Skip Navigation
Remote View
MeanwhileOnGrad @sh.itjust.works
cm0002 @lemmy.world
Megathread

Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]

Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It's having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!

And for anyone asking "Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?" Here's a quick recap:

Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it's off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).

If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the "Tankie Triad" (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they've positioned lemmy.ml as the "flagship" instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.

Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse's overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that "They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit"

I don't know about you, but I'd prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse "Voat 2.0".

So if you haven't joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!

You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

"NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES" ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a "negotiating tactic" !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640

General negative sentiment to other instances who haven't "seen the way" yet: https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

"concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren't that bad" https://lemmy.world/post/26985447

"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

"The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it's actually a good thing a state has that much power!" ~Tankies of .ml https://lemmy.world/post/30010789

Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763

Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558

Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post

Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit

Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes

You're viewing a single thread.

259 comments

  • I think the whole "saying anything different from what we like? You're banned" thing is also playing a good part.

    • I think they really have no idea how unpopular their viewpoint is. If you ever go and look around at "Lemmy" based on how it looks when hosted on .ml or Hexbear, it looks pretty dramatically different. I think part of the reason the mods are so aggressive with this kind of censorship is that it creates a really surprisingly effective illusion that a lot of the world agrees with them. You can find off-instance communities where people post a counter-narrative if you search, but that's easy to write off as "the lib instances" or something. I think they have no idea how far in the minority they are.

      The name for the cognitive bias involved is "what you see is all there is." Your brain doesn't take account of content which is hidden from you, so if 90% of what you see is pro-Russia, and everyone there is of the opinion that anything outside of that is weird Western propaganda and distorted and fake, it's pretty easy for your brain to run with it. And once you're in that box you have no idea that you're in the box. And also, a lot of propaganda frameworks like that are self-sustaining (describing any contrary information as deliberate lies or giving this huge emotional emphasis to reasons for discounting them, so it's really hard to bootstrap yourself out of the box.)

      I'm not trying to make excuses for the people who are running the operation, I have to assume that they know better. Although, maybe not. Maybe they have some other kind of dysfunction and really think they are standing up against US imperialism or something. I do also think that professional troll farms are also involved in creating the impression, too. My point is, I think the average users may be genuinely confused by these events and see them very differently from the rest of Lemmy does.

259 comments