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/[email protected] 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.

  • FozzyOsbourne@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    29 days ago

    it’s easy to be communist of you only touched it online

    This is almost certainly the case, these kids read about the ideals of communism and think it sounds great, and they know about how things are in the USA and think that’s bad. Two fair assessments, but they then deduce that the because capitalist America is bad, then Soviet Russia “communist” China must be good, ignoring the fact that every person who survived/escaped those reigemes described them as hell.

    • volodya_ilich@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      every person who survived/escaped those reigemes described them as hell

      This is patently false, you’re either mistaken or lying. During my PhD in a western European country, I had the pleasure of working with several Chinese students and supervising the thesis of even more of them. Of all the Chinese students, all except one returned to china after finishing their studies because they prefer life in China. I made it a point to ask about their opinions on the government, and the approval rate of their government is so much higher than the approval rates of governments that we have in the west. If you look up any poll on this topic you’ll find the same conclusion: Chinese people are on average happier with their government than westerners are with theirs.

      About the USSR, a majority of the citizens were against the dissolution of the country and a transition to liberalism, so again, you’ve been misled or you’re lying.

      • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        29 days ago

        First of all, anecdotal evidence. Also survivorship bias. One - the type of person that goes to study abroad is usually wealthy, well off. Two, your family is collateral so you are guaranteed to return. Saying negative shut about the regime can get you in trouble so they’ll sing praises of it - just like in Russia.

        Second, the USSR thing is complete dogshit and you can see why now in Ukraine. People hated the russians. Speaking russian in western Ukraine after it disolved could get you threatened or punched in the face. Same thing with the Baltics. Same thing with Poland.

        • volodya_ilich@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          29 days ago

          Dude, you’re absolutely delusional if you think that the conversations I’ve had with Chinese co-workers and FRIENDS (which you clearly never had) are swayed because “their family is collateral”, as if the Chinese government was punishing families for their children emigrating. That’s absolutely insane bullshit on the level of “Chinese hivemind” conspiracy. Regarding your “anecdotal evidence” claim, I beg you to please look at any poll on the topic.

          The way they arrived to western Europe isn’t because of “rich families”, it’s because of an agreement between a university in Western Europe and another university in China where China would pay for their tuition abroad. So much for the fucking oppressive state huh?

          Funny that you bring up Russia, I also happen to know people there who have no problem telling me in private (as Chinese friends could do) that Putin is borderline fascist, oligarchic, kleptocratic scum, and I fully agree with it. Almost as if, in private, people could voice their actual opinions.

          Wow, people hated Russians in post-soviet countries after decades of anti-russian propaganda, what a surprise. I wonder why the Polish were capable of forgiving Germans for the literal Holocaust, but not Russians for a bloodless invasion of their country in the context of a war against Nazis… Almost as if the hatred was manufactured and it was an unjustified form of racism…

          • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            29 days ago

            Yeah, okay, you are just a tankie. Fucking bloodless invasion my ass you ignorant moron. You are insulting the history of my country and my people. I won’t be wasting any more time on you - you don’t deserve the wear on my phone screen from replying to you.

            • volodya_ilich@lemm.eeEnglish
              0·
              29 days ago

              Bye bye, revisionist racist prick. 3000-7000 deaths is absolutely bloodles for an invasion of half a country, keeping in mind that there were plenty of actual Nazis in Poland. Maybe you’re just one of them, since you condemn so much more a bloodless occupation than fucking Nazism.

              • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                29 days ago

                Ah yes the tankie forgetting about Katyn in their assessment and countless other massacres. You heard it here folks, the war in Gaza is bloodless. So many nazis we need a denazification special military operation, huh?