this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2023
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A couple of days before the reddit blackout there were some posts pointing out examples of the main lemmy instance mods/devs banning people and censoring news/comments that tried to criticise the CCP, it was easy to confirm because there's the modlog, I don't know if it's still there or if they are still doing it, but there's a precedent.
Also they host and federate with lemmygrad.
Still there's no real worry about it, the rest of the instances (specially those created by the reddit blackout) are not controlled or manipulated by those devs (most if not all of them already block lemmygrad). Also I think anyone could make their own fork of the server software, not sure about how open is the software.
People have been bitching about the bullshit moderation on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad continuously for as long as lemmy federation has been active. Nothing new and suspicious about the call-outs.
Some of the new people have even picked up the torch and started calling out bad moderation on lemmy.ml, though I think the best long term solution is to block and move on.
Software is fully open and forkable.
Can you link me to the details? This is concerning to me, and I want to dig into it.
Sure thing, here you go
Hm, yeah, this is weird. Personally I would not make the leap from "some mod, probably one from lemmy.ml, deleted anti-Chinese postings with a sketchy explanation" to "Lemmy devs are employed by the CCP." But that said, deleting a political viewpoint on the central server, not because you don't allow political viewpoints, but because you don't allow this specific political viewpoint ("orientalism"), is definitely sketchy.
I would say the same if they were deleting Republican viewpoints, or anti-Republican viewpoints, from a discussion about US politics. One of the whole key points of this software in the first place, I think, is that people can say things without other people deciding if they're allowed to.
They own and federate with lemmygrad, also were the owners/mods of r/comunism and the complains seem to come from way before (from those that came before the reddit blackout), it's not sketchy or coincidential, it's deliberated.
I don't agree with your last statement, in the end the instance belongs to someone else and they placed rules that we agreed to follow the moment we joined.
Just like with everything else, being free to say whatever you want doesn't mean being free of consequences.
I'm not up to speed on the history, and I just tried to read a little bit about lemmygrad and mostly just got confused. Do they support Marxism-Leninism, and also the CCP and modern Russia? That seems very contradictory to me if it's true, but I'm still trying to make sense of it, so maybe there's something I'm missing.
Yes, absolutely. They can do whatever they want on their server, including censoring opposing political viewpoints. I can say I think that's a bad thing to do, because to me, using control of a platform to censor your opponents' political viewpoints is in fact very bad. I mean if they actually do support Russia and the CCP, then I guess it's not surprising if they're okay with censoring opposing views, but to me, it's wrong. They can do it -- people can do a lot of things -- but it doesn't mean that every thing a person can choose to do is right.
This isn't that though. The phrase is "prior restraint." If I go out and accuse someone of something, and it's not true and they sue me for libel and prove me wrong and I'm punished for it, that's consequences. If someone's not allowing the accusation to exist in the first place, that's not free speech with consequences, that's someone controlling and approving beforehand what I'm allowed and not allowed to say. I mean, they're not the government, so it's legal, and anyone can just take their message to some other platform which definitely mitigates the real harm involved. But it's still concerning... it's like, if you did that with that amount of power, what are you going to do if you wind up later on with more power?
Basically they are trying to keep the propaganda machine going, it won't make sense.
Just to be an ass: there is no absolute right or wrong, to them we are in the wrong and should submit to their ideas, to us they are wrong for trying to censor and limit discussion.
Oh right, then it was a phrasing problem as we agree on that.
I mean... just look around and there are many examples and multipying.
At least for this context, it's not so big because the users can ditch that instance and register at a different one, if they actually get extreme they'll just get defederated or if they defederate too many instances they will isolate themselves and the server software can be forked, so there's at least some safes in place.
Have you considered asking them, at lemmygrad, and get first hand answers instead of "please someone explain how those other people ou there think"? There's room for multiple layers of misunderstanding there.
Luckly lemmy.world federates with them, maybe someone with more knowledge and confidence in history than me will pop up. But feel free to ask questions there. We are friendly.