People need to realize you can use alternatives
this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2023
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First I created account there and then landed on my current instance, because lemmy.ml's admin views looks sketchy for me. Been living in ex-ussr for all my life I just cant accept all that communists and marxists and the fact that lemmy.ml has /c/Communism on it.
I know that's silly but that's why I'm not there anymore.
Profit motive ruined Reddit so you’ve come to a place created by communist then get upset that the people who made and operate it are communists. Yeah that’s more than a little silly.
There's a difference between being a communist and blindly supporting authoritarian dictatorships wearing communist masks.
I've not really looked into it too deeply because every single mile-long screed about this "controversy" starts off by clutching pearls about communists. Can you link me to where this is happening without paragraphs of dissembling preamble?
This is the lead dev on Russia's invasion, total support here and other comments:
https://old.reddit.com/r/TheGangGoesLeft/comments/tcu04j/whats_with_all_these_totenkopf_symbols_on_your/i0g1itl/
A few months later, they've apparently flipped on the issue entirely and now support US aid:
https://old.reddit.com/r/SocialistRA/comments/y2rzhg/interview_with_anarchocommunist_combat/is5yno0/?context=1000
I'm not very concerned with the "communist" or tankie part fwiw. And while I do have strong opinions on Russia's invasion, I'm far more concerned with the 180 shift in position displayed here, and I have yet to find an explanation. I don't think he wants to talk about it, but a quick "I changed my mind because xyz" could alleviate my concerns. Clear communication is important if you're gonna have such strong opinions imo.
I'm not trying to villainize him or cancel lemmy, he seems like a decent person and we've even had a brief interaction here... But I hope you can see why I'm cautious about things. The whiplash is my main issue, not which side he picks.
And I'm not here to stir the pot, it's just that you specifically asked and I had already personally looked into things.
Mods: I won't be spamming this, just wanted to put it out there once.
However... if the platform prospers and attracts enough other devs, none of this even remotely matters, and that's why I'm still here, I want to believe this can be set aside.
It's not silly at all. I also made an account there before realizing the admins are tankies. It honestly sketches me out about Lemmy in general considering they're the two lead (and currently only?) devs. Casts a big shadow over all of Lemmy when the devs are posting Xinjiang genocide denialism and their instance is at the top of the recommendations on join-lemmy.org. With lemmy.grad pretty high up there too.
Yeah that’s what Lemmy started out as. The thing is with all the Reddit refugees flooding in it is diluting out the tankies. Besides, lemmygrad.ml is blocked by many instances. As for the values of the devs the great thing is that Lemmy is FOSS so if they go rouge someone will just make a fork of Lemmy.
At least with the way Lemmy is designed it doesn't seem like even the main devs can have much of an impact.
They even write themselves that if they made changes to the Lemmy codebase that some instance admins didn't like, then those admins can decide not to upgrade their instance. The code is also open sourced so anyone with some tech know-how can fork the codebase and remove whatever they don't like.
Is it possible to move instances once I'm registered or do I have to create totally new account on other instance?
You'd need to sign up for a totally new account. There is talk of adding a migration feature but obviously that'll require a bit of patience, they've got a long list of feature requests!
Unfortunately an account transfer feature is pretty complicated to develop so it might still be a while. Devs need to make sure it doesn't cause issues with federation when content changes home instances and domains, and transferring live user content over while retaining points, interactions by other accounts, and while having the same timestamp but now being hosted on a different instance, while ensuring there is only one canonical location/URL of the content on the fediverse, is not easy.
Oh no ;_;
Any recommended communities? (or ones to avoid)
Everything from beehaw.org is nice. Even stuff on lemmy.ml is okay as long you don't bring up politics. Stay away from news or politics subs on this instance. And I hope we will get bigger communities on other servers than lemmy.ml or beehaw.org.
I'm currently on lemmy.world. You can create communities and people are chill over here.
All I know is that you should avoid lemmy.ml. In their /c/WorldNews community, an admin gave a four day ban to a user for posting an Axios article about the Chinese succession plan for the reason of "Orientalism". Those guys are tankie shills. In my experience, lemmy.ca, sh.itjust.works, and lemmy.one seem solid. Obviously I personally went with lemmy.ca. But you should check out the admin profiles before you join any instance. That will tell you most of what you need to know. That and the modlogs (found at the bottom of the page) that will tell you what posts have been taken down and what people have been banned by mods on various communities.
Who are they shilling for?
China and Russia. Thus censoring legitimate western media articles about China. There's also a lot of anti-NATO bullshit. Here's the Axios article they banned a user for posting.
Out of idle curiosity, do you self-identify as a leftist?
I generally align with the left most of the time, but I hate making one label the basis for your entire political opinion. I am very against censorship. My greatest pet issues have to do with censorship and democratic principles. In terms of American politics, I will never vote Republican. If I feel a Democrat has let me down in a big way, I would consider voting third party, but 99% of the time I would vote Democratic. Centrist Democrats piss me off more than leftist ones. My foreign policy stances are probably the least in line with the further left. I am generally pro-NATO with the understanding that NATO isn't perfect. I just worry way more about a world with China/Russia at the helm given their propensity for censoring opinions that oppose their majority parties.
I'm terminally-online enough that I am used to the paths of most arguments that have appeared on this website about politics, but -- and I say this to be transparent -- this one baffles me and I don't know how to respond to it. I've seen people say it but, well, it gets hard to explain within rule 1.
Maybe if we agree that "NATO is an extension of US foreign policy" we can sidestep the issue for now.
This one I am much more used to. Remembering that NATO is a military organization and not, you know, "who controls the internet," I'd like to just present you with a simple pair of questions:
How many of the past thirty years has the US been at war?
How many of the past thirty years has China been at war?
Beyond that, for all the fearmongering people do, China is remarkably less interested in unilaterally dictating relations than you might think, so explaining things in terms of "which country is the master of the unipolar world order" is not justified. Unipolarity has only been the state of things for a little over 30 years (and only obvious for a little over 40) and was unheard of before that. There is no reason to suppose that the future can only be unipolar, especially if the country that ushered in unipolarity and viciously guards it with world-historic levels of violence (the US) is no longer the strongest force.
China has shown every indication of seeking bilateral development and cooperation. An example in severe microcosm is the US banning China from the International Space Station and China responding by making its own space station which the US isn't banned from, nor most other countries (though I think it is still a finite list and not totally open, owing in part to being a new program). Stories like "debt traps" from China are grotesque projection, as China doesn't do things like forced restructuring or asset seizure, unlike the IMF.
I truly think this sort of "US is the least of the available evils" ideology has a hard time existing except in a subcultural bubble where it meets no challenge at all, because it is an astoundingly flimsy position.