The administration of lemmy.ml routinely abuses its rule 1 anti-bigotry policy to conduct political censorship, deleting documented facts regarding the ukraine invasion, holodomor, and xinjiang abuses under false pretexts of imperialist propaganda, misinformation, and nazism while leaving pro-Kremlin talking points untouched.
Verifiable public moderation logs prove this systemic shielding of state propaganda, down to moderators inverting standard geopolitical context, such as noting that fringe extremist units do not make an entire democratic nation fascist, to ban dissenters under the explicit excuse of being a Nazi.
https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=All&userId=25800386 and https://lemmy.world/modlog/446?page=1&actionType=All&userId=20355358.
The Europe community moderator (https://lemmy.world/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml), who focuses exclusively on criticizing the West and never Russia or China, banned me as a Nazi.
I decided to block the lemmy.ml instance entirely to avoid any further interaction.
I see that there are dozens of relevant posts; you can find the relevant report posts here
- https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
- https://lemmy.world/post/5697017
- https://lemmy.world/post/50302822
- https://lemmy.world/post/13238608
- https://lemmy.world/post/43978041
Log screenshots
The comments in this post are turning nasty and I’ve already banned two users for their behavior. Locked.
It is so blatantly obvious. Worse than the_donald was on reddit. Pure Chinese and Russia propaganda. Overtly negative on anything from the west and won’t allow anything negative about Russia, China, etc.
💯
“Overtly negative on anything from the West” lol.
Make sure you vote blue no matter who, lol.
Reminds me of some zio article I read lately that says in reality democrasy does not work in the middleast and that Israel is the only democrasy in the middleeast…etc ,… without mentioning that in reality the US steps in to slaughter every middleastern country the moment they try democrasy, and forces them to install a puppet dictatorship government that works for the intrests of israel and US.
Democracy works when it serves USA’s interest.
Which democratic countries did the US install dictatorship to apart from Iran which was more the UK(BP) thing?
The mods do whatever they want, many break their own posted rules with regularity.
In my experience, in Lemmy they are more apt to delete a comment then ban, so that is nice.
There’s no logic to it. I’ve said “The nation ___________ says this, their motto is ___________ … (and then repeat their own slogan from their own officials).”
Delete. 100% true, easily verifiable everywhere, public information pertaining to the discussion, deleted.
So, if you’re censored or banned, that just means that you’re a thinking person with reasonable opinions who bases your conclusions on the factual information available to you.
It’s a good thing. Thank God.
If they agree with you, please get help immediately. Time is short.
I’m just a user here but three days ago I was banned from some community without any explanation. Some moderator accused me of being a rapist because of one comment that they deleted and no one could read. After some comments trying to find out what was happening, I was banned. I didn’t see before, but in that community, in the blahaj something instance, they warn something like ‘no tankies’. I’m in lemmy.ml, and I guess that makes me a tankie.
These instance wars are bullshit.
well, lemmy.ml has a significant userbase acting as “tankies”, and in turn other instances are overly suspicious of anyone from ml, but I can’t blame them for that. the “tankies” they speak about just make new accounts when they find out people started blocking them. It’s such a shame that new users mostly end up on ml. the devs are enjoying that they can use it to spread their politics, and make controversy in the fediverse.
Yep I don’t immediately assume someone from ml is a tankie, but it’s going to make me more wary that even normal stuff they say is just being a mask on tankie.
They should defederate. They are treating everyone in ML like shit. And why would I change to an instance that treats people like shit, anyway? Isn’t that the problem in the first place? What I do is just strip apart the instance part in usernames and treat everyone as equals, fuck, I must be a commie. BTW, my account is 6 yo, you know, when lemmy.ml was basically the only instance with some certainty around.
It’s basically a rite of passage for a new lemmy user to get banned from half of .ml for a completely mundane comment they made.
I’ve blocked all .lm instances and even now piefed. The creator or piefed bans anyone who criticizes his dumb ass decisions. Well that’s fine, there a reason the entirety of piefed as a software has been decreasing population.
Also there are occasional mods that just love to jerk themselves. The dumb taco truck mod on the Star Trek instance will ban you if you say you don’t like new Star Trek, but that dumbass just moderates two mostly dead communities, so it’s okay
Pretty sure he’s under the delusion it’ll blow over and be forgotten. Now he posts as Kirk on startrek.website.
Gross.
😀
The authoritarian bootlicker server is doing authoritarian bootlicker things? Shocked, I say. Shocked!
You must be new around here. This is old news and a reason a lot of places block ml
It’s important to document their behavior anyway, because not al places block ml.
I knew that lemmy.ml is tankies, but removing comments/posts that don’t serve their agenda is new to me.
A lot of instances are curated, they’re the supreme mods after all. Some delay your posts until they can curate them, and some just remove them. It’s the way it be.
This isn’t said and understood enough. Instances on the Fediverse aren’t free-for-all, apolitical places without ideology. Some try to be (with varying success) but being active in the Fediverse and especially running an instance is in itself a fairly ideological and political act. So chances are instances reflect their owners’ ideology. And that is great because one has places to be if an instance doesn’t suit them, unlike corpo platdorms where one ideology drives most of them.
The only thing that bugs me about it is that the largest instances can control what most people see.
True. It’s definitely not a perfect, problem-solved thing. Merely an (significant?) improvement from the corporate status quo.
The great thing about lemmy’s design is that that’s not really true. I’m seeing this criticism of .ml despite being on .ml, because most of the posts that I see on lemmy are not on my home instance. At least half the time, I’m having discussions outside of my “home turf.”
When you have a space that agrees on certain base assumptions, it becomes easier to have more in depth and thoughtful discussions, because you don’t have to focus on just proving or advocating for those basic assumptions over and over again, and watching every word you say to make sure it can’t be twisted or misinterpreted to paint you in a negative light. By contrast, sharing a space with ideological opponents often means people tend to dig in and just make snipes at each other, everybody’s just grandstanding and trying to get owns in, and the level of discussion is brought down to name-calling and accusations.
At the same time, yes, echo chambers are a concern. If you’re never exposed to opposing viewpoints, obviously that’s not great either. We can see that happen on any number of subreddits. And if we were on different subreddits instead of on different instances, I wouldn’t be seeing this criticism, and you wouldn’t be seeing my response to it.
The way the fediverse is designed inherently addresses both of those concerns. You can have a space where the discussions assume a shared ideology allowing for in depth discussions, but then you’re also federated with other spaces with different shared assumptions. The “tankie” creators of lemmy designed it this way on purpose, for that reason. To allow minority views (including but not limited to their own) to have spaces for discussion, without becoming isolated. To allow for higher level discussions with shared assumptions while also allowing for interactions between groups with different assumptions.
This is why all this hand-wringing over .ml’s censorship is kind of silly. Because people on .ml are constantly seeing content from other instances with completely different policies, and that is not in spite of what the .ml’s admins want, they literally designed it that way on purpose.
The only censorship that really matters on the fediverse is defederation.
and those other instances can also moderate and delete comments and posts for all other instances unless archived or crossposted. If a lemmy.world mod deletes a comment in a lemmy.world post, I won’t be able to see it from over here in db0
You might be thinking of lemmygrad?
Im glad youre taking the steps to enjoy lemmy your way. Take care stranger.
Just defederate yourself from those instances (block them.) Idk why you think spending all this time and effort on an instance you really don’t like is going to do anything positive for you.
why you think spending all this time and effort on an instance you really don’t like is going to do anything positive for you. I am not looking for something positive or negative. I am analyzing how they mix truth with false information to influence people.
What specifically triggers me is that they selectively criticize some things such as Israel’s occupation of Palestine, but stay silent about Russia’s invasion. It is good to inform others and provide references for the new lemmy users who do not know much about instances.
- https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-disrupts-covert-russian-government-sponsored-foreign-malign-influence
- https://www.timesofisrael.com/meta-takes-down-chinese-spamouflage-disinformation-mega-campaign/
- https://www.cyfluence-research.org/post/cyber-based-influence-campaigns-13th-19th-july-2026-report
- https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5901/cmselect/cmfaff/703/report.html
- https://thehackernews.com/2024/09/us-seizes-32-pro-russian-propaganda.html -doppelganger, tenet Media, Spamouflage
Funny, I just had a thread going about the same thing happening in the “LateStageCapitalism” instance……
u/godlesscommie, where are you? Gonna come onto this thread to bitch and moan as well?
So you went into a community, you made a bunch of posts that are literally against the rules of the community and frankly the tone of the posts are antithetical to the point of the community. It’s called late stage capitalism. What did you think they thought?
This is straight up troll Behavior. I would have banned you too.
A bunch of posts? I wrote a conversation provoking comment that was upvoted far more than downvoted, and spurred other comments.
it was removed because the mod has an anti-democratic agenda that they can’t defend. Instead they just remove comments and ban people. It’s shitty behavior by a shitty mod, and deserves to be called out. I’ve seen 2 other threads talking about this exact behavior.
Thought-provoking comment, my goodness. Isn’t there a cookie you’re supposed to be beating off onto somewhere.
Your comments were directly and obviously against the rules of the community. You went there to troll. I don’t know why you’re lying about it.
I mean these people are incredibly stupid but I probably also would’ve given a temp ban (but I also probably would’ve banned the people saying “both sides!!!”). That community is there to moan about capitalism’s failings, and your posts didn’t really fit there. It’s like going into a support group for women and saying men also have these problems, even if you’re right these people feel like they’ve been failed by the system so you have to take a softer tone.
His reasoning for deleting my comment was “democrats are fascists.”
During a literal republican fascist regime.
There isn’t a tone soft enough to deal with lunacy.
There needs to be a list of instances that defederate lemmy.ml by default. It’s not just a single community, it is at the admin level.
Be the change you want to see in this world. Make your own instance and defederate.
It’s good to have this documented, thanks. It’s one thing for everyone to “know” they’re Tankies, it’s another to have compiled evidence and A/B examples like this to point to.
Was anyone hiding being a “tankie”? I mean I don’t really use the term I just call it Marxist-Leninist but if that’s what you want to call it I’m fine with that. I mean I’m clearly not trying to hide my political views if you look at my username. Not sure what you needed “evidence” for. But more power to ya i guess.
I mean, you shouldn’t. “XiJinpingStanAccount” is a glorious handle. I salute you, comrade.
lol thanks
People need to start realizing that users like you are flamebaiting to get banned and then make hate threads about .ml
You spout right wing propaganda while insulting users and then whine about “tankies” when you get banned.
I’m more curious how .ml users feel about that mod’s idea that rape is an acceptable action to do in certain contexts, for example if a woman served in a Western military.
I can understand all their political positions and opinions but that one seems beyond the pale.
My opinion is that geneva_convenience has been going off the deep end, getting worse and worse lately, and definitely should be removed as a mod, honestly just banned. He’s an edgelord who’s taking things to unreasonable extremes and trying to pick fights with everyone.
i agree, can’t stand them either and it’s only been getting worse
I only really saw it for myself when I said, “I’m completely opposed to the genocidal, apartheid state of Israel. I don’t have a problem with Jews existing,” and they responded by accusing me of being a “liberal Zionist” and “supporting genocide” and then blocking me.
I remembered Cowbee saying something about them before, I just looked it up and I gotta give props as always because he was calling them out 9 months ago for not reading theory of doing praxis and just watching Bad Empanada, and for apparently calling Hexbear “transzionist” and accusing them of defending Contrapoints’ stance on Israel, which is just bizarre.
It’s honestly very unfortunate. Geneva has had ample time and advice to move onto a better, more coherent worldview, when they seem to be taking the opposite path.
is that not what any good forum needs?
There’s a line.
Geneva convenience says I’m a “zio” because I say HAMAs commits war crimes.
Dude, they take pride in it. You can watch it… more videos than you could ever watch all of
(Yes, Israel commits war crimes and breaks the Geneva convention, too).
That’s nothing unusual for a user who excused pedophilia and posted a fascist dogwhistle.
Geneva is more of a radlib and Bad Empanada stan than a principled communist. 80% of what they post is decent to good, and a solid 20% is horrendous.
Fucking Christ. We aren’t on .ml but you wouldn’t know it from the number of people absolutely obsessed with them. Just ignore it if you don’t like it. Join a de-federated instance, block the communities, whatever. Bitching here has absolutely no impact.
Counterpoint - if we were on .ML these people would be blocked - they’re exercising their freedom.
We’re not on Reddit, Facebook, or X and you’ll find whole communities of haters for those sites, too.
Believe it or not, negativity tends to spread further than positivity in general as we are a risk-averse species, and it’s one of the documented harms of social media in general. You’re probably gonna find some version of this style of bitching no matter where ya go, it’s a human thing.
Finally, based .world
I share this to raise awareness, I can block the instance entirely! the more people see their abuse, the better for public awareness. If you don’t like this post, just downvote it or block my account,so you will not see anything like this again!
Continue being incredibly cringe in a very public way. Whatever you post, I wont be making a post every day complaining about you.
censoring facts and attacking tone instead of answering arguments prove my point
