Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.

For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.

Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.

The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…

  • join@lemmy.ml
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    18 days ago

    It’s called cognitive dissonance, the less your worldview makes sense the more tiresome it becomes to hear counter arguments. You used to be able to just dismiss them as „russian trolls“ but now that doesn’t feel right anymore, you feel like you actually have to engage, and this takes energy. Much easier to just shut it out completely, just take comfort in your personal bubble, and only engage with straw men arguments, the ones that are obviously wrong (and hence not used by anyone).

    Have fun in your bubble, have fun believing that Russia is gonna collapse any day now for the coming 8 years, the 57th nuclear sanctions package is really gonna do it, have fun believing that the army that spent 4 years taking Sheviakivka is gonna be in Berlin the week after, have fun thinking the people that sold you the Gaza genocide have the best intentions when they say war is the only answer in Ukraine, wish you all the best.

  • wuffah@lemmy.world
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    18 days ago

    ML is not far-left, it pretends to be in order to spread pro-Putin, pro-Russian, and pro-Republican state propaganda because they know it’s destroying America. ML and Russia are about as socialist as the Nazis claimed to be.

    • Eldritch@piefed.world
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      18 days ago

      While I agree they aren’t far left. They are sincerely more socialist than the Nazis were. The problem is, they are often as authoritarian as and group think vulnerable as maga, nazis, etc. Economics is fine. But it should never supersede or dictate social policy.

      And all these heavily centralized States weather corporate or otherwise always fall to the same flaws. Power calcifying and protecting itself. Not the people or Society.

  • StankStain@lemmy.today
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    18 days ago

    i’m new to my instance that isn’t defederated from anything and I see an awful lot of whining about .ml hexbear and lemmygrad but i haven’t seen the users do anything. i’m more annoyed by the whiners so far.

      • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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        18 days ago

        So called “tankies” supposedly everywhere, but all I see are left-wing people.

        Yes. Because “tankie” is just a pejorative for anyone to the left of the western Overton window

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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            18 days ago

            Nobody in the year 2026 is using the word tankie in the context of the internal disagreement between British Trotskyists and Khrushchevists about the Hungarian uprising in the 1950s. Even you immediately - one sentence later - pivot to claiming it must means “authoritarian Stalinish stuff”, which is both incredibly vague and has nothing to do with the Hungarian revolution; a term that can be used for anyone to the left of the western Overton window.

            • TheLegendaryAssholeOfJushinLiger@sh.itjust.works
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              18 days ago

              I see why people block y’all. No. No one calls anarchists tankies. Confabulate as much as you want. It means what it means, and has meant since its inception. People like you, probably. And you fucking know it.

              • Toga77@lemmy.world
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                18 days ago

                Lol like everyone in here complaining and blocking, when you were presented with facts, your true colors came out.

                Softer than baby shit.

              • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
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                17 days ago

                No one calls anarchists tankies.

                Happens all the time, it’s a right wing/ center-lib tactic to sow division

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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                18 days ago

                I see why people block y’all. No.

                Oh no! Someone disagrees with you! Better reach for that block button! That’ll show them.

                No one calls anarchists tankies

                Yes they do. All the time. Ask me how I know.

                Confabulate as much as you want.

                Go back to reddit

                It means what it means, and has meant since its inception.

                You don’t seriously believe that the word tankie, in this day and age, is only used to refer to people who support Khrushchev sending tanks into Hungry half a century ago. So you’re just undeniably being willfully dishonest now. And for what? What is the point about lying about this?

                People like you, probably. And you fucking know it.

                I was not born for several decades when the Hungarian revolt occurred and have no real opinion on it, so no, I don’t “fucking know it”, I know you’re fucking wrong, and are trying to cover that up with impotent aggression.

                • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
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                  17 days ago

                  No one calls anarchists tankies

                  Yes they do. All the time. Ask me how I know.

                  You know because George Soros paid you to tell that lie probably!

              • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                18 days ago

                Anarchists that support existing socialist states get called tankie all the time. “Tankie” isn’t an ideology or a species of human, it’s a pejorative for a loose grouping of those that like, say, China and Cuba.

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
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    18 days ago

    I’m on .ml and just don’t see this. I moved here from .world after the cat food ban. The stupidity burned too much for me to stay there. I’m unsubscribed to most of the lemmy communities where the political crap is, so maybe that helps.

      • solrize@lemmy.ml
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        18 days ago

        It’s a long story but basically after some stupid drama, lemmy.world banned discussion of cat food unless there was scientific evidence presented that the cat food was healthy for the cat. The drama had been about vegan cat food discussions in the vegan discussion group. Vegan cat food turns out to be a thing and appears to have enough approvals to be sold in pet stores, but people on .world wanting to talk about it should come over here to .ml. No I wasn’t a participant in the vegan group discussion itself. I made some posts in the surrounding drama thread that you can probably find in my .world profile from shortly after I joined.

          • solrize@lemmy.ml
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            18 days ago

            Lemmy.world’s admin (not community mods but the actual instance admin) decreed that lemmy.world was going to be like Wikipedia, where anything controversial that you posted had to be accompanied by a research citation, more or less. The specific statement under dispute was that brand XYZ vegan cat food was ok to feed to your cat. A bunch of idiots howled “cats are obligate carnivores, hur hur! They can’t survive on a vegan diet! Mods, delete that comment!!!” and the site admin sided with the idiots. So I had to escape from the stupidity. Are you still confused? Btw the vegan cat food is perfectly fine for cats as far as I can tell. No I’m not about to go look for diffs links so some of those details may be garbled by now.

            I don’t think the citation policy was ever enforced on anything else, but anything that crazy is hard to forget.

            .world also defederated hexbear because it didn’t like hexbear’s politics, but I’m a regular on hexbear’s covid community (which is pretty good and not that political) so I had to go elsewhere for it. I can still reach it from .ml but this convinced me that the federation model is a failure. There’s no giant Spez overlord who can censor you, but there are 100 petty instance admins who can censor you instead. I’m still on Lemmy to stay away from Spez though.

              • solrize@lemmy.ml
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                18 days ago

                Well you can find the actual wording, but I think it didn’t have much effect except that one discussion. The edict was issued and otherwise forgotten about.

        • plyth@feddit.org
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          17 days ago

          Try talking about Nato expansion and see how far you get.

          The government doesn’t care if you hate it as long as you confirm the narrative with your hate.

          • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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            17 days ago

            What expansion?

            The latest new members of NATO after many years have applied because Russia invaded ukraine, a non-NATO country.

            If there weren’t countries invading other ones, no one would need to join NATO, as it is a defensive alliance.

            • plyth@feddit.org
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              17 days ago

              What expansion?

              Russia says that they were promised no Nato expansion in Eastern Europe like there was a commitment to no Nato troops in East Germany.

              If there weren’t countries invading other ones, no one would need to join NATO, as it is a defensive alliance.

              How can countries protect themselves if they are attacked by Nato or Nato countries?

              • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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                17 days ago

                They can defend themselves the same way as if any other country attacked them.

                NATO doesn’t protect you if you start an offensive war. It only protects you if you’ve been attacked first.

                There’s no better example than the epstein-US-Iran war. Trump keeps whining that his “NATO allies” are not helping him. Iran right now can attack the US as much as it can, since the US started the war for no fucking reason.

                Some individual countries that are part of NATO have helped the US, but that was independently of NATO.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              16 days ago

              NATO is as defensive as the IDF is. It’s a gang of imperialist countries protecting each other from the imperial boomerang, and will constantly invent new enemies to justify its own existence.

              • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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                16 days ago

                Yeah. A defensive alliance is totally the same as a military that is currently committing a genocide for the purpose of territorial expansion.

                And Russia is totally an invented enemy that is not currently in a war with the purpose of territorial expansion.

                Oh wait, what is actually similar to the IDF is Russia! Who would have thought?

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  16 days ago

                  NATO countries aid and assist with genocide. The purpose of NATO is to defend the collective interests of the world’s imperialist countries from anti-colonial and socialist backlash

                  Russia’s territorial expansion was provoked by the endless encirclement and expansion of NATO, with the refusal of Russian admission to NATO to protect it. When imperialist countries encircle you and refuse to let you join so as to protect yourself, it’s only reasonable to expect that one day said encircled country will lash out. The entire war was preventable even up to 2022.

  • narp@feddit.org
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    18 days ago

    When I joined Lemmy, Lemmy.ml didn’t really feel different than Lemmy.world to me.

    Maybe I’m taking crazy pills but it’s like they got more propagandist on purpose. As if they decided to up the anthem because .grad got defederated by all sane instances… And what’s propaganda good for if it doesn’t reach the right people?

    Same with tankies having lemmy.world accounts. It’s not ironic, it makes sense.

    Now Lemmy.ml became their “outreach” instance, where they ban everyone who criticizes them (even on another instance) or even for downvoting (Dessalines did that because his favorite poster ‘cowbee’ got downvoted by “bots” too much. Then they opted out on lemvotes, so no more checking yourself).

    For an outsider it looks like everyone agrees with them because they upvote each other and every critic got either banned or they blocked them themselves and I’m starting to think this might be by design. I wonder how many users are banned from .ml, while still retaining general visibility through federation.

    Isn’t it basically how Russia and China operate? Keep your own people isolated in a bubble where only your narrative is accepted and at the same time invade other spaces to manipulate their opinions?

    • TheLegendaryAssholeOfJushinLiger@sh.itjust.works
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      18 days ago

      I mean why would a leftist like ANYTHING about current day Russia? China? OK, there are apologisms that can fit into a leftist umbrella. But RUSSIA? It’s a fucking kleptocracy. Anyone “leftist” saying otherwise is a crock of shit. They haven’t been red in decades.

      • Jupiter Rowland@sh.itjust.works
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        18 days ago

        I mean why would a leftist like ANYTHING about current day Russia?

        Because they unironically believe that Russia = the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. That Putin literally is the Premier of the USSR and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Maybe even that what Putin is trying to do in the Ukraine is reconquer his own territory from CIA-driven Western insurgents.

        Basically, just because Putin is a Russian, he automatically is a ☭★✊ СФММꙠИЇꙄТ СФМЯДDЭ ✊★☭, therefore he must be anti-Capitalist, therefore he has to be a good guy.

        These people completely distrust any and all Western media because it’s capitalist, imperialist propaganda, but they take everything from Russia Today and Sputnik News at face value because the good guys wouldn’t ever lie, right?

        They say they’re against wars. But if Putin started a full-on invasion in Germany (while the country is in a state in which it’ll be defenceless within three days), I can guarantee you that they’ll cheer for the Red Army finally coming and purging capitalism and imperialism.

        Seriously, we have a political party in Germany whose very principles appear to be based on this belief, and that tried to get a new Chancellor of their own into office.