I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy's massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml. It's been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let's say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, they're what's colloquially referred to as tankies. This wouldn't be much of an issue if they didn't regularly abuse their admin/mod status to censor and silence people who dissent with their political beliefs and for example, post things critical of China, Russia, the USSR, socialism, ...
As an example, there was a thread today about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre. When I was reading it, there were mostly posts critical of China in the thread and some whataboutist/denialist replies critical of the USA and the west. In terms of votes, the posts critical of China were definitely getting the most support.
I posted a comment in this thread linking to "https://archive.ph/2020.07.12-074312/https://imgur.com/a/AIIbbPs" (WARNING: graphical content), which describes aspects of the atrocities that aren't widely known even in the West, and supporting evidence. My comment was promptly removed for violating the "Be nice and civil" rule. When I looked back at the thread, I noticed that all posts critical of China had been removed while the whataboutist and denialist comments were left in place.
This is what the modlog of the instance looks like:
Definitely a trend there wouldn't you say?
When I called them out on their one sided censorship, with a screenshot of the modlog above, I promptly received a community ban on all communities on lemmy.ml that I had ever participated in.
Proof:
So many of you will now probably think something like: "So what, it's the fediverse, you can use another instance."
The problem with this reasoning is that many of the popular communities are actually on lemmy.ml, and they're not so easy to replace. I mean, in terms of content and engagement lemmy is already a pretty small place as it is. So it's rather pointless sitting for example in /c/[email protected] where there's nobody to discuss anything with.
I'm not sure if there's a solution here, but I'd like to urge people to avoid lemmy.ml hosted communities in favor of communities on more reasonable instances.
I've been banned from .ml for being a 'racist' for being anti-Xi, despite the fact that I am Chinese, and pointed out my ethnicity as such in the discussion. I guess antisemitic Jews aren't the only weird accusation getting thrown about nowadays.
I don't think any of this is even real to them. The same way that a majority of the white-nationalist 4-channers are just roleplaying and losing themselves in the storylines, as a species we tend to do that, we just get lost in a narrative because it explains how we feel.
The tankies are doing the same exact thing. They're not impacting policy, they're not marching for anything, they're not taken seriously and it's just another in-club that has its own language and imagery and secret handshakes and a unifying message to rally behind (America bad!) and instead of turning that criticism into actionable plans for changing representation and making anything better, they put on WW2 Russian Tanker helmets and have erotic fantasies about a communist uprising that will never happen.
Children.
I got a ban for pointing out the nuclear strikes on Japan killed less than the conventional firebombing runs leading up to it, and if nukes wouldn't have been used a shit ton more people would have died.
Like, no opinion on if what was morally right or not, just what the numbers worked out.
It's all trolls over there, when a rational person makes a community, the admins start drama there and troll the mods till they leave or get kicked out for stupid shit.
I just blocked the whole instance. I never see any of their posts now, and as an unintended bonus I don't even get notifications when their users reply to my comments.
Like, it would be best if we defederated from them and that hilariouschaos troll instance.
But I can just block them, works the same.
More people were killed in the firebombing.
The theory that more people would have died of the nukes weren't dropped is FAR from settled fact. The Japanese were already looking to surrender and it's not likely the bomb played a big part in that decision.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki?wprov=sfla1
Regardless it's nothing to get banned over, that's for sure.
Whether that alone is something to be banned over is probably context dependent, and I don't have any faith that that instance had a good reason for it. Nevertheless that person holding up their great take about the nuclear bombs being good actually does not paint a great picture of them as a person. It makes them look like a reactionary US nationalist who wants to believe anything that makes their side the "good guys". They can pretend it was morally neutral all they want, but morality is the only reason anybody argues something like that because it's so nebulous the only way you get there is with motivated reasoning.
At any rate I wouldn't put that on the pile of reasons to hate on the .ml instances, not when there are so many good reasons.
I honestly disagree that blocking works the same. Social media relies on a network effect, and if they keep being allowed to operate popular communities then they will have that network effect in their favour, and new users that don't know any better will keep joining.
Defederation is an important tool to turn certain instances into pariahs for bad behaviour, and individual blocks don't achieve that.
This is a lot of the problem with gen z, especially among the left. Everyone is quick to smash the block button, which in aggregate just makes everything worse for everyone else.
It's not a generational problem, it's a platform problem. It's a disempowered person problem. Generations are mostly made up anyway.
Hitting the block button is fine to deal with harrassment, it just doesn't solve the wider issue.
I think zoomers are far more prone to refusing to engage with things that make them uncomfortable than previous generations.
And just because something isn't clear cut doesn't make it imaginary. It's a useful but fuzzy categorization.
Well I'd be fascinated to see how you arrive at that conclusion but until then I'm going to have to disagree on the basic principle that the generalisations people make about generations are usually pretty useless.
If you truly don't see any difference between Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials then I think our views of reality are so wildly different we might not be able to have any sort of communication.
Okay, but you brought it up and then when asked about it instead of explaining you fell back on the idea that it's self-evident, which I think I'm right to not be convinced by.
To the extent the generations appear different I think is easily explained by the difference in material conditions that each has grown up within and the necessarily different ages of each group at any given time, and nothing to do with the inate characters of the people involved.
I see zoomers intensely involved in the issues that affect the world and to the extent they feel the need to check out I think is 100% valid given the bleak world they have been born into, much bleaker than at any earlier time.
I see a hard-nosed pragmatic awareness of the need for hope in the face of our grim reality because it is the only way we can find a path through. I have heard that message from people of all ages, but also from zoomers.
Again, I don't think there's much difference and one thing that absolutely hasn't changed over millenia is bemoaning the state of the "kids these days".
Well, I mean...yeah. Of course. I don't think anyone is saying there's like a BIOLOGICAL difference between generations.
I do disagree with this. In my lifetime, the great recession was much much worse than now.
You fell back from the motte to the bailey then went ham on a strawman because the actual argument was getting too much for you.
You accused Gen Z of some specific behaviour and when I asked you about it you fell back on some vague notion of the generations simply being different.
You were clearly implying some difference of character, but when I point out that that's pretty weak you pretend I was talking about biology, which I never mentioned.
If you think Gen Z is more likely to block, check out, whatever, explain where you get it from. If you're not going to do that then I will just continue to believe that you're basing it on your own biases and move on. You clearly aren't very disciplined about your thought processes.
Oh but you had it worse as a kid? Also something we've been hearing for millenia from intellectually lazy entitled assholes.
Generations being different means they have...different behavior. Wtf are you even talking about?
People's actions are their character. That's a distinction without a difference.
My personal observations, which is different than bias.
Millenials objectively had it worse as a kid, at least economically which is what I was referring to. Not my fault you have recency bias.
Okay, so whatever your bizarre non-claim is it's just an opinion? Cool, opinion rejected.
Now, millenials objectively had it worse? Okay, fucking prove it. Since that's not an opinion I'm sure I won't just get another rhetorical runaround.
Comment rejected, would you like to try a new comment?
Okay, that's not how this works, but you seem to be incapable of following the most basic line of reasoning. This wasn't you defending an argument, it was you mentally shitting the bed. I think I'm done here. Have a great life. Or I guess have a shitty life, since your generation has it objectively worse than everyone else.
Comment rejected. Would you like to try another comment?
You're doing absolutely nothing to back up your argument.
Explain?
When you block someone you cede the conversation to them. When lots of people block someone, fewer people push back against their bullshit. Because the people most able to push back against it no longer see it.
So you make them invisible to yourself, but not to others.
I don't want to get in the merit of the comment, but unless you see the future, this statement is simply not true. Your argument is simply based on accepting certain assumptions as true.
Coincidentally this argument is routinely used by people supporting american atrocities, who consider nuking hundreds of thousands of people the humanitarian solution to WWII.
To be clear, I don't agree with that line of moderation, I don't agree with most of the views that seem to characterize .ml, but it's a year that people make posts like this one, you can't tell me you don't understand the ban based on the above.
I suggest you learn about history before you form opinions on what happened
History is about what happened. "Otherwise it would" is speculation.
And even after the nuclear bombs, there was an attempted coup to stop surrender.
Prior to the bombs, there was no chance of surrender.
That is history.
And where is the count of deaths in the different timeline?
Look, my point is simple: human history is not deterministic and we simply can't know what happens tomorrow like if we were predicting the laws of phisics. Maybe there were other 100 different course of actions leading to as many outcomes.
You can analyze what happened, but it's foolish to say "this was better because the alternative would have led to". You can only analyze and discuss what happened, otherwise anything can be justified with "it wouldn't have been worse".
"this genocide was good, because without it the oppressed population would have led to civil war and many more deaths".
You think the nuclear bombs were a genocide?
Seriously, who "taught" you this stuff?
I am genuinely curious where people presented all of this stuff you're saying as history.
Like, it's almost like the only thing you know about civilian deaths in WW2 was American dropped nukes.
There's sooooo much that you're missing. But unless you dropped out of school at a very young age, I can't be the first person that tries to explain this to you
So where are your opinions coming from?
Is this a thing where you learned everything you know about a subject from YouTube videos?
If so....
Why?
I just made an example of speculating on future occurrences to justify concrete actions that instead happened. In fact, the entire comment was about the general idea of considering history deterministic, not about the specific atomic bomb event...
Bruh, you need to not speculate on things you have no idea about
But clearly you don't care about what actually happened, so I'll stop trying to explain basic shit to you now.
You need to learn what abstraction is, my friend. I am not speculating. Quite the opposite. I am saying that you like to think the world works according to precise laws that you can use to predict the future. This is why you are arguing in multiple comments that "they would have...", as if people are NPCs with 3 different behaviors and the outcomes are predetermined so it's just a matter of choosing.
The reality is simple: you, me, nobody can know for sure what " would have happened" if history happened differently. This is a methodological issue, not a discussion on the merits of your speculation.
I don't know if nuclear bombs caused less deaths than the millions of other potential courses of actions, and neither do you, neither does anybody else. I don't know if Israel wiping off Gaza from the map potentially saved thousands of lives in future conflicts. You see the problem?
Now, before assuming that everyone else is an idiot and that you are the only smart one in the room, you might want to try a little harder to understand the point of your interlocutor, considering we are also discussing in what (I assume) is your native language but not mine. If you didn't understand so far that my critique is in the method, not in the merits, of your claim, then I agree, there is nothing to talk about.
That's an absolutely disgusting thing to say. Japan was already surrendering, they were only nuked as a show of strength.
I'm not sure what you imply when you say that "a shit ton more people would have died", but if you're saying that the US should have napalm bombed an entire surrendering country just to make an example, I don't think it makes your argument valid. It's not ok to do something horrible, just because you could have done something even worse if you had wanted to.
Who told you something that ridiculous?
They weren't already surrendering, ok. I'm not an expert but imo it could be argued that the Soviet Union joining the war (as they were about to) might have given Japanese command an excuse to surrender while saving face, or triggered an internal coup or something. They weren't stupid, surely they could see the writing on the wall.
If you think there was anyway they'd have surrendered without nukes then yes, I will agree that you are "not an expert".
For fucks sake, after the nukes there was still an attempted coup to prevent surrender...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
People thay think Japan surrendered because of life, have no idea what they're talking about about.
Japan surrendered because they thought America had more nukes, and if they kept fighting then Japan would be left uninhabitable for centuries due to atomic contamination.
The people who tried the coup, did so because they thought America didn't have more nukes.
They weren't, but honor was/is huge in their culture, and Japan was an empire for thousands of years.
They'd have fought to the last Japanese civilian was alive
They surrendered, and I know I'm repeating myself, because they thought their islands would be literally wiped off the face of the planet.
Anything less wouldn't have won the war and cost more lives on both sides.
Even as a trolly problem, it's not a tough call on if nukes saved lives.
If a coup needed to happen to stop surrender...
Sounds like they were planning on surrendering, no?
If anyone would like more context about the kind of think they were posting:
Yep, the horror. I absolutely deserved an instance-wide ban for the terrible things I said.
I do love the amount of facts and proof that is been dug up and displayed in this post, many thanks to all those going to the effort!