I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they’re what’s colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn’t be much of an issue if they didn’t regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, …

As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.

I posted a comment in this thread linking to “https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs” (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren’t widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the “Be nice and civil” rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.

This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:

Definitely a trend there wouldn’t you say?

When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.

Proof:

So many of you will now probably think something like: “So what, it’s the fediverse, you can use another instance.”

The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they’re not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it’s rather pointless sitting for example in /c/linux@some.random.other.instance.world where there’s nobody to discuss anything with.

I’m not sure if there’s a solution here, but I’d like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.

  • aleph@lemm.eeEnglish
    100·
    6 months ago

    I’ve defended lemmy.ml in the past when people have blamed the entire instance for the actions of a solitary, overzealous moderator, but this genuinely concerns me:

    This must have been action taken at the instance admin level, considering all those communities have different moderators.

    Is there any way to probe the modlog to see which account it was?

    • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      33·
      6 months ago

      Gonna put this out there. Ended up in a thread on ML the other day. The poster/admin got a little unhinged, over 4 down votes. 4. Took to the admin panel to see who dared down vote him. Convinced he had been the victim of the tiniest not swarm ever.

      1000001794

      It’s troubling behavior for anyone with power.

      • Hubi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        Downvotes are public on Lemmy fyi. There are interfaces that show who voted on a post or comment.

        • Eldritch@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          For admins, yes. I was pointing that out in the picture of the responses I posted. But not for General users.

          • Hubi@lemmy.worldEnglish
            7·
            6 months ago

            Even regular users can see them through other federated services like kbin AFAIK. They show up under likes and dislikes.

      • Pili@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        You gotta admit, it’s very suspicious to be massively downvoted (25, not 4) over an inconspicuous comment that merely highlights a few paragraphs of the linked article.

        I know I would also be wondering if there was a pattern in the origin of those downvotes.

    • kuato@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      6 months ago

      Only admins can do site bans. What you’re seeing is a hacky/temporary feature of the upcoming Lemmy v19.4, of which lemmy.ml is running the pre-release: when an admin bans someone from the site (temp or otherwise), it also automatically bans them from any community they have ever participated in. Lemmy.ml has always been the “beta” instance for new releases.

      • sudneo@lemm.eeEnglish
        3·
        6 months ago

        Tbh, also harass a mod. People get quite worked out when being moderated, and being a mod is enough work without people chasing you to argue with you or straight up harass you, I suppose. At least, I can see plenty of good reasons to hide the moderator name.

          • sudneo@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            6 months ago

            What does this have to do with showing mod log? Genuinely confused

              • sudneo@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                6 months ago

                It does, but it’s an online forum, not an essential service, and easy to replace. On the other hand, being there with your name or nickname exposes you to harassment from those pissed at you for your decision.

                I would say it’s an acceptable evil given the circumstances.

                As a side note: asking why after a mod action is almost universally pointless. Moderating is free work and a level of subjectivity is implied. I think not having the ability to argue is infuriating but understandable.