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CriticalResist8 @lemmygrad.ml

Lemmygrad has never defederated from any real instance, and will continue to do so

Following the news that Lemmy world has decided to defederate from hexbear without consulting their community and before hexbear even federated with anyone, I'd like to make this announcement to settle things once and for all about us "scary tankies" who apparently don't tolerate free expression or whatever.

Lemmygrad has been around since the very beginning of Lemmy as a project, we are one of the oldest instance with lemmy.ml.

In that time, we have never defederated from anyone except in three cases:

  • troll instances (usually inactive and unmoderated, with free account requests, that trolls used back in the day to bypass their bans). We usually refederate if they start being moderated again.
  • outright fascist instances such as exploding heads or powerballs or whatever before the admin deleted it (which you're welcome, it's because there's communists on Lemmy that there's so few fascists)
  • and, the fringe case, the couple specifically NSFW instances that we instantly defederated from because we don't want to host porn on our database and our rule 5 prohibits porn anywhere on Lemmygrad.

Otherwise, we have no reason to defederate from anyone. Holier-than-thou liberals can be difficult and irritating, I'm not denying that or implying we're somehow above it all, but to defederate would imply we are scared of what they have to say. We're not, because what they have to say is stuff we've all seen for ourselves and used to believe too.

You can see our blocklist here for yourself: https://lemmygrad.ml/instances, we only block around 40 instances, which might seem like a lot, but then compare to lemmy world which blocks 141 instances, or beehaw which blocks 765 instances.

Nobody is born a communist. Nobody is born a liberal either, but we become one through the self-reproduction of culture. From our earliest age we're exposed to liberalism (the ideology of capitalism) to the point that we integrate it. Did you have a model UN in school and vote for class presidents?

So really we can't be scared of anti-communist arguments because we've heard them all before. It's especially weird when people say we "buy into old propaganda" around Stalin or whatever, when anywhere you look, Soviet historiography in academia amounts to little more than "Stalin was paranoid and acted like the Tsar but called himself a communist". Like we went to public school too lol, we had a unit on the USSR lol.

Anyway, all defederations that happened on Lemmygrad come from other instances themselves, most of them pre-emptively defederating us before they even saw a single post from us. If beehaw, or shitjustworks, or lemmy dot whatever wanted to refederate, they could do it instantly and we'd be federated again.

And on that topic, let's talk about bans. We don't ban people who ask questions in good faith. But we will instantly ban anyone who comes to Lemmygrad solely to troll, as all online forums have done since time immemorial.

Likewise on blocklist issues, we poll our community very often for their input and allow them to propose changes. You can look at our !lemmygrad_court@lemmygrad.ml to see some things we've included the community on. We try to practice democratic centralism where applicable.

It goes even further; we allow communities and posts that some both on Lemmygrad or outside might disagree with, on the principle that we see ourselves as a more generalistic ML instance. We allow users to have their own community and moderate it however they want (respecting sitewide rules), and generally the removal of a community goes through an admin chat and might even go to a community feedback session. We have meme communities, we have religious communities, we have shitposting communities, and we also have serious discussion communities. And a plethora of personal communities for users who want to post in their own space like a blog.

We also have exactly 6 rules and no lengthy code of conduct or other documents one needs to read to participate here. This is helped by the fact that as we're all communists and more specifically mainly marxist-leninists, most of us already behave the expected way around comrades and don't need to be told how to conduct themselves.

So let me ask this; who is really censoring who here?

102 comments

  • The liberal instances will literally be like "Commies like Lemmygrad don't support free speech!" then block every instance that threatens their echo chamber.

    Beehaw, arguably the most liberal instance, blocks far more instances than we do by a longshot. But liberals on Lemmy's platform still act like we're the ones who're block-happy.

    • Well, they heard it on the internet, so it must be true. I think what annoys me more than the censorship complaint though is that we're anti human rights. Americans tend to think that unless you can post all the racist garbage you want to, then your rights are being infringed. Probably because that's about the only human right they have. I consider human rights to be more along the lines of having food, shelter, water and medicine. That sort of thing that the American government seems to think are some sort of luxuries. I think that those basics are what every human needs to survive. I'm not even listing things like a basic standard of living and egalitarianism.

      But that also bleeds into the whole authoritarian garbage. Not even counting the amount of ethnic cleansing that the US has done, the majority of Americans by a long shot actually support increasing the minimum wage. Why isn't it being increased? The people want it. Could it be that the people in power don't work for them? What would you call that?

  • Hopefully a few libs will read this, and actually read it.

    Otherwise, we have no reason to defederate from anyone. Holier-than-thou liberals can be difficult and irritating, I’m not denying that or implying we’re somehow above it all, but to defederate would imply we are scared of what they have to say. We’re not, because what they have to say is stuff we’ve all seen for ourselves and used to believe too.

    Nobody is born a communist. Nobody is born a liberal either, but we become one through the self-reproduction of culture. From our earliest age we’re exposed to liberalism (the ideology of capitalism) to the point that we integrate it. Did you have a model UN in school and vote for class presidents?

    So really we can’t be scared of anti-communist arguments because we’ve heard them all before. It’s especially weird when people say we “buy into old propaganda” around Stalin or whatever, when anywhere you look, Soviet historiography in academia amounts to little more than “Stalin was paranoid and acted like the Tsar but called himself a communist”. Like we went to public school too lol, we had a unit on the USSR lol.

    This part in particular is just something it would be nice to get through lib's heads. We didn't pop fully formed out of the earth one day, we were all libs at some point in our lives, before realising that liberalism doesn't actually explain anything, and is more in the business of explaining away things, and using distraction and simplification instead of proper understanding of a situation.

    When they come in here with their "Stalin bad man, million billion dead" or "Kim Jong Un evil dictator!" or whatever, they don't understand that we also used to believe those lies, before becoming better educated on the subject and actually examining a different point of view from our own. Hopefully they choose to do a bit of that too.

    • The problem is that they think we're QAnon style conspiracy theorists. They won't even entertain the idea that all of this stuff that they've been told their whole lives is bullshit. Even when you present the CIA doc where they planned it. The lies are just too big to comprehend, even though they are pretty well documented.

      • It was pretty funny on that lemmy world thread when some people said "Criticising NATO is playing right into Russia's propaganda".

        A. You'd have to explain why NATO Propaganda is more desirable than Russia's propaganda.

        B. You'd have to explain why we have to buy into this NATO Propaganda to the point where we can't say things that align, even if by pure luck, with Russia's line.

        C. You'd have to explain why, when communists have been against NATO since its inception, we suddenly can't talk about it because someone else picks up the same line.

        D. You'd have to explain why I give a fuck about Russia and Ukraine fighting some 3000km away. Putin isn't at your doorstep he can't hurt you.

        E. You'd finally have to explain why Ukraine could not defend itself if NATO didn't exist. Could the US magically not send ammo if it's not through nato? Do they think these weapons and vehicles materialize out of thin air in the NATO factory?

        But they will never find any real explanation beyond "Putler bad mmkay" because there's none. It's all deflection. They stan for NATO (whose achievements include irreparably destroying Ukraine with cluster bombs and depleted uranium ammo, invading Libya and bombing Yugoslavia) and they will find any bad faith argument to defend their beliefs. It's not rational or sensible, it's belief.

        Also with that thread, we've actually got several people requesting accounts on lemmygrad. We accept them.

      • They need to use conspiracy theory style logic to keep us in the "crazy conspiracy theorist" zone though. By using sound logical arguments and showing that we are not conspiracy theorists, we can reach those who are actually willing to listen. That's why I'm saying I hope they actually read this stuff.

        The ones who come here to just "own the tankies" or whatever are beyond help. We should dunk on them nonstop. But some of them come here prepared to dunk on a "crazy conspiracy nutter" and then realise that we aren't like that, and hopefully start to examine what we're actually saying.

      • This is extremely frustrating because there are real conspiracies that the "conspiracy theories" distract from. Just like you were saying, most of it is well documented, probably because the US built its intelligence agencies using Nazi intelligence officers.

      • My understanding of the modern form of the term "conspiracy theory" is that it was consciously developed to be a term that shuts down all conversation and immediately makes a person think that the case being presented is so inconceivable so as to be dismissable without thought. IIRC this modern use came about after the JFK assassination, the circumstances of which had many people asking very serious questions.

  • Well said comrade. If other instances admins are afraid of having their viewpoints challenged so much so as to defederate, then that's their prerogative and they're doing a disservice to their community and users for creating an echo chamber.

  • We also have exactly 6 rules and no lengthy code of conduct or other documents one needs to read to participate here.

    The rules is lberal (in sense of welcoming, permissive). The rules say nothing about liking or disliking Stalin etc. You can even be an Anarchist, reading Bakunin und Kropotkin all day and it would still be ok to be here. No trolling, chauvinism and anti-communism. This rules include so many point of views. As long as you follow the rules, you will maybe get downvotes, if someone doesnt like your opinion. Maybe a communtie will ban you, if you are way to annoying to them (Not following community specific rules), but thats all.

    I think lemmygrad is well inclusive.

    Whoever defederates from lemmygrad will also miss all the pictures of my pigeons.

    Sorry for mistakes, I reached my daily free DeepL limit.

  • Awesome , just the way I want it to work! Would be my rules as well if I had a instance. Even if I hadn't seen this first. Fishes in the sea and so on

  • Did you have a model UN in school and vote for class presidents?

    Thankfully that's pretty much unheard of in Danmark

  • I wish I could block an instance, like either the posters or the instance from appearing in my feed. I think lemmyworld is garbage and wanna defederate it from my feed

  • What would really be killer is if we get a meme domain that's like "censorship free federated instances" and pretend to be the authority (I say pretend because it's subjective what it really means) on who is censorship-free. Basically just have a simple page calling out other instances and warning users that they aren't getting a full experience. And also list the ones that respect free speech and play nice.

    Something like that, if shilled occasionally, would go a very long way into getting users thinking critically about federation, even if a bunch of libs get pissed off in the process (they can't argue so they just seethe). And the longer such an "infamous list" is up on the internet the more impact it will have. Source: trust me bro i'm a web developer and i'm terminally online.

    • There are already tools that do this, I forget the links but you can browse instances and look at who blocks them.

102 comments