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The lemmy.ml Problem

Dear Admins and Users of lemmy.world,

I am writing to express my concerns about the impact of lemmy.ml on our community. It has come to my attention that lemmy.ml frequently disseminates propaganda and engages in historical revisionism. Moreover, there have been instances where their admin privileges were used to suppress dissenting views, reminiscent of the already defederated lemmygrad instance.

While personal blocking of lemmy.ml is an option, it does not address the broader issue of new users potentially being influenced by misleading content. It is crucial that we protect our users from a continuous stream of biased information.

To illustrate these concerns, I have provided a link to a detailed post on the Fediverse that documents these issues comprehensively [Here].

Given these points, I urge the admins to consider a defederation from lemmy.ml. If their users wish to remain part of Lemmy.ml, that is entirely acceptable, but we should take steps to prevent the propagation of harmful misinformation, especially in their comment sections.

Thank you for your consideration.

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76 comments

  • There are some good points here, but I think defederation should always be a last resort and especially so in this case, given that we are talking about lemmy.ml here.

    Since it was the former flagship server (in activity, at least) before LW came along, there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.

    That's not to say that I agree with the actions of the .ml admins, or think that opening a dialogue with them about moderation policies isn't a great idea, of course; I just think it's overall a better approach to let the individual user figure out for themselves which communities/instances they want to engage with and which ones they want to avoid.

    • there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there

      And that, in fact, is my main concern with ml. They have lots of communties which are non-political for sure but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda. At which point the negative outweigh the positive?

      And even in the non-political Communities your comments gets censored when they are not on line with their views.

      • but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda.

        So block those individual communities that post what you consider propaganda. Hell, even block the whole instance - that option is readily available to you.

        At which point the negative outweigh the positive?

        With a server like, say, Hexbear, this would be an easy calculation. Defederate and what does the average user miss out on? Not a whole lot. On the other hand, .ml has a wide variety of technology, open source, gaming, hobby, etc. communities that don't even touch on politics.

        I regularly visit many of them, so for me at least, it would take a lot more on the negative scale to even break even.

        • For sure I can block them for myself (as I have mentioned in my Post itself) but this won't solve the Problem of policing non political Communities and injecting them also with propaganda.

          • To what extent is this actually an issue? What examples do you have so far?

            • Pardon me but have you read the Post i linked? He talked about politics, granted, but banning him from non-political Communities (in fact, ALL Communities) is completely out of proportion. And that is just for reciting established facts!

              • Yes I have, which is why I'm asking. While I agree that the admin response was totally out of all proportion, this is not evidence of either of the things you previously claimed.

                If you're going to justify defederation based on non-political communities being policed and injected with propaganda, you need to provide some concrete examples of that happening.

                • First and for most my main reason for defederation is that they straight up lie and mislead.

                  If you demand prove I will unblock ml again and will try to find it. I would have thought that you would have seen this yourself since you seem to be more on ml than I was.

                  • I've seen it in the obvious communities like worldnews@lemmy.ml, sure. But in non-political ones? Not once.

                    • https://lemmy.ml/post/16185014

                      https://lemmy.ml/post/7981013

                      https://lemmy.ml/post/15667300

                      Here are three posts from the memes-community. They got downvoted to oblivion (from the Users) and contain propaganda, but were not removed or anything from the moderators or admins. The People who posted thisdid not got punished or anything.

                      Here is a Comment from someone who tells about his own experience in communist Hungary. His Comment got removed for violating rule 1 "Be civil and nice.". Why does this comment of his own experience get removed for being not nice, but posts which contain propaganda and clearly insult people in an non-political Community like Memes did not?

                      This Comment (even though I disagree with its content) got removed for “Bourgeois Bootlicking” despite having Rule 2 in place, which states: “Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.” His Comment was as, if you ask me, maybe not totally polite but still acceptable.

                      The Admins on lemmy.ml are totally willing to turn a blind eye towards propaganda, Insults and lies "for their side" even in non-political communities but they will strike you down if you disagree.

                      Of course, I can't cover every community and I'm sure there are many people who are not like this but there is a huge trend towards this style of moderation.

                      PS. : Sorry for light-mode. I somehow could not turn it off on lemmy.ml.

                      • I appreciate the effort you've put in here, but still I do not see grounds for defederation. You've just given me three examples from a single community that is obviously political.

                        Look, the question isn't "are there communities on lemmy.ml that are ideologically censored", because of course there are; the question I am putting to you is "is the average user going about their business and not actively engaging in politically-oriented communities affected enough to warrant the largest Lemmy instance completely defederating?" I would still say no, personally.

    • there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.

      Agreed. To address this, I started this thread to see which lemmy.ml don't have alternatives on other instances: https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

      Hopefully that can help people who want to avoid lemmy.ml.

      I guess at the end of the day, people should be able to choose whether they go to the lemmy.ml communities or the alternatives

      • See, now that's a much more positive approach. Users making informed decisions and organically migrating is much more in keeping with the Fediverse spirit than admins wielding the defederation hammer, IMO.

        • Agreed, but let's also be honest about this:

          The smaller, less visible alternative communities seldom grow. It's the classic case of the biggest and oldest trees getting all the sunlight, while the saplings in their shadow are stunted.

          We saw this on Reddit, too. Alternative subreddits, usually born out of protest of the moderation on the original, popped up all the time and never grew. Some did, some even overshadowed the original, but that was rare. The algorithm and search results would always funnel visitors to the old one.

          Unless there's an effort made to give more visibility to the smaller and less established alternative, there's a good chance it goes nowhere.

          So in reality the user choice you're describing is less about choosing between two communities, and more about choosing between a community or a DND group that gets together once a week, but half the people flake out anyway.

          • LW communities are already much more active than lemmy.ml ones, there are just a few missing, I wouldn't worry too much.

          • Absolutely agree, which is why I would advocate against defederation. It's better to let users organically migrate away from problematic moderation than for the LW admins to preemptively make the decision on everyone's behalf.

            Lemmy is still a relatively small community, and too much defederation is only going to be detrimental to its overall health.

    • The non-political communities on .ml are poisoned by mods who ban users based on their political opinions they voice in other communities. If you're critical of China, you will likely be banned from all communities on .ml, regardless of if they're political.

      • They banned the Plex mod, who was doing good work, for basically nothing as far as I can tell. Effectively killed the community. Rest in peace BrooklynMan

    • let the individual user figure out for themselves

      What a ton of people will figure out is that the fediverse has a serious problem with propaganda and moderation. They'll come check out the Fediverse, see it's full of extremist political content, and go back to Reddit.

      I'm thrilled about the potential of the Fediverse to be something great, but I won't even tell anyone I use it in it's current state.

      Defederating malicious propaganda instances like Lemmy.ml should be a no-brainer. It's not "people I disagree with," it's a murderous authoritarian government's tool for spreading lies.

76 comments