Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
This whole lemmy tankie dev thing has been discussed ad nauseam here for the past year or so. Not sure what solutions you suggest, but if I were to filter my software by who’s an asshole dev and who’s not, that list will end up really short.
As far as the ml instance goes, I don’t agree that we should start defederating left and right with any and all undesirables, but to each their own. At least people now will be in the know, and it might take some weight off lemmy.world
It’s the Vampire Castle phenomenon of online leftist spaces. One dev and instance admin of Lemmy has problematic personal beliefs, so now we aren’t allowed to be on Lemmy anymore because it’s failed an ideological purity test that OP decided for the rest of us. In other news, Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, is a hardcore Ayn Rand style freemarket libertarian, so I guess we should all ditch wikipedia and each buy a 400 pound Encyclopedia Britannica set. Because that’ll show him to believe things I think are terrible.
It’s all so melodramatic. I’ll take a jaunt into the comments sections of these posts once in awhile to see what the libs are clutching their pearls over now. Today we have:
Oh nooooo, a dev is a ban happy shithead! How unusual and extreme! Better raise the banner and gather the troops, the tankies are coming for us all! We must defederate and/or fork a parallel Lemmy because only tankies have weird ban happy power trips! This will solve all the issues!
On the bright side, block op and the surprisingly small number of the other more vocal tankie drama lords and it gets a lot quieter.
I got a 14 day instance ban for calling a tankie a tankie on ML. Their authoritarian ideology is dangerous and it needs to be quarantined.
You are more than welcome to block any and all content from that instance. You can do this by going under your user settings and clicking on the “Blocks” tab and searching for lemmy.ml in the Block Instance section. That’s the thing about Federated content. You have the power to selectively engage with the content of your choosing. You don’t get to quarantine others because there is no centralized authority that gets to say “your instance gets stuck in an internet ghetto where it isn’t allowed to interact with other users.” You have to quarantine yourself by excluding content. If that doesn’t work for you, then maybe it’s less that you dislike their authoritarian ideology and more that it isn’t the same flavor as your own.
I blocked ML months ago. I’m still going to keep calling for large instances to defederate, because sticking my fingers in my ears doesn’t make the problem go away.
Yes, that will happen when the “problem” lives solely between your ears.
Yeah, I honestly give very few shits about the political opinions of the lemmy devs as long as it doesn’t taint the project itself -and if it did at some point in the future, forking an open-source project is stupidly easy.
I even donate a smidge of money to the development effort via librepay - man does need it to live after all.
Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.
Dessalines & Nutomic put a lot of effort into building and maintaining the lemmy codebase. I respect that.
I’ll add that they’re also generally quite pleasant when I see them on Lemmy. And I haven’t seen either of them involved in being ban-happy. Some will argue otherwise based upon misconstruing the relationship between FLOSS devs and FLOSS consumers as a business/customer relationship (expecting customer service and product manager input on software that’s donated free of charge). But, I think that those folks are just not yet familiar with how FLOSS development works.
I’ve only been on Lemmy a month, and this shit is already exhausting. Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users? Why is this even an ongoing topic that spans multiple communities?
OP wants to feel like a saviour of us all from tankies.
Isn’t a main point of this whole fediverse thing that you can just block entire instances as well as users?
You can do exactly that. OP wants everyone to do it.
I’m new here, so pardon my lack of understanding. But if this lemmy_.ml place is engaging in such disagreed upon behavior by so many people, why hasn’t it been banned so I’m not even seeing it in the first place? I’ve recently learned there are whole lemmy servers ignored or banned by most other civil lemmy servers due to their bad behavior, why not ml?
If this really has been going on for over a year, and so many communities are against it, why is it not banned?
Please bear in mind that I’m a lemmy.ml user (though not a tankie, nor marxist, nor even socialist.)
Look at OP. How many lines are about smearing someone for their politics and beliefs (Even the subject line covers ONLY that), and how many are about the need to improve moderation practices at .ml (precious few, not even the subject line).
IMO that’s one reason. The discussion rarely ends up being about moderation practices even when that’s the stated goal. It ends up being about not liking someone’s views.
The other reasons - you can personally block that instance if you choose, but for it to be hidden from EVERYONE on an instance, the admins of the instances need to make that decision. (To defederate.) There are lots of potential reasons not to do so, and I think many of them boil down to not throwing out the baby with the bathwater since there are plenty of users on ml like me who are not tankies and are just having the same discussions we’d have anywhere.
I got a 3 day ban from one single community at .ml within my first couple days here for using the term “whataboutism” - I suspect it was an automod action. I wasn’t really happy about it, but eh? shrug
I have the same answer for folks now that I did when social media was somehow full of US conservatives claiming they could no longer speak their minds on social media. No one is obligated to give me or you or anyone a platform. If Lemmy.ml is that much of a shithole, it will eventually get defederated broadly, and everyone who isn’t a tankie will stop using it.
The occasional thread like this, or someone complaining that my opinion is invalid because I’m an ml user (has happened maybe three times) are the only times I ever think about it really.
As a fellow communist, I was always bewildered by this urge of many tankies to prove by all means, against any evidence, that China is socialist and ultimately good.
It’s neither. China turned to markets, privatized many industries, and really did commit atrocities on Tiannamen square and in Xinjiang.
Doesn’t mean socialism as a system is dysfunctional. United States are directly responsible for insane atrocities all over the world, and we don’t need to deny that either.
We need to learn from the experience and strive for it not to happen again. Not close our eyes, scream “blah-blah-blah” and pretend it never happened.
China and the Soviet Union were responsible for acts of genocide, mass murdering/starving people, etc.
Doesn’t mean this didn’t happen in a capitalist world, and doesn’t mean we should close our eyes on that to defend the good look of the system. If anything, this does the opposite. Problems need to be solved, not ignored.
I had my first ever comment, in decades of forums/reddit usage, get mod deleted because I was critical of China and the USSR. It was a fairly mild criticism. That action turned me off the whole instance.
They learn from who they are worshipping. Exactly how the CCP control the narratives.
They learn from who
they are worshippingpays them and might disappear them if they say the wrong thing.
Your apparent antagonism towards the lead Lemmy developer is sensationalist and non-constructive. If you dislike their moderation then the solution is simple: leave their instances and communities. If your user does not reside on their instances then its admins cannot silence you. If you do not participate in their communities, then their moderators cannot silence you. If you do not wish to see their users then block their instances (though, I would still advise against this). Your argument is founded upon the premise that you don’t like their opinions, so just don’t listen. Don’t taint the Lemmyverse’s image with your false alarmism. Be the change that you wish to see. Start an instance with administrative rules that you think are better. Start a community with moderation rules that you think are better. If one finds that they are needing to resort to ad-homenim to gather support, then I would advise one to critically analyze their position and arguments.
EDIT (2024-06-07T19:25Z): From your other comments in this thread I see that you are advocating for the creation of new communities and for people to individually distance themselves from lemmy.ml, rather than defederation. I agree with this. I still disagree, however, with the approach and tone that you used in your post. I think the same end can and should be achieved without ad-homenim attacks.
Why is criticism never accepted?
Why is it “leave” instead of addressing the issues brought up?
There is no issue with either. I fully support civil criticism and discussion. And I also support users moving to a place where they feel a better sense of community. I think it’s wrong to force people to interact with those that they don’t wish to. This is why the fediverse exists — to remove centralized control over the discourse.
And I also support users moving to a place where they feel a better sense of community.
How about supporting users who want to improve their community instead of finding a new one?
How about supporting users who want to improve their community instead of finding a new one?
I support that as well. My initial point was from the perspective of users not originating from lemmy.ml being annoyed with how lemmy.ml is administrating itself. If the users of lemmy.ml wish to stay to try and improve it, then I fully stand behind them, but, at the same time, I still support lemmy.ml’s autonomy.
Are people on Lemmy.ml advocating to improve their community, or is it just .worlders wanting to change .ml?
It’s likely both. The ratio, however, I’m not sure of.
Are there people that don’t know that Lemmy is developed by Marxists, and their instance is run by Marxists? Thought that was common knowledge, that’s why Lemmy exists in the first place, it was developed along Communist principles.
That’s not quite correct, they are Marxists Leninists, who are the more Authoritarian and reactionary counterparts.
All Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, not all Marxists are Marxist-Leninists.
It’s accurate to describe them as Marxists still.
technically accurate sure, but it implies that all marxists are tankies, which is absolutely not true.
what precisely would be the problem with referring to them by the specific term for what they are?
What separates Marxists from Tankies? I’ve seen dozens of definitions of tankie.
It’s important to recognize that Marxist-Leninists far, far outweigh the number of anti-Lenin Marxists. You don’t have to agree with Lenin to acknowledge that at this point he is almost as relevant to Marxism in a geopolitical context as Marx himself.
oh i see now you’re on lemmy.ml lol, good thing i avoided that endless bad faith argument
What part of that was bad-faith?
Some folk identify the .ml (or the pronouns of hexbear users) and work backwards from there.
Simply: the bad faith was having .ml there in the name. I’ll take him for his word and bet that’s what was meant.
*edit And it isn’t like I haven’t seen wingnuts go “.world eh? More like .nazi!” as well. It is just that whole general vibe with the people who all up and comment about blocking shit.
Plenty of people try Lemmy then promptly leave when they realize it’s run by “Marxists” (i.e. people pretending to Marxists as a facade for spreading CCP propaganda).
it’s run by “Marxists”
Lemmy isn’t run by any one entity. Lemmy is essentially just the protocol that the Lemmyverse is built off of, which itself is an extension of ActivityPub.
You’re right, I knew better but still conflated the Lemmyverse and Lemmy.ml.
You should know /politics and /news ban anyone critical of israel and Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
Then stop posting there.
I have stopped posting there because… they banned me for posting negative things about israel.
Your same argument can be applied to anyone complaining about .ml by the way.
Go find me a post or comment I’ve made in that shithole.
Then come back here and delete your response in humiliation.
This is not about you this is about the argument you are using.
You could type “then stop posting there” as a reply to OP as well. It solves nothing except to create echo chambers.
And I can say the same to you, which I am. Stop posting there if you don’t like it. We’re not talking about OP. We’re talking about you.
No we’re talking about you.
You can stop replying if you don’t like it.
Wow your argument is amazing I am winning every debate with this.
Is that so? How is this about me? I’d LOVE to see you suss this out.
This is true.
Also, some other communities straight up ban you for being in any way critical of NATO/US.
Lemmy.world mods just banned returntoozma from /politics for not posting enough postive news about Biden hahaha.
Only Orange Man bad.
I would like to see similar proof of this allegation as exists elsewhere in this thread for .ml communities. Can you substantiate your allegations?
It’s not that I don’t believe you necessarily, it’s that it is completely counter to my own experience, where it seems to be commonly accepted that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and likely genocide.
Can you illustrate any comments that have been deleted/users who have been banned for critique of Israel?
Sure thing.
This is what got me a banned for “antisemitism” on /news. Because factually stating that israelis are Europeans that colonized Palestine is actually a hate crime against Jews according to the /news mods.
“To be fair, Israelis are extremely European. In fact 75 years ago they mostly lived in Europe. They should consider going back. The problem here is that Putin was banned two years ago for war crimes and israel is not while it is committing a massive Genocide.”
Don’t look up Netanyahu’s real name that’s antisemitic.
I have also been banned multiple times before on those communities for stating the fact that there is zero evidence that Hamas raped anyone on October 7, one of israels biggest lies that has been heavily debunked by now. But this too is not allowed because israeli lies are not allowed to be debunked until at least 6 months years after israel is done using them as propaganda to commit Genocide with.
And returntoozma, a well known poster that frequenntly posts pro-Palestine articles who is not too happy with Joe Biden being complicit in Genocide, just got banned from /politics for too many negative posts about Joe Biden.
Can you tell me the time of your interaction happened so I can look it up in the mod logs, and the thread itself? Your comment seems fairly innocuous to me, and I would certainly be surprised to see that it is viewed as a hate crime.
EDIT: I can’t see that return2ozma was actually banned in the mod log.
Returnoozma posts the same stories over and over again, to as many subs as possible, and with a clear agenda that doesn’t seem to extend much past “Biden is bad.” They have also been called out for it repeatedly by the users there, and I have personally asked them to tone down the reposts. But it’s not as if they have their content constantly removed. It was overwhelming.
If a community asks a user to ease up on posting the same content over and over, with a clear agenda, which seemed to be the case with oozma, then a ban seems appropriate.
Not sure how to link the thread. This should be the comment but it is removed
Ozma should have gotten banned for spamming in that case, but the explanation posted publicly on /politics says “posted too many negative things about Biden”, not “spamming”
I think that comment removal was out of line, but I don’t think many comments should be removed at all. However it doesn’t look as if you have been banned from any other subs across .world, have you? That’s a large part of the discussion happening here.
I just read the announcement about his ban. It’s strange I couldn’t find it in the mod logs when I looked. However, their explanations are pretty well articulated, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make a user who overwhelms a forum with a clear agenda take a break.
I was banned from /politics for 30 days for debunking israeli rape propaganda. That ban expired recently. Only worldnews is not in the gripes of Zionist censorship (of the three big news communities.)
They did not ban ozma for spamming but supposedly for propaganda.
I’m not sure what you debunked, but based on our short interaction here you seem to deny that there is any evidence of sexual assault. Which is not true: there’s plenty of evidence, which I have you in another of my responses.
What is true is that some of the reports of rape were untrue. Read the AP news article I linked, where they interview some of the people who actually made those initial reports and reconsidered them.
I think it’s ok to acknowledge that both Hamas and the Israeli government have committed atrocities, and keep doing it. I can condemn both.
Getting back to the point of the OP here, though: there are plenty of examples of Israel being criticized, that have survived moderation.
I don’t know that I agree with the decision to ban ozma, but it does seem like it was at least openly discussed, and it doesn’t appear as if he was also banned from completely unrelated subs for his actions.
Which, again, is a huge crux of the OP that you seem to be avoiding.
Also, here’s a UN report that may interest you:
“Reasonable Grounds to Believe Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Occurred in Israel During 7 October Attacks, Senior UN Official Tells Security Council”
https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15621.doc.htm
Many of the first stories by Israeli first responders have been illustrated to be false, however that doesn’t mean no sexual assaults happened: https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-sexual-violence-zaka-ca7905bf9520b1e646f86d72cdf03244
yes the UN which confirms there is zero evidence of rape provided by israel. Consider reading it. The report states that any testimonies do not count as evidence as a UN investigation (which this is not) would have to take place. Israel is blocking the UN rape investigation because of course, there is no evidence of rape.
If legalese is too difficult consider: https://normanfinkelstein.substack.com/p/pramila-pattens-rape-fantasies
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/12016983
That’s my comment, where I replied to you, with a source from the United Nations. I’ll highlight the relevant… title of the page… for you:
“Reasonable Grounds to Believe Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Occurred in Israel During 7 October Attacks, Senior UN Official Tells Security Council”
I also included an APNews article about this very topic, and addresses the ways that disinformation regarding sexual violence in this conflict about. Here’s the headline of that article:
“How 2 debunked accounts of sexual violence on Oct. 7 fueled a global dispute over Israel-Hamas war”
Edit: here is the actual UN report: https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/report/mission-report-official-visit-of-the-office-of-the-srsg-svc-to-israel-and-the-occupied-west-bank-29-january-14-february-2024/20240304-Israel-oWB-CRSV-report.pdf
The report states that any testimonies do not count as evidence as a UN investigation (which this is not) would have to take place. Israel is blocking the UN rape investigation.
AP massively manufactured consent for israel their report is worth nothing as they were spouting those debunked rape lies to begin with.
And it’s certainly not 2 accounts… It’s far more.
And the israeli government claimed on BBC that there were survivors of “khamaaas rape” and that they had video, photo and forensic evidence. All which turned out to be lies.
So you did not read anything I’ve sent you?
I’ve edited my previous comment, and included the actual UN report.
The AP has been targeted by Israel for its coverage of the conflict.
In that article they interview the people who initially reported some of these cases of rape, and illustrate how and why they were wrong. It doesn’t say anywhere that there are no other erroneous reports of rape.
The UN report, which I’ve linked elsewhere, illustrates the evidence and methodology, and makes the convincing argument that sexual assault likely occurred in the context of Oct 7. It’s in plain English.
Known shill Linkerbaan defending Lemmy.ml with a whataboutism. Not very original.
Known
shillneoliberalLinkerbaanfuckingkangaroos defending Lemmy.mlworld witha whataboutism.adhominems Not very original.
Lemmy.world is ran by Zionists.
Do you mean people in favor of the existence of a state of Israel (original meaning) which is most of the Western world, so unsurprising, or in favor of the colonization after the 1993 “two states solution” agreement?
If it’s the later, do you have proof?Most of the western world does not agree that criticism of israels right to existence is illegal or antisemitic.
The world mods permabanned me for clarifying that israelis are as native to Palestine as the Russians are to Crimea.
“To be fair, Israelis are extremely European. In fact 75 years ago they mostly lived in Europe. They should consider going back. The problem here is that Putin was banned two years ago for war crimes and israel is not while it is committing a massive Genocide.”
= Permaban for Anti Semitism.
So you confirm you used the original meaning? Then yes, that’s pretty average Western. You wrote it as if it was some extremist position, but it’s not, hence my question.
They should consider going back.
There’s probably some western countries or political groups that will judge this as being antisemitism because they follow the logic that the existence of Israel is essential to the survival of the Jewish people. This idea was obviously much more consensual after WW2 than today.
There are some groups Zionist lobby like AIPAC that will argue that. I don’t care about those groups. They call every and all criticism of israel antismitic.
There was no mention of Judaism and israel is not a Jewish state to begin with. It is a Zionist state.
This is like Hexbears calling negative things about China Sinophobic.
Only Zionists subscribe to the notion that saying israelis are European colonists is “antisemitic”. And going as far as to ban a user for it is hardcore Zionism. Thus the /news mods are provably Zionists.
Everyone that has been on the Internet for more than a few days has an illinformed hot-take floating around. You can learn something for a perspective even if it’s not based in fact. Read with compassion and you don’t have to believe everything you read.
Indeed, but this is more about admins banning users from the entire instance because they don’t share the same political views.
.world does this all the time though, especially if you criticize Israel or Biden (or other CIA projects)
This would also be deeply problematic. I’ve seen it posted elsewhere, and asked the same thing:
Can you back this assertion up with any proof?
Edit: they can’t, they’re just insulting people with disabilities and don’t like they got called for it.
Yeah, I’ve had comments deleted and have seen others deleted that criticized Israel or that criticized Biden’s support of Israel.
So my own eyes have shown me that this is true. My own eyes have also shown me that .world is run by mods who push an agenda that conforms with the CIAs goals of domestic control over the US population. Which, if I wanted to read that midwit drivel, then I would’ve stayed on Reddit.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
It seems like they have some strong say when it comes to their own instance. According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
I’m only a 1yr Lemming myself, but I never saw such a critique aimed at any other instance, hence why I’m skeptical that the devs don’t have influence over how the software is used.
the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used
According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
That isn’t an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That’s them using their own property as they wish.
It’s more than just that IMO. It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
Yes, you may say that ML is of course free to screw with their own instance, but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances, and 2) they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
What’s the point of leaving oppressive, commercial social media only to run in to the same kinds of abuse of power on a supposedly transparent, user-run, P2P social network?
It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
I’m not convinced that this is in conflict with the aim of federation. The whole point is to give people the power to create their own instances with their own rules instead of having to rely on a single central authority. The network isn’t necessarily distributed — it’s decentralized. An instance can administrate their content as they see fit. An instance cannot alter the content produced by any other instance. An instance can only manage the content originating from itself.
but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances
Would you mind being more specific?
they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
Hm, well, it depends on your perspective. The whole point of the Fediverse is to give people the freedom and power to control how they interact with the service. A server has the freedom to associate with the users that they wish in the same way that you have the freedom to consume what you wish. The spirit of the software is to enable people to have this freedom that otherwise wouldn’t exist with a large central service. The way I like to look at the Fediverse is where each instance is like a country, and each community is like a regional/state/provincial government within the country, and federation between instances is like cross-border policies between nations.
a supposedly transparent […] social network?
I’m not sure what you mean by “transparent”.
a supposedly […] user-run […] social network?
It is user-run, in that any user can create an instance.
a supposedly […] P2P social network?
It’s not P2P. A P2P network would be distributed. The Fediverse is decentralized.
deleted by creator
Dude, this is common fucking knowledge, and nobody cares.
It’s one of those things where the very tankies you’re talking about made it trivial for anyone not wanting to interact with them, their instance, or anyone in specific can just block whatever. And then there’s the instances that defederate from .ml and/or grad, which is a decent amount of them.
They may be assholes (though they tend not to be in interpersonal ways, only in their political views), but they’re assholes nobody has to interact with for very long.
You’re beating a dead horse with this one
I have Lemmy.ml blocked and I still see them in other communities all the time.
If that’s the case, then that may be a bug. I advise you to report that.
It’s standard, unfortunately, I’m not the only one
What do you mean by “it’s standard”? As in that is the intended functionality? It shouldn’t be — the whole point of blocking instances is for the user to be able to, well, block an instance, ie content originating from it no longer shows up.
Yeah, the software is set up so that even if you block an instance you still see comments from their accounts on other instances.
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that topics like this made the rounds in several subs at the same time.
Block the instance if you’ve got a problem.
This community is called YouShouldKnow not YouShouldDoSomethingAboutThis
You have the info and you can care as much or as little as you like
YSK: you will never see more pathetic whining than people on Lemmy constantly complaining about “tankies”. Full disclosure: I have been called a tankie one time in two years on Lemmy. I commented on a post that was basically jerking off to the idea that Japan would repeat its atrocities against China in the event that there was a war over Taiwan. I expressed doubt that it would go very smoothly, for which I was banned and labeled a tankie.
Lemmy.world is like a Trump echo chamber. They keep screaming about their imaginary tankies on .ml but when you go on .ml there’s less tankies than Zionists on .world
