Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
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Lemmy feels as a aplha/beta product that we ar all testing right now. Nothing wrong with that, in fact, I like Lemmy more then Reddit. But you cannot expect everyone to love it right now.
For Reddit its clear: you sign up, you search for a community and you subscribe.
Here, you sign up (if you don’t get the spinning wheel). You search for a community. Oh, it is on another instance. What is a instance? Then you browse and see different Lemmy websites. You get confused, you heard something about Fediverse but what is it?
Also, there is no karma what important is for many users. Mod tools are extremly limited and all the apps you can use on mobile are in alpha/beta/in development.
There should be a easy to understand welcome page upon sign-up and I think this needs to be prioritized if we want to welcome (more) mainstream users. The post that explains how Lemmy works on c/lemmyworld doesn’t cut it.
Karma is important? The only “use” for it is to do what? users farm it so adding karma or something similar would just make this place worse
- it can be used to differentiate troll accounts from people that make generally liked comments
- it gives users a rush and encourages participation
- it can help with ranking
Now, that said, there are ways to game those things too, but that’s the concept and some of the bigger benefits.
I still receive PMs every once in a while from random people on Reddit thanking me for comments that I’ve posted years ago. Those comments have less than 20 karma combined. I also have a comment saying “Nice.” which contributes nothing and is sitting at almost 3000. Karma is meaningless.
Nice.
Have an internet point
Nice.
A picture of a kitten in the appropriate general forum or a statement agreeing with the general opinion on a top comment on some politcal forum will get many times more Karma than a post on an expert forum that took 30 minutes to validate and write and is anchored on a decade of domain expertise.
Beyond it’s utility (for commercial social media sites) as a gamification element (a score, which incentivises people compete with each other in producing easilly digestible content that pleases the general population in a forum - which, note, doesn’t mean its correct, well researched or anchored in genuine domain knowledge), Karma, at least as done in Reddit, is near useless.
Maybe some kind of per-forum Karma or just a per-forum summary of the reception of past posts for a user might be useful, but “score”-Karma just indicates the ability to produce lots of content (so, produced quickly, hence almost certainly not validated) which is popular in large forums (which are invariably the generic ones).
I like the idea of a karma or score on a per community basis. I’m reminded of the web forms that Reddit replaced; the karma-like systems some of them had worked pretty well.
I’m new and know nothing, but doesn’t not having karma make it less attractive to bots? If there’s nothing to farm…
Bots farmed karma on reddit because mods on some subs tied rights to participation to minimum karma. So bots were sent elsewhere, where mods were more relaxed, and farmed until they reached the target sub’s karma requirement. Then the accounts were sold to advertisers and astroturf campaigns to sway posts or sell up/down votes.
Without karma there’s no incentive to do any of this. I’m sure there are spammers and farmers thinking how to exploit lemmy right now. But just not having karma is a massive advantage. I still think that admins and mods should be able to see some user stat that aggregated bad behavior. Like number of removed posts, removed comments, downvotes, blocks from other users and bans from communities and instances. That way they could decide their actions based on the user reputation, as trolls and spam accounts would accrue a bad reputation really fast, and would encourage users to engage in the moderation process.
True, not having karma is detrimental for advertisers and excellent for users. Let’s hope it never gets introduced.
In the r/CRSRacing2 sub (which I mod, kinda, until I can’t anymore) the karma is used to stop new joiners to ask the standard questions that are answered in the 1st post the get to see… (pinned)
But that’s about the only use I can think of. (other then useless bragging rights)
Yeah but this could be solved with a slightly more complex bot that tries to determine if a post is a question from the FAQ instead of just blocking new users.
I’m not a karma whore, otherwise I would not post on Lemmy. But when you post something and you see that people agree with it is nice to see. I do not see the problem with karma.
I think there’s a difference between upvotes and karma. Seeing upvotes on a particular post is nice. Having a score of the sum of all your upvotes and having it displayed to everyone is a different matter, in my opinion. I feel like it gets taken as a gauge of the quantity/value of a person’s contributions, when there are low-effort ways of gaining karma, hence the problem some may have.
Its a gamification tactic to keep people addicted to Reddit. It’s definitively not a good thing, in my opinion
This is aggravated on Reddit by karma based moderation, e.g. minimum karma to post. This resulted in bots that repost popular content and / or copy popular comments to farm karma so they can bypass these tools.
Having moderated on Reddit, there’s a good reason for min karma to post. It cuts spam account posting massively.
I have no doubt it used to work, but if you’ve ever browsed /popular or /all, it doesn’t work any more. Bots farm karma for a few weeks, then hits 30 or 40 different communities with the same crypto spam. The bot gets banned, and another takes it place.
I agree!
Doesn’t seeing upvotes on a certain post, as it is now, give you that feeling?
It does. But as I said it is not a really important feature for me. It is ‘nice to see’ but nothing more than that.
User engagement is important, and karma is one way of driving that engagement. Pretending something’s not important from your high horse because you don’t understand it just makes you look like a spez.
gamification does drive engagement, though not necessarily the right kind.
User engagement is important, yes, but since we do not have ad targets here, I think most people are okay with less content as the cost of the overall quality being higher. At least that is my hope.
aa
Nerds rescuing defeat out of the jaws of victory.
Exactly. It’s not a flaw, it’s a litmus test. If someone is not willing to figure it out, then they’re probably not the kind of people most would like to have a conversation with in here.
lol you’re not wrong, having a filter of sorts will keep the zombies out for a while. People forget that Reddit was at its best when it was a smaller website.
To be fair Reddit felt like a beta product for it’s entire lifespan too
yeah I remember the reddit interface being uninuititve, confusing, and really hard to learn when I started out. I just got used to it
I have never cared about reddit karma. According to someone in reply to my saying I’ll be gone July 1, “You have over a million comment karma. You’ll never go, you live here.” Well, all it took was an easy link in Plumbing for me to find and join my fellow Lemmings. I agree it should be an easier and clearer process to join, though!
I have accounts as far back as when Reddit became public and probably millions of karma across them. I eventually started cycling though new accounts every year to leave old baggage behind and get a fresh take on the place.
Karma and accounts are meaningless and karma was a nice way to trick your mind into valuing them way more than you should.
Lemmy feels as a aplha/beta product that we ar all testing right now.
It is an alpha product. That’s why the version number starts with a 0.
I… have a guide in my instances sidebar explaining those concepts to people.
You cant possibly expect people to take on the heavy onus of glancing slightly to the right. /s
You are giving more credit then I normally do. I have just started to assume people can’t read at all.
I’d be so mad at you right now if I could read what you wrote.
It needs to be a pop-up and pop-under ad to get their attention, then the close button needs to be tiny and in a different part of the window to really keep their attention, and then it needs to loudly read the text of the window contents to make absolutely sure they’ve gotten the message.
Failing all this the text needs to be animated in an obnoxious way until they put their cursor/finger in the ad space so they really read it in case their audio is muted. /s
Well yeah. I’m sure they had a plan for growth. And I’m also sure Reddit screwed that up. They’re doing their best.
I like the sh.itjust.works lemmy because of the name.
Also, apparently they’re run with 99% renewable energy which is pretty cool.
I actually hate it because of the name. I can’t be the only one.
The name is the reason I picked it. Just for the lulz. And apparently the name was picked by the community, which puts it in the same category as Boaty McBoatface, so I’m not too surprised it’s rather silly.
Yeah, it’s the only issue I have with it. good thing federation means I don’t have to actually go there to see the content haha
in the past 10 minutes i have had so many mixed emotions towards you.
I have come across your comments about 7 times and each time I either feel like fking you up or giving you a hug.
It’s interesting how opinions of different people may differ or align depending on the context. Wars don’t really matter if you think about it this way…
I propose a truce
I propose a truce
meanwhile them, probably:
I don’t even know who you are.
ikr… I’m sitting here developing a love-hate relationship with someone who is completely oblivious of my existence
I feel you! Like seriously! I feel the need to add it as my primary link. I was planning on building my own, just because I can, but now… I don’t know. I am so confused.
Fuck war, it’s hell on Earth.
I’ve seen his comments often too. Kind of wild lol
Dude is a prolific commenter
where am I right now?
Lemmy.world. Which is ONE example of a Lemmy instance. Lemmy instances don’t even need to have Lemmy in the name.
Lemmy is a system that allows anyone to create what is essentially their own Reddit. Each of those are called instances. Lemmy.world is one of those, Lemmy.ml, is another, Beehaw is a third. Each of those Lemmy instances are run by different people for different reasons. Each of them have their own communities. A community is like a subreddit. The post you commented on (“PSA: Lemmy.ml is not Lemmy”) was posted to the “Fediverse” community on Lemmy.world. Lemmy.ml could (and possibly does) have it’s own Fediverse community. That would be separately run with separate content to the Lemmy.world Fediverse community.
Where it gets a little confusing, is that users in each of those different instances, can access and participate in the communities in each other’s instances. IE, if you set up your own Lemmy instance called TimeLighter.IsCool and created a community called “Timelighter appreciation society” I could potentially join that community using my Lemmy.world account (assuming you allowed it.) I wouldn’t need to create an account specifically on the TimeLighter.IsCool Lemmy to access it. If I did though I’d still (in theory) be able to use it to participate in the communities here at Lemmy.world.
Thanks, this is definitely helpful to newcomers I think
This makes much more sense now. Thank you so much!
Do posts in these other communities appear on the all page on lemmy.world?
Yes they do to one degree or another that I’m not certain of. You definitely see all of the local (ie lemmy.world) communities and the communities you’ve subscribed to from other instances on the all tab. I think you actually can see content come up from any community from other instances that lemmy.world is federated with whether you have subscribed to them or not (ie, lemmy.world and that instance both have their settings such that lemmy.world users have access to that instance’s communities. So for example you wont see content from the weird nazi instance because lemmy.world has defederated from them.)
Actually now I’m saying this I think it might be more subtle still. I think all shows everything from lemmy.world plus any community from a federated instance that a lemmy.world user has interacted with.
So if lemmy.world is federated with lemmy.madeup but noone from lemmy.world has interacted with their content yet they wont show up in all but once lemmy.world users have visited !madeup@lemmy.madeup and !catpics@lemmy.madeup then the c/madeup and c/catpics communities from lemmy.madeup would then show up in lemmy.world’s all feed. I’m like 80%+ sure that’s how it works. I’m still learning too!
NB: I will try to revist and clean up this comment once I’m 100% certain of how it works.
I believe only if you subscribe to them in the “Communities” tab and you select “All” on the Instance type
WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!
THAT’S MY PURSE
I DON’T KNOW YOU
You’ll find Bobby, that I don’t have testicles.
¯_(ツ)/¯ vhat are you talking about? vhat are you talking about? ¯_(ツ)/¯
ah just like on reddit the ¯_(ツ)/¯ doesn’t ¯_(ツ)/¯
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\_ I think you dropped this.
why am I right now?
Lemmy.world
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I just had a look at Lemmy’s GitHub. Of the web interface alone, the second biggest contributor only joined two weeks ago. And there are many others. Those are new developers. So in essence: lemmy.ml admins are some of the software developers and are actually now in the minority, unless I missed something very obvious.
This might be a stupid question, so forgive me. Who controls what happens to the actual software? Like, if a hundred great ideas get added to the GitHub, who controls which ones make it into the next version of Lemmy?
Lemmy.ml devs own the repo, it’s just licensed as open source software under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE. You can read the license in the repo files. So you can fork off it and run your own instance. If you go to GitHub.com/LemmyNet you see the two people who are members of the project, with the accounts, both have Fidel Castro avatars.
Personally I think having a bunch of socialists run the software, is by definition the best way to have it avoid corporate interests.
Whoever has permission to merge into the main branch of the code repository would have final say. All pull requests for the lemmy repo are currently public though, so you’d be able to see an abuse of power if one were to happen. More users can also be granted the ability to merge code into the main branch as well, which more than likely will happen with the biggest contributors.
If the main project start doing something stupid, other devs can just fork the project as a new lemmy project with a new kind of government of how codes are merged into the project.
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At the same time though since it’s all open source, if things on the software side get out of control the software can fork.
Exactly my thoughts, similar though process, similar weird cartoon photos. Great minds as they say…
People like this are actually the best ones to have running such a project. For them it’s not just a pet-project to pass time, or a small way to show their skills. It’s a necessary step for them, to be able to keep their online presence.
You’d be surprised at how effective people can be, when they’re doing something out of spite.
Not everything here has to be misconstrued to be done out of spite.
I could be mistaken, but I truly believe that a large part of these forks and communities are about providing an alternative platform where there is opportunity for dogma agnostic discussion and constructive criticism beyond name-calling.
Seriously, if you don’t understand the politics of the lemmy devs, you’re functionally not understanding the point of lemmy. I think people believe in more socialist ideas than they’ve been lead to believe, especially with the rampant conflating of “leftists” in media to mix it with liberals as a tactic from the right. Lemmy is inherently political, and that’s a GOOD thing.
Let’s be honest. In Western Nations. People aren’t taught what socialism is ever. I mean I can only honestly speak for myself and the 1980s. But all we were really taught about as far as socialism is that Commies/ML bad. Which is fair enough. Capitalists are bad too. The problem being that we were never educated in any way shape or form about other left-wing ideologies. We’re to go out to the average person on the street and ask them to describe or define anarchism I can guarantee you. But most of them would have no real sense of the actual ideology and just give you some sort of reply coming down to chaos. Likewise the majority of them have no knowledge of or concept that libertarianism is a left-wing ideology. And has only been recently co-opted by the right wing to do damage in recent history. Almost every single person you ever asked about libertarianism would wrongly describe it as a right-wing ideology. And that is all on purpose. Because it behooves the wealthy to keep us uninformed.
I actually haven’t seen much mention of tankies on any Lemmy except as a joking reference here or there. I’m on lemmy.ml and the signup there said explicitly that it is a free software community. The signup had no particular reference to other politics, though I have no idea what is present in the admins’ minds. There is also lemmygrad.ml which is explicitly socialist.
You are right. I’m on Lemmy.ml because it was advertised as a place to discuss Lemmy (the software) and FOSS in general, and for the most part that’s exactly what I’ve seen here.
I see that the signup page doesn’t even say anything about free software any more.
I’ve seen a bunch on WorldNews (don’t remember from which server) and 196@blajah, although they were quickly kicked out of the latter
What’s a tankie?
If you haven’t seen tankies denying genocide and/or saying the victims brought it on themselves, then, I suspect you haven’t been looking very far in the comments of the news community there, to be fair. There are a lot of posters who will defend Russia, China, Syria etc all day long. All their crimes are apparently made up by “western media”, (as if Jimmy Dore’s basement isn’t in the west.)
Fortunately, they’re getting super buttmad lately at being downvoted so much.
“leftists” nowadays who defend Russia seem extremely pathetic to me. The only thing Russia has in common with leftism is a general dislike for the activities of the United States. But there are many other groups who opposed the US, such as Nazi Germany, which doesn’t necessarily make them your ally. As a Russian-american I can say that a lot of media and discourse on Russia in the west has incredibly poor overall quality, but it’s not a CIA psyop, it’s a combination of American exceptionalism, genuine issues, and zero cultural awareness.
I only see leftists defending Russia here and on Twitter. Internet is littered with those croks. Honestly been thinking in leaving social media as a whole. Would make me saner.
The trick is to curate your feed. Like a podcast? Find a community for that. Have a hobby or a hobby you are thinking of doing? Get some of those. You fill you feed with specific interest you like. If you want to check on news you specifically visit the that feed but you never join it or subscribe and you never look at the comments. Or you just read a newspaper. A proper one. If you want your social media to be fun you cant just doom scroll the r/all or whatever it’s equivalent is called.
I’ve been going through the “de-social media” line. I have friends to tell me the important news and send me memes anyway.
Are comments that criticize Russia, China, Syria, etc being taken down?
Not at all. Had a huge thread on the word tankie and no comments deleted, just up and downvoted.
I know what tankies are. I just haven’t encountered them much and haven’t seen them discussed much on lemmy.ml. They were a running joke in a certain part of reddit which is where I first heard of them. If by “there” you mean lemmygrad, then yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me, but if you’re over there at all, you’re sort of asking for it. I haven’t had occasion to look there much.
no, i meant lemmy dot ml, their news pages.
Hmm ok. I’ve mostly been looking at news on lemmy.world and beehaw.org. There may have been tankie stuff on lemmy.ml that I didn’t see.
I don’t understand why there are so many lemmy news subs anyway. I begin to think this federation thing is just a single signon scheme for a bunch of separate forums. The fragmentation will likely make it impossible to catch up to reddit.
Today I’ve seen a “meme” (It was more of a drawn image) where they laugh about Ukrains committing suicide and portrait it as the right thing to do. That was on Lemmygrad though
Yes. Lemmy.ml is much more reasonable than most things I’ve seen posted on lemmygrad.ml. keep in mind I don’t agree with either of them on overriding political ideology. But lemmygrad is much more in your face unapologetic and trollish about it. As far as lemmy.ml if you don’t go into the specific subs pertaining to those issues you don’t get heavily bombarded by it.
I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, when account migration is delivered, it’ll be easier for people to grasp.
Also I’ll say this to anyone that stumbles across this post before joining Lemmy. Look for a small instance with room to grow as opposed to a massive instance. You’ll find your user experience a lot nicer.
Unfortunately this might not be true. Instances need maintainance. If the one that spun it up doesn’t dedicate time and resources to it your experience might just be worse than average.
In my case I was having all kinds of timeout issues and occasionaly instance went down. Moved to a bigger and more active one and never had issues since.
Oh, you need a good admin for sure.
Is account migration on the roadmap?
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It feels like this is more aimed at outing admins or mod teams that people will disagree with. I have no issue with any other Lemmy instance, because I’m not a member of their instance. The community will have some things to figure out as far as easily relating the nature of instances and the fediverse, which it looks like will take some trial and error.
There’s things users will pick up on just fine, while the main complaint is “too many communities” where people desire a centralized system to replace Reddit with. It’s my personal opinion that people only think they want a centralized system, and given the situation with Reddit, it highlights how beneficial of a concept the Fediverse and Lemmy itself is over a centralized system, but I digress.
Lemmy.ml’s stances on Russia, China, and “tankies” is great…for them. I have no issue with how any other instance is run or what their community prefers for a style of moderation. They are free to run it as they see it. It’s telling that it went from the largest instance to taking a backseat to many others though given the word got out prior to this post, and that’s fine. I won’t begrudge them over their instance’s nature. It just makes me love Lemmy as a whole.
I couldn’t have said it better.
I haven’t seen that much of a problem on Lemmy.ml, so I think you really have to dig down into it to find the dirt. I think some people have a problem with the admins political views, so they try to smear them any chance they can. But those same admin made lemmygrad as a place to kinda keep all that stuff separate from the main instance.
Sure, it seeps over sometimes, but the bulk of the content on lemmy.ml is just standard shit. Reddit was no different. Most subreddits were normal and there were a few ones that were full of imbalanced idiots. That didn’t make people leave the site completely. We just didn’t sub to the subreddits we didn’t like. In a similar vein, just block the communities here that you don’t want to see.
As far as the “too many communities” discussion goes… we’re never going to win that battle. The majority of people out there aren’t willing to make the change to the fediverse because of this one issue. Most likely a true Reddit alternative will be made and most normies will move there in time.
It’s great that Lemmy has gained some popularity, but there are too many issues here for it ever to become as big as something like Reddit.
Just out of curiosity, what did the devs do that was stupid?
The devs hold extreme political views. They are on board with the Tiananmen Square massacre being necessary and shit like that. Like this post says though, there are plenty of instances that are totally run by normal people. Additionally, the Lemmy server code is open source, so that helps to ensure that it isn’t doing anything nefarious behind-the-scenes.
Exactly. My instance is run by a normal guy. I mean, he’s a Chief Information Security Officer and none of those guys are REALLY normal, but still.
Damn, so they’re not only tankies, but the dumbest kind of tankies. If you’re going to simp for authoritarian regimes with red flags, at least don’t defend the ones that are actively privatizing public sectors of the economy and dismantling whatever nominal socialism there actually exists.
Source: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Text:
Here is one of the Lemmy devs denying that the Uyghur genocide in China is happening:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq954mu/
“The Uyghur genocide is as real as white genocide.”
Here they are again denying it:
https://old.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/xq49ct/deleted_by_user/iq951cv/
“The holocaust was a genocide that actually happened, with all the evidence that goes along with it. There is no Uyghur genocide.”
“Do you believe in anything as soon as the word “genocide” gets attached to it? What about “white genocide”? Are you a white genocide denier?”
And just so nobody can deny that parentis_shotgun is a Lemmy dev: -
“I’m one of the devs of Lemmy” https://i.imgur.com/5kp9BP0.png
Direct links to the posts will not work but still exist on the user’s profile page: https://old.reddit.com/user/parentis_shotgun/ - hold PgDn until comments stop loading then Control+F. In fact feel free to peruse their history in general - it’s quite interesting.
One of my favorite posts is their defense of the government of North Korea in /r/AskTankies: https://old.reddit.com/r/asktankies/comments/tb1836/okay_but_dprk_seriously/i04d1wu/
Now ask yourself why would someone who is not a Red Fascist Tankie piece of shit be answering questions on behalf of Tankies in /r/AskTankies while defending a totalitarian regime? Is it… perhaps because they’re in support of such a regime because they are in fact a Tankie piece of shit?
Yeah I’m out of the loop too. Though AFAIK lemmy.ml has always been awfully run instance full of tankies.
The fuck is a tankie?
I don’t think there is a clear and consistent answer to this question. Like asking a conservative what “woke” means, it is used to refer disparagingly to a wide variety of people that a given person doesn’t like.
Every person that I’ve seen describe it says some variation of “they’re fake marxists that support anything that opposes the west, include fascist and violent regimes.” Conservatives use “woke” to refer to anything that opposes christofascist white supremacy, from gay pride parades to a black person appearing in a movie.
I’m pretty far left myself in my way of thinking, and I don’t support some people that I would agree adhere to the description of tankie. There’s a clear definition, even if it is used in a derogatory way. It’s someone who thinks that left ideas should be spread in an authoritarian way. Which, in my opinion, is pretty much the definition of fascism. Power for power’s sake, domination just to say they won. Authoritarian imposition of ideology is antithetical to socialism.
The Marxist-Leninist explanation of the term: https://youtu.be/LcJ5NrJtQ8g?t=24
In case you’re interested in hearing both sides 😉
More details in the link above, here is the introduction:
"My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors."
So, the dev is another /u/spez.
most of the drama has been around beehaw, people don’t like the political affiliations of the main dev… but idk what you’re gunna do about that besides move to kbin witch uses lemmy anyways.
Kbin and Lemmy are both based on ActivityPub, but they don’t use each other.
I don’t think the drama has been only around BeeHaw, the existence of Kbin itself is mostly because of the Lemmy devs being holocaust deniers, believing in “white genocide”, and stuff like that. I also wasn’t convinced at some point until I was pointed at the receipts, see the “Read right here” comment on this post: https://lemmy.world/comment/562635
Am I missing something? They’re specifically saying the opposite of what you said - that the Holocaust happened and that white genocide isn’t real. The statement “Are you a white genocide denier?” is mockery, not an actual inquiry.
They deny communist genocides… The holocaust wasn’t the only genocide…
Oh, right. So, they’re Uyghur genocide deniers. And North Korea supporters too apparently. Which… I mean… isn’t much better.
That part does seem to be true, and yeah, it’s not great. As far as I can tell, though, nothing about their ideology can really affect Lemmy. If it wasn’t open source, or was flooded with ads to monetize it, I would probably be in the anti-lemmy camp. But (so far) that’s not the case, and as long as that remains true, I don’t see much of a problem with the platform as a whole.
Ironically, Lemmy being decentralized like it is is pretty antifascist. Not gonna try to parse out how fascist sympathizers justified that in their world view, but I’m not complaining.
Yeah, I haven’t read to much into the history of the developers, other than a lengthy summary of posts that someone posted a few days ago. But he seems to be strongly anti-censorship, which would have to be a modified form of fascism.
Yeah, that’s fair. I’m staying on Lemmy following the same line of thinking; but I cancelled my monthly donation to them, thinking it would sure be swell if they ran out of money and have to transfer the reins of the project to other people, at which point I’d donate again.
And if they don’t and Lemmy just dies because of the lack of funds because of who they are, I’m thinking it’s not the end of the world either, because there’s Kbin to take over that’s awfully similar anyway.
They’re getting external funding: https://nlnet.nl/project/Lemmy/index.html
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This isn’t just a news story that lasted a few months and then went away.
It’s hard for international news sources to get accurate information of what’s going on in the Xinjiang area thanks to the CCP’s military police controlling the region, but there’s still been a steady drip of information that clearly shows that the Uyghur population are being oppressed and their culture being stamped out.
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/03/intercepted-china-uyghur-muslim-surveillance-police/
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/asia/china-uyghurs-xinjiang-genocide-report-intl-hnk/index.html
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/21/hikvision-leaked-tape-uyghur-/
Why, what’s wrong with lemmy.ml? Can someone eli5 me?
My account actually lives there but I also made a lemmy world one.
In the lead developer’s GitHub, he sympathizes with Marxism including those that committed atrocities.. He apparently censors lemmy.ml with this in mind. Since it is open source though, I can trust that other instances might be better maintained. There is no way I’ll use any personal information in my signup because this all probably is going to China.
my signup because this all probably is going to China.
China is sophisticated enough that it can vacuum up all the information it wants about without any involvement of a Lemmy.lm admin.
Oh the ml in lemmy.ml is Marxist lenonist. That makes a lot of sense actually
You literally just made that up. I’m pretty sure they said at some point that they chose this simply cause its free.
I was wrong, and it was a guess using context clues from the post I was replying too.
I didn’t “make it up”, I was just incorrect.
I just get kinda pissed off at comments like that because I’ve been using lemmy for like 3 years now and they’ve never done something wrong but now there are some people that just say stuff about them that’s not even true. Your comment wasn’t the first like that after all.
That’s the beauty of the fediverse. Don’t like the server? Go somewhere else.
Based
Leninist. Marxist Leninist is largely an oxymoron as Lenin just sort of ignored a lot of core things Marx discussed. Specifically going against many of them. There are many different Marxism derived ideologies that aren’t ML and don’t sympathize or apologize for the atrocities of ML or capitalist regimes. Please don’t lump them all together.
As far as Leninist go. I agree with you 💯% though.
When it comes to physics Einstein has yet to be proven wrong for just about anything. When it came to politics and human nature. Einstein was not known to be any great judge. And even then. That’s feinting praise. Einstein knew how to throw shade.
Ok, firstly you are not smarter than Einstein.
Secondly. What are you on about? He said this in 1929. Lenin had been dead for 5 years already when he said this. Stalin was leader of the USSR and everything about Lenin and the revolutionary years was perfectly well known. Pretending that Einstein was simply unaware of the events that he actually lived through at the time is ridiculous.
Seeing as he died in 55
That’s 31 years after Lenin. Having lived through Weimer Germany as a jewish man, watching and applauding the success of the soviet revolution, seeing the failure of the german revolution after the murder of rosa luxembourg, fleeing to the US, and watching the USSR liberate nazi Germany auschwitz and all the camps of the holocaust that he narrowly avoided being part of himself.
He commented on the US in his later life actually, in December 1947 he stated:
“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life.”
The FBI had a 250 page file on einstein, you can view it here: https://vault.fbi.gov/Albert Einstein
On page 14 the report says:
“Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this “preliminary condition” of world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as Albert Einstein.”
Ok, firstly you are not smarter than Einstein.
Never claimed to be. Cool strawman though.
That’s 31 years after Lenin…
You know basic math? That’s cool too. Specifically made point of refference to the legacy of lenin’s authoritarian ideology and it’s common outcomes. Ie social repression and brutality. Not so much the man himself.
He commented on the US in his later life actually, in December 1947 he stated:
If you’re implying that demostrates he wished he’d gone to Russia. That would be a non sequiter and completely unsupported by the qoute. Though I agree with Einsteins assessment there. The US was after all the base model for much of what became Fascism and Nazism that we’re still waiting for a reckoning for even 100 years later.
“Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this “preliminary condition” of world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as Albert Einstein.”
Hey, you know who wasn’t anarcho communist. Lenin and Stalin! Einstein got it sorted out eventually. Good on him. Double good as I tend towards anarcho communism a bit myself. Posthumous hi-5 with Einstein.
Never claimed to be. Cool strawman though.
You certainly imply it when you do a 🤓 “that’s a little outside his area of expertiseeeee” response.
You know basic math? That’s cool too. Specifically made point of refference to the legacy of lenin’s authoritarian ideology and it’s common outcomes. Ie social repression and brutality. Not so much the man himself.
Lenin’s authoritarian ideology? Have you read ever actually read any Marx? When Marx said “We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.” do you think he was talking about sunshines and rainbows? When he said he wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat.
What do you think Marx meant when he said: “their(socialist) ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” what do you think he meant?
What do you think Marx meant when he said: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
All you are doing here is demonstrating that you have no idea what Marx ever actually said. You are trying to separate the two as if Lenin somehow poisoned the pure magical utopian ideas of Marx when Lenin was exceptionally faithful to him in every single way. All you are doing here is demonstrating that you have not read Marx and nor have you read Lenin, yet you feel fully equipped to commentate on both as if you’re an authority on the matter. Why?
If you’re implying that demostrates he wished he’d gone to Russia. That would be a non sequiter and completely unsupported by the qoute. Though I agree with Einsteins assessment there. The US was after all the base model for much of what became Fascism and Nazism that we’re still waiting for a reckoning for even 100 years later.
I’m not implying it. I’m stating it flatly. Einstein supported and defended the USSR his entire life. The fact of the matter however is that it was simply too late in his life by the time he realised America was not going to become what he wished it would, an old man with his family and network all where he had laid roots couldn’t/wouldn’t just change that a few years before his death and there would be little point to. He outright stated that he saw America as becoming like nazi germany and did not expect that to stop. He was vocally opposed to the US starting the Cold War, persecution and deportation of communists, and he continued to be completely vocal about his opposition to it right up until he died.
I could even quote the multiple times he flatly defends Stalin but I think that’s a bit too spicey to be quite honest and I’m not particularly sure we should bring Stalin into it when this is not about him, it’s about Lenin.
Hey, you know who wasn’t anarcho communist. Lenin and Stalin! Einstein got it sorted out eventually. Good on him. Double good as I tend towards anarcho communism a bit myself. Posthumous hi-5 with Einstein.
Lol I never said the FBI goons knew what they were talking about. I don’t think it is correct to label him an ancom, even his “Why Socialism?” essay clearly demonstrates that he wants a state. This isn’t really that surprising though given that he was a scientist who viewed all the major advances of science throughtout the era as state-led.
In the lead developer’s GitHub, he sympathizes with Marxism
Based
There is no way I’ll use any personal information in my signup because this all probably is going to China.
Typical liberalism red scare fearmongering, lemmy has no ties to China.
In the lead developer’s GitHub, he sympathizes with Marxism including those that committed atrocities …
FTFY
It’s funny which part of the quote you decided to omit. Tankies gonna tank, eh?
For those who haven’t checked - in the linked page dessalines(Lemmy lead dev) recommends books and articles by, among others, Lenin, Stalin & Castro.
I haven’t read those works they mentioned so I can’t say if they defend the atrocities of those regimes (they very well might), but I wouldn’t say suggesting a book about those political ideologies implies you believe the atrocities committed by those regimes were acceptable.
But I’m also totally ready for someone to tell me they do in fact minimize the bad things. As someone born in the American south who was raised with echos of Lost Cause propaganda I’m familiar with folks twisting a horrible truth.
That’s basically one of the common concerns I see, just kind of in addition to the general tankie vibes that are shared by many in lemmy.ml and lemmygrad which are sympathetic to communist regimes that have committed atrocities.
Stalin went too far, sure. We know.
Fidel did nothing wrong. Lenin did what he had to do for the sake of revolution.
It seems to me that community choice in Lemmy is far less important than community choice is in Mastodon. In Mastodon you subscribe to some people or maybe some lists but you’re largely dependent upon what types of local traffic are happening. I couldn’t reliably fill my feed with interesting people in Mastodon. With Lemmy, I’m filling my feed with interesting communities, while the content with a lot of these communities is still kind of light It’s at least enough to keep me relatively interested. I don’t have to rely on the local splarg to keep me entertained.
Maybe a third to a half of my lemmy subscriptions are remote I’ve only blocked a handful of idiots. The experience thus far as better than Reddit honestly.
If you have not been on mastodon lately. I’d suggest a revisit.
As part of my migration to Lemmy I did and found the experience much improved. It way easier to find channels to follow from all various instances.
Now my main focus was on getting good news feed set up - which is pretty mainstream need. So if your needs are more niche it may still be a pain.
I was there last week. I followed the tech news people when they finally made the mass exodus in the wake of twitter. It’s more or less just full of news and my local community theme. The biggest pain is when a guy who posts news I love just boost the crap out of everyone. No, I want to see his articles, not how much he likes that person’s cat pictures.
I prefer lemmy and karma indicators.
The biggest pain is when a guy who posts news I love just boost the crap out of everyone. No, I want to see his articles, not how much he likes that person’s cat pictures.
One of the biggest things I dislike about Twitter, too. I don’t care what these people retweet or whatever. I want to see their posts. It’s a pain in the ass to navigate through a flood of retweets.
Follow hashtags. It’s the easiest way to get a feed going in Mastodon. Now it’s a feature I wish Twitter had.
I followed #cat, #catsofmastodon, and #caturday, and now my Mastodon feed is full of cats!
Canada Turd Day?
They prevent incoming traffic from kbin. Sp, only leach kbin’s contents, but not sharing back.
Some users accused developers as being tankies. Not sure how true this is.
Oh they’re absolutely tankies, dessalines website is crystal clear on that. To me this is simply a test of the fediverse. If it works as intended, the devs political orientation shouldn’t matter. We’ll see.
Are we talking about the devs of Lemmy itself, or people specific to .ml?
.ml is run by the Lemmy devs.
Gotcha. Thanks for clearing that up!
Oh that’s not good. That goes against the spirit of federation. I wonder what their reasons are.
Nobody knows for sure, but my guess is they blocked any request with “Bot” in the header, and blocked the “KbinBot” by accident.
Just a guess though.
Well, how do you feel about the Chinese government and the North Korean one? Good? Hopeful they expand? They do.
Hi friend! I’m not sure how this is possibly related to my question. But thank you anyway.
I think post suggests that lemmy.lm is moderated in way that supports ideology mentioned in the post.
This is what happens when you get your world views from right wing basement dwellers.
No, what happened is much simpler: I checked the biggest (at the time) instance, lemmygrad, and they had a warning about the kind of place that is. Here’s the link https://lemmygrad.ml/post/668436 and one of the top comments, at the time the top one https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/403994
Not a great start isn’t it? So I check the second biggest option, Lemmy.ml and… it looked pretty similar, even if not explicitly so. I did 2 + 2 and went back to reddit knowing that there was no alternative at the end of the month. (A couple days later I read that thousands of people joined and as such diluted things, and here I am)
Then I come here with a little hazy memory and help answer a question… making the mistake of conflating the two instances. Downvotes clearly inform me of the thing, and I just own up my fuck up. Like the saying goes, never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Side note, “Freedom of speech” and “no censorship” are admirable ideals, until you figure out that showing off weapons in protest against things you don’t like is neither of those, and demonizing a whole group of people because of what they are born as is oppression.
OP is annoyed because lemmy.ml devs are left-leaning and don’t encourage bombing muslim countries, killing gays or locking black people in areas abandoned by the government.
They do support Communist China’s repression and ethnic cleaning of Muslim regions.
They’ll shout that somehow the West forced them to do it. And it is all the west or the United States fault. They never accept that they do anything bad.
I feel like for most people who aren’t that into technology the concept of a decentralized network can seem a little overwhelming given most of them are used to social media that is controlled by one company.
As someone of a certain age, this just reminds me of the BBS days. lol
Edit: Without the dial-up, thankfully. ;)
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You want people to understand, yet it seems you enjoy confusing statements???
- Lemmy.ml is not Lemmy
Does this make sense only to you, who understands?
- PSA This is a prostate specific antigen. Thanks for your educational post.
If you want people to understand then use plain English to lower the barrier of entry. Otherwise you’re just going to be going crazy with all the noobs who haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about.
I don’t think that’s particularly confusing. It simply states that Lemmy.ml is just a part of Lemmy, they are not the same thing.
But Electric Cars ARE cars!!!
Then I’d propose ‘Lemmy.ml is ONE OF A NUMBER of instances running on the Lemmy platform’.
As I said, statements are not confusing to people who understand them - but they are confusing for outsiders.
Noobs gotta research a little like they did back in the early 2010s, ever since that stopped happening the quality of discussions went down immensely. I do not oppose a little bit of attitude-based gatekeeping.
If you really care that much about “Authoritarians” and “Tankies”, maybe you should just move to exploding-heads.
I, for one, fully support the explicitly antifascist politics of the core maintainers
Agreed. There is too much false equivalence of “Tankies” and fascists.
Fascists want to enslave your sisters and daughters and stick your trans friends in psych wards until they “decide” to stop being trans. They’re fine with Blacks wallowing in poverty as second-class citizens and having militarized police on every streetcorner.
“Tankies” (Marxist-Leninists) believe in all the same progressive things other (so-called) Socialists do but have different views on historical figures and foreign policy, something that does not matter a bit in the here and now.
Here is the difference between Fascists and “Tankies”: if it was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that China was trying to exterminate the Ughyr people through mass execution, 95% of the “Tankies” out there, myself included, would disown China and denounce the genocide (this will not happen, because it isn’t a genocide except in the broadest and most meaningless of terms). If it was proven beyond a doubt that the Holocaust happened (which it more or less has), the majority of Neo-Nazis would still say it was good.
Saying you’d denounce a genocide you deny is happening isn’t accomplishing what you think it is.
People don’t equate “tankies” with “fascists” because you advocate some sort of marxist-inspired system of governance… it’s because denying the suffering of others when it’s politically convenient is absolutely the opening strategy of the fascist playbook.
Also, “Disown China”??? Nothing wrong with liking other countries but the way you guys talk about them is off putting and doesn’t come across as informed or even remotely unbiased.
Being “unbiased” is not a virtue. I am a Marxist. I judge people, governments, and ideas based off of a Marxist framework. That is my bias.
I give China the benefit of the doubt because they are, at least, claiming to be a Marxist state. This on its own puts them above any non-Marxist state.
Why? I am a socialist democrat and don’t would never support North Korea just because they claim to be a democracy. China is an authoritarian state that does nothing to support socialist ideals.
I give China the benefit of the doubt because they are, at least, claiming to be a Marxist state. This on its own puts them above any non-Marxist state.
This is a spectacularly stupid assertion. Like, we’re talking trumpian levels of idiocy here. Y’all tankies really want to make horseshoe theory a thing.
The communist party has engaged in a huge crackdown on labor unions and workers rights in the last 10 years. Words are just words.
Neither is being biased a sin. It’s when your bias allows you to ignore facts that people stop taking you seriously.
Isn’t claiming to be a Marxist state while still maintaining power within a small group of people (the inner party, a political version of the bourgeois) worse? By effectively being the same power structure, it allows critics to dismiss Marxist ideals as the same or worse. China is a particularly bad case as they disallow proper freedom of speech, basically castrating the proletariat. This harms perception of Marxism, hurting your case in arguing for it
Isn’t claiming to be a Marxist state while still maintaining power within a small group of people (the inner party, a political version of the bourgeois) worse?
The Chinese system isn’t perfect but I think questions like these put the cart before the horse. Is the Chinese system set up in such a way that, if bad actors got their way to the top, they would wield an immense amount of power? Yes, definitely. This question is separate from whether or not the people at the top right now are bad actors. And I think, like in any country, it’s a mixed bag; there are oligarchs and business-industry plants and corrupt officials, but there’s also well-meaning bureaucrats (Xi Jinping broadly fits into this category) and ideologically-driven Marxists.
The idea that Xi Jinping is a power-hungry dictator is an overblown trope. He is a fat, old, boring bureaucrat who got into office because he is an agreeable political moderate; a compromise between the ideological Marxist wing of the party and the pro-business Dengist wing.
As we saw in the Soviet Union, unrestricted Freedom of Speech is the downfall of Marxism. Home-grown Liberals are only the first issue; the United States government spends literally billions of dollars propping up anti-government organizations, whether that’s Uyghur terrorist groups, the Falun Gong, Tibetan Independence movements, or “LGBTQ+ Rights” organizations who always seem to spend more time arguing for political liberalization than they do actual LGBTQ+ Rights (and, before you strawman me, I want to make my point here clear: LGBTQ+ Rights are good, but many such organizations in China are funded by foreign actors in order to disrupt Chinese politics. The bad things about them are not their LGBTQ+ Rights advocacy, but their advocacy for other forms of Liberalization that undermine Communism in China. If an LGBTQ+ Rights organization in China calls for the downfall of the CPC, they do not deserve to exist)
Sorry, but you are exactly the kind of person everyone is talking about being awful.
I dare you, go to Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, where there are much - vastly - greater lgbt rights, freedom of press, freedom of speech, freedom to protest, uncensored internet and media, etc, than in China, and tell anyone passing by this Xi bootlick spiel. Ask them if they’re happy to see how Hong Kong has been treated.
He is far from harmless. He’s an imperialist who, in his own words several times wants to use military force to impose his flag on millions of unwilling people who already have their own democracy.
I think some of the foundations of your arguments are shaky at best.
Xi is a bad actor. He actively removes opponents, like his predecessor, Hu Jintao, who sat right fucking next to him and was publicly removed. Under Xi, China is asserting ownership of international waters in the South China Sea that have historically been either international waters or even owned by smaller nations. Under Xi, the Uyghers’ and Mongolians’ culture is actively being erased by outlawing local religious and cultural customs. I fail to see how any of these active are “agreeable” or “moderate”. Going back to the Marxist theme, Uyghers and Mongolians are of the working class, too. Why should they be persecuted?
Free speech is the downfall of Marxism??? What? Seriously? The Soviet Union didn’t fall because people were complaining. It fell because their systems weren’t economically viable. While many of the domestic programs of the Soviet Union were excellent, the cost due to size versus productive population was prohibitive. Most of the USSR’s land wasn’t economically viable, but they held things together through totalitarianism, which again, isn’t really empowering the workers. Once they let up on the totalitarianism, the cracks started to show. Maybe if the USSR was smaller and had managed their bureaucracy better, they could have succeeded, but that wasn’t the case. It had nothing to do with freedom of speech. And if the workers can’t voice their needs and desires, that’s depriving workers of power, which is the opposite of Marxism. I don’t think there has been a properly Marxist state.
I don’t know where you’re getting your information and history from or what your path is for your reasoning, but it really doesn’t make sense to me
Ughyrs are being genocided rn, but otherwise your points are correct
Based and materialist take
I see this “based” used now and again. Does it mean something special, or do people not know how to spell biased?
I’m not op, but in the spirit of being helpful, “based” was explained to me as “the opposite of cringe” on whatever spectrum those two entities could exist on.
It’s basically equivalent to saying something is legit or insightful
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undefined> If it was proven beyond a doubt that the Holocaust happened (which it more or less has)
“If”…“more or less”… Tankies are Fascists. You’ve made that clear.
stay mad, nerd
That phrase stuck out for me too, and supports my growing suspicion that the majority of people that claim to be marxists are actually just another group of fascist conspiracy theorists. I hope to be proven wrong.
You could literally prove yourself wrong by exercising just a little intellectual curiosity. Marxism is, at its core, an economic theory based on the idea that democracy has as much a place in the workplace and economy as it does in our political system. If that’s fascist to you, you’re unserious.
Now, if you’re just unwilling to correct or criticize your own beliefs, and you want to conflate Marxism with Stalinism and Tankies, you’re better off just saying so.
I joined Lemmy a while ago and I suddenly got exposed to many “tankie” debates going on. Is there a reason this group suddenly became relevant on Lemmy (I mean, from the view of a Reddit migrant)?
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I use “tankie” to refer to the type of people that claim to be Marxist but are actually just anti-West, like the ones that support Russia’s love of genocide simply because Russia is opposing the western world. I’d love to have conversations with actual Marxists, I’ve just become increasingly less sure that they exist.
Honestly a lot of Marxism would absolutely have a lot of criticism of NATO, US, the “west” how they have handled the situation and got us here in the first place. But that doesn’t give Russia a pass for invading a sovereign nation.
Under Marxism this is basically a bullshit neoliberal capitalist power structure vs an oligarchic Imperialist POS.
Ngl you’re going to probably isolate yourself from Marxists by using the label “tankie” since they typically see it as a label used by liberals to put down revolutionary leftists. I can’t speak for all Marxists/ml’s but that’s what I’ve noticed
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Read the comment you’re replying to carefully. He’s not referring to Marxists. He’s referring to pro Russian warmongers / anti wests trolls that wrap themselves in Marxism flag.
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That’s because that’s just Russian propaganda used to justify doing imperialism and conquering Ukraine.
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Wonderful revisionist history you have there. Russia blindly believed they could roll over Ukraine and seize the country in threeweeks, (Russia’s words not mine). They didn’t do a “shock and awe” destruction raid at first because they wanted to steal the land in tact and re-add it to the Russian “empire” that Putlin wants to rebuild. Putin knows he doesn’t have much time left and he wants to rebuild the glorious USSR before he dies. He has made moves towards that for the last 10 years. So far his only real success is the puppet state of Belarus. If it was really about Nazi’s this was the stupidest police action in modern history.
the proxy war in Ukraine
Lmao which proxy war? It’s Russia committing to a full scale invasion of Ukraine and losing. That’s like calling WW2 a proxy war because the soviet union received critical amounts of US aid.
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China is not communist, it’s an authoritarian state doing state capitalism and performing ethnic cleansing/genocide. It’s quite far removed from the ideals of communism.
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This is a good comparison because I also oppose car-dependant infrastructure and think we would be better off with more public transports and an infrastructure closer to the people in general.
I suppose I don’t get why someone who claim to be communist would adhere in any way to capitalism knowing full well how much harm capitalism bought about.
But then I’m an anarchist so it’s not that surprising to me that a state would perpetuate oppressing power structures such as Capitalism or Police forces.
OMG Chick-fil-A becoming “woke” was the highlight of the week. 🤣
So the word ‘tankie’ is what capitalists or liberals use to shut down Marxist dialogue over these countries
Tankie is a term coined by dissident socialists and communists to refer to authoritarian Stalinist/Maoist leftists who are hostile to libertarian or democratic leftist movements, or any other kind of democratic movement. Comparing it with “woke” (which has no well-defined meaning) is ridiculous.
The people who are labeled tankies are very much anti-democratic. Them being leftist or communist is actually not an issue at all. The problem is they either 1) Attempt to gaslight about authoritarian regimes (for example by claiming said regimes are not authoritarian, that their “elections” are real, or that everything is western propaganda), or 2) Unabashedly support these regimes, sometimes claiming that their victims “deserved” it.
Tankie was recouperated from dissident socialists, the way it’s used today has very little to do with its origin. Just because something starts out as a politically radical idea doesn’t mean it can’t get twisted in bourgeois society. It’s mostly just used as a smear to mean “communist I don’t like”
It’s like woke - what started as a term used by BLM to criticize oppression of minorities was recouperated and now it’s been turned into a right-wing smear and lost all meaning.
doesn’t mean it can’t get twisted in bourgeois society. It’s mostly just used as a smear to mean “communist I don’t like”
No, not at all. It simply means “Communist who supports oppression & authoritarianism”. European socialists, especially eastern Europeans, still use it in this exact same meaning to this day. The non-bourgeois workers & trade unionists who were subjected to decades of oppression under various Stalinist regimes also use it.
The entire argument is pointless and trite anyway. Most of the people in this thread taking offence at the term “tankie” do in fact support authoritarianism and are attempting to gaslight readers about it.
“support”
You keep using this word, but do you really think any of the people you call tankies have actually done anything to support these countries? Or, more likely, are you using “support” to mean “refuse to condemn/disavow”?
Well, count me in to that group.
I will not join the imperialist dogpile against China. My opinions about their government is irrelevant at best, and at worst by joining in the echo chamber of “China Bad!” then I am helping America pave the way for a war it so obviously wants.
If you want to call that support, then I have to ask why supposed “socialists” are joining America in attacking China!
You keep using this word, but do you really think any of the people you call tankies have actually done anything to support these countries? Or, more likely, are you using “support” to mean “refuse to condemn/disavow”?
I couldn’t care less if tankies “only” refused to condemn China/Russia/DPRK or whatever oppressive regime they think is anti-imperialist – indeed, I wouldn’t even describe this group as tankies. The cold-war “tankies” weren’t passive or neutral either.
The tankies you see here, even in this thread, actively dehumanize and gaslight people resisting these regimes, and attempt to delegitimize any act of resistance against them, even if indigenous. These are the kind of people who would smear actual leftist activists in Russia, China or Iran as “CIA Agents” in the hope that said regimes continue existing, to take revenge against the US. This worldview espouses that nobody has any agency except the US (and its authoritarian adversaries), because every opponent of these regimes has to be agent of the US.
If you want to call that support, then I have to ask why supposed “socialists” are joining America in attacking China!
Refusing to condemn something isn’t the same as lending support. Gaslighting people about the Tianamen Massacre, about the treatment of Uighurs, or about creeping authoritarianism in HK is, however, definitely a form of support.
Socialists who oppose the CCP tend to do that for entirely different reasons than the US. Not that there is much socialism to support there. Labour rights and protections under the CCP are inferior to the average European country, with the rampant 996 culture and very few instances of collective labor action, which is seen as undesirable and suppressed by the party.
