Lemmy.ml is acting as a proxy instance for Hexbear and should be defederated by any instances that defederate from Hexbear
The mods of all the major communities there remove comments criticism Hexbear and usually follow it up with a ban. It's absolutely clear what is happening and it shouldn't be allowed to continue.
Welcome to federation, where basically every instance is a proxy to all others.
Btw you are also free to block any instance yourself.
Unfortunately blocking an instance only blocks posts on that instance, not users from it, which is the main issue people have with those instances.
Yeah it's a very common misconception, I find it weird that people are still having it though when 0.19 is widely available.
Maybe they're just saying it as a way to be dismissive of the issue, this kind of stuff happens often when people report or call to attention malicious instances or malicious users.
I think thays a good compromise. if you then have an issie with a particular user you can block them individually.
I'm actually mostly fine with blocking instances myself. Users from troll instances rarely annoy me.
Btw you are also free to block any instance yourself.
Not how the instance blocking feature works. it's a common misconception because people don't read the docs and just assume it does what they think it does. From the News Section on Join-Lemmy:
Users can now block instances. Similar to community blocks, it means that any posts from communities which are hosted on that instance are hidden. However the block doesn’t affect users from the blocked instance, their posts and comments can still be seen normally in other communities.
It's not an alternative or replacement to defederation, not even close. I'm really surprised this misconception still persists even after widespread adoption of 0.19.x across the Lemmy network.
If they weren't such weasels and actually agrued back rather than just ban people like the spineless dimwit twats they are, I'd say the argument that they are easily filtered holds. But given they are just looking to propagate their shilling for Russia, trump (and they definitely do this) etc... fuck em!
Even outside of their space, when they "argue" it had generally been posting giant, random images that had little to no context followed by walls of emojis. Which is why my blocklist is mostly Hexbear users.
Please find a single example of Hexbear supporting Trump. Attacking Biden does not count
Jesus fucking christ, this has comments talking about trump living rent free in muh libs heads
https://hexbear.net/post/2090983
You're the same pack of fucking incels mixed in with the same russian shilling from 2016, that post was from an hour ago, took me seconds to find it
Yes, leftists famously LOVE Donald Trump 🤣
This is the most Reddit radlib shit I’ve seen over here yet. Grow up my dude
Lemmy.ml are tankies first and foremost. They’ll defend anything that Russia/China thinks is good.
Calling them leftists is an insult to the rest of us who aren’t authie chuds.
Hexbears arent lefties. They are hiding behind acting like they are lefties while at the same time sucking up to the most fascist regimes on earth.
They sure seem to like him a lot better than voting in solidarity with the people who's lives he threatens!
Or maybe I should refine to White "Leftists" since everyone else need not be told why that's so fucking stupid.
No 'leftists' don't, but you're all pepe loving little bootlicking fascists.
Sure, but what about right wing trolls pretending to leftists?
I'm all for defederating Hexbear, but lemmy.ml is absolutely huge compared to Hexbear. To motivate the community to do that you'd need quite a bit of proof. Or at least something rather compelling. Do you have any proof of what you're referring to?
Asking for proof of what is an open secret on lemmy seems disingenuous.
I think that instances like hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml are very bad advocates for Lemmy and will most likely end up damaging it more than anything else, keeping the "normies" out.
They argue in Bad faith, say the most radical stuff they can think of, and purge anything bad said about totalitarian regimes they idolize. China, Russia, Iran, all considered victims of the evil west..
I was banned from lemmy.ml for posting a meme about the fact that gay characters are removed from movies in China. Not even by a mod. By an admin. I'm not remotely surprised they're pro-shitheap in general
Hexbear loves to dogpile as well. I've seen a couple of raiding threads linking to other threads in Lemmy.ml making fun of whoever. But in reality they're just directing people over there to shit on someone. At least, that's what I saw last year, so I'm very distrusting of them.
That and the Lemmy.ml AMA thread where one admin was all buddy buddy with Hexabear users during their federation.
It's totally reasonable to ask me to cite my reasoning.
I would like to see proof of how a community doing its own thing of sharing their radical views on their instance is damaging.
I haven't seen any rampant behavior of lemmy.ml users going to other instances and dogpiling certain posts or comment section. That may be defederation worthy.
IF lemmy.ml is admin'd by the Lemmy devs, themselves,
AND their ideology/prejudice is being obstructed by the Lemmy-verse,
THEN wouldn't it be rational for them to engineer-in to Lemmy, itself, protections for their ideology?
Breaking the Fediverse's ability to "manage" them?
or breaking the Fediverse's ability to have any alternative-ideology be its core??
I'm thinking they could either adulterate privacy, deliberately, or they could force blocking to be porous, or something..
IOW, I'm thinking that it is strategically-incompetent to allow tankies to own our core tech, exactly as it is strategically-incompetent to allow right-wing highjackers-of-our-countries to do so.
?
I blacked out irrelevant information.
This is less about the instance as a whole. The !worldnews@lemmy.ml mods are notoriously terrible. It's best to just avoid the community altogether.
ml and Hexbear definitely don't have the same users. Their comments look very different. Hexbear is far more extreme in every way.
Hexbear is mostly just trolls in my experience. They like to brigade any discussion involving Russia, China, Ukraine, etc.
Lemmy.ml is full of tankies that will also go out of their way to defend Russia and China but they aren't just blatant trolls which is the difference.
Having controversial opinions isn't the problem, trolling and brigading are
I would need pretty convincing evidence to believe that the major .ml communities don't have at least one mod each with a Hexbear alt.
At some time we have to deal with this.
Keep in mind that we like Lemmy for being a federated platform.
I don't think there is enough awareness at this point. And the way we do it here, it has to come from the community. The people and mods have to become aware and make a decision to move their participation and the communities to another instance. I don't see a way around that. This will take some time, patience and effort.
I've started to do my part and unsubscribed from !Fediverse@lemmy.ml I'm now going through my list of subscriptions and find alternatives to other communities, so I don't contribute to the lemmy.ml communities being the larges ones any more.
[Edit: Wow. I've replaced 32 communities, some with substantially better alternatives, and I've found a few nice additional ones in the process. I still need recommendations for alternatives to: "Peertube", "Libre Culture", "Crawling the IndieWeb", "datahoarder", "Linux Phones", "postmarketOS", "osu!". I'm glad I did this. I think this is the way to make a change as a simple user. And now I'm not part of the problem anymore. It took me the better part of an hour, though.]
I'm just blocking the entire lemmy.ml instance. I've seen consistent problems from them, and nothing worth staying connected with.
Wish I could help you find alternative communities but I'm not sure about the ones you mentioned. They'll grow over time if Lemmy survives.
Thx. I found the most important communities to me. I'm glad most of them have an alternative and those are going strong. I can live with losing a few minor ones.
Concerning "blocking them": I'm not sure. I was a strong opponent to the whole defederation and "safe-space" thing last year. Where especially beehaw.org decided to do their own thing and rigorously defederate, often preemptively and without talking to people. I think such behaviour splits the community and disconnects people. I really don't like all the drama, falling out with each other and particularism. And I think all the feud is a sure way to kill the platform before it even took off with the general public... Honestly, I'm slowly changing my mind. Give me some more time.
Moreover, it seems pretty clear to me that .ml intends to keep their finger on the scale as much as possible. Just saying "oh federation solves all the problems just block them" doesn't really fix the issue when there are a bunch of ways they can potentially run malicious versions of the code base to mess with how federation functions and hold onto their influence. For example, they are already refusing to federate their mod logs in some cases, and they've shown themselves to be completely shameless and hypocritical when it comes to banning any and all dissent. They simply cannot be trusted.
I personally believe that the broader fediverse should seriously consider taking serious steps to cut out .ml before they do something drastic to fuck it all up
They also manipulated the modlog on their site to not differentiate between removed by mod and removed by admin. So even When something is removed by Dessalines or Nutomic it'll still show as moderator and not admin in the mod log.
doesn’t really fix the issue when there are a bunch of ways they can potentially run malicious versions of the code base to mess with how federation functions and hold onto their influence.
This is hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions 😂
Well, the discussion in this thread has convinced me to agree. It's also readily apparent that ml thinks any criticism against them is because they're leftist. They can't fathom that anyone could think they're an asshole or authoritarian apologist.
They don't think that, they aren't actually leftists and they know it. They're masquerading as leftists and using that as a cover for spreading authoritarian propaganda. It's intentional, they know precisely what they're doing.
If you try to talk to them about it they'll argue in bad faith and try to waste your time.
Seems like they werent such big fans of your post. It has been removed from their instance and your account was banned. Very interesting 🤔
You've got things backwards: OP was banned first and then posted this drama in reaction. The post isn’t visible on lemmyml because OP is banned.
I don't know about that. I do see in their modlog that he has been banned multiple times. Allthough i cant find the exact time and date of his newest ban, it corresponds with the creation of this post, aka. 1 day ago from making this comment. But yeah, there is a possebility that he was banned right before or something like that 🤔
Ah! That makes sense. I was on world news of Lemmy.ml and the comments where full of nutters and/or troll farms. It was like gote/gout (or whatever it was called), another Reddit alternative I've tried that seamed to fill Nazis kicked off Reddit. I unsubscribed and blocked.
Edit: Voat! That was it.
I think you're thinking of Voat.
Yes! That's the one!
Lemmy.ml is a massive instance. I don't really know where are you posting there, probably in political communities and thus this reaction. But I follow lots of communities that are hosted on Lemmy.ml and they are just normal communities about their topics, normally technology. I certainly do not want to lose those communities of having to move my accounts around just because you had some problems with some particular people. Block them yourself and move on.
I don't get why there's always people in small places that are always doing their best to make them even smaller. Lots of goods things are lost this way. We must be clever in trying to preserve and make this good things thrive. And, believe me I've been in lots and lots and lots of small community driven projects, this kind of attitude is no good for them. You cannot take every small issue you have with some part of the project and say: "we do not work together anymore".
If there's an issue let's be constructive about it. But defederation of such a big instance with so many people and communities that just does not care about this drama... I don't see how that helps lemmy as a whole.
I suppose there's a lot of political ideology behind what's being ask for, and what's being said. So I do not expect convince OP of anything, as those hard as steel political beliefs are inmutable. But I hope sanity and a wish for making Lemmy a big project of the kind of social networks we want in the future will prevail. Even if that means sharing space with people you don't politically agree 100% about everything, because that's how a community works, different people working together.
I've seen inter-Lemmy drama posts in this comm before, and the mods deleted them (or locked them—I don’t recall).
It's hard for me to believe the mods haven't seen this post. They've probably gotten multiple reports.
It seems they're making an exception this time.
The fact I got an instance ban means the admins were involved and were endorsing the tankies. The problem exists at the highest level of Lemmy.ml, not just in a handful of communities.
I've been saying this for like 6 months.
.ml is just a filter for Hexbear and lemmygrade users to infiltrate the greater federated instances.
I block them
No. Defederating at the drop of a hat is stupid. You don't like it? Then you, YOU, block the instance.
I don't like defederation, but these clowns are asking for it for a very long time.
Lemmy.ml is not only a massive instance, it is also the original and core lemmy instance. Widespread defederation would be like a nuclear bomb to the lemmy platform.
Some people have developed alternatives in the threadiverse like kbin or piefed. If lemmy.ml is truly too far aflight for users to tolerate, it seems likely that alternative platforms will fill in the gaps. For now, lemmy is still a thriving and growing platform.
Widespread defederation has been the norm, though. It has always been a thing, and many threads exist going back and forth on mutual defederation for ages.
And also, the only reason I'm on Lemmy.world and not .ml is precisely because of their moderation and their community. I'm the example you're talking about.
I say bite the bullet and break the cord already. This is not the first or only thread calling for defederation of Lemmy.ml.
What I'm saying is that this is a unique instance. I also think that for my purposes, .world is a much better option, and I think that for most people, it's a much healthier and more stable place. I'm just not sure that the rest of lemmy can survive without .ml - It is literally where the development of the platform happens.
What do you do when you have defederated from the developers of the platform you're using? How do you have a working relationship to meet users needs? Someone will say just fork it, but that's essentially the same as launching a new platform. As I mentioned, others have done exactly that, partly for technical reasons relating to the vision of what the platform should be, but also for political reasons.
I'm not advocating for anything, i'm simply stating some of the realities of the platform we are using.
Ml will be long term poison to the group. There's nothing new to say over there, all their own threads are circular.
It's not thriving. The devs are prickly arseholes, which is anathema to building a cooperative, volunteer-driven dev community and the tone of many mainstream communities is obnoxiously set by tankies amd their alts.
Probably one of if not the biggest reasons people had poor experiences on Lemmy before was because they signed up on Lemmy.ml
What have they done to prevent a cooperative, volunteer driven dev community?
My experience contributing to lemmy was not bad, albeit it was pretty small thing.
So what if it is the original? Bad moderation, combined with idolation of authoritarianism is some poisonous stuff.
The question is if admins are willing to have an open conversation about the moderation and content.
But deFederation is a fine solution. Then the admins on .ml have their way and they can have their little hermit kingdom without any dissenting views. And we can go on with out lives without their bile in our feeds and threads.
If instances can participate in asymmetric information warfare without reprisal, the Lemmy experiment has failed.
This is the biggest fucking loser nerd shit i've ever read on this site lmfao.
Go outside and touch grass
If that's what it takes I'm ready to switch to a new platform today. Let's fork and make something healthy.
So, you want people to miss out on cat pictures because your feelings were hurt?
Your stance is basically: "I had disagreements with/don't like users from an instance, please block an entire instance for all other users in the instance I'm in". Why are you making your problems everyone else's?
My stance is that Hexbear is a bunch of fascists spreading their ideology and Lemmy.ml is helping them doing it by banning dissenters. I believe that freedom of speech only works with parity, and giving fascists a one-way echo chamber with which to spread fascism, deny genocide, brigade, and otherwise act in bad faith should be entirely unacceptable. People should not be getting posts from Lemmy.ml on their feeds because this "curated" discussion is basically the memetic equivalent of an engineered virus, and it cannot be allowed to spread.
It would be better if you could just ignore them.
In general this Lemmy architecture, presented as compromise, where instance admins have some power and defederation is a thing - I don't like it. I understand it's simpler to do, but socially it may just not be something that will work.
IMHO user identities should be cryptographic, so should be community identities, and moderation should be done the same way as certificate revocation, and providing storage and connectivity shouldn't be connected to moderation or identities.
It's very easy to label people fascists as a generic "bad people" label and claim they're arguing in bad faith based on nothing but your feelings. I could just as easily call you a fascist for trying to decide what everyone else on this instance gets to see and that you're arguing in bad faith wanting vengeance because you threw a tantrum on another instance and got spanked for it.
The most name-calling I see are from people like you who label anyone who disagrees with them a "fascist", "shill", "bot", "tankie", "wumao" or millions of other terms and I see so many posts getting downvoted for not following your desired narrative. We can see this happen in the posts right here.
"My opinions are so weak, I can't tolerate dissent."
I predicted this when lemmygrad got defederated. I said that neoliberals were gonna identify some other instance as the "tankie instance" and start campaigning to defederate from it.
Funny because it's always been those 3 instances this whole time, nothing ever changed in our dislike for them.
As long as we all agree you don't actually care about rule violations, you're just mad they think differently than you.
Many people are saying
Me: How's that AI search algorithm going, Google?
Google: "Did you mean 'Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds Dune?'"
my face when i signed up for lemmy.ml 2 months ago for fun and now they're being called 5 different political terms
(their sign up verification test was "what is two plus two" back then)
Just don't join the communities you don't like.
Would you apply that logic to a neonazi white supremacist community on Lemmy.world?
This comment is brought to you by the Hexbear outreach program.
Lmao. Welcome to lemmy.world, where anyone left of center or who mildly criticizes the instance is a Russian bot or a secret hexbear user. Y'all have no clue how ridiculous you sound. The whole instance is like a giant neolib /r/politics circle jerk
What’s funny is that Lemmyml users aren’t seeing this neolib nonsense because OP is temp. banned.
"Anything that isn't praising shitheaps like Stalin, Mao, or the Kims is neolib nonsense"
Rules in question stated as a reason for removing the comments and temporary ban:
People can make their own conclusions.
Since when is calling out tankies racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia?
bigotry
ˈbɪɡətri
noun
obstinate or unreasonable attachment to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudice against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group.
If the person in question went after them simply because they are part of the group called 'tankies', the first rule was broken.
If the person in question was the first to throw out insults, the second rule was broken.
If however the opposing group initiated the conflict, broke the same rules and was not punished, then the complaint here is fair and should be pursued in order to prevent an escalation of abuse.
...
The nasty thing about bigotry is that by definition, it doesn't matter which group is being discriminated against. It accepts all discrimination under its label.
They can write whatever bullshit they want as a reason. If the comment is gone, who's gonna check? Hell, who audits that at all?
Apparently, I have to audit it.
Really the best choice here. Hooray for open modlogs!