MeanwhileOnGrad

In the campist brain, Russia is geopolitically opposed to the USA empire, and therefore since USA is the greatest evil, we need to "critically support" their opponents.

The types of tankies you find on .ml are not so much Marxist as they are anti-USA (they'll call it anti-imperialist, nevermind the imperialism they're supporting)

That means they'll support everyone that's anti-USA. They'll cheer for al-Qaeda as long as they're shouting "Death to America". And that's only slight hyperbole

Two faces of the same medal. People are brainwashed in taking sides. If you are not right-winged you are left-winged. They realize their government is shit and jump into the one of their enemies. Instead of study and think they conform to a model and feed on its circlejerk rejecting opposite views.

Not everyone on .ml is foolish but their modlog can get really stupid

Originally, .ml was the flagship instance for a fledgeling new software project, and the devs had to try and keep the mask on as much as they could for it to be a general purpose main instance. But over time that mask slipped, and users fled to other instances. Which means the only users left on .ml today are the fellow tankies. And knowing that, now they don't seem to try to hide it anymore.

It probably has, they've spent just the last almost 2 years or so of Lemmy-verse growth since the Reddit API debacle banning, censoring and ostracizing newcomers that didn't fit in with the tankie mindset

They've become the echo chamber they always accuse .world/.ee/SJW of being

I've noticed the same thing. I do think part of it is .ml has been accruing users from other, more widely defederated instances like lemmygrad and hexbear.

Trolls want an audience, after all.

long overdue to defederate

lots of them have smurf accounts on other instances anyway these days

Except for one that says it is balancing out other propaganda, as if that made it any better...

Nothing really shady about it, it's quite obvious, they support Putin and his war against the world. Do they do it for free or because they're payed operatives remains unknown, but does it really matter at this point

Yea that's how most feel, the rest of the Tankie Triad, Hex and Grad, are much more in your face about it.

.ml aims for subtlety through admin and moderator action to avoid wider calls for defederation and also now that Lemmy is catching on to some degree, the main devs are letting the mask fall off on their "flagship" instance

I'd say, more tolerated. Because they're the devs, the lemmy.ml instance is considered the flagship instance.

Where new features go live first, a number of official support communities are and because it was the first, the perception that they have some of the biggest comms

The rest of the Tankie Triad (Grad and hex) don't have that so that's why they're pretty much widely defederated from, it's a much easier decision.

I say perception, because the comms there are only the "biggest" by subscriber count. If you look at the statistics by monthly active users, it tells a much different story where only a single .ml comm breaks the top 15 comms Lemmy-verse wide

We are everywhere haha

This feels like it has to be an urban legend or taken out of context or something. Russia had been involved in heaps of massive wars using guns before WW1. Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, 1877 Russo-Turkish War, and the Russo-Japanese War all involved shitloads of guns