Hello World,
Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.
Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.
At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.
As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one’s stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.
We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.
Thank you,
The Lemmy.World Team
Lemmmygrad supposedly is for people who support communism, but when talking to them, they really are supporting totalitarian countries which have nothing to do with communism.
It’s amazing what some state-sponsored troll farms can convince people of. Some people can’t evaluate content they see online critically and gobble up the propaganda
The tactics and attitudes definitely make me think of that. It seems like the same people who showed up and fucked up a bunch of subs on reddit 6-7 years ago, like how conspiracy went from discussing things like UFOs and MK ULTRA to conservative political conspiracy theories and opposing the Democratic Party and politicians.
Are you saying MK ULTRA is just a conspiracy theory and never happened? I’ve watched documentaries on PBS, BBC and the History Channel. Clearly the program existed, as for what clandestine operations it ran, that’s certainly loaded with conspiracy theories.
If everything is a conspiracy theory, nothing is a conspiracy theory.
https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/history-of-mk-ultra
No, I didn’t intend any meaning like that. I just said it was the sort of thing discussed on the sub prior to a bunch of bullshit.
The bit that really irked me was that it was purely performative. It seemed like literally the exact same community that populated the_donald with memes and Trump train bots and the photoshopping of Trump’s pic onto Rambo. Their posts have fuck all to do with communism just like the trump posts had nothing to do with conservative politics. It was just edge faux-outrage and basically taking an opposite position for its own sake. They could simultaneously criticize Gov Newsom for not signing a trans rights bill while praising Putin who is doing his level best to make being gay illegal. It’s a mistake to see it as political discourse when it’s really just trolling. Like on the_donald, they egg each other on and have their in jokes and memes (in both the picture sense and in the actual meme sense) about walls the same way the trumpers did with helicopters.
Defederation is the best response imo.
It is funny to mention Trump around tankies and watch their heads explode. They can’t pretend Trump is a communist, but their propaganda masters don’t want them to turn against the Republicans, so they’re just in this weird space where the only thing they can do is aggressively avoid the topic at all.
hexbear had an entire thread with hundreds of comments where they all agreed they hated trump and viewed him as an odious fascist
https://lemmy.ml/post/4040923?scrollToComments=true
The closest thing you find to support for trump in there is some of them thinking he is a less effective imperialist.
I’ve seen them actively celebrate that they don’t suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome” like liberals (supposedly) do. The longer you watch them, the more pro-fascism you see slip through
I’ll clear that one up since everyone here seems to be boldly making inaccurate claims. They say that because media outlets and people will spend more time analyzing and critiquing Trump eating McDonalds or typing covfefe than the US, say, drone striking innocent Afghani people or the utter shit show that Libya has become due partially to the efforts of Clinton and Obama.
You could have just sait it’s whataboutism.
Don’t forget the classical “liberals are the real fascist allies”
Liberalism birthed capitalism, the greatest hierarchical economic system this world has ever seen. It supports and feeds capitalism with its cult of individuality, a reverence of wealth and power, and its almost dogmatic need for competition in order to sort the best from the worst.
Fascism is a logical extension of this. All it does is shrink the in-group and expand the out-group.
Nazism was basically just liberalism taken to its conclusion. Rich people get to live in comfort as poor people die in a mass genocide.
Uhhhh. No. That’s not how it went at all. Rich Jews did not get to live in comfort, they had their wealth stolen and were killed all the same. Nazism was ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, and purging society of the “unideal”, rich or poor. The only German Jews who I think could get amnesty were those who fought for Germany in WW1 – soldiers do not tend to be rich, and their families were not extended the same amnesty, from what I recall. Otto Frank had military service but it did not save his family.
It’s rather disgusting to ignore the antisemitism and homophobia that led to genocides and reduce it to only economics.
The anti-semitism was populism, an attempt to steer the public to support them by repeating their own beliefs back at them. Germany was already heavily anti-semitic. Nazism was a colonial project, literally copying and pasting the US conquest of the West to Europe.
The nazis rose to power because they were backed by capitalists and the German establishment, and the reason they were backed was that they helped suppress a resurgent socialist movement in Germany and redirect the frustration of the german middle class toward scapegoated minorities and away from capitalists. Nazis co-opted socialist language and messaging, but were staunch capitalists and class-collaborationists who carried out mass privatization and crushed labor organizing.
I don’t think you’re really considering that liberalism does a lot of the same shit, only their targets are different groups which you don’t consider because it makes you feel uncomfortable.
I’ve actually once seen a tankie scream something about how the “imperial coreTM” (America) allows gay marriage, codifying Obergefell into law last year just in case SCOTUS and some red-state AG decide it needs to go and make a serious attempt at it. Some of them actually do think it’s “capitalistic degeneracy”
Whenever communists or socialists gather, the tankies take over.
It’s been like that since the past 100 years.
I’m not even sure they’re really tankies anymore (or the meaning of the word is changing). Actual tankies still ostensibly support communism, but all too often, it’s blatantly apparent that they’re actually right-wing totalitarians cosplaying.
They’re tankies in the original sense. The word came from an incident where there was an actual honest to god socialist movement when workers were seizing the means of production, and “communist” Russia sent literal tanks to shut it down. A reporter happened to observe the whole thing in person and tried to write up the story, but his editors would only print the official U.N. statement that the tanks were stopping a fascist movement.
Thanks I’ve been wondering where the term originated
Yep, it’s easy to bait them too. You make a post or comment calling out tankies for supporting authoritarianism, and out of the woodwork scurry all the “socialists and communists” to downvote you.
Thing is, a real socialist or communist hates authoritarianism too.
[Looks around nervously]
Aren’t we gathering here too? This defederation seems like tankies not taking over.
Anecdotally I was in a bunch of actual leftist subreddits; I only departed because capitalists enshittified the whole website.
Maybe you just didn’t recognize it. Reddit leftist spaces were famously led by tankie mods.
Yup, you would call out their BS and you get banned. The system was perfect and no one is allowed to fully criticize it.
Aww, they’re just not doing “the right kind” of communism I guess?
Show me communism that doesn’t end in genocide and totalitarian state leadership, I’ll wait.
The biggest problem with communism is not the socialism, it is the totalitarism that is required for it to function. And that’s the part that kills people.
Now that Russia and China aren’t even communist, it clearly shows what they are truly after.
I think that’s the point: communism had good intentions but always ended up in totalitarianism.
Good riddance
They can have their little hate fest in private now! I think they wanted that anyways.
They do it to so many smaller forums too. I saw an old board I used to frequent for game faqs and questions turned into one, under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.
It’s crazy to watch one user create a wannabe cult, user shame everyone and constantly move goalposts with straw men bs. Meanwhile, they had moderators discussing in Discord chats who to drive insane next and pick on. Not to mention using a serious issue as means to divide people that frequent the site by having over 30+ accounts to pad the numbers that agree with their views in topics.
It’s scary how far they go these days, especially considering the site was relatively respected around Y2K era, and now it’s full of republicans pretending to be trans and liberal for a psychotic gimmick.
under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.
The “trans rights to tankie” pipeline is just as weird as the “hippie to fascist” pipeline. I saw a lot of it on Blahaj.
Yeah glad to see those fucks go. There’s been an awful lot of bad takes filling up content sections on certain topics, every time I checked who had posted it it was almost always a lemmygrad user.
What kind of bad takes?
Agree
I honestly don’t get the big deal about defederation.
Free speech doesn’t really seem achievable on social media because bad actors will always manipulate votes to ensure that some opinions are promoted more than others.
For example, the opinions of lemmygrad should probably consume ~1% of the total informed opinion “pie chart” if you will. They can be adequately represented by some idiot posting their opinion in a thread once in a while - yet here we are. Their bizarre takes are sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
Surely there’s a better way to ensure that all opinions on a given matter can be considered rather than just saying we must allow our streets to be overrun with zombies lest we forget they exist.
The lemmygrad users think the same
Good for all 19 of them
You mean they’re sharing the same brain cell?
I just gotta say, the moderation here makes me so happy I joined this instance.
Same! I moved over from lemmy.one, and was re-creating my block lists when I discovered that lemmy.world had already defederated from hexbear. So that saved me like 40 blocklist entries right there! Good job, admins!
This is an admin thing, some mods are still all over the place on this instance.
Do you have any examples?
!world
From the sidebar:
While not required, consider including the article’s mediabiasfactcheck.com/ link.
Then you find a top post removed with the reason of mediabiasfactcheck, for a source with no fact check fails and a slight “center right” orientation.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
Meaning: no rules.
Not sure who redacted that, but it allows any arbitrary decision.
!politicalmemes
From the sidebar, rule 2:
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.A lot of comments removed with a reason of “rule 2”, even when including multiple links to support the claims made. After I got one of those, I tried replying to some comments by providing sources for the claims they made, while citing the rule. My comments were left alone, the parent comments got deleted for reason “rule 2”. At no point any mod actually asked to provide sources, clearly didn’t check the ones provided.
Personally, I’ve left (blocked) that whole community.
I get mod overload, I get different communities with different rules, but these handwavy approaches that allow misapplication of one’s own rules, don’t lead to anything good.
Then you find a top post removed with the reason of mediabiasfactcheck, for a source with no fact check fails and a slight “center right” orientation.
If I look through the modlog, I don’t see the particular post you mention, could you maybe elaborate on which post you mean?
Meaning: no rules. Not sure who redacted that, but it allows any arbitrary decision.
I disagree with the statements that that means “No rules”, it just means that sometimes a technical rule violation doesn’t warrant a removal of a post. There is no world in which rules are perfectly complete for every edge case and no “arbitrary” decision ever need to be made.
A lot of comments removed with a reason of “rule 2”, even when including multiple links to support the claims made. After I got one of those, I tried replying to some comments by providing sources for the claims they made, while citing the rule. My comments were left alone, the parent comments got deleted for reason “rule 2”. At no point any mod actually asked to provide sources, clearly didn’t check the ones provided.
I’m actually a mod for politicalMemes. If I look through the modlog, I don’t see many instances of comments / posts being removed for rule 2. So could you please specify which removals you are referring to?
If I look through the modlog, I don’t see the particular post you mention
Yeah… I’ve been looking through the modlog, and can’t find neither that, nor the politicalmemes ones. I think it was about a week or two ago, so it’s not easy to parse (or maybe I’m doing it wrong).
just means that sometimes a technical rule violation doesn’t warrant a removal of a post
If it’s supposed to mean that, why not just write that? Or, instead of “rules”, maybe call it “guidelines”, if they’re supposed to be interpreted on a case by case basis.
I think it is pretty clear that the case-by-case statement means that there is some flexibility in the rules. But I will consult with the other moderators of politicalMemes to see if they think changing is necessary.
bro im a leftist and i dont understand
how people who dont live in the Levant
need to comment on these local issues
Why shouldn’t people comment on international affairs?
-
It seems reasonable to condemn both terrorism and genocide.
-
The current landscape is a product of foreign parties drawing the map.
-
The US props up Israel, who in turn have propped up Hamas to justify their treatment of Palestine.
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The bulk of the middle east has some stake in this issue for one reason or another.
-
Because people who don’t live in the Levant caused these issues 80 years ago, and actively fund it today
I don’t understand
Why people need
Huge line breaks
Between each statement
I think this is for the best, there are some seriously disturbed people posting on Lemmygrad. I saw comments cheering on and celebrating the Hamas attack and talking about how they hoped the people who were kidnapped get tortured. Whatever your politics, that is super fucked up and not “legitimate discourse”.
Nothing of value has been lost
Addition by subtraction
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I understand that they are staunchly pro-communist and also take a pro-Palestine, including some of them (many of them?) a more clearly pro-Hamas stance. And that all of this could annoy many of the centrist liberals that seem to dominate here. But from perusing the lemmygrad link I do not see clear signs of hate speech, certainly not a clear hate speech agenda as you would see with some hate groups. And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.
There may be more to it, I don’t know, but personally I wouldn’t like lemmy.world, an otherwise fine instance by all means, to become a centrist liberal silo where no other opinion outside (mostly US-centric) liberal orthodoxy is heard. So yeah, not convinced that this was the right decision, basically because of a lack of evidence.
Lost all respect for lemmygrad when they deleted a comment i made about voting for the lesser of 2 evils being the correct course of action to advance the interests of the Prolitariat in the United States. They care more about larping as revolutionaries than enacting change that actually helps the Working Class.
Lemmygrad is a cesspool of pseudo intellectual unemployed neckbeards complaining about how oppressed they are under the yoke of capitalism, from their mother’s basement in Wisconsin.
Good riddance to it.
You guys were still federated with Lemmygrad this long?
Most of their communities were blocked since months, that’s why you didn’t see much of them.
I’m just surprised overall because most other major instances defederated from them weeks or months ago, along with Hexbear and/or Exploding Heads. .ca has been defederated with those probably for at least two months now.
The administration of this Instance has a moderate lean towards not defederating in general, they have to be pushed in general. I would describe LW as a free speech leaning Instance, within the Lemmy environment.
Naturally the topic is very divisive overall and tends to draw heated arguments no matter what position is taken. Free speech absolutists find it downright draconian. I imagine being on Beehaw for longer than five minutes might reduce them to ash, I’m not sure.
LW has some communities which are quite non-freespeech, with rules like “we can remove and ban anything against the rules or not” (see !world), and some which use their rules arbitrarily as excuses for removing content that doesn’t match their ideology (see !politicalmemes).
The administration of this Instance has a moderate lean towards not defederating in general, they have to be pushed in general. I would describe LW as a free speech leaning Instance, within the Lemmy environment.
lol not even close, lw is one of the most defederation trigger-happy instances out there, with only dbzer0, lemmy.blahaj.zone, and a few others having more. You just don’t see lw announcing them. Even lemmy.ml has less defederations than lw.
All you need to do to get banned from lw is to piss of an admin enough over the mildest shit to be a ban-on-sight.
You know, based on your username I think you might be just a little bit biased
We even know exactly who they are :) Well, were. This account got banned too!
deleted by creator
Removed by mod
So, how does it work if I’m on lemm.ee? Is this defederation global?
No its only for the instance. Lemmy.ee is still federated with lemmygrad.
Oh, bummer
Is the admin Armenian!?
The phrasing of “an increase in hate speech and calls to violence” suggests that there is a tolerable level of those.
A tolerable level we can handle by moderation. And when even the admins join in it becomes clear there is a big incompatibility and cultural difference.
But you probably meant something else, right?
No, that makes sense.
;)
😉
Not it doesn’t, it suggests there’s a finite amount of volunteer moderator time. Don’t be a troll.
I’m pro voilence against people who block grocery store entrances because they figured that was the best place to chat with someone they ran into… so yes.
People going slow in the fast lane on the freeway
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Can’t forget those whom text at the theater
Escalefters 🤬
I took it to mean “it has increased to the point we can’t deal with it all”
It’s more a question of if you want do deal with it at all. :)
Well there are going to be assholes everywhere but I guess if that instance’s admins/mods aren’t doing their jobs of moderating their users then it makes sense to defederate so the burden doesn’t fall on all other instance’s mods.
The world isn’t black and white like your comment is suggesting.
I’m wondering if you’re trolling or just ignorant. I’ll do you the respect of assuming ignorance.
There will always be hate speech in any forum. Period. This cannot be stopped short of closing the forum down entirely. If, however, the hate speech is low volume, it can be dealt with individually with post deletion, user bans, community deletions, etc. Standard “tactical” moderation techniques.
But…
Shitholes like lemmygrad.ml release a veritable flood of hate speech, as do their right-wing “Freeze Peach!” equivalents. Individual, tactical moderation does not scale to that level without a whole lot more money than a hobbyist-run instance can bring to bear. Thus if hate speech and calls for violence reach the point where tactical moderation can no longer keep up, you start with the strategic moderation. In older-style forums that might be an IP ban. In the Fediverse it’s defederation.
See how that works?
Now please, prove to me you’re not trolling and simply didn’t understand how things work.
Yes, there is.
Example:
“I hate fascists and they deserve to get punched in the face.”
Free speech is important. Every opinion should be heard and considered. However, your freedom ends when it crosses over someone else’s. Good riddance, i had blocked most of lemmygrad’s communities anyways, since all they did was spread propaganda and hate.
Love the mod team (being ex-reddit, never thought I’d say that), the transparency and clarity of their communication with the community is great!
About time.
Tolerating intolerance will only lead to intolerance.
Tankies mad
“Cowards” lol
They literally just ban you if you start to pick apart their bullshit opinions.
Proudly banned from !GenZedong@lemmygrad.ml
Oh hey me too! High five!
we should make t-shirts
When you’re called a coward you know it’s a W because it just means you don’t want to be dragged down to their level
tankies gonna tank
beautiful
Before I saw lemmygrad: wtf are we doing?
After I saw lemmygrad: glad we defederate…
There was a lot of it.
Like a lot.
Okay, you didn’t have to put so much mustard on it.
