Examples of racism on Lemmy?
Examples of racism on Lemmy?
In 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) and its cross-posts, quite a few people said things like "maybe racism is a problem on Mastodon, but I don't see it on Lemmy." Of course, plenty of comments in the various threads were in fact examples of racism on Lemmy, so one takeaway is that at lot of people don't see racism even when they're looking at it. And helpful commenters pointed out some of the other patterns of racism on Lemmy. ... but that wasn't really the thrust of that discussion.
So I wanted to ask more generally, what are some of the examples you've seen of racism on Lemmy? Quotes and links are great, but also feel free just to describe examples or call out more general patterns!
The whole point of the fediverse is that it's distributed. There's gonna be bigots. But they can be blocked, their instances can ban them, and then they can make their own instances which other instances can then defederate. That's working as designed. In a perfect world, the bigoted instances will be a disconnected graph from the network of other instances.
You don’t think having a disconnected graph consisting of only bigots would lead to amplification and advancement of the bigotry?
Why would it? It seems like it would just be similar to the circlejerk forums they've have for decades, alienated from the mainstream and unable to normalize their ideas and recruit so easily.
There's a collection here,
As a POC I'd say Lemmy is way better than most similar sites but there's still the prevalent sexism that always seems like the "acceptable casual bigotry" and I'm not a fan of that. The kind of "jokes" that guys mostly laugh at while women mostly roll their eyes at because the punchline is usually heavily reliant on sexism.
There used to be Wolfballs, a right-wing Lemmy instance. I didn't browse much but there was definitely ample racism there.
If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about 'jewish shapeshifters'. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.
Good point, thanks. I seem to recall another one as well -- although both were widely defederated so I suspect most people on those instances didn't wind up seeing them.
I did not see any racist comments for quite some time. But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
The anti-French sentiment is also present here like in the whole English speaking web.
The French aren’t known for their hygiene so I am not surprised their river is filthy
From a post about an olympic triathlete who got sick: https://lemmy.ml/post/18887659
In Belgium: Tartare or Mayo. Andalouse for the gal, thanks In the UK: Salt and Vinegar In both cases: I will have to change seat if you plop yourself in front of me with your poor fries inundated by ketchup. Only the French do that, and it is a Casus Belli in my book.
From a post about dipping fries: https://lemmy.ml/post/18963222
The anti-French sentiment is also present here like in the whole English speaking web.
Frankly, I'm always going to be anti-French until ALL of their leech-like tentacles are severed and ejected from every Afrikan nation they've been hoovering the resources out of. I have no love for neocolonists, not the French, not the Israeli, and sure as shit not the Amerikan.
It sounds as if you're using the atrocities of the French bourgeoisie as a way to excuse nationalist bigotry against a people. The French state is imperialist and colonist, the French citizens are mostly victims of capitalism, not the settlers.
Obviously it's a different situation with French people overseas, but we're not in that context.
But xenophobic comments were common on threads about Ukraine’s invasion.
As in "fuck the Russians"? Because I feel that hating Russia is somewhat less based on prejudice than your other examples, and somewhat more on recent real world examples.
Try checking out the comment section on pretty much any post mentoning Islam.
Thanks, a good suggestion!
Are you able and willing to link to a specific comment that you consider to be racist?
I don't have links because they get banned pretty quickly, but over the last week I've seen maybe 4 or 5 examples of lemmy users referencing "the race card" (derogatory) in response to others talking about systemic racist violence.
Thanks, it's a great example, and good to hear they got banned quickly! It's a great point that when moderators are proactive most people don't see the posts so think there's less racism than there actually is.
I follow your blog from time to time and I appreciate it. Just with your recent posts I realized you have an active Lemmy account.
I was going to continue this comment with "But I don't get...", then I stopped and read your blog post again and remembered rule #2.
I think I get what you are trying to say, it's good that there are some mod tools to help with modding, but they're not enough, and even if racism isn't as visible on Lemmy, people targeted by racism still exist and get hurt. So I guess your point is be more proactive than reactive. People don't get that, and even if they are well intentioned, they think of all the defederating and banning examples as "good enough".
Early adopters are also overprotective with Lemmy and its small community, especially when a newcomer directly questions "how is racism in this community?". They found their peaceful corner of the internet (relative to major social media platforms), they know it has its flaws, but since the beginning they had to defend to questions like "who owns the data?", "what happens with deleted posts / comments", "is defederatation effective", "what about that Lemmygrad which is hosted by Lemmy developers", can mods and admins become too powerful", "how long till this gets the same fate as Reddit", etc.
I'm not defending the behaviour, just thinking of an explanation. Because frankly, I'm also surprised by the downvotes and backlash you received.
So I guess what I was trying to say is, "Hi Jon! Keep up the good work!"
Permanently Deleted
@10_0 @thenexusofprivacy nigger
@10_0 @thenexusofprivacy Very funny behavior lemmy
You know what time it is now.
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@10_0 @thenexusofprivacy niggerfaggot
I am sure there are instances I have forgotten, there is definitely a certain amount of bigotry, it's not hard to find classism, sexism, and ableism as usual for the internet and I am sure I have come across racism too but I don't remember any specifics.
Thanks!
I got tired of being unable to list examples when I said “I’ve seen X so much!” and then others said “Really? Where?”
So I started saving examples of the thing I wanted to later prove existed.
Maybe it's just the handful of instances I follow, but I can't recall anything. But I've become quite callused and thick skinned having Benn on the Internet sense the early 90's and the wastelands of forums/chat rooms lol. Send help.
.world users every time they see a palestinian
honestly why do they leave reddit
Assuming you are from the USA what are your options really?
One option is to follow the lead of pro-Palestinian orgs working to end the genocide. You have more power than any other global citizen believe it or not.
It's a whole lot of smug whites more than happy to talk over subjects-of-empire like this is still Reddit out here, split out between the likes of lemmy.world, sh.itjust.works, lemm.ee, jlai.lu, and feddit.de-- the last two are because they're French and Germans respectively, though; no one's expecting anything out of them but resource extraction (in the French case) and for them to go to bat for genocidal states lately (in the German case).
At least the aggrieved ashen lords don't make a habit of coming to specifically demarcated Black-and-Indigenous spaces on the fediverse as much as they used to, ig.
I'm not black so I am sure I am not sensitive enough to it, but I don't think I've ever seen any racism on here. On a slightly related note have experienced transphobia only two or three times in over a year, and they were quickly banned. I imagine it works the same way.
I have an account in beehaw too, and it's usually the one that interacts with the world. It's considerably different from a different instance.
Are you white?
Well it's not like we can revive the only black man with a dream...
Sorry, I'll see myself out or be banned
What's wrong with a perfectly fine example of a joke? Black man told me this one FFS
@thenexusofprivacy @asklemmy Go get raped by a pack of niggers if you want "no White toxicity".
Lol
