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this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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MeanwhileOnGrad
2116 readers
82 users here now
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
Welcome to MoG!
Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
Alternatively, a detailed blog post about Tankies.
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether it be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users, as it handwaves their extremism.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in arguments that lack mutual agreement.
Brigading — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from voting, commenting, or manipulating the post in any way. This includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be banned.
Tankies can explain their views, but may be criticised or challenged for them. Any minor infraction of the rules may result in a warning and possibly a temporary ban.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically last only 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction doubles the duration. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Interesting, I'm not sure how I feel about it. On Reddit it encouraged people to post groupthink fluff so they could be allowed onto their desired subreddit. The bots were great at that, and we got a "dead internet" website.
I suppose we've got other stuff going for us like bans being local and bots being scorned. And I have to admit that mod/admin effort isn't free. Do you think the low karma warnings could potentially be a slippery slope to something worse?
Reddit records positive karma though, which is different.
Also Reddit or Reddit communities (not sure) can literally throttle the activity of users who are heavily downvoted within a specific subreddit. Some subs also instant block anyone with -100 Karma. Unfortunately though, when you do encounter an account like that... it's very obviously why they are like that. People can get unfairly hit by arguing in the wrong communities but 9 times out of 10, a -100 karma account (it caps at that on Reddit) has been trolling, looking for fights, spamming etc.
It's understandable to feel that way, but imo this is about basic internet etiquette rather than censorship. If I went to .ml and wrote a few sensible comments there I would quickly get a bad rep. It's not perfect but it's a far cry from censorship as well.
Doesn‘t matter what it‘s supposed to be, the relevant factor is what it does in reality.
i agree, there shouldn't be any upvotes, downvotes or reputation system at all.
I mean if we had piefed without a karma/reputation system we would get a true level playing field, reduced performative posting, more raw feedback and less censoring.
but on the other hand there would be too much noise, spam and bot flooding (since no reputation/karma), lack of trust and accountability.
Xitter for example has no rep system yet people still find a way to judge the quality of a post using the Ratio method (likes vs comments)
I like the principle of reddit and piefed expands on that and tries to come in with "common sense tools"
I think it's really up to you to decide what is important.
Do you want a place for raw, unfiltered, diverse and equal expression? (à la Twitter) which comes with its set of negatives. Or a place that is organized, high-quality and "trustworthy" and its own set of negatives
I personnaly prefer an organized place but that's just my opinion.
Edit: should have used Mastodon as an example instead of Twitter
I suppose it would depend on where the score limit is. Any admin tool can be abused by a sufficiently determined admin, of course, but I think as long as the low-reputation limit is something along the lines of "This person is consistently averaging a distinctly negative score", it's probably fine. You'd really have to be overwhelmingly commenting on controversial issues with nothing but controversial takes in order to average that with good faith posting.
Mostly it's the "MY BIG NUMBER" attitude that I think should be avoided, and since users can't see their reputation, that's probably not going to be a problem.
My reputation is so low, because I critically engage in this community from time to time and people don‘t like it.
calling random people nazis and fascists for not liking tankies isn't critical engagement
this the critical thinking you talk about?
Or do you mean critically engage against people's opinion even when yours seems to be the same line of thinking the tankie employ? Because you give the vibe that the only country you adore and care about is Russia and China, to which the system used by piefed is really useful for people to not engage any of your comment.
I'm critically engaging and pugjesus downvoted both of my comments without responding. But they usually do, and I genuinely like to hear other people's opinions — especially when they're far different from mine.
Weird when a community that criticizes instances for authoritarianism and groupthink is... well...
Downvote and move on, that's a pretty basic reaction to something you don't agree on the internet. Not all interaction on the internet need to be an essay and shit flinging, not everyone have the time to engage every comment they don't like. I don't really like it as well, but i do use it from time to time and i understand why people do it, they just don't care about having argument every moment of their online life.
And i'm not sure what you mean by "critically engaging", you simply posted a link and say it's interesting. There's nothing deep about it for people to engage other than a simple "ok", which tend to replaced by the vote button.
I was referring to another comment I made here. However, this was under the mistaken assumption that pugjesus was a mod here. I apologize for my confusion.
A single user is hardly representative of an entire community, and also, downvotes don't mean groupthink. Anyone can upvote or downvote for a variety of reasons. Personally, I very rarely vote, and I think downvotes should be removed entirely.
You know what? That's my mistake. For whatever reason, I thought they were a mod here.
Regardless, posting the craziest parts of comment sections are no more representative of an instance than a single user represents a community. Basically any comment section over 30 comments is going to have some out-there ideas.
Having a community where people can openly call them "fascist bootlickers" for theories somewhat based on the context of the rest of the comments, that have nothing to do with fascism, is kinda nuts.
Just so i get this right, do you believe that posts featured in this community are examples of these outliers and not representative of tankies?
or do you take issue that the title isn't neutral enough?
I take issue with insults and presenting curated screenshots as representative of communities, yes.
You don't think a comment of 17 upvotes is representative of their community?
No? That's a weird thing to say.
Okay, so what is representative then? What metric are you going by?
I don't understand this argument, it's like you're trying to get me to justify this community when I already gave my reasons for disliking it.
I don't need to have a metric for enjoying myself.
it's just strange that you don't think this is representative of tankies. i mean we have hundreds of posts of all different examples of all sorts of different users, even prominent tankies and their admins too.
And I'm saying you could find examples of people being nuts and having shitty opinions in every comment section, regardless of the instance. I see every instance from .today. I mean, if we're going by upvotes my comments in the same section had 52, 49, and 35 upvotes. This one had 111. By your metric, that would be more representative of the community, right?
We could go and find all the most upvoted comments of every section screenshotted on .ml and post those instead, see what we find.
I implore you to visit the rest of this community and read the side bar
I've been directed to this community many time when asking what, exactly, is so bad about .ml, .grad and hexbear. I can only conclude that you agree it's okay to attack users by calling them fascist bootlickers without evidence, deliberately misconstrue context, and encourage brigading through posts like these.
I don't see anything relevant to my comment in the sidebar, so I implore you to read it again.
You don't take issue with hate speech, conspiracy theories and apologia/revisionism?
Absolutely. This isn't it. Can you not answer a question?
This thread isn't that, no. But there are examples across this community of such content
Which brings me back to my questions:
Is it okay to call other users fascist bootlickers without evidence that they're engaging in fascist or bootlicking behavior?
And
If upvotes represent the vibe of a community, why not have a rule to post the most upvoted comments to represent them more accurately?
And
Do these instances engage in bad behavior moreso than other instances on the fediverse?
No, I don't think so.
Too ugly to add to the rules and annoying to go through. There's also an important distinction: Tankie instances don't allow downvotes, which is why I note the vote count. If it were on world or any other instance that allows downvotes, I wouldn't make that argument.
Yes
So maybe mod posts that attack other users?
You're a mod, making and enforcing rules to protect a broader community should be the bare minimum. Which instances don't allow downvotes? I have downvoted .ml content on my .ml account and this one, and you can definitely see those downvotes. Sounds like you made that up.
Either use the upvotes as a metric or admit the screenshots don't represent the broader community. You're waffling back and forth on this one.
Hard disagree. You made an echo chamber for all your bad faith arguments.
Why should I stop users from attacking others? Tankies do it all the time in their spaces, but you're not advocating for them to stop, you're in no position to call me bad faith until you do.
Hexbear. If you don't know what instance is what, you shouldn't be arguing any of this.
This isn't an echo chamber either, Tankies are even given special privileges that other users don't get. You can even check modlog to verify this.
Tell you what: if you're honest and in good faith, go make an account, post in Hexbear's /c/slop, and tell them to stop making fun of people and using blanket statements.
I didn't tell you to stop users from attacking each other, I said you should moderate your community to prevent unfounded insults and brigading. The people in the screenshot didn't do anything wrong.
I do tell users to stop attacking others, often, especially in the communities I made.
Hexbear is just one instance. And... weird? I've downvoted and seen downvotes on hexbear communities I engage in. As far as I know, you should be able to see them, too, if your instance allows downvotes. So, yes, I do know what I'm talking about. Do you?
But, come on. This is circular logic and you know it. You first argued that seventeen upvotes was indicative of a community's values, didn't agree that the most upvoted comments in a thread would better represent a community, and continue to say your community represents "tankie behavior."
Now you're telling me to check the modlog for some ambiguous priviledge? How exactly do I... check their priviledge?
Also you're a hypocrite:
What. Lol, why?
edit: How is that any different from what I'm saying here?
Your comprehension is low, and I can't be bothered explaining things to you.
Tell you what: if you’re honest and in good faith, go make an account, post in Hexbear’s /c/slop, and tell them to stop making fun of people and using blanket statements.
I don't need to do any of those things to argue in good faith. That wouldn't prove or disprove anything I've said, and if so, I'd like to know how.
Furthermore, we're talking about this post and this thread. Why do you keep changing the subject and putting the onus on me?