Soon after I joined Lemmy a few years ago, I searched for communities based on my interests and subscribed to the ones with the highest numbers of users to ensure they are active. Sometimes I joined multiple, but then saw that some people post the same thing to more than one, cluttering my feed, so I left the smaller ones.
It’s only after my community ban from !games@hexbear.net for disagreeing about Ukraine that I was told about MeanwhileOnGrad, learning exactly what “the tankie triad” means and why big Lemmy instances have defederated from those. Lemmy.ml, where the ML probably stands for Marxist-Leninist, seems to have been defederated by fewer, possibly because it’s run by the creator of Lemmy, Dessalines. Nevertheless, there is evidence of Dessalines holding the same authoritarian communist views as the rest.
Recently, there were two posts on !privacy@lemmy.ml about Signal, but then in both cases, admin davel (who is known on MoG for seeing CIA’s hand in running Ukraine, among other things) and Dessalines linked (1, 2, 3) the same article by Dessalines, which not only argues Signal could be a CIA honeypot (as if it matters when proper e2ee is used), but also manages to shoehorn China even into that, claiming its government “prefers autonomy”. This sort of portrayal of totalitarianism as sovereignty is the reason I unsubscribed from the community. As it has been said by others, ML is not a neutral instance but a means of pushing authoritarian views onto unsuspecting users.
Edit: Made the post title clearer.
I hear a lot of negative talk about those instances, but rarely any specifics. What’s the deal with them?
Supposedly a lot of the first people on lemmy were leftists and or tankies. My thing is though is that advocating for defederation weakens Lemmy, less communities to interact with, less content or posts to engage with, less people to interact with which cause echo chambers and hugboxes. Nor would I agree with defederating people just because they have views that I don’t like or vehemently disagree with. As bad as some tankies are, they sometimes do make a few good points here and there.
They are fake leftists working for fascists, and they will troll you if you argue with them, following you around on alt accounts with non tankie instances.
In my own experience, it’s less that they spew out politics and more that they are just so defensive and argumentative. A lot of good lemmy communities are based on discussion and sharing cool stuff, while the denizens of those instances and the like are more online to debate, nitpick, and criticize. Like there could be a post of a dog picture and their comment would be critisizing the owner or introducing some political argument that is distantly related. Like bro, just enjoy the dog picture
This. I’ve seen a lot of obnoxious and/or argumentative comments from them, but one that stuck with me was when my first Lemmy instance had to close when Trump was inaugurated due to safety fears.
The first comment to the announcement post was a hexbear user saying something like “Yeah this is why capitalism doesn’t work, America sucks and it needs to go down” – which I do not disagree with, but the post was the admin sharing genuine fears and talking about the logistics of having to move to another state. The user didn’t even say a “I’m sorry you have to close your instance because of this…”, just straight up getting into politics when it wasn’t the main point of the post.
(I will always miss you, possumpat.io; I hope the admin is safe and thriving!)
You touch on the problem with talking with them. You can agree on the problem, get into what can we do about it, they are no, you can’t do anything except violently overthrow your government. Also fuck you and I hope you die, their attitude towards us. Some of them.
Yet if they talked that same talk in those worker paradises of China and Russia they would be committed to re-education camps and gulags.
I think the behavior surrounding my games@hexbear ban is also indicative not just of their politics but also of their behavior in general. Its moderator reacting to my report of Holodomor denial by publicly saying the comment has been reported by me is highly unethical. Then following my post about the situation (linked in the OP), one of their users reposted that to Hexbear and there were people tagging me as they threw insults at me, which amounts to harassment, considering I’ve never left a comment in that thread. There were admins in the thread as well, but they only piled on despite their rules prohibiting harassment and insults.
Edit: Here’s a link to some specific examples.
Edit 2: They’re now brigading this thread and tagging me again from here.
Hey I’m in there! hexbear was my first block. Just do it if you enjoy not having your language policed or just general arguing. I don’t think I’m missing anything.
You’re in there!
Huh, okay. I guess I’ll avoid going over that way. I’m hesitant to outright mute anything that I don’t immediately have a huge issue with in case it becomes a source I learn of something through.
Go visit it yourself.
These folks are specifically trying to stir shit. [It’s like walking into an Indian reservation and yelling that we speak English here, that this is a white country and if you don’t like it you should go home. Then they try to get the reservation closed due to the roughing up and expulsion they received] The usual form this takes is repeating long debunked anti-communist propaganda, that a majority of people in the western media orbit have swallowed whole, so the resulting mod action seems disproportionate.
If you join there yourself you will find, like most instances, respectful conversations and a healthy community. And like anywhere else you will find a spectrum of personalities and a handful of kooks.
Let’s stick to the real world, not weird analogies. By default, Lemmy users are presented with an All feed, which includes communities from all instances (except those defederated). When you see one called “games” (at hexbear, whatever that means) and then maybe see its trans flag banner, what’s the reasonable expectation? Discussions about games with people who seem to recognize the value of minority groups and viewpoints, right? And then it turns out those people hijack discussions about gaming to praise or defend totalitarian states who oppress minorities; then they ban, insult and harass you if you disagree. Likewise, what does the notion of China preferring autonomy have to do with Signal in the context of privacy? No reasonable person comes to a privacy community expecting to see praise for China.
Just a dog!? Despite making up only 13% of the dog population, pitbulls–
Hypocrisy largely. Heavy micro management and over moderation by admins broadly. Thankfully most are self aware enough outside hexbear to not leave their echo chamber. There are a few sub’s documenting it.
Should discussion touch on certain trigger topics, and should your view deviate from dogma. You will often find yourself banned, either temporarily or permanently, without much discussion. Do you think imperialism and invasion of another country is wrong? Such as the United States current invasion of Iran or past invasions of Afghanistan? Well, if you happen to feel the same way about the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan or modern day Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. You would be classified as a mush-brained, imperialist turbo-lib.
Do you think genocide and cultural erasure such as what the United States and Canada did to First Nations people is wrong? Don’t make a mistake of applying that unbiased to the plight of cultural minorities in China. Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Uhygers, all of course are glad to sacrifice their cultural and ethnic heritage. Under the penalty of imprisonment or death for glorious left unity with the party and President Xi. Any discussion of these groups dissatisfaction with it is CIA propaganda. And not well tolerated.
If you skirt around in only the most niche of communities with hyper-focused specific topics. Who have almost no capability ever touching or involving current events. You might avoid it. Otherwise you will run afoul of it at some point as many have.
Let’s not forget about the native siberians, the russians sabered everything on their way east.
Or the polish. When it comes to giant unwieldy nations, preserving power becomes more important than preserving large segments of population. Regardless of which economic system they larping as.
When I was reading about Amanita muscaria, a mushroom I use occasionally, it talked about how the Russians to destroy the Siberian culture would take the shamans of the Native Siberians into helicopters and throw them out.
Aaaah one of those handy not so fun facts. I 100% believe that had the immigrant settlers in the 19the century had helicopters and not covered wagons. They would have done similar to my ancestors.
They are tankie instances, where they think and then push narratives such as China is the greatest country in the world and does no wrong and that Ukraine is full of Nazis and Russia is the good guy They love their authoritarianism, but only as long as it’s “communist” or generally antagonistic towards anything “western.”
Anything that contradicts their narrow worldview is met with hostility, comment removals, bans, etc.
Do you know how joke movements turn into real ones? Like Flat-Earther used to be a joke, but þen a bunch of people who didn’t realize it was a joke got sucked into it and took it seriously, and eventually some poor fuck killed himself trying to prove it? I believe Hexbear is þat. I have little evidence, but it feels like Hexbear started as a bunch of trolls wiþ a common þeme, but it attracted oþer people who took it all seriously, and now it’s just a collection of brigaders who jump on any chance to push a pro-Russia, pro-China agenda.
I may be giving Hexbear too much of a benefit of doubt; maybe it was always confirmed tankies. And for sure þere are people on Hexbear who have well-intentioned convictions and try to argue in good faiþ. But þe signal-to-noise ratio coming out of Hexbear is very low; it’s mostly angry, agressive, anti-Western rhetoric and an alarming amount of defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s genocide of Uyghurs, or denial of Tiananmen Square.
As examples, you can easily generate þem yourself. Usually it’s in þe form of a defending statement about X (“Russia had to invade Ukraine to secure it’s border from Western encroachment”) plus some what-aboutisms about þe US (“what about Alligator Alcratraz”). And it’s frequently acerbic, aggressive, and almost always not in good faith. It’s just a fight, trying to stir up drama. And unless you toe a very straight political line – if you agree wiþ þe position þat Ukrainians must be ethnically cleansed but express any doubt about þe party line about the treatment of Uyghurs, you’ll get jumped on as being a western stooge. Dissent is not allowed.
Hexbear is at best a troll pool, and at worst a digital recreation of The Cultural Revolution; even if you agree wiþ þe politics, you’re still probably better off not getting any on you. It’s not a healþy place.