How good is Lemmy dealing with censorship and why does the sign-up process on lemmy.ml involve having to copy a sentence from "The Principles of Communism"?
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?
it's not sketchy, it's basically a captcha to keep down automated bot sign ups, and they link to that document in particular, i assume, because the devs are marxists and figure folks who are vehemently anti-communist would refuse and thus keep down their moderation load.
The most correct answer here honestly.
.ml is actually Mali's TLD. That it happens to also be an initialism for Marxism-Leninism is a coincidence.
That they picked it specifically is not a coincidence, though.
Right, but .ml doesn't stand for Marxist-Leninist is the thrust of what I'm saying.
Except it does stand for that in this context. It's like saying "the TV in twitch.tv doesn't stand for television, it's Tuvalu", like, yes the ccTLD tv is Tuvalu's, but twitch wouldn't have chosen that TLD if it weren't for the "coincidence".
I used to think it stood for machine learning.
It does stand for Tuvalu. It is a happy coincidence for Twitch and any other media company that wants to use that TLD that such a seemingly in theme TLD exists (so long as you only use the abbreviation and never spell out what the TLD actually stands for), but .tv 100% refers to Tuvalu. There isn't a Television-land that it's reserved for.
Mali also happens to be under attack by US funded terrorists. The same pattern repeats itself over and over and over
The ccTLD was free when lemmy started. And developers like to test out things on free resources. The ccTLD just became paid last year.
Repeating the same thing for the 1000th time doesn't make it the truth.
Yes they're tankies, have awful censorship and are thin skin snowflakes. but making out the whole .ml ccTLD a marxists-leninist agenda just makes them see you as conspiracy nuts.
For what? a couple domains you've noticed to fit your narrative? Holy fucking batman. LMAO!
.... when did I say everything on .ml domain is marxist-leninist? It's not any kind of conspiracy lol.
I said they picked this one because it was an obvious reference. Apparently some other people have spoken directly to them and said it was purely because it was free. Which I didn't realize, and also makes sense.
They used that TLD because it had the same letters as Marxist-Leninist, not because they're from Mali. They're not from Mali.
So you are a mind reader now?
Sometimes people write their reasons for doing things down and other people read them and they don't need to read anyone's mind to know why they said they did something.
LOL. It does not stand for Marxist-Leninist. That's some grade A trolling if I saw it.
The .ml domain stands for the country of Mali, but lemmy.ml definitely chose that domain because it can stand for Marxist-Leninist.
You spelt militant anti-capitalists wrong, its spelt "tankie"
All Marxists and Anarchists are "tankies?" Lol.
You're catching on well done
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.
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.
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.
.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.
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.
Seems like a simple task to help verify that you are not a bot. It might also help deter applicants who are anti-communist. I guess you solved the problem for yourself by choosing a different instance.
Probably this, I have had to do the same for private tracker sign ups.
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!
Yes, exactly, you can host your own or sign up at one someone's already hosts. The resistance is in the ability to choose which admins you trust and align with your views while still interacting with the rest of us.
The devs run their own and have their own rules and censorship but you don't have to sign up there. Does that help?
Helps a lot, thanks for your answer!
The fact that each instance can have its own rules and culture is f a b. I love that’s one of the criteria. Mander.xyz should have a ‘identify all the creatures from the Triassic’ image captcha.
I don't know how to set up a specific image captcha, but I like that idea! I have added that to the registration form 😛
Open source is inherently political and you depend on software being developed by communists. We are here to evade corporate censorship, censor reactionaries, spread agitprop, and discuss raising the quality of life of all working people.
Not just tech workers. Everyone.
The developers of Lemmy are Communists, they don't hide this fact.
To answer your first question, there are no "free speech" instances in wide use, depending on your point of view an instance might be "censoring" or fighting "misinformation." It's up to you to pick an instance you want.
Yeah lemmy.ml is full of commie bastards...😂😂😂
Why don't you move if you are aware of it?
It's phrased in a positive manner, sarcastically.
Indeed. Anytime someone asks for my ideology I always say "I'm a filthy commie." 😂
You misunderstand: that is why we’re here.
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
The fediverse is not really about avoiding censorship as it is about providing choice. That means the choice to listen to who you want to listen to (i.e. what servers to (de)federate from/to), the choice to post whatever you want (but you might get banned from your own instance or any other instance, that's their prerogative), the choice of administrators and moderators (i.e. which instance you sign up to and what communities you participate in).
All of that stuff doesn't really have to do with censorship directly, but it has implications for censorship. The fediverse is not built primarily to avoid censorship though, and in some cases it is made to make "censorship" (moderation) easier, rather than harder.
Thanks for that information!
Lemm.ee is a great neutral instance and the admin seems nice, you probably made a good choice choosing it over .ml. Glad to see you were not scared away from Lemmy by it. Welcome! It can get confusing, but it just takes time. It's a nice little place, overall and feels more like reddit used to be once.
If you have an email address, you're already used to the federated service pattern. When you sign up for a gmail, you're making an account with Google to be able to send emails to anyone else with an email address. And there's nothing stopping Google from making you fill out a "sketchy" application to get an account.
On Lemmy, each instance has its own set of rules, and if you don't like them, you just make an account on a different instance.
As far as censorship, each "community" (analog to subreddit) lives on a certain instance and the rules of that instance apply.
Edit: also on the topic of communism, however you feel about communism in the physical world is irrelevant when it comes to the digital world. Free and Open Source Software makes the world go 'round, and is often communist in nature, even if done unintentionally. The pattern of people developing software for their own purposes, and then sharing it freely with others is the purest form of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." That said, running an instance isn't free, so make sure to kick your instance a few bucks if you appreciate their work.
Okay but implying that a given instance is the main community for Lemmy by promoting that it's run by Lemmy's developers and then making people repeat phrases from the Communist Manifesto just to make an account ain't exactly the best first impression to give, no?
If they've been trained to immediately recoil at the word "communism", and don't understand how federated moderation works, then yes, it'll probably scare away a good number of users. But on the flip side it's not a for-profit business trying to hook DAU using predatory and emotionally exploitative patterns, so who cares about first impressions? The people who use Lemmy know why they're using it.
It's not the context of the article, it's the presumption of solemn affirmation as a requirement to entry that is agregious, no?
You're just restating what OP said. I refer you to my original post.
Yeah, you're discussing communism specifically. I have no beef with communism or any other political ideology. Except perhaps capitalism, I might have beef with that. Digressions aside, the ask could be for quoting an article about Spongebob Squarepants and I would have the same grievance. Can we discuss the action itself, without going into a discussion about communism?
If you don't like SpongeBob, pick a different instance, that's federation.
To me this is like having a problem with the flags someone else has in their yard. Not your yard, not your flags. You're free to not like their flags, but if your grievance is with the action of them peacefully demonstrating free speech, that's a you problem.
Sure, maybe that guy also happens to work at the flag factory down the street. Probably explains why he has so many flags. Doesn't mean he's going to make you put the same flags he likes in your yard.
Edit: for the record, I'm not downvoting you, I think you've been very reasonable in this discussion
I appreciate you addressing the downvoting; I had noticed the trend and it's very easy to jump to the "I'm under a personal attack" conclusion.
While I believe 107% that each instance owner can do what they want; if this given instance is the first instance to which most people will be introduced, being the closest thing to an "official" instance, should they have a duty, or at the very least, an interest, in maximizing the inclusitivity of their community?
Ensure you aren't a bot I guess, and if somebody programs the paste text they can switch the text to copy from?
Join us at lemm.ee. It’s as neutral as can be, the admin is cool, and they leave blocking to the users instead of just defederating outright.
OP was already posting from Lemm.ee
Lol I didn’t realize because my app doesn’t show the user’s instance in the post. Either way, I invite anyone else who can’t decide on an instance yet to consider lemm.ee.
You're right, that Sunaurus admin guy is pretty cool.
most people have answered your questions so i want to chime in with the information that i wish someone had told me when i first joined:
a lot of people came to lemmy from reddit like you and i both did and also mostly for the same reasons. most of them went to lemmy.world because it was the first search result on the big search engines like google & bing. those people have turned lemmy.world into a mini reddit and ended up recreating the same problems that reddit has plus more; hence the bot check that you ran into when you signed up.
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent; i think of it like if r/politics; r/anarchy/; r/communism; r/socialism; etc. went off and created another social media platform and then started discussing everything like reddit does, but from this perspective. instances is the name given to individual servers and all those servers combined is nicknamed the lemmyverse, or lemmy, for short.
the fediverse is the nickname given to the pubg protocol that's shared between all the platforms that use it like lemmy, mastadon, kbin, threads, bluesky, etc and that means that the conversations from all of those platforms are shared amongst each other so it's possible to be on lemmy and have a conversation with someone on kbin, for example. i stick with lemmy because it's doesn't have any venture capital investors pushing the admins to enshitify it to maximize profits like has been happening to reddit and bluesky; i've been moving from one social media platform to another because of enshitification like reddit's since the 1990s (before it was called social media) so this last part matters to me a lot.
i started off on lemmy.world like most ex-redditors did and discovered that they've duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations so i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn't defederate with anybody due to fact they're the primary instance where lemmy development takes place. the federation is what makes lemmy decentralized and when you defederate; you cut yourself off from the rest of the lemmyverse, but lemmy.world and some of the other instances that got most of the ex-redditors like the star trek instance use it to try cut off content and people from the instances that they don't like and that's their right since it's their instance. lemmy is decentralized so trying to cut out people & content only serves to cut yourself off and that's intention behind the fediverse; to make it so that no power tripping mod or ban happy admin can stop the conversation like they do on reddit.
everything is done by volunteers and donations and, if you don't like one instance; you can move onto any other one and still get a similar experience. i don't like letting other people decide what i can & can't see and who i can & can't talk to so i mostly stick to the instances that don't defederate with anybody like lemmy.ml and i use the block-people and block-communities features when i feel like i need them for myself.
I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don't have to agree! However:
https://lemmy.ml/instances
If you switch to the "blocked" tab you'll see that this is absolutely not true.
One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)
oh yes, i keep forgetting about the fascist and corporate shill instances; they were also the reason why i went with lemmy.ml and why i think it'll take longer for it to enshitify. thanks for correction.
Haha I'm guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
[Bonus info]
Reddit has a history of big events when a clump of subreddits get banned all at once when a newspaper reports on them. A lot of right-wing ones went to Voat and later *.win, and some socialist ones (notably /r/GenZedong) went to Lemmygrad, which became the largest federated instance at the time. /r/chapotraphouse also made their own fork, Hexbear, although while it was the largest, it wasn't federated with the rest for years. Most instances were either hard-left (e.g. Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml, SLRPNK) or a slight left, but tge third most populous for a while was Wolfballs, a 'free speech' instance, de facto alt-right (US right-Libertarian style instance), which ended up defederated from almost all the others due to constant bigotry and rule breaking when posting on other instances. Wolfballs admin eventually shut it down before the Reddit API exodus because, among other reasons, they realized the neo-Nazis among their users were serious and not just trolling.
Overall, the few right-leaning instances are alienated from the bulk of federation and become islands or vaporize, but most just dismiss Lemmy or even the Fediverse at large as a left wing commie thing.
yes, that's what i get for going fast; thanks for the correction and the history lesson.
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.com
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 genuinely leans towards fascism thanks to dedication to anticommunism and full support for the Military Industrial Complex and NATO.
And leans towards eating lots of glitter. At least in my experience.
😂
lmfao 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony
And 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!")
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.
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 so 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.
Edit2: why downvote this? Am I incorrect?
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.
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.
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!
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.
The .ml admins (and devs of Lemmy the software) are from that crowd, basically. If you don't like it, try another instance.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There's no connection to Mali.
Welcome. Admins and mods of every instance, not just ml are very trigger happy to enforce their opinion. Going as far as fully disabling users accounts. Not by using an automatic word filter though.
Each instance has different political opinions you need to agree with. This one likes communism. Upside is no email verification required, so it is very private.
Lemmy is much more wild west than moden Reddit. Similar to old Reddit. Enjoy the ride.
As the internet should be.
If you host your own instance, you have complete control over what gets posted. If not, you have to follow your instance's rules.
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.
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-wing? 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.
The admins seem to not crack down on misogyny, transphobia and so on. If they're doing it on principle - refusing to censor and letting the bigots make fools of themselves in public - then I guess I can respect that. But on the other hand, sometimes silence can be seen as approval.
👻 A spectre is haunting @[email protected] ☭
Some of Ayn Rand’s earliest works are out of copyright now. Would that have made you more comfortable?
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.
The issue you've faced varies instance to instance. If you want complete freedom and censorship resistance, you have to run your own server.
That depends on the instance you are in.
It's quite resistant to any single entity's censorship, but if you share things most server admins consider unacceptable, other servers will block your server.
At least one of the Lemmy developers is a hardcore communist, and some people see lemmy.ml as a little sketchy for that reason. I see you found another server, which is exactly how federation is meant to work. While the overall culture tends to be left-leaning, most server admins are not hardcore communists and don't censor political positions that aren't advocating violence or discrimination.
Okay awesome!
theres more than just the lemmy platform to access the fediverse also. i use an mbin-based instance that can access all the same content as lemmy, and then some. https://moist.catsweat.com
To be clear, they roleplay as a "hardcore communist", whatever that is. Its not any different than how billionaire sycophants with no access to capital make statements like "I'm a capitalist" while working minimum wage jobs.
Having a high-paying software engineering job while enjoying the social safety net that a liberal social-democracy provides, does not one a communist make.
The .ml admins are, to put it mildly, far left. That's why it's great to have other instances like lemmy.world, feddit.org etc. If you don't agree with how the admins run an instance you can make an account somewhere else without missing out on content.
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.
It seems like most have this covered, but it is my limited understanding that which instance you pick can defederate from others of their own choosing. This means you can't see their content AFAIK.
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren't shy to enforce their views, which gets reflected in their instance, lemmy.ml, which is considered to be fairly tankie.
However, as Lemmy is federated, you can join any other instance and view whatever interests you without having to recite political literature to sign up.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated; although it defederated from certain instances, which might make you feel limited. I found lemmy.today as a way to be connected with anything and everything, from Hexbear to Beehaw, to, well, Lemmy.world
Their evil enforcement, our righteous peace keeping.
Being "apolitical" just means they're neoliberal. Which tbh sounds perfect for OP.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it's a country with 99% of Earth's population) is everywhere. If Lemmy.world would ask people to recite Adam Smith, I'd absolutely be pissed.
For the record, I am communist, I just don't want to be bombarded with politics at every corner and I refuse to analyze crochet through the prism of the class theory. It is possible to abstain from politics on .world, but it is often hard to escape on .ml (thankfully, Linux communities are generally neutral), or Hexbear (although it tries) or, Marx forbid, Lemmygrad, latter being a straight up shithole where politics is everything, people are as politically uniform as clones, and you can be banned for saying Stalin could be wrong in some of his decisions (I'm serious, it happened).
People need to have a place to relax and unwind, and endless political circlejerk is not a good environment for that. Politics is important, but not really when people just proclaim the same things over and over again as a form of leisure.
There's a list on GitHub of instances by most federation. It's where I found mine.
Good option! Could you please share the link to the list if you still have one?
Sure, I'll PM you.
For anyone else, it's easy to find by search, but it feels like one of those things that could be ruined if it got too well-known.
lol wut
I read through the answers and I still can't believe it.
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 ![email protected], ![email protected], ![email protected], 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.
The level of censorship is going to be different depending on your instance and where you are posting to. A lot of instances are managed by individuals or small teams out of passion. They can do as they please and don't have to pander to everyone for commercial appeal like Reddit or Tumblr. If someone doesn't like what they're doing they can join a different instance or create their own.
Instances can defederate from each other over these differences. A lot are defederated from the instance Exploding Heads because of their alt right content for example. From what I understand you can also report content to the administrators of your instance if it goes against their rules and I think they can remove it from appearing on your instance (or block the user that posted it). This isn't going to stop it from appearing elsewhere.
I also wouldn't say it's sketchy. It's just the overall political leaning of a lot of Lemmy is relatively left leaning and having those measures in place kind of demonstrates the vibe the instance is trying to create.
Think of Lemmy instances like a Discord server. You are joining a community. You are not joining up to a centralized corporate website. There are many lemmy instances. Shop around. lemmy.ml are Marxist-Leninist. It's what the .ml stands for. If that's not for you, find another instance.
The OP is trolling.
Looks
Fuck me. It's real. I'm at a lost of words...WTF.
EDIT You can't escape censorship on Lemmy. If you run your own server with full Free Speech. You will have instances blocking you. Welcome to the modern Internet.
You are free to self select a commune.... Oops I mean a instance of lemmy that best reflects your values.
lemmy.ml has earned itself a pretty bad reputation, although there are instances that are worse. They keep things clean enough to not get defederated, but you're not really in sane company on there.
Lemmy.world has earned itself a pretty bad reputation, although there are instances that are worse. They keep things clean enough to not get defederated, but you're not really in good company on there.
Ikr? I'm honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out
hahahahahahahahahaaaaa
you're fucking kidding me
A few corrections regarding your misconceptions of Communist theory, for anyone scrolling by but unfamiliar with Marxism:
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.
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."
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Sure is great to cherry pick and remove any and all context! All I did was add context to the nonsense you spouted.
Mmhmm
Edit: Oh look, the mods removed the photo evidence of their users calling for violence. Wonder why, anyway it's over on meanwhileongrad where they can't do shit about it. Tough break.
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 ![email protected]. 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?"
Hmmm, it seems that trolls have invaded AskLemmy.
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.
Because dessalines is legit in competition for the most cringe person on the internet.
That's an interesting description of lemmy.ml
I'll just say that hiding not only the instance, but also any comments from any user registered with that instance has made my Lemmy experience about 1000 times better.
Edit: oh shit I'm thinking lemmyGRAD.ml lol