aren't even controversial in most parts of the world.

Right now, the instance hosts a lot of let's say mainstream, non-political communities, purely because lemmy.ml was the first instance and so "popular" by default. The way the mods over there behave, it's clear that they're not suited to be a mainstream instance for these communities. Unfortunately due to network effect, people won't just move.

The only way to dislodge these communities and move them to more neutral instances is if larger instances like lemmy.world start defederating lemmy.ml.

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

There are some good points here, but I think defederation should always be a last resort and especially so in this case, given that we are talking about lemmy.ml here.

Since it was the former flagship server (in activity, at least) before LW came along, there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.

That's not to say that I agree with the actions of the .ml admins, or think that opening a dialogue with them about moderation policies isn't a great idea, of course; I just think it's overall a better approach to let the individual user figure out for themselves which communities/instances they want to engage with and which ones they want to avoid.

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

there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there

And that, in fact, is my main concern with ml. They have lots of communties which are non-political for sure but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda. At which point the negative outweigh the positive?

And even in the non-political Communities your comments gets censored when they are not on line with their views.

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

but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda.

So block those individual communities that post what you consider propaganda. Hell, even block the whole instance - that option is readily available to you.

At which point the negative outweigh the positive?

With a server like, say, Hexbear, this would be an easy calculation. Defederate and what does the average user miss out on? Not a whole lot. On the other hand, .ml has a wide variety of technology, open source, gaming, hobby, etc. communities that don't even touch on politics.

I regularly visit many of them, so for me at least, it would take a lot more on the negative scale to even break even.

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

For sure I can block them for myself (as I have mentioned in my Post itself) but this won't solve the Problem of policing non political Communities and injecting them also with propaganda.

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

To what extent is this actually an issue? What examples do you have so far?

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

Pardon me but have you read the Post i linked? He talked about politics, granted, but banning him from non-political Communities (in fact, ALL Communities) is completely out of proportion. And that is just for reciting established facts!

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

Yes I have, which is why I'm asking. While I agree that the admin response was totally out of all proportion, this is not evidence of either of the things you previously claimed.

If you're going to justify defederation based on non-political communities being policed and injected with propaganda, you need to provide some concrete examples of that happening.

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

First and for most my main reason for defederation is that they straight up lie and mislead.

If you demand prove I will unblock ml again and will try to find it. I would have thought that you would have seen this yourself since you seem to be more on ml than I was.

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

I've seen it in the obvious communities like [email protected], sure. But in non-political ones? Not once.

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

https://lemmy.ml/post/16185014

https://lemmy.ml/post/7981013

https://lemmy.ml/post/15667300

Here are three posts from the memes-community. They got downvoted to oblivion (from the Users) and contain propaganda, but were not removed or anything from the moderators or admins. The People who posted thisdid not got punished or anything.

Here is a Comment from someone who tells about his own experience in communist Hungary. His Comment got removed for violating rule 1 "Be civil and nice.". Why does this comment of his own experience get removed for being not nice, but posts which contain propaganda and clearly insult people in an non-political Community like Memes did not?

This Comment (even though I disagree with its content) got removed for β€œBourgeois Bootlicking” despite having Rule 2 in place, which states: β€œBe respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.” His Comment was as, if you ask me, maybe not totally polite but still acceptable.

The Admins on lemmy.ml are totally willing to turn a blind eye towards propaganda, Insults and lies "for their side" even in non-political communities but they will strike you down if you disagree.

Of course, I can't cover every community and I'm sure there are many people who are not like this but there is a huge trend towards this style of moderation.

PS. : Sorry for light-mode. I somehow could not turn it off on lemmy.ml.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I appreciate the effort you've put in here, but still I do not see grounds for defederation. You've just given me three examples from a single community that is obviously political.

Look, the question isn't "are there communities on lemmy.ml that are ideologically censored", because of course there are; the question I am putting to you is "is the average user going about their business and not actively engaging in politically-oriented communities affected enough to warrant the largest Lemmy instance completely defederating?" I would still say no, personally.

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

As a user subbed to multiple communities there, I never see this stuff. Ever. I stay far, far away from news and current events though. I actively seek news from sources, not aggregation platforms.

I would prefer to have the option to interact with those communities rather than have a few users brigade the admins into defederating. There's a reason one of the SCOTUS cases that is cited as binding precedent in freedom of speech cases relates to the distribution of Communist propaganda. The marketplace of ideas is meant to be freely available to all, not curated by the most opinionated or noisy.

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

The political content published in lemmy.ml isn't the main problem, it's the fact that lemmy.ml moderators are banning users from general interest communities, including non-political communities, when they criticize China or Russia elsewhere. This happens not only when the criticism is posted within a lemmy.ml community, but also when the criticism is posted outside of lemmy.ml.

The behavior of these lemmy.ml mods corrupts the "marketplace of ideas" that you're describing. lemmy.world should not present or promote general interest communities that only allow users to participate if they avoid making comments critical of China or Russia on the fediverse. This kind of bad moderation creates a chilling effect.

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

I appreciate your reply. I agree with the principals and ideals, but I just don't get worked up over every bit of outrage out there. I used to be a real worked up individual, willing to throw everything I've got at anything that didn't fit with my ideals, but I'm older now, and sometimes I want places where I don't have to fight for every inch of ground.

I don't disagree that the mod actions are worth highlighting. I disagree that defederation is the first and only solution. It reads to me like some users argued with mods about topics known to be hot-button over there, on a post guaranteed to be controversial, and a temporary ban occurred. That action and its reach is worth discussion.

I don't agree that the users should go to the biggest lemmy instance and try to soap box their POV in order to trigger user outrage in hopes that they pressure the admins to enact some vengeance on an entire instance in the form of defederation. I disagree even more since the source of the outrage is not a user at LW, and wouldn't be affected in any way by the proposed defederation. What they really want is for their subbed communities to move away from ML.

SpaceCadet coming here suing for defederation is barely different to me than the mod that banned them from unrelated communities. "Someone I disagree with did a thing I don't like and I want to flex on them," is what I see from my POV. I don't care they got banned. It seems like a foregone conclusion that would happen there, and I've known that since the first fifty posts about how Dessalines and Nutomic behave (on social media and on github) were posted.

If I follow their weird rules, I won't get banned. The implicit rules include not talking shit about topics cleansed by glorious fascist leaders? OK. I don't care. I have no interest in changing the hearts and minds behind the eyeballs on ML. I'm not on a crusade to fix the world one post at a time. I'm browsing while my game loads, or the water boils, or on the bus.

What I care about is a few idealistic users posting picture evidence of a clear power-trip ban and expecting admins to defederate. That's the corruption of the marketplace of ideas. Silencing the entire instance for thousands. For all we know, half the users on LW would like to learn more about their point of view, if only to dismiss it as wacky and untenable, but not only do they lose that opportunity, they lose the opportunity to engage with unrelated communities, of which there are several that are more active than anywhere else.

At the end of the day, its a lot easier for anyone up in arms about this to block and move on than the workarounds required for the majority who don't care and want to stay engaged in the communities they are subbed to. They'd have to make accounts elsewhere, or even at ML.

Call me apathetic, but I just don't care about this fight.

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

While you certainly are free to not care about lemmy.ml mods blocking users from unrelated communities for criticizing China or Russia anywhere on the fediverse, which effectively silences lemmy.world users, there are currently 1,019 upvotes vs. 92 downvotes on the "Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem" post, which suggests that most lemmy.world users who are aware of the issue do care.

Nobody is claiming to be trying to change the minds of lemmy.ml mods. We just don't want to have to worry about whether posting something mildly negative about China or Russia on a post anywhere on the fediverse that somehow catches the attention of lemmy.ml mods will cause us to lose the ability to participate in a community such as [email protected].

Condoning this censorship from lemmy.ml corrupts the "marketplace of ideas" because it distorts the discourse visible on lemmy.world to favor the political preferences of lemmy.ml's mods. This affects every lemmy.world user, whether they block lemmy.ml or not, because there is no way to opt out of the chilling effects other than defederation.

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

I see more than enough justification to defederate. Being banned from every lemmy.ml community such as the Linux community because you dared to make a critical comment about China or Russia in another lemmy.ml community is ridiculous and unacceptable.

lemmy.world should only support communities with reasonable moderation policies that do not punish users for merely contradicting a lemmy.ml moderator's political stance.