Hey everyone, I’m new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here (on the official site it says “Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.”).
The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the “lemmy.ml” server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”.
So I thought I try that one when it’s from Lemmy’s own developers. When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?
Thank you for posting, OP.
I was thinking about making an account here. Saw this and made one here, to see how the instance would feel like.
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Yeah when I joined IIRC I just had to write a sentence about why I wanted to join. The communism thing made me laugh though!
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communism is good though? that’s the only reason i signed up with lemmy. also because .ml is too strict
Ikr? I’m honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out
The original developers of Lemmy are communists who were seeking to create a social media space that would be free from corporate censorship and centralization. When they created ml, they decided to have it be geared towards communists and leftists as their specific flavor of the Lemmy community, because that is what interested them.
If you are looking for a less political and more general instance, I’d recommend:
lemmy.world
sh.itjust.works
lemmy.dbzero.comlmfao dbzero terms of service is literally to follow the anarchist COC, hosts Lefty memes, and one of the largest anarchist communities.
World is peak neoliberal, has a stupid media bias bot calibrated for neoliberal positions as centrist, and is explicitly aligned with the USA in law and ethos.
Shitjustworks is similar to world but Canadian.
Life is political and people hosting online communities have ideologies. Shock horror I know. An ideology being invisible to you because you are raised in it does not make it any less explicit.
An ideology being invisible to you because you are raised in it does not make it any less explicit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemonyAnd invisible ideology in the imperial core today is zombie neoliberalism.
Very interesting, thanks for the reply. I signed-up on lemm.ee since that’s the 2nd biggest instance on their list. Is this a good server as well? (The description here says: “General-purpose Lemmy instance. New users and communities welcome!”)
Lemme.ee is fine. It wouldn’t hurt to have multiple accounts in different instances in case one goes down for maintenance so you can keep browsing. I recommend dbzero since they’re techy and don’t lean on politics as much as other instances.
It wouldn’t hurt to have multiple accounts in different instances in case one goes down for maintenance so you can keep browsing.
Grass? Never touch the stuff. Worms fuck in it.
Lemm.ee is less politically oriented than any of the 3 that were recommended, by the other user, but it’s lesd of an instance and more of a tool for interacting with other instances.
I understand lemmy.world, but I’m curious what makes you say that about the other two? Stricter defederation or something?
dbzer0 is an Anarchist-leaning instance, though it allows others. Sh.itjust.works has ncd and meanwhileongrad, which attracts pro-NATO and anti-Communist individuals, though the lean isn’t as strong as Lemmy.world and dbzer0 and as such there’s more variety there.
Thank you. I forgot about meanwhileongrad. That makes sense.
No problem!
Yeah, that’s a good one. Honestly, at the end of the day, it matters more what communities you follow than what instance you are on.
But what communities are available to you depends on which instance you picked. Right?
Technically yes, but in practice for any of the big instances, not really.
I still see all the communities I want from SJW: local, dot world, dot ml, lemm.ee, etc
Exception is Beehaw because they defederated us but they also deferedated Lemmy.world too they’ve already cut themselves from most users. I have an acct there anyway but don’t feel the need to check it much anymore.
Edit: another notable example is Lemmy.world won’t allow federating with any communities focusing on piracy.
Wrong. You can subscribe to any community from any instance that is federated with yours, and it will show up in your feed. Once one person has subscribed to an outside community, it will start to appear under All in your home instance as well. If you pick a home instance that is federated with most of the others, then you essentially can see everything you would feasibly want to see.
I am subscribed to communities all over the Fediverse.
I’ve been happy on lemme.ee for the fact that they didn’t get caught up in the defederation drama about a year ago, and that they’re mainly a neutral landing instance to go about interacting with other communities on other instances. Other instances will defederate with instances they disagree with, a form of censorship in itself, whereas the admins of lemm.ee leave it to you to block what you don’t want to see yourself.
Exactly why I like it here too. They really do let the user choose their own censorship limit.
Any instance whose rules you agree with is good. Picking a big one that’s not the biggest is a good call so good job.
All 3 of those are highly political instances, though. Lemmy.world is overwhelmingly liberal and enforces that bias, and dbzer0 is mostly Anarchists. Sh.itjust.works is the least overtly political but leans liberal.
And leans towards eating lots of glitter. At least in my experience.
😂
There’s plenty of censorship on Lemmy, but unlike Reddit, the censorship is orchestrated by the individual server, not by a corporation in control of the whole ecosystem. Go post something pro-capitalist on lemmy.ml, or something claiming climate change is a hoax on slrpnk.net, or something anti-trans on lemmy.blahaj.zone and see how fast it gets taken down - you could consider that censorship, but the reason Lemmy is better than Reddit in this regard is that you can go post that same thing on another instance, in a community that supports those views, and it’ll stay up. It’s all up to the administration of the individual instance.
Even if you can’t find an instance / community that will espouse your unique views, you can create your own, and post whatever you like, and everyone who federates with you will be able to see it. That’s how Lemmy is resistant to censorship.
I’m not touching the lemmy.ml question with a ten foot pole, someone else can field that one.
I only use lemmy.world and find it more open to free speech than reddit ever was. Reddit has gotten worse over the years. I was never a big reddit user, but just a few weeks ago I was in a non political non controversial group. None of my comments violated the rules. Out of the blue I was banned. I was scratching my head. I was told that the asshole mod of the group went through my post and comment history and found “one” comment unrelated to the group in question that they didn’t like and therefore banned me. The mods and Admins over there are dedicated to the hive mind. I am never going back
Filters out conservatives pretty well and stops bots because it requires the user to read.
Interesting. Must be newish because that wasn’t a requirement when I signed up a few years back.
Censorship still exists in lemmy. I got banned from an instance just because I said some things that weren’t aligning with far left ideas. I was one of the active members of that instance (we were very few) on non political communities.
I made a political post and one of the administrators wasn’t OK with it and started insulting me and then banned me from the whole instance.
Welcome to the Fediverse! Somebody has probably told you this, but I just realized that I forgot to hit “Post” before I went to dinner. Here it is anyways.
When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
The applications and copying of a particular line is a simple form of spam prevention. The fact that the line is from “The Principles of Communism" is probably because the owners of that particular instance (who are also the main developers) are communist. I believe they also run Lemmygrad, which is full on Marxist, and one of the more commonly blocked instances. Lemmy.ml is intended to be a more mainstream instance but like much of the Fedi leans hard left.
I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here
Lemmy is censorship resistant, but not censorship free. There is a difference. Censorship (or moderation, depending on your view point) happens at 3 levels, user, community, and instance. You can’t do much if other users find you obnoxious and decide to block you, but if you find the moderation of a community to be over bearing and if your current instance allows, you can create your own community from your current instance and mod it how you see fit within the guidelines of your instance. If you find your instance’s moderation to be overbearing, you can create your own instance and moderate it however you see fit. However, you will still be subject to the moderation policies of the communities (and their home instances) that you subscribe to.
In the Fedi you have absolute freedom of speech, but nobody is required to give you a soapbox or megaphone and nobody is required to listen to you.
LMAO that’s a “new” (to me) requirement, I guess they’re full mask off now. They, along with their sister instance lemmygrad, and their cousin spawned from chapo trap house called hexbear, are rabid authoritarian communists (aka tankies) who want to kill people to enforce their ideals “for their own good.” They honestly believe that once they take over and kill all political dissidents the state they install to accomplish this violent goal will “wither” on it’s own. Clearly, they’re insane and can mostly be ignored, unless the topic is entirely apolitical. Also heads up, .ml (and grad, not hexbear) are the instances run by the devs that originally made lemmy, and jerboa (the app) is made by one of them as well.
Most other instances are cool.
So I’ve certainly read some leftwing stuff on lemmy but I have yet to encounter, ant current recollection, any posts / comments which advocate violence. Not saying they don’t exist but would be curious to see some examples (if you have some on hand).
You will in time, there’s plenty on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works. the latest I can remember is “the French deserve a thousand Charlie Hebdos” (Charlie Hebdo being a magazine, ironically left-leaning no less, that was shot up with 12 people murdered and 11 injured for publishing a cartoon depicting Muhammed in 2015).
Do you actually believe this or are you intentionally lying about what their political goals are?
Enough of them have told me by now that I believe them, yes. If you’re unaware you haven’t been paying enough attention or don’t ask hard questions like “what will you do if someone doesn’t want to give their property to your collective willingly?”
A few corrections regarding your misconceptions of Communist theory, for anyone scrolling by but unfamiliar with Marxism:
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Marxists advocate for revolution, because Capitalism cannot simply be voted out. Given that following Marxist analysis to its correct conclusions necessitates transitioning to Socialism, this can be seen as a “call to violence.” Yes, it is, but out of necessity. Marxists don’t advocate simply massacring everyone of slightly different beliefs, rather, Marxists are not Blanquists and thus believe revolution is only possible with mass, popular support.
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The Marxist conception of a State is a tool of class oppression, not all instances of government. Rather, Marxists advocate for working towards full Public Ownership of Capital and Central Planning by the government. When Marxists say they believe the State will wither away, they mean eventually all property will be folded into the public sector and thus the concept of “classes” will cease to exist as well, gradually as property is folded into the public sector to the degree to which markets have formed Big Industry and Monopolist Syndicates. From Engels:
“When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society – the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society – is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished”, it withers away.”
Communism or not the people you associate yourself with and defend (.ml, grad, and hexbear) advocate violence, the mod team supports it, and you know it. Stop trying to pretend you don’t.
Sure is great to cherry pick and remove any and all context! All I did was add context to the nonsense you spouted.
Mmhmm
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.ml is treated as a bit of a bogeyman around here - most of my interactions with their instance and users has been good. I realise this could be different for others. But, yes, they are Marxist-Leninist so, obviously, their opinions and content will be closely aligned with their political philosophy. In my personal opinion and experience .world seems to have vacuumed-up a tremendous amount of people from the other site you mentioned (Robbit?). Their netiquette seems to have not changed. Also, myself and some others have noticed that on .world it’s not unusual to see comments that express views from outside what the majority believe get deleted. Fortunately the “mod logs” are public record so you can see why comments were deleted, whom by and what the original post/comment was. (I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed) I hope you enjoy your time here. Welcome.
(I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed)
Correct. There is a “purge” feature, but I’ve not yet had to resort such measures after several months of admining.
Thank you (and your fellow admins) for all you do and the time you sacrifice. It is appreciated, by me at least. I don’t even want to consider what vile obscenity you run the risk of exposing yourselves to and I’m happy you’ve not yet had to purge anything; but there’s some sick individuals out there and I’m glad you’re a bulwark against that.
I wonder if it will be somewhat better here.
If you host your own instance, you have complete control over what gets posted. If not, you have to follow your instance’s rules.
one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do.
That’s just basic bot detection, like a captcha. Karl Marx’s works are out of copyright, and Lemmy’s lead developer is a communist, hence the choice.
it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
In general, instances don’t expect you to agree with their mods on politics or religion, but the content hosted on that instance would be somewhat biased towards the mods’ tastes. So you go from lemmygrad (far-left) to lemmy.ml (centre-left) to lemm.ee (centrist) to shitjustworks (centre-right) to lemmy.world (right-wing). Personally I’d avoid the first and last, but it’s up to each person to decide what’s right for them.
Is lemmy.world particularly right-win? It seemed mostly shitty liberal from what I’d noticed, thought admittedly I don’t actually pay much attention to people’s instances
They referred to ML as “centre-left”, so their perception is obviously very skewed.
…fair enough, missed that
Liberals are pro-capitalist, which inherently makes them right wing. American politics would have you believe otherwise, but American politics are severely skewed to make the populace accept the dominance and power of capital as an unassailable truth.
.world also makes a habit of denying ongoing genocides and shutting down any criticism of the parties involved in said genocides. Many of their users go out of their way to shit on left-wing instances and deride anyone left of them as a tankie.
Not to mention the sheer volume of woman bashing I’ve witnessed in gender-related threads.
So, all that considered, I think it’s perfectly fair to consider them right wing.
HILARIOUS!
So, the instance that demands you copy a sentence from the a communist’s manifesto ir not be allowed in- is considered “center right.”
The issue you’ve faced varies instance to instance. If you want complete freedom and censorship resistance, you have to run your own server.
Because dessalines is legit in competition for the most cringe person on the internet.
TL:DR; ml is for Marxist-Leninist, but each server has their own philosophy and rules, so just comment and post on other servers if you want nothing to do with this. On censorship, modlogs are public so there’s no hiding stupid admin actions unlike Reddit.
Hello and welcome to Lemmy! Enjoy your stay, even if it can be a little chaotic the discussion and vibes are generally in a good place for real people to talk, and I think the Fediverse is where the future of our internet should be, open and people-first instead of corporations.
To give you context, the lead developers of Lemmy and maintainers of the lemmy.ml, are Marxist-Leninists, and that’s why it’s .ml and that’s related to the signup process. Esoteric signup processes (most other servers are just describe why you want to join) are there to help prove you’re not a bot or troll or are aligned with that server’s values. Lemmy.ml is a general topic instance but their moderation has a pro-Russian, pro-China slant, and have been known to ban comments and users speaking against that on controversial (e.g. Ukraine, Gaza, US politics) threads. That’s the reality, there is a lot of valid criticism of that from within and outside Lemmy, but that’s also their perogative. (That sounds not great, but stay with me here.)
However, being part of the Fediverse, this software extends beyond the developers’ own political whims. So, you aren’t subject to their philosophy if you don’t post on .ml and aren’t registered with them. Other servers have different policies, some more laissez-faire like db0 or ee, some very protective like beehaw.
I hope you can understand that even if admins sometimes have power trips, they don’t have the power of Spez to kick you off the whole platform or enforce awful rules. If we compare Reddit to a kingdom where you can be expelled at any moderator or admins whim, Lemmy is more like a fiefdom where you can only be expelled from the duchy. If you’re an extremely unlikable troll, every server will reject you.
Because these relationships between servers are organic, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows and there are a lot of topics people can and will disagree on. Please just try to be reasonable with your fellow user and moderator, try not to get upset if your post is removed (double check the rules of the community AND server you post to) if you get 20 downvotes on something unpopular (though it’s avoided on lemm.ee since downvotes are disabled). Modlogs are open so if you think a ban/removal is unfair/unjust, appeal to your mods/admins first, if you think it’s still unreasonable or part of a power trip rampage you can have a discussion about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !fediverselore@lemmy.ca, !modabuse@lemmy.sdf.org, and mention your old user handle for people to judge whether it was justified or not. Unpopular stuff often doesn’t get censored unless it breaks rules, or is just plain mean, trolling, flaming or unproductive.
