Note to the haters: if you threaten me like you apparently threatened the poster of the other thread complaining about cm0002’s multiple accounts which caused them to delete their post and their account and leave Lemmy, I will report you and repost screenshots of your threats publicly. If you act too egregiously, I will report you to law enforcement and/or my lawyer. I have legal insurance and am willing to use it. Be civil and let us have a civilized discussion.
I had noticed that cm0002 was a high-volume poster on Lemmy a while ago. After they cross-posted a few of my posts from lemmy.ml communities to other communities on other instances, I asked them about their motivation for doing this. They are open and public about their desire to draw traffic away from lemmy.ml and support away from Lemmy devs because they think that “tankies” are going to destroy the Threadiverse. I was having a decent, amicable discussion with them on direct messages, but as soon as I expressed that I was sympathetic to some of the political views of the so-called “tankies”, I never got a reply.
Then the whole post about them creating accounts on pretty much every Threadiverse instance came up just yesterday (https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45730651). While some people defended this type of activity as not being ban-evasion because they are not trying to hide being the same user, I feel that if nothing else, this makes it more difficult for moderators to review a user’s posting history to spot a pattern of bad behavior. If someone reports one of the (dozens? hundreds?) of cm0002 accounts, a mod may see only a few posts from the reported account and not get a full picture of this user.
Finally, I started looking into their one-person crusade against Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and “tankies”. I started looking at their claims more closely and didn’t like what I saw. To me it seems like they are making many distorted or debatable claims and spamming the Threadiverse with these. I read their “megathread” (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) of supposed evidence that the Lemmy devs, lemmy.ml, and “tankies” are bad, and think the whole thing is lame, flawed, and dangerous:
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First, notice that the majority of posts that they link contain only what they would like you to see, and not a link to the original thread where one would be able evaluate the context for what was said.
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Second, notice that even where screenshots are provided, what the list item claims was said is most often not what was actually said. In other words, distortions. Specifically, most of the items that are claimed to be direct quotes (based on the quote marks around them) don’t at all appear to be actual quotes. I’m not a lawyer, but I would think that in many jurisdictions this would be grounds for a libel lawsuit.
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Third, most of the items that are not outright distortions are either exaggerations or debatable.
I personally feel that this crusade is more damaging to the Threadiverse than anything that they have complained about. I’ve been tired for a while of all the whining that I see here about “tankies” (Tankie Derangement Syndrome?), but have been holding my tongue. All this stuff from cm0002 is finally driving me to respond. Look, it’s fine to have the beliefs of a liberal, conservative, MAGA, loyal supporter of the United States’ imperial project, or a “tankie”. Live and let live. Learn to accept that people who think differently from you may have legitimate and valid reasons for thinking that way, as much as you may disagree (except fascists). I wish people would learn to agree to disagree after a discussion reaches a certain point where it becomes clear that it’s no longer productive. What’s not fine is to relentlessly target and persecute other people and other instances (again, except fascists). This is why I call this a crusade, because it’s nearly religious in nature. These people and instances haven’t committed any crime. Threadiverse visitors don’t deserve to be bombarded with all the whining and complaining that we often see. For all the complaining that I see about “Russian/Chinese bots”, I sometimes wonder if many of the complainers aren’t either intelligence or corporate agents trying to destabilize the Threadiverse.
My proposal: If nothing else comes out of this, I think that it would be beneficial to the Threadiverse if all instances added rules against disparaging, targeting, and persecuting other instances and users of other instances in general, especially if using false claims that border on libel, if they don’t already have such a rule. If we want to see the Threadiverse be sustainable as a Reddit alternative in the long term, I think that this would be a useful step contributing to that.
Another thing: I think that most instances defederating the so-called “tankie triad” (hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml) is stupid to start with and damaging to the health of Lemmy and the Threadiverse (Lemmy/Mbin/Piefed), considering that at least Lemmy (and I imagine the others too) now allows users to block entire instances and allows admins to make this user-level block the default for new users. My instance, lemmy.zip, takes this default user-level block approach (for hexbear and lemmygrad) and I think that it’s a reasonable way to handle any concerns about the “triad”.
Anyway, I decided to look through cm0002’s “megathread” (https://sh.itjust.works/post/37226752) that they keep spamming and make comments showing how just about every item on the list is flawed, in my opinion. I only looked through the supposed “noteworthy selection” since those have their comments about the item on the main list. I suspect that most people wouldn’t look past that list and take it at face value. Note that most of them seem to indicate either problems with reading comprehension, malicious distortions, or lame complaints about random internet comments. There is no point in debating the items below with me. It’s fine to debate the items above with me. Like I said above, learn to accept that people may think differently than you do and learn to agree to disagree.
Dessalines - Head .ml admin - Head Lemmy Dev
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“Slava Ukraini” is considered a “Fascist slogan” - https://lemmy.world/post/36065538 - Debatable. It has a history of use by fascists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slava_Ukraini
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“NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES” - https://lemmy.world/post/31595035 - Distortion. Note the quotes, making this appear to be a direct quote, whereas Dessalines doesn’t appear to have written the quoted text on this linked thread.
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“The BBC is not a credible news source” - https://lemmy.world/post/35824465 - Debatable. First, it’s a partial quote with no link to the original thread to get the context of the comment. Second, not credible is perhaps exaggerating a bit, but BBC news earns plenty of valid criticisms about bias. Here’s a collection of many of the criticisms: https://iea.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/BBC Bias Chp 3.pdf
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Showing support for Ukraine on .ml is worthy of a site ban - https://lemmy.world/post/32775563 - Distortion, debatable, and exaggeration. First, the comment used the slogan from item 1. Second, also note that it was a 30 day ban, which the lemmy.ml code of conduct appears to call a “kick” as opposed to a permanent ban.
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Open declaration of support for Russia - https://lemmy.world/post/27352415 - Distortion and debatable. Even though from what I’ve seen in the past I believe that Dessalines possibly supports Russia, that is not what the posted chart shows. The chart is not unconditionally supporting Russia. It’s making the claim that if a person supports Russia (in the Russia-Ukraine conflict) AND Palestine (in the Israel-Palestine conflict), it means they "fully understands the core of international geopolitics, while if they support Russia AND Israel, they believe in “Social Darwinism” (i.e., the discredited idea that stronger countries are always right). In other words, the chart is absolutely not unconditionally supporting Russia.
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"Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! - https://lemmy.world/post/30580167 - Distortion. Again a completely fake quote and again no link to original thread for context.
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Censoring criticism of China while allowing fellow “in-crowd” user “concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren’t that bad” misinfo to remain - https://lemmy.world/post/26985447 - Distortion and Debatable. The first comment that was removed seemed to be criticizing the Soviet Union for having had “concentration camps” and the second post from the user removed for criticizing China for also having “concentration camps”. Did the USSR have concentration camps? The first result that uses that term when I searched was literally the CIA website, and when you read the historical document there, it is clear that they are calling the gulags (prisons) “concentration camps”. Regarding China having those (presumably referring to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang), Wikipedia itself calls them internment camps, similar to the Japanese internment camps in the US during World War II. Meanwhile, cm0002 complains about a comment using the term “shitlib”, which is a criticism of someone’s political philosophy, not being removed. The two are not equivalent.
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Censoring when users call out propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522 - Debatable. At least some of the removed comments seem to be purely anti-Russia (“Fuck russia!”). The others seem debatable on the basis that other instances’ admins do the same or worse.
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Discussing winnie the pooh and/or the negatives of china is a 30 day ban - https://lemmy.world/post/35374967 - Debatable. This is pretty weaksauce to use as a reason to defederate one of the top Lemmy instances.
Davel - .ml admin
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Spreading anti-ukraine Russian propaganda - https://lemmy.world/post/34655572 - Misinformation. The article they’re complaining about literally links to documents on the CIA’s own website discussing their 1957 plans. Is it “Russian propaganda” to discuss historical facts?
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General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet - https://lemmy.world/post/27426510 - I don’t even understand this one, plus again no link to original thread for context.
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“See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” - https://lemmy.world/post/30673342 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context, no evidence that they wrote what is “quoted”.
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Response to a valid report of “NK is actually good” as propaganda/misinfo https://lemmy.world/post/32627834 - Distortion and debatable. Once again, not actual quote and no link to thread for context. The meme itself is obviously shitposting, FFS.
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Removal of a credible article that was on the Uyghur genocide - https://lemmy.world/post/33205310 - Debatable. The mod removed a story that they saw as bigoted, possibly because of xenophobia. No link to original article or the cross-posted thread.
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It’s totally fine when Russia kills woman and children, war is war after all - https://lemmy.world/post/33224299 - Distortion. First, no link to thread for context. Second, they are distorting what was said. The actual quote: “Still not a genocide. There is no war where women, children, and other civilians don’t end up getting killed.”
Nutomic - 2nd in command Lemmy Dev
- Their continued transphobia - https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 - Debatable. No link to thread for context, and they were contrite in the screenshots.
General Tankie user behaviour [note: this is about random users of lemmy.ml]
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“Propaganda is good actually” - https://lemmy.world/post/36162233 - Distortion and debatable. No link to thread for context. Partial quote taking it out of context. The actual full quote in the screenshot: “Anyone pushing their views is propaganda. Propaganda isn’t always a bad thing, propaganda can be good, like antifascist or pro-communist propaganda, or it can be bad, like fascist propaganda.”
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“The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it’s actually a good thing a state has that much power!” https://lemmy.world/post/30010789 - Distortion. Again no link to thread for context, plus no indication that what they claim to be a direct “quote” was actually written by the person. Besides, this is a random user linking to a YouTube video.
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Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763 - Distorion. No link to original thread for context, and screenshot does not say what this item claims.
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Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a “negotiating tactic” https://lemmy.world/post/27012640 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. The article in the screenshot claims “Not enough to conquer Ukraine, the invading force was sufficient to persuade Ukraine to the negotiating table.” That is not saying that they invaded only to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table, but that Ukraine came to the negotiating table as a result of the invasion. Different meanings.
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Biden is worse than Trump - https://lemmy.world/post/33631617 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. What was actually written by a random user on the screenshot: “I’d argue Biden is worse. Trump is honest about being a terrible person. Biden pretends to be good.”
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Uyghur Genocide denialism - https://lemmy.world/post/33873969 - Distortion. No link to original thread for context. Not an accurate summation of what was said.
I reserve the right to edit this post to clarify points and/or add additional thoughts.
also the comm they’re posting this in has some pretty egregious comments being made and not being moderated because it’s a snark comm for ‘social Democrat’ power users to punch left
specifically calling users of other instances ‘degenerate roaches’, mwog is loaded with posters eager to be free of ‘degenerates’, calling myself and others degenerate roaches.
directly quoting db0: Guy uses “degenerates” straight and is complaining about commies, progressives and furries. 90% they’re a cryptofash.
so far there’s been zero action taken, beyond banning one dude for a slap on the wrist period of 7 days, and not removing any of the posts in question.
Thanks for the summary and the receipts! I knew that mwog was full of shit, which is why I blocked that comm long ago. I only waded in there to address cm0002’s list point by point.
Nah bro, the biggest threat to the fediverse is that the main dev is cringe as fuck and spends more time being an authoritarian jackass than developing Lemmy. Fortunately there are better options so it’s fine to let him tilt at his windmills, but his influence is absolutely holding Lemmy back.
Sue me in fucking Canada for all I care.
That note about lawyers was only to try to help people who would resort to threats to back off. You’re fine. It’s fine to disagree with me in a civil manner.
Hey, I don’t think it’s ideal that the developers of a program are so political if they want wide adoption, but I think that all this complaining about them only brings them more attention. What’s worse for Lemmy adoption? That the developers are political and “an authoritarian jackass” or that people run around screaming from the mountain tops calling attention to this?
These are the consequences of the way they handle themselves. I have been caught up in their tantrums on many occasions myself and I have zero patience left for it. When you act the way they do, when you ban users for made up rules, selectively enforce those rules, while going around openly baiting people, you better believe they are going to hold a grudge. The fact that they go around casually making enemies like this is why people like CM exist. It’s predictable and preventable, but that would require at least a child’s level of self awareness.
Seriously go check Dessalines post history. The dude literally does not post on any comm that isn’t hosted on .ml because he is so fucking fragile he cannot participate in a community where he can’t swing his pathetic ban hammer. And you think that kind of leadership isn’t a bigger problem than calling him out on it? It’s not my job or your job to tolerate his impotent bullshit, and if he doesn’t like that maybe he should grow the fuck up. This is not imagined and it is not an overreaction. It is a justified response to the way he treats others, and honestly this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of potential liability on the fediverse as far as I’m concerned
I do have one question that I forgot to ask of you. If the Lemmy devs are so terrible, why wouldn’t cm0002 make his “megathread” with posts that would actually make them look bad, as opposed to mostly either distortions or nothingburgers like they did? Why not expose people with truthful information rather than made up stuff? Doing this severely weakens their case.
I don’t really agree with your premise that the points made aren’t valid, and I’m not going to debate the points individually. CM’s method of prosecuting his gripes are different than mine, but overall I think the assessment that they aggressively push a very specific “tankie” narrative is generally true, and that this often adds up to greater than the sum of their individual behaviors. Like I suggest in my other comment, one of the most obnoxious things they do is just strictly enforce a specific editorial order by selectively enforcing rules. It’s a very obvious pattern - if Davel or Nutomic or company actually gets into a debate they are careful to stick to the script and let other users (or alts) tag in to bait and troll until they have an excuse to hand out a ban. The issue is not that they are saying “hey I don’t think China is probably engaged in genocide.” It’s that if anyone pushes back will get flamed and sealioned until they slip up and get banned for extremely vague rule violations, while the tankie trolls do not face any such consequences. In this way they enforce an extremely strict, singular, and arguably problematic version of “left unity” which effectively excludes most other leftists who do not fully buy into the Leninist imperial hypothesis.
To summarize, whether or not CM’s examples illustrate a narrative danger to the fediverse is tangent to my argument. My argument is that the way the ML devs behave to enforce their narrative is the problem, as it is just doing all the shit they claim to hate about reddit, but with a red coat of paint.
Exactly. This and the herd behavior on .ml instance. If you make a wrong perceived comment, you get a full group downvote on each comment you did on the thread instead of just the one comment. And end up banned.
Thanks for describing your perception of the problem. However, if I, as an active Lemmy user since the Reddit API exodus, have not seen any of what you’ve described even though I regularly read posts in lemmy.ml, I figure that there’s not much there. Aren’t instance admins allowed to moderate their instance as they see fit, even if it’s not even handed? Do you think it’s possible that admins and mods in other instances may be guilty of similar selective enforcement? Do you think that each user should be allowed to decide for themselves which instances they read or block? Do you think that defederating instances that have lots of good content and that are not guilty of allowing illegal content or spam is damaging to the Threadiverse?
Fair enough, thanks for elaborating your perspective.
the dude you’re responding to got banned on .ml for complaining about Palestinians being violent, they have an extreme chip on their shoulder about anyone on their left
Good to know, thanks!
deleted by creator
That note about lawyers was only to try to help people who would resort to threats to back off. You’re fine. It’s fine to disagree with me in a civil manner.
It’s fine to disagree with you in every manner, it’s the Internet, grow up.
Do you think that threats are fine too?
No, “civil manner” is not the same as “everything except threats and followups”.
Ok, thanks for clarifying, but I never said that people could only respond in a civil manner. I warned them against threats and asked them to reply in a civil manner so we could have a civilized discussion.
We reached the point of legal sabre rattling at the start of a thread.
Amazing.
I only did that because the other person who had made a post complaining about cm0002 just the day before I posted mine in the same community said that they received threats due to that post, and it was bad enough that it led them to delete their post and account and leave this discussion system altogether. Just trying to discourage that kind of stupidity.
[this is what mwog power users actually believe]
The reality:
This is the longest post I’ve never read.
Thanks for reading it. :)
Edit: haha, I just noticed that you said “never” not “ever”. In that case, no problem. I’m not forcing anyone to read my rant post. :)
One of the biggest pushing forces that have made people move away from Lemmy is tankies, demonstrably. .ml and Lemmygrad are shockingly toxic, regardless of if you agree with their politics(and you’d better, yor you’re insta banned)
It’s so such a meme, there are multiple communities documenting people catching full site bans for saying things like “Russia is kind of uncool, actually”
It doesn’t really go much deeper than that. The admins are authoritarian assholes that have fallen deep into the online leftist rabbit hole, and well adjusted users don’t want to be around them.
One of the biggest pushing forces that have made people move away from Lemmy is tankies, demonstrably.
Do you evidence that this is really the case? Do you think that it could perhaps be your personal perspective?
Enough of personal perspective to be banned for mentions of things they don’t like, or comments that can be interpreted in a myriad ways. Mods there consciously want people to fall in line. Fuck them, they are worthless idiots.
Not even talking about the surrealistic feeling of some fat American leftist who can’t read in Russian telling you sitting in walking distance from Gorky Park how you’re all wrong and superficial on bloody USSR. And they don’t get any ideas when you tell them that.
Ok, fair enough, thanks for providing your perspective, but do you think that the proper way to address that is for everyone to defederate an instance that has a lot of good non-political content or for people who are bothered by the mods in political discussions there to block the instance or the problematic communities where the mods exercise a heavy hand?
I think talking about federated services is different from talking about federated data. In Lemmy they are the same, which is why it’s not a good architecture. In Usenet they were not the same, but outside of mammoth technology there’s no similar solution.
Think about bittorrent trackers. They do serve the job of helping peers find each other. But nothing is tied to them, mostly, outside of many closed ones.
Lemmy instances also provide storage and relay services, functionally.
All of these can be separate, and user identities can be untied from instances of some service.
Trackers help you find relays and storage nodes serving specific users and groups. User and group identities are cryptographic (hope so, but one can have separate authentication services, why the hell not ; then it may be analogous to Lemmy instances in regards to bans and moderation).
Doing that isn’t easy, though. But I suppose a competent programmer can implement a tracker (simplest by far - announce, clear, request and storage, the tracker just has to check signatures if identity is, say, hash of public key), a storage service (an object storage with authentication, similar to previous, but perhaps paid with additional registration for that identity), a relay (not much more complex than a toy chat server, but perhaps similar to storage service) and a client application (that one is complex, but not too much, because all the logic of finding stuff by trackers and assembling\replaying group\user\post states is on the client) in not too horrible time.
OK, I’ve started writing a prototype for that in an TCL/Tk recently, lost willpower (ASD, BAD, bad sleep, bad food habits) after adding replays and before adding networking, and when thinking about convenience of integration with ready libraries and such, suspect C or C++ from the beginning would be easier. Bitwise operations not being PITA as a bonus.
Thanks, there’s an interesting technical discussion to be had about how to address these issues with Lemmy and the Fediverse in general. I’m not much of an actual programmer although I’ve programmed a lot in school over the years. With that caveat, nowadays I would be inclined to only start brand new coding projects using memory-safe languages. There are so many wonderful ones to choose from nowadays that are not only more secure but also more productive, and most of them can use C and C++ libraries.
Getting back to my previous message though, given the two choices that are currently available, defederate from an instance that may have some issues in some of their communities, or let users decide whether to block them, which one would you chose?
defederate from an instance that may have some issues in some of their communities, or let users decide whether to block them, which one would you chose?
The latter.
Thanks. I think that out of those two, that’s a better option too. Good luck with your development of alternatives though. It could be useful!
As I have said Im not into communism and have not been banned from the whole instance so far. Honestly I don’t find being banned as all that bad of a thing. I have often compared the federation to going out in meatspace, at least in the way I want to interact with it. Being banned just means that space is not for me and I will go hang someplace else. Honestly I find having posts removed as more insulting. One reason I have the interactions I did with cm0002 is because someone at a .world instance removed a post I did of my daily comic and for me that was just totally unacceptable so I started posting the .ml equivalent community instead.
Fair enough, thanks.
as soon as I expressed that I was sympathetic to some of the political views of the so-called “tankies”, I never got a reply.
Makes sense to me. It’s not worth continuing to argue with someone who admits to being in bad faith.
How so?
Imagine you’re talking with someone about science, and after a while they say they believe in a flat earth.
At that point, it’s understandable to end the conversation. Because flat earth discussions have all been had, and anyone who believes in a flat earth in 2025 doesn’t believe in science. You’ve identified a fundamental principal on which you disagree, and there can be no productive discussion.
I get the argument you’re trying to make and I appreciate you doing so, but it sounds like you’re trying to say that being anti-Western capitalist hegemony is equivalent to believing in a flat earth. Is that what you really believe, and if so, why? All evidence completely debunks flat-earth theory, so I understand why someone would disengage from debating with someone who believed that. On the other hand, most evidence makes Western capitalist hegemony look very bad, so why is it invalid to be against that?
I wasn’t trying to say that being open to tankie arguments is the same as believing in a flat earth. I was only making the comparison to explain the sense of futility and exhaustion many people feel when they encounter an argument they’ve had so many times. There’s a point where you recognize a fundamental difference in worldview, and that any further discussion is pointless.
Personally, I think western capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced. But I also think that anyone who denies the genocides recognized by the majority of the world is being willfully ignorant. Many people seem to have a very limited ideology of “everything western = bad” and believe that brutal regimes elsewhere are somehow perfect utopias, despite well-documented evidence of the contrary.
As I understand it, the term “tankie” specifically refers to people who deny or defend the brutal tactics used by communist leaders, often denying genocide. If someone tells me they agree with tankie ideology, I don’t have much confidence that conversation about it will do anyone any good. So in that regard, I empathize and understand why the person you were talking to went quiet after that.
I wasn’t trying to say that being open to tankie arguments is the same as believing in a flat earth. I was only making the comparison to explain the sense of futility and exhaustion many people feel when they encounter an argument they’ve had so many times. There’s a point where you recognize a fundamental difference in worldview, and that any further discussion is pointless.
That makes more sense, thanks. I feel the same way about some discussions about this stuff.
Personally, I think western capitalism is bad and needs to be replaced. But I also think that anyone who denies the genocides recognized by the majority of the world is being willfully ignorant. Many people seem to have a very limited ideology of “everything western = bad” and believe that brutal regimes elsewhere are somehow perfect utopias, despite well-documented evidence of the contrary.
Without trying to get into a detailed discussion about it, what genocides do you have in mind, so I have a better idea of how to think about what you’re saying? The issue with “recognized by the majority of the world” is that it’s a problematic concept nowadays, and perhaps always was. The West and specifically the people that control the West, very much control the narratives that we receive in the West, to manipulate the people for political purposes. Some things where people start screaming “genocide” are nothing that any average person would recognize as such, or have a much more nuanced story. I think a lot of the heated discussions around this boil down to disagreements about a) the supposed genocide claims being a lot more nuanced and generally less terrible than the narrative that the West tries to push, b) the idea of providing “critical support” for countries that may do some arguably bad things while fighting the Western capitalist hegemony and trying to build actual alternatives. Maybe some people believe that these countries are perfect utopias, but I think that most recognize that those countries and systems have flaws and have made errors (like all countries do), but that they are still worthy of that “critical support” because they represent the only alternative and resistance to the Western system that has any chance of working.
As I understand it, the term “tankie” specifically refers to people who deny or defend the brutal tactics used by communist leaders, often denying genocide. If someone tells me they agree with tankie ideology, I don’t have much confidence that conversation about it will do anyone any good. So in that regard, I empathize and understand why the person you were talking to went quiet after that.
My understanding of the term “tankie” is a little broader than that. I don’t think it’s specific to genocide, but it allows for the idea that socialist and communist leaders have sometimes had to resort to harsh and perhaps heavy-handed tactics to maintain their system in the face of a constant barrage of threats and attacks from every possible direction. From what I understand, it specifically started being used in reference to the USSR sending in tanks to quash a worker revolt in Hungary(?) in the 50s(?). A revolt about which we just recently(?) got evidence that the CIA was involved in.
Thanks for your reply and explanation of your points.
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together. The vast majority of people, smart and dumb, believe that’s crazy, and that any open-minded read of real history and news will illustrate the fact. Even in the countries in question, where they tend to either believe their country/specific tribe is great and everyone else is shit, or that good is dumb in general.
Of course, that’s not the same thing as saying the West doesn’t suck as well.
It’s less out there than flat earth is, but mostly because physics is really precise and self contained in a way geopolitics isn’t. In both case the point seems to be to go against the consensus, not find the truth.
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together
Very imaginative and creative.
Which is to say, you’re lying and making shit up.
Everyone reading who’s not in the club is going “yeah, of course”. You can deny it if you like, not OP.
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together
This is demonstrably untrue, the OP pointed this out in point 5 above: the admin’s post was saying that supporting Russia AND Israel amounted to having a social darwinist view of the world
Hexbear also routinely shits on russia for being a capitalist reactionary hellscape.
I’m subbed to most if not all of their comms and I will routinely come across things like this. it’s pretty clearly shitting on the CPRF for going along with the war.
The
emoji is imparting ‘lenin would have shot everyone in this room’, I have to imagine that includes Putin. One of their news mods is said ‘If you’re a communist party and Putin is praising you, you’re not a communist party.’And everyone in my hometown agrees I’m going to Hell, who gives a shit.
Just because you have an in-group that believes your lies doesn’t make you less of a liar. It just means your lies have more spread, liar.
You believe that all the anti-West countries are secretly the good guys, and are working together.
That’s not at all what I believe. What I believe instead is that any entity that counters the Western capitalist hegemony deserves support unless it is proven to be doing the wrong things and/or for the wrong reasons. Consensus sometimes is not the truth. I happen to believe that Western capitalist hegemony is one of the worst things to happen to the world in the last few hundreds of years. That goes against the Western consensus, but it is the truth in my view and in the view of many others around the world, especially in the Global South.
If you consider the entire world, the ideas in the West (that the West is right and good) are the minority opinion. It’s only Westerners who believe those things. If you consider recent and current events, this is evidenced by the fact only the West supported Israel and Ukraine from the start and mostly continues to do so, while most of the rest of the world stayed either neutral (mostly regarding Ukraine) or came out against one side (mostly regarding Israel).
Sure, I recognize that every country and every culture has flaws and bad people, but the West is the principal part of the world which has weaponized their flaws, bad ideas, and bad people against the entire planet. There may be other outlier examples, but the West has outdone them all, by far.
That’s a long way of agreeing they are the good guys, with room for exceptions whenever it gets too hard to defend.
How do you feel about the fact non-Westerners hate each other at least as much as they hate the West? Your community is full of Westerners, because those of us who actually have family outside know better then to make it more than just another faction.
That’s a long way of agreeing they are the good guys, with room for exceptions whenever it gets too hard to defend.
Lmao! “You just blindly defend anyone who’s against the West, except for the people who you don’t defend.”
How do you feel about the fact non-Westerners hate each other at least as much as they hate the West? Your community is full of Westerners, because those of us who actually have family outside know better then to make it more than just another faction.
That’s very debatable, but I recognize that there are many divisions around the world at every level. Breaking up the Western hegemony would still be an improvement, because at least it wouldn’t be one small group dominating the entire rest of the world. It would be much easier to either fight with or come to a mutually-beneficial or at least neutral understanding with a neighbor of the same size than to try to fight against one group that spends more on their war machine than most others combined, has military bases in the majority of the world, again more than all others combined, and has intent to dominate the rest of the world. In other words, it would be monkey vs. monkey rather than monkey vs. 800-pound gorilla intent on subjugating monkeys.
One of the worst thing the right has done is be so fucking stupid that they make liberals assume anyone who disagrees with them for any reason must also just be stupid.
I forgot to ask in more detail: what do you mean by bad faith? How exactly was what described bad faith?
As far as I can tell bad-faith means exactly nothing at this point, despite being used both in the anti-cm0whatever rant and here.
But yeah, I tend to limit how much time I spend arguing with conspiracy theories too.
How was bad faith used in either that or this thread? I genuinely would like to know what people think is bad faith in either because I certainly don’t think I used bad faith here.
Edit: also, what were you referring to as “conspiracy theories”?
I explained elsewhere here. We’ll keep it in one place.
I agree. Anybody who comments or even votes on comments in bad faith isn’t worth much.
I have the same question for you that I just asked Kolanaki. What do you mean by bad faith? How exactly was what described bad faith?
Kolanaki downvoted your comment asking what they meant, but didn’t even respond. That was what my link showed. I don’t think their initial comment explained itself, and so downvoting a simple question without responding to it is simply arguing in bad faith.
Basically a comment downvote is an attempt to silence the person who wrote the comment.
My personal opinion is that every comment downvote, outside of comments that deserve to be removed by mods, is done in bad faith. A comment downvote is for things you are sure are spam or trolling. That sort of thing. Using it as a “disagree” button is a bad faith use.
I think most people are unaware that comment votes are public information, and so if you look at how they vote, often, all of their hypocrisy will be laid bare.
I agree with you, even though I sometimes succumb to the desire to downvote comments that I think are stupid or that I don’t agree with. I’ve downvoted a few here, but generally not for disagreeing with me but for comments that seem in bad faith or that don’t seem to contribute anything to the conversation. What you’re describing is essentially what I recognize as the (old?) Slashdot moderation guidelines, but very likely older than that. I wish that votes information were more public so it would be easy to see it at a glance.
I often feel a strong desire to downvote in retaliation to other people’s downvotes, so I certainly don’t expect others to be perfect when I’ve probably not perfectly lived up to my own ideals in the past. The real answer, I think is to remove downvotes, even from the underlying message formats, and somehow rework the “report” button so that it’s not a burden for mods to deal with. Maybe something like Slashdot’s community moderation could ease the burden.
I completely agree with you. I have wished that Lemmy would remove downvoting for a long time now. Some instances have done that individually. I also often wonder why no one else ever adopted at least some of the ideas of Slashdot’s community moderation model. Perhaps it was just too complicated and different from other systems.
This post, and you, are ridiculous.
How so?
Ok. So I had a similar initial experience to you initially but I am slightly left and libertarian of center (real center not the us overton window thing). I had the convo which happened when someone said to hit him up as I just assumed he was a bot from his behavior. I have heard all the anti tanky retoric but while I don’t go for communism I have by and large treated fine on the communities (the only thing I encountered was being banned from a community for “supporting” landlords but hey I got banned from another instance for using a term I might consider crass but otherwise common for it being considered a slur so to me its all a sensitivity issue). I am getting quite sick of blocking his alts and his motivations are not exactly good. That being said its laughable to use the term liable in a largely anonymous online setting like this. That being further said it is a problem but i not sure what to do about it.
I will do the thing I should and break this apart a bit. Anyway I just want to add a bit of my own experience as I think it adds a bit more to how his behavior is problematic. I asked if he was looking to post the comic I post daily and he said no. I asked if he would as I would stop posting if he was diligent about doing it but he said not he only crossposts and can’t be bothered to go out of his way to do it himself. I had experimented before when I thought he was a bot and found what I posted was crossposted within the hour but would not get posted if I did not post. At one point I screwed around a bit to try and poison his cross posts and this is really funny. He would go through all the work even if I did not post the link. I was posting comments about the comic for the day and talking around it and he would go and get the url and do the post properly. But only if I posted something! I mean it was kinda funny sad. I mean sad that he was this way. I sorta felt sorry for him. Anyway I could not keep it up and went back to posting in a standard way. Since I just block his alts as I see them. It is problematic but I honestly don’t know how we can deal with people that have mental problems. I have a brother who lives in a halfway house and you feel a bit bad about people he may interact with in a typical day but he has just enough ability to function and his issues are not really his fault as he is sick. I like the idea of not allowing disparaging but its a slippery slope. Discussions need to be made about defederation and at what point discussion is disparaging could be hard to say. I could see maybe a rule like that which is exempt in defederation threads.
Thanks for your detailed comments.
That being said its laughable to use the term liable in a largely anonymous online setting like this. That being further said it is a problem but i not sure what to do about it.
The point I was trying to make was that users and moderators here should take into consideration things that can lead to lawsuits. At least in the US, people can sue for any reason. Making completely made up statements look like they are direct quotes from other people for the purpose of materially injuring them (in this case, loss of income) seems like it would be easily actionable to me. I think this situation could easily be handled by moderators. I hate to say this because I appreciate moderators on this platform and think that they are already overworked, but I think that this case is low-hanging fruit.
As for cm0002, I don’t have anything personal against them. I wish them well and even mentioned this to them in private messages in the past. The problem I have is with this quasi-religious “crusade”, like I called it, against everything and everyone that they disagree with. I think it’s damaging to the Threadiverse as a whole and dangerous to individual instances. Lemmy provides the ability to block users, communities, and instances for a reason. Everyone can use this functionality to minimize any contact with people or sources they don’t like.
Having said all that, reading and thinking about your post made me realize something: perhaps I’m mistaken and the best answer here would actually be to split the Threadiverse into two or more segments. That would perhaps be the easiest way to cut down all the complaining, whining, and attacking that has been happening apparently since this grew into a large-ish network. Who knows? However, the thing about defederating is that it too can be a slippery slope - first they defederated the nazis (which was the correct thing to do), next defederate the so-called tankies. What next after that? Defederate liberals? Defederate conservatives? Defederate progressives? Defederate anyone who doesn’t follow a list of approved beliefs? Where will it stop?
I mean the lawsuit thing is laughable and 100% not possible. I seriously think it weakens your statements. Especially given they are so long to begin with. Best to be as concise as possible (and yeas, I know, as does anyone who knows me in this media, im being a huge hypocrite with that statement).
As far as defederation I personally am not big on it but I get why it exists and its going to be a conversation. Personally I would rather not have it at the instance level and want the software to allow individuals to be able to block at every level. I don’t like lemmy.ml or lemmy.world and I would like to be able to block everything that comes from it. I don’t like a community and I can block that. Individual same. I personally would like blocking to be two way. If I am not having anything to do with something I would prefer it to not get my content as well as not seeing theirs. I additionally like other things like blocking web urls for posts that are links so I don’t have to see things from faux news or news nation or such. That being said (im into that phrase today I guess) it a fantasy ideal of mine and currently things don’t work that way and there are bigger world things that might not make that possible. One, ironically given my first paragraph, is law. I completely understand an instance defederating because another instance might have posts that could get them into legal trouble. Something like child porn. Further I can understand instances that are so diametrically opposed to defederate from each other. An instance thats put up for gay folks may not want to federate with one that is about how great nazism is. Again I really wish users could be the control point and the bidirectional is key so that people can realize just how unpolular their thing is when not only is no one seeing their content but they are also not getting content. But yeah defederating can be a slipperly slope and should not be done casually. I have found most people are not super gung ho to do those in general although in specific instances you can get cheerleaders for a specific one.
I mean the lawsuit thing is laughable and 100% not possible. I seriously think it weakens your statements. Why? Genuine question. I’m not a lawyer or have any legal training, but what would stop the Lemmy devs sue someone for distorting their statements with the purpose of damaging their reputation and making them lose income, if they wanted to? I don’t believe they’re the type that would do that, but I’m not aware of anything that would stop it. I’m not saying something that would stop them from doing that doesn’t exist, just that I’m not aware of it.
Especially given they are so long to begin with. Best to be as concise as possible (and yeas, I know, as does anyone who knows me in this media, im being a huge hypocrite with that statement). Hey, I agree with that. I tend to be pretty wordy in everything. I wish I was more concise too.
Regarding your paragraph on defederation, I’m glad that we agree on another thing. I don’t know if you know, but Lemmy allows a user to block at pretty much every level (user, community, or entire instances). I understand that the blocking is not 100% perfect, but I don’t know the details. I can see that bidirectional blocks would help. I would expect that the blocks as they are go a long way in improving user experience here though. My community and instance blocks definitely improve mine because it helps me not see stuff I don’t want to see. I can also understand that keyword filters and URL filters would also improve the experience, so I hope that they add both eventually. I’ve heard that Piefed may have more features in that regard.
Why? Genuine question. I’m not a lawyer or have any legal training, but what would stop the Lemmy devs sue someone for distorting their statements with the purpose of damaging their reputation and making them lose income, if they wanted to? I don’t believe they’re the type that would do that, but I’m not aware of anything that would stop it. I’m not saying something that would stop them from doing that doesn’t exist, just that I’m not aware of it.
Because the entire fediverse has a net active user pool of 40k users. Moreover, the lemmy devs have no idea who anyone who might be disparaging their instance is. They could literally be anywhere in the world. Do you genuinely think its worth their time at all?
No, I don’t think it would be worth their time and I also don’t think that they’re the types who would be inclined to resort to that in the first place. My point is that those posts expose the poster and the instance admins to action, if someone were litigious and lived in a litigious society that facilitated this.
It would also help if they actually had a name even if they were rather than just some user account from who-knows-where.
Like I mentioned, I’m not a lawyer and have no legal training, but it seems to me that someone could legally force an instance to at a minimum provide IP logs, email addresses, etc.
yeah im on piefed now mostly due to features like that. pretty much everything is there except the bidirectional and the devs are pretty active and seem to talk regularly about improvements so things have come to it that did not occur to me but im estatic about. just recently it was a setting to not have things in your feed that you already read which I am just loving. I pretty much don’t have to read looking at new now because everythig I read goes away and if there is no new stuff then old stuff will show. which I really like.
That’s good to know. I haven’t tried piefed yet. I hesitate for a couple of reasons (technical and political, although neither is a super-strong reason). I’m pretty sure that the feature to hide posts you’ve read has been on Lemmy for a long time too, although I haven’t used it myself. I torture myself by seeing the same posts over and over and over again. I should really try that feature. :)
By the way, I just now noticed that my last reply to you had messed up formatting that was merging my responses with your quotes, so I’ve edited it to fix it.
no worries. I have had auto formatting messing up my things and I was not even gracious enough to fix it for the people.
Thanks.
Dude, I do recommend you look into yourself asking why so many people are disgusted by your believes and want to isolate you. It’s absolutely not something only 1 or 2 people do, and it’s not some frivolous preconception from people that never got you the benefit of the doubt.
You’ve got a rare opportunity where the bubble your ideas create got temporarily busted. It will form around you again if you don’t take it to reevaluate those ideas.
Dude, I do recommend you look into yourself asking why so many people are disgusted by your believes and want to isolate you. It’s absolutely not something only 1 or 2 people do
In my case, I’d say the main reason is that I don’t believe in God, and I’m queer. I don’t mean on Lemmy, I mean in the conservative area where I grew up. Lots of people were “disgusted by my beliefs,” and it certainly wasn’t “something only 1 or 2 people do.”
However, since I rely on reason and evidence (rather than fucking societal pressure like liberals always seem to want me to follow), I was able to overcome all that.
And yet a few days ago people chased off someone ranting in a rant comm about cm. Seems more like those advocates for cm can’t handle the criticism or anything pointing out logical flaws in the megathread they update
One of the arguments I’m making is that people should be allowed to believe what they want. I have liberal and conservative friends. No nazis though. Anyone putting people down for what they are instead of for what they do, they can go pound sand. As long as people are reasonable and can discuss ideas in a civil manner we can have a conversation.
Some people may think that my beliefs are disgusting. That’s fine - if that’s the case, I think that their beliefs are disgusting too. Have you ever considered that perhaps your ideas are a bubble? I don’t know what ideas exactly you’re talking about (yours or mine), so can only respond to you in general terms.
So what? Sucks to suck, tankie.
you seem charming
Oh no, not duplicate posts!
It’s the zionism, transphobia and bigotry that is the bigger concern.
I criticized Israel for invading Syria in the last 24 hours. So much for “Zionism.”
If you’re naive enough carry water for Russian and Chinese imperialism, no wonder you’re naive enough to think mods are always correct and fair. Or does it just resemble something useful enough to make ad hominem attacks on someone who disagrees with you?
Go back to your .ml safe spaces, you useful idiot.
I criticized Israel for invading Syria in the 24 hours
you have harsher words for me than the people doing a genocide lmaooo
🥱
Keep it up, cm0002. It’s working.
Working to annoy large swaths of the Threadiverse. Way to keep it a thriving discussion platform.
