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…
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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.
Should i ask what the “cat food ban” was?
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.
??? I’m still confused.
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
diffslinks 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.
where anything controversial that you posted had to be accompanied by a research citation, more or less
WHAT that is BONKERS
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.
Still crazy it was even a thing lol. What a concept. And then to weaponize it. Against vegans. All of it is increasingly absurd and ridiculous. Thank you for sharing it with me.
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.
Same. I don’t block anything and it’s perfectly fine tbh. So called “tankies” supposedly everywhere, but all I see are left-wing people.
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
What? Tankie is a term that came around to disparage communists who sided with the USSR in sending tanks to Hungary. It specifically means authoritarian Stalinish stuff
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.
woah that’s a bunch of crazy rambling
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.
No one calls anarchists tankies.
Happens all the time, it’s a right wing/ center-lib tactic to sow division
Lol like everyone in here complaining and blocking, when you were presented with facts, your true colors came out.
Softer than baby shit.
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.
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.
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!
Could someone give some examples of these leftist propaganda posts? I just browse all top day, maybe they get diluted enough for me to overlook these… i’ve seen this argument pass by so many times.
I got banned from memes in Lemmy.ml over whether genocide in China is real. All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.
Not saying US propaganda is trustworthy either blindly believing propaganda from any government is wild.
I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.
I checked the thread you were talking about, that’s not what happened. The supporting evidence came from a huge number of different sources, including many western sources. You also equated Chinese diaspora with the Chinese government itself, which reeks of chauvanism.
As for the bit on Tian’anmen Square, it’s correct, even Wikipedia says so:
Deaths in and around Tian’anmen Square itself
Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the “hold-out” of students’ last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a “massacre” on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[i] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[j] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.
Student leader Chai Ling claimed in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crush students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 400 students died at the square.[268] Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu’er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire; however, according to Mathews, it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened.[211] Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”[269]
In 2009, human rights activist Robin Munro, stated that he was present during the clearance of Tiananmen Square and that, according to his account, there were ten Western reporters near the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the time. He also reported a Spanish television crew that recorded footage of the event. Munro disputed Wu’er Kaixi’s claims of mass killings inside the square, stating that he did not witness fighting there and instead observed students peacefully complying with the soldiers’ demands to leave the square in an orderly manner. He further noted that the Spanish TV crew reported not seeing killings within the square during the final clearance.[270][271]
In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[194] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[194] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[194][216]
The square was evacuated bloodlessly, all of the deaths that day occurred in areas scattered around Beijing during riot suppression. A few hundred people died, which is a tragedy, but not 10,000 people being executed on the square like the west initially reported. Substantial evidence to the contrary since then has come out, and Wikipedia has accordingly responded and added this context.
I don’t think Wikipedia is a CPC front group.
Also from that Wikipedia article:
Tap for quotes
Official government announcements shortly after the event put the number who died at about 300.
The Swiss Ambassador had estimated 2,700, following a visit to Beijing’s hospitals.
Records from Beijing’s main eleven hospitals, compiled shortly after the events, recorded at least 478 dead and 920 wounded, though Timothy Brook notes that these figures are an undercount due to lack of information from other hospitals.
Jonathan Fenby puts the death toll at over 700 in his book
British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died […] Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths
While public discussions about the events have become socially taboo, private discussions about them continue to occur despite frequent interference and harassment by the authorities. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo remained in China in order to speak out about Tiananmen in the 1990s despite the fact that he received offers of asylum; he faced constant surveillance. Zhang Xianling and Ding Zilin, the mothers of victims who died in 1989, founded the Tiananmen Mothers organisation and were particularly outspoken about the humanitarian aspects of the protests. The authorities mobilize security forces, including members of the People’s Armed Police, every year on 4 June in order to prevent public displays of remembrance, with an especially heavy security presence on the anniversaries of major events such as the 20th anniversary of the protests in 2009 and the 25th anniversary of the protests in 2014. On the 30th anniversary of the protests in 2019, the well-known Chinese artist Ai Weiwei wrote that “autocratic and totalitarian regimes fear facts because they have built their power on unjust foundations” and he also wrote that memory is important: “without it there is no such thing as a civilised society or nation” because “our past is all we have.”
Journalists have frequently been denied entry to the square on the anniversaries of the massacre. Also, the authorities are known to have detained foreign journalists and increase surveillance of prominent human rights activists during this time of year. Internet searches on “4 June Tiananmen Square” made within China return censored results or result in temporarily severed server connections. Specific web pages with select keywords are censored while other websites, such as those which support the overseas Chinese democracy movement, are blocked wholesale.
The actual numbers of deaths seems to be heavily disputed. In a country where the government heavily censors even discussion of the event and redacts all mention of it online, I’m hesitant to take the “official” numbers at face value. The truth is we’ll never know the true death count, we only have unreliable information; but I wouldn’t be surprised if the event was as bad, or worse, than what we know.
Another insufferable .world Liberal trying to deny the imperialist atrocities committed by the US which are the cause of most suffering worldwide because he wants to talk about his own free healthcare afforded to him by said colonialism.
The term originated from X user @posting_forever and their followers and was originally used to criticize liberals unable to concede that their luxurious lifestyles often come at the cost of less prosperous people or nations.
Typical .ml user comment.
You are the reason why lemmy feels tiring. Keep your propaganda in your own instance. Nobody gives a fuck outside the US.
Why don’t you start complaining about Imperialist Russia or China? Or will you get insta banned from .ml?
Having mindless tankies parrot ccp and russian propaganda is getting tiring.
More worried about the much more prevalent american imperialist support.
Ah yes the vast support the current US government enjoys on …Lemmy.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Wait y’all like Russia again? What?!
Where in my comment does it say I like Russia? Accusing people that are against war and in favor of negotiated settlement of being in cahoots with the enemy is as old as writing.
I think I’m gonna save myself the headache and just block you and move on with my life.
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?
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.
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.
What the actual fuck!
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.
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.
Sortition based governance when?
Whining about .ml takes up more of my feed than .ml