PSA: Alternatives for the most popular lemmy.ml communities

barsoap@lemm.ee to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 309 points –

For all your boycotting needs. I'm sure there's some mods caught in lemmy.ml's top 10 that are perfectly upstanding and reasonable people, my condolences for the cross-fire.

  1. !memes@lemmy.world and !memes@sopuli.xyz. Or of course communities that rule.
  2. !asklemmy@lemmy.world
  3. !linux@programming.dev. Quite small, plenty of more specific ones available. Also linux is inescapable on lemmy anyway :)
  4. !programmer_humor@programming.dev
  5. !world@lemmy.world
  6. !privacy@lemmy.world and maybe !privacyguides@lemmy.one, lemmy.one itself seems to be up in the air. !fedigrow@lemm.ee says !privacy@lemmy.ca. They really seem to be hiding even from another, those tinfoil hats :)
  7. !technology@lemmy.world
  8. Seems like !comicstrips@lemmy.world and !comicbooks@lemmy.world, various smaller comic-specifc communities as well as !eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
  9. !opensource@programming.dev
  10. !fuckcars@lemmy.world

(Out of the loop? Here's a thread on lemmy.ml mods and their questionable behaviour)

327

Didn't we do this yesterday?

I think it's good to have regular outreach. I just subscribed to the linux community from this one.

The other post also has me considering moving my account to a different instance. There were some compelling arguments against centralizing on lemmy.world. (I don't strongly disagree with the moderation here but I do somewhat disagree with centralizing admin power like on reddit.)

I wouldn't mind seeing these regularly. But maybe it would be nice to have someone make specific accounts for that purpose so you can easily block them out of your feed.

I like to think of .world as a introduction point for the fediverse. I think it should be trigger happy with defederation to keep the instance approachable by the mainstream then let people choose other instances based on what they offer.

I moved to lemm.ee cos they d9nt defederate from many people and that aligns with my whole ideology on free speach.

Are our accounts portable yet? Until they are most people (especially contributors used to the fake internet points system) are going to stick with their first account with fake internet points.

U can export and import pfp and followed communities etc but not votes or posts.

Cool, TIL, just curious about what happens to the posts you’ve made, if you delete your old account?

Its the fediverse nothing ever gets deleted its shared across all federated peers its the one downside to moving away from centralisation.

Export/import subscriptions in your settings

There is no karma on Lemmy, no reason to stay attached

I guess this more a top 10 list than our extensive thread

Yeah this is post 65534 on how lemmy.ml is bad, centralizing on lemmy.world is best. Two more and we'll get a nice round number!

OpenMW's official Lemmy community has been on lemmy.ml since 2021, way before lemmy.world existed (and most other instances, too), and way before there was any inter-instance drama. It's becoming increasingly likely that it's not going to be a suitable long-term home, but we'd be much happier if we could migrate the existing community rather than start from scratch with a new one. Is there any way to do that yet?

IMO organizations should self-host their official communities. If you're going to move, it ought to be to something like !openmw@lemmy.openmw.org.

In addition to the obvious benefits of having admin control/being able to avoid moderation drama imposed by others, it also means you could have more than one community: maybe !openmw for general discussion, plus !modding, !development, etc.

+1, larger community projects really should try to spin up their own Lemmy hosting on whatever infra they already have for message boards

but we’d be much happier if we could migrate the existing community rather than start from scratch with a new one. Is there any way to do that yet?

Migrating content over should be doable by a sufficiently tech-savvy admin, subscribers, I don't think so.

Community migration is coming in future releases of Lemmy but right now it's not possible.

Principally it is possible if you can iterate over all the posts and comments and inject them into the database of their new home.

That wont work at all. Each subscriber needs to get the update which is not a feature of Lemmy at the moment. Simply injecting posts will only copy over content.

I think the suggestion in whole was "do that specifically for the content, and for the users make a post on the old instance linking to the new, pin it and lock the community so the users have to migrate themselves, since dragging them with you is impossible currently."

We love to be the home of smaller communities, but for sure, any larger ones should look into running on their own setup. If you need help, drop us a line!

!openmw@lemmy.ml has less than 150 subscribers, so it's definitely not large. We're already swamped with infrastructure work for the stuff we already self-host, so I don't think we'll be running our own Lemmy instance any time soon.

I enjoy OpenMW and I'm happy to host if you want, although my instance is basically just me and a few friends right now.

I keep seeing posts about ml recently. Is it time to migrate off? I joined it because it was like the only instance available during the start of the reddit migration and it says "FOSS and privacy enthusiasts" which I am. I didn't even care to know what a tankie was until my all feed started to fill up with so. much. politics. including from lemmygrad and hexbear for the last few months. Fellow ml users seemed normal too.

Idk friends I just want to wear linux knee socks and engage with my niches. I didn't expect all the hail china or seeing "removed" all the time or to end up being grouped in with lemmygrad and hexbear by users from other instances.

Sounds like programming.dev might be a good fit, or perhaps dbzer0?

Last I checked, dbzer0 is unfortunately still federated with the instance where if you name it everyone from it will start calling you a Nazi b/c you don't want to lick Stalin's feet. It's not as much of a problem here, but it's still something to consider.

Edit: getting targeted by tankies illustrates my point beautifully, so TY everyone who is making my argument for me.

To be specific, we are defed from grad, but not hexbutt or lemmy.marxist-leninist unfortunately.

There's few enough that I can get by blocking everyone with an account from hexbutt. Haven't gotten a personal message telling me to kms or a shock link since I moved my main account.

Same here. I will say though, I wish we damn would defed hexbutt lol few or not it's too damn many.

.world liberals are on a propaganda crusade to close off their Zionist echo chambers.

"Yo ho ho evEryBody I don't agree with is a Zionist yo ho ho"

Kony 2012, amirite Linkerbaan?

The way that I see it, the issue with lemmy ml's administration and moderation is not quite political in origin. It's about transparency; and I think that this wall of text that I wrote about how lemmy dot ml handled ani.social shows it well, as the dispute in question was not political in nature. (I can abridge it at request.)

With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to "use lemmy.world instead". I don't have anything against LW's administration, but I think that it's foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation. That instance is already 40% of the MAUs, and hosts the largest comms using Lemmy.

The way that I see it, the issue with lemmy ml’s administration and moderation is not quite political in origin. It’s about transparency

Well it's really both. The issue is the combination of a number of factors which on their own would be fairly easy to deal with, but put together they are very problematic:

  1. The admins are political extremists
  2. lemmy.ml has a very prominent position in the lemmyverse, because they were first and got a headstart
  3. The admins are actively using their position to heavily police discussion according to their extremist political views. The fact that they're not being transparent about it is aggravating, but not the root problem.

This prominent position of lemmy.ml is the fundamental difference with the hexbear or lemmygrad situation. Those instances can easily be contained at the user level: most people can just block and ignore them entirely because nothing interesting happens on those instances for non-extremists. Not so with lemmy.ml, which hosts a number of large bona-fide communities.

So I think it's necessary to make a concerted effort to reduce lemmy.ml's prominence in the fediverse, so that political extremists can't put their thumb on the scale to nudge discussion in a certain direction. Part of that effort is raising awareness about lemmy.ml's nature, which is what this PSA does, but that likely won't be enough due to network effect. It will take more to get people to move their communities to other instances. If other large instances, like lemmy.world, would block lemmy.ml that would provide a real stimulus for a large amount of people to move away from lemmy.ml.

With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”. I don’t have anything against LW’s administration, but I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further

I agree that spreading out more would be desirable, but on the other hand "just use lemmy.world instead of lemmy.ml" is a very simple and practical suggestion to move away from ml.

With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”.

It's where big replacement communities happen to be, that's all there is to it. Avoiding centralisation is a good thing in general but "tired of .ml mods? Here's alternatives" isn't the right time to go for it I think. Maybe the admins can come up with a scheme to round-robin disable community creation or something, to spread things out. Also, community migration is in the pipeline software-wise that would help a lot.

I'm thinking that perhaps the community could/should go a step further, and create another instance to talk about open source and privacy. That would be IMO the best scenario - it would be a great counterpoint to .ml, and it would avoid centralising Lemmy around .world even further.

(I also feel like this might be better even for the devs. Administrative work isn't exactly pleasing, and if I had to take a guess they mostly maintain that instance because they need it for the software. But that's just a guess, don't trust me on that.)

inb4: yes, I know - easier said than done. But I feel like it could be a good option.

I think that it's foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation.

It defeats some of the points of federation, but there are still a lot of reasons why federation is still worth doing even if there's essentially one dominant provider. Not least of which is that sometimes the dominant provider does get displaced over time. We've seen it happen with email a few times, where the dominant provider loses market share to upstarts, one of whom becomes the new dominant provider in some specific use case (enterprise vs consumer, mobile vs desktop vs automation/scripting, differences by nation or language), and where the federation between those still allows the systems to communicate with each other.

Applied to Lemmy/kbin/mbin and other forum-like social link aggregators, I could see LW being dominant in the English-speaking, American side of things, but with robust options outside of English language or communities physically located outside of North America. And we'll all still be able to interact.

Ah yes Lemmy.world should be a giant monolith. Great defederation plan.

The onslaught of fediverse karen posts about lemmy.ml continues.

I mean it’s obviously run by Russia so anything that makes people realise you can’t trust anything that comes out of it is good.

"Here you see one of the prime examples of a lemmy.world liberal turned xenophobe. Swallowing up the hate towards current enemy of the USA and projecting it onto everything they don't like"

Like I don't think the .ml admins are remotely in the right, but politically illiterate libs seeing ghosts everywhere is funny af
(or at least it would be if they didn't generalize everything evil in this world on Russians or Chinese and dominate one of the largest Lemmy instances)

- Yours truly, an actually Russian person with a migration background <3

OOTL on this one, what happened on lemmy.ml?

Criticizing China on lemmy.ml goes about as well as evangelizing crypto on awful.systems. Join an instance that shares your values or roll your own. Know your audience or get the hammer.

It's like a huge chunk of the population out here has never experienced a forum before.

It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.

Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, edit: where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.

"Criticizing China" was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.

The sad part is that this situation was entirely predictable a year ago.

The Lemmy devs (who also run lemmy.ml) made no secret of who they are and what they believe. Especially dessalines.

I do think they have made a very good piece of software. And I think we're better off here than on Reddit. At least it is more difficult for one asshole to ruin everything. We have tools to block people and instances, so it doesn't matter as much even if they're in charge.

I worry that if lemmy.ml continues to be run the way that it is, then it will bleed over into the software side, and we would be forced to fork Lemmy. So far though, despite running lemmy.ml like assholes, the actual development seems fine -- not too different from any other open source project (I only remember that one issue where dessalines completely failed to understand why a user would want to block an instance).

The irony is that, despite creating a tool with what seems like very socialist principles (it gives users & communities a lot of power, and doesn't centralize that power with one person), those principles are often lost on the devs in favor of authoritarianism. Hence the term: "tankie".

(I only remember that one issue where dessalines completely failed to understand why a user would want to block an instance).

Oh he knows why, because he IS why. He wants to pretend he doesn't because he knows people will use it to block the instances that force the politics he enjoys. Nobody is fucking trying to escape star trek lol, it's him and his ilk and he knows it, and since their goal is evangelism (they have to save our souls with authoritarian dictatorships!) he doesn't want the evangelism machine shut down.

Fascism is quite capable at achieving its goals - seeing as how it is not limited by any of that pesky "morality" that slows others down.

16 more...
16 more...

Agreed. But to be fair, there's never been a forum like the fediverse before. People are still learning how to navigate this complex, multifaceted space. It's not just one audience, it's many different ones.

16 more...
16 more...

Lemmy.ml is developed and admined by tankies. Recent allegations are that someone is censoring accounts that have previously made posts critical of China by moderating them across various magazines

I mentioned elsewhere but here's a copy and paste:

It is far more than just that. Removing comments is one thing, mass-banning from many communities at once despite never even having commented in them at all is another, but the real issue is using database manipulation to delete the log entries as to why the comments were removed after the fact.

Even if unintentional, which strains credulity, this is some spez-level stuff going on, where we have the option to either take what a single person (who does not seem inclined to follow their own stated rules) offers, or else we can leave. Many are choosing the latter, and like the Rexodus, making the situation known to others as well in the process.

“Criticizing China” was merely the spark that lit the match, with the situation offering proof of what apparently people have been suspecting for some time now.

54 more...

Is it possible to migrate my account to another Lemmy instance? Or would I have to start over?

You can migrate your subscriptions in the settings (import / export as a JSON file, easier to do on a computer).

You would lose your comments and posts history, but you can refer to the old account on your new account so that people curious would know it's you. Also, if you keep the same name and avatar, most of the people wouldn't notice.

  1. JOIN US! Comicbooks is slow, I'd like it to grow so I can discuss less popular creator owned comics, at the moment it's mostly some news posts, my list posts, some super hero discussion, and some dude who thinks internet comic strips are "comic books" (but nobody has corrected them because they seem nice enough lol).

some dude who thinks internet comic strips are “comic books

Is that me? Ha ha

Naw lol the one you posted is at least a nightwing/starfire thing, it's related. But you're cool too!

I meant whoever posted the one about the comet passing earth a little while back haha.

You've never seen superfans print out and bind a webnovel, huh 😛

Lol technically correct, the best kind of correct!

Naw for real though I just think personally that stuff belongs in comicstrips or one of the more apt communities for it, and comicbooks is specifically for Comic Books proper (not just Marvel/DC but also Image, IDW, DSTLRY, Massive, etc, the more creator owned and independent side.) I think this because quite frankly "Comic Books proper" doesn't really fit in those communities dedicated to strips, and I'd like a space for it specifically when I'm looking for that stuff specifically. My opinions on the matter are far from "the rules" though, it is certainly allowed to post them.

This is also not to say I don't like strips, I do very much and am in most of those communities as well! It really just boils down to organization for me lol, may be slightly OCD.

Also, did you check !fedigrow@lemm.ee ? As a regular poster, that might interest you

Just subscribed!

Nice! There is this post about being the only one posting to a community that might interest you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19187513 (and if you want the full version with 90 comments: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11491827)

Thanks I'll check it out! But also I'm not the only poster there, there's you, Jordan, and a few others too! It's a small community but it is a community haha. I'd like to see it grow but I'm also thankful for you guys who are already there!

The views of .ml mods have not affected me. I don't really check my subscription feed, only /all or /top->day, therefor im still exposed to all those other communities.

The only instances that I've noticed are missing are porn related, and as an asexual, I don't have an interest in them. If I did, I could just visit a different site, like pornhub or w/e

Not all .ml users are tankies, or communist, or foss enthusiasts. I'm just a guy who likes memes and tech

It affects people who think that Lemmy.ml is the default instance, as it says itself and people say that any instance is fine to join.

It also affects people in the batshit insane comments that come from people on that instance, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, that occur with noticeably higher frequency than from other places.

It also affects people on that instance who talk as if into a void with many people blocking their instance but they don't even know that. And that effect will increase over time.

It lowers traffic on the Fediverse, decreasing overall engagement, and drives people away from it altogether. It also lowers the likelihood that you can recommend to people irl to check out the Fediverse - when THAT stuff (e.g. defense of genocide) is seen it tends to turn people off who aren't used to it or who are tech or culture savvy enough to know how to handle it.

So it does affect you, I promise, even if not directly, and over the next few months will do so increasingly as your instance turns into more of an echo chamber than it has been in the past, as more people block it either individually or at an instance level.

Agreed that many of the users are regular people who are just innocently getting swept up in all of this due to the actions of the admins. Just like users of Reddit were when spez did his power flex moves.

You might want to at least make an alt somewhere else so that you get some experiences that your .ml account increasingly will start to lack.

I hear you. When I first joined .ml, they were pressing for people NOT to join it. To create their own instances so that .ml didn't become a central entity, and get overwhelmed with users. The latter did occur during the reddit exodus.

I also agree that they can curate and manipulate the instance to their ideals, which will limit casual users and their reach.

I don't feel like I'm being secluded, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening. I have seen hate for .ml users and hexbear users, and I really don't get it. The fediverse shouldn't be segregating users based on what instance they're in. That's like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.

I don’t feel like I’m being secluded, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I have seen hate for .ml users and hexbear users, and I really don’t get it. The fediverse shouldn’t be segregating users based on what instance they’re in. That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.

I agree with you for Lemmy.ml

I'm not so sure about hexbear, people don't randomly end up there

I did. I stumbled upon a post to chapotraphouse while browsing the All feed from startrek.website that had not defederated it at the instance level. And similarly I found a politics (or maybe it was a memes) community on lemmygrad.ml that same way too! It seems neither of those are defederated from that server still. And on discuss.online while lemmygrad.ml is defederated, hexbear.net is not.

Probably you meant people don't sign up with a login on those instances randomly, but I thought I would add the above perspective at least - that anyone across the Fediverse can get there randomly, if the defederation is not at the instance level.

The fediverse shouldn't be segregating users based on what instance they're in.

If an instance is full of authoritarian propaganda and extreme censorship then actual users should leave.

Right, so we should unblock the nazi instances like exploding heads because they have one cool guy there maybe?

Wait, you need a passport to leave .ml and make a new acct, and have to endure a long process and spend thousands of dollars to become a citizen there? Oh so it's a lot less like people trapped in the US than you thought I guess.

Man I'm gonna level with you, I'd prefer if most people on those instances weren't assholes causing problems everywhere on lemmy since all they are is brigadiers, but since they are, you will be associated with them by being one even just in name. Unfortunate, but human nature.

I don’t feel like I’m being secluded

You probably aren't... yet, but you will become thus, increasingly over time.

For the past half a year I have defended lemmy.ml, saying that its users are nowhere near as bad as hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml (just... visit them, you'll see fairly quickly what they are all about). And that much is still true - the users are quite often innocent.

Though not 100% so, and now this with the admins, I will block lemmy.ml soon. I have already started blocking some of its communities, like all the politically-themed memes were simply not fun to keep appearing in my feed, unlike the many other meme communities scattered throughout the fediverse. I am missing out on basically nothing but contention, which has noticeably improved my experience of the Fediverse.

Yes, I am throwing out some babies along with the bathwater, but I am okay with that. The point is to foster a sense of enjoyment and peace, rather than constantly argue with people who are not engaging in good faith to begin with. I left Reddit for good reason, and believe it or not I would have left it regardless of all of spez's bullshit.

Imagine my dismay when coming to the Fediverse, I make the mistake of ONE comment in chapotraphouse, and I got like a hundred replies of the most batshit insane, derogatory, bad-mannered and bad-faithed "arguments", which lasted for WEEKS long after I stopped responding. I was being "dunked on", which they LOVE, and which - apparently, much to my dismay upon finding out - is the literal purpose of that community. I almost left the entire Fediverse after that.

Well, it did not help that I made the same mistake upon replying to a comment in some political community on lemmygrad.ml. It was those two events together that almost made me leave. However, fortunately for me Lemmy v0.19.3 came out just as I was mulling that issue over, so I blocked those two instances, and now I am as happy as a clam. Honestly this issue with Lemmy.ml is nowhere near as bad as those two instances. But it's still not great, it still impacts people - e.g. it will impact you far more than me - and it will hurt all of us if we cannot recommend to irl people to come to the Fediverse, b/c they are likely to see that stuff and be put off by it. And therefore all the content that they may have offered for our consumption is gone along with it.

An analogy might be: how much fecal matter is okay to appear in your food? We can spend a large amount of time curating our own experiences here to avoid that, but how likely is a non-Linux-using average person who might want to leave Reddit and come here to be even willing to do that, before they can start enjoying their interactions here? That "shit" demeans us all.

That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.

I suggest a different analogy instead. Crime in the USA in general has gone down substantially in recent decades, but let's say that you wanted to walk the streets of NYC in the 80s-early 90s. It's not "just b/c they are there", but rather "crime is MUCH more likely to occur there, than other places". If you choose to go there, you are making a probabilistic bet that you will survive the encounter. Maybe you will... or maybe your child will become Batman after you get brutally murdered in front of him, but either way, past some threshold it becomes a foolish bet to have chanced it, in return for what gain even?

You and I do not get to decide upon the preferences of others. Many will leave Lemmy altogether, rather than put up with this stuff. I at least will block Lemmy.ml, but that leaves the newest and least aware and therefore most vulnerable people to still have to deal with it. In the meantime, we are conversing about it, letting people know about the problems that we all face, together.

I have noticed the high level of political memes and threads and don't care for it. I didn't understand why they were so common, I thought we were all trying to get away from politics.

I will try a different instance and report back.

Possibly a good comparison could be memes@lemmy.ml vs. the two alternatives mentioned in the OP - I really wanted to keep the former, but politics kept creeping in and just made the experience un-fun so eventually I blocked it all. I thought perhaps the mods were simply lazy, I had little idea of the systemic issues across lemmy.ml altogether.

So I decided to go to sopuli.xyz. Viewing their all/hot is not much different than what I have now. However Sopuli is closer to what I expected .ml to be. There are some instances with zero defederations (completely unsensored), but I'm happy not seeing porn, discrimination, or ads in their feed. @Oka@sopuli.xyz

I thought we were all trying to get away from politics.

First of all, why would you think that? Second of all, everything is political so that is literally impossible. And third of all, only centrists who want things to stay exactly as they are, because they feel they are are benefiting from the status quo, ever say such things.

I'm completely lost. Can someone fill me on what the hell is going on?

Lemmy.ml is full of tankie creeps, and there's a big debate about defederating from it. One of the big talking points is that ml has a bunch of popular communities. These are alternatives to them.

Are people actually that serious about defederating from Lemmy.ml?

Pug Jesus summarized it well enough. I didn't think I'd have a stronger stance on it, but I am strongly in favor of defederating. I also have a very strong personal opposition to MLs in general, since I essentially regard them as traitors due to the faction's pattern of conduct.

Pugjesus is Joe Bidens strongest warrior though, everyone's a tankie by that guys standards.

Yes anyone that doesn't throat putin's cock is a liberal, we get it.

That got weirdly sexual pretty quick - are you trying to be homophobic?

Since when is throating cock only a homosexual act? That's actually kinda bigoted to suggest.

And yes, metaphor can be very difficult to understand. I'll try to speak more literally so you can keep up. Not defending an authoritarian dictator doesn't automatically make someone a liberal.

When you use it in the context of being an insult it's pretty easy to conclude you're trying to be bigoted. Last I checked Ukraine was the one with a coup government and suspended elections.

Are people actually that serious about defederating from Lemmy.ml?

Yes. I avoid Lemmy.ml communities like the plague, but because I don't feel there's intentional hostility from the community towards outsiders, unlike Grad or Hexbear, I don't think I'm in favor. I do understand the underlying thought process. It's difficult to 'join hands' with a community, however otherwise normal, which is run by genocide deniers who very clearly use their power over the community to push a narrative of genocide denial.

genocide deniers who very clearly use their power over the community to push a narrative of genocide denial.

You are the premier genocide denier I've run into on this platform, you're more concerned about the Democrats election chances than the people they help kill.

what?

I think I made it pretty clear, but when it comes to Israel's genocide the above poster is outspoken defending the Democrats supporting it, but when its US state enemies they're getting extremely mad about anyone not repeating the US state department line on things.

Ah ok so this was more about post history. I don't want to get involved there :D I just didn't get it without context

You are the premier genocide denier I’ve run into on this platform

Because I want less genocide instead of more? How curious.

Are you planning for voting for any political parties which are directly aiding active genocides in the near future?

Biden is the only one circumventing congress to get bombs sent to Palestinian refugee camps so far

People who use Palestinian bodies to push their political agenda are co-opting genocide. Fuck all the way off.

Clearly the same standards don't apply to pushing the political opinions of lemmyworld, hence all these threads.

It rules being able to just look in a database what has you so mad

You clearly just hate dissent and want an MSNBC bubble

The thing is, as far as users and communities go lemmy.ml is pretty much a general purpose instance like lemmy.world, but it is controlled by political extremists who are using their admin position to put their thumb on the scale to push discussion in a certain direction.

New users to Lemmy.world are surprised Lemmy.ml has Marxists, so they are saber rattling yet again. This time they may actually go the full length and defederate, but that remains to be seen.

Just a disclaimer for normal ppl:
What op is referring to as "Marxists" are (what the irl leftists call) revisionists who think that Marxism is somehow compatible with bourgeois counter revolution (PRC after Deng, under whom the crackdowns in Tiananmen happened btw) and "anti-american" imperialism (what Russia and modern-day China are doing militarily (mostly Russia) and financially (mostly China))

Nobody believes the PRC is economically Socialist, just that it has a Dictatorship of the Proletariat and keeps their bourgeoisie in check, which is in the eyes of the CPC a safer option than shutting out the entire world like the USSR did, leading to its collapse. I don't think anyone is calling the PRC full Socialism, not even the CPC itself.

As for Imperialism, most people talking about it are using Lenin's definition, a sort of International Bourgeois/Proletarian system, not just expansionism or international trade.

There is no DoP left in the "P"RC. At best it's social democracy combined with one of the most brutally efficient capitalist systems of exploitation to date (which from a purely liberal economic pov is quite impressive, but so is Japan)

(following quotes are not meant as an appeal to authority, but rather me using wording which put it better than I ever could)

'Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the ABC of Marxism.’ ‘Opportunism does not extend the recognition of class struggle to what is the cardinal point, to the period of transition from capitalism to Communism, to the period of the overthrow and the complete abolition of the bourgeoisie.’
(Lenin, The State and Revolution)

Mao Zedong also pointed out:

“Never forget classes and class struggle.” “Stability and unity do not mean writing off class struggle; class struggle is the key link and everything else hinges on it.”

This was directly levelled at Deng Xiaoping, whom he assessed as follows:

“This person does not grasp class struggle; he has never referred to this key link. Still his theme of ‘white cat, black cat’, making no distinction between imperialism and Marxism. This tells us that both production and modernization will go astray if we abandon the key link of class struggle, and if we reject the correct, Marxist line and the socialist road. If we follow his revisionist line, we can never develop production but will only sabotage it; we can never achieve socialist modernization but will only degenerate into capitalism!”
(Notes: "production" as in 'socialist mode of production' and "modernization" as in 'socialist modernization of society')

Yes, I'm aware, Deng is absolutely a revisionist. I was explaining what most Marxists at least on Lemmy believe about China.

Personally, I understand why they went down that road after the fall of the USSR, but it remains to be seen if this will actually end up being the correct play. I think it would have been better had they taken a more hard-line stance in favor of Marxism than Revisionism, but we are now so far from that point that the entire last 35 years of global history would have been completely different.

yeah, alt-hist stuff isn't all that productive

the thing I meant was, that the ppl who defend China as well as China itself, have forsaken Marxism and should not be called that

it means a complete revision of the understanding of class struggle (being replaced with class collaborationism and often the CPC taking up the role of the bourgeoisie) and thus dialectical/historical materialism

which is why I am referring to them as "social democrats at best"

100% agreed on Alt-History, no questions from me on that.

However, I do want to flip this around just a bit, for the sake of a thought experiment. For critical supporters of the PRC, it seems that opposing US hedgemony and creating a multipolar world is the primary means by which Lenin's Imperialism can be fought in our present moment, even if we lack any hardline Marxist powers.

In your eyes, what should these Marxists instead be supporting? The US? It seems everyone is agreed on supporting the Global South, but when it comes to countries with any real influence on global geopolitics, are all of them bad and unworthy of even critical support, generally, or is there a force you believe is on somewhat of the right track, as a Marxist?

This isn't a gotcha, I am genuinely interested in this conversation.

I'd say that you don't have to support either side in an inter-imperialist conflict.

Just because China's ruling elites have virtually no military bases abroad (compared to the USA), doesn't mean that they aren't imperialist. Only that they are "smarter" in that regard.

To use Jimmy Carters words (about the "smarter"-part):

"Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody?" Carter asked. "None. And we have stayed at war." The U.S., he noted, has only enjoyed 16 years of peace in its 242-year history, making the country "the most warlike nation in the history of the world," Carter said. This is, he said, because of America's tendency to force other nations to "adopt our American principles."

In China, meanwhile, the economic benefits of peace were clear to the eye. "How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?" he asked. While China has some 18,000 miles of high-speed rail, the U.S. has "wasted, I think, $3 trillion" on military spending. "It's more than you can imagine. China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that's why they're ahead of us. In almost every way."

"And I think the difference is if you take $3 trillion and put it in American infrastructure you'd probably have $2 trillion leftover. We'd have high-speed railroad. We'd have bridges that aren't collapsing, we'd have roads that are maintained properly. Our education system would be as good as that of say South Korea or Hong Kong," Carter told the congregation.

China might be a so called "social democracy". It is, however, - in contrast to the European model - in large parts funded internally: most prominently the coastal cities and their SEZs (special economic zones), which host abhorrent labour/environmental laws, red-tape-cutting corruption and whatever else international investment capital needs (or be it internal one, like the allowing 996 culture at Huawei or Chinas tech sector in general)

To quote Michael Parenti:

Regional bureaucrats milk the country dry, extorting graft from the populace and looting local treasuries. Land grabbing in cities and countryside by avaricious developers and corrupt officials at the expense of the populace are almost everyday occurrences. [...]

Workers in China who try to organize labor unions in the corporate dominated “business zones” risk losing their jobs or getting beaten and imprisoned. Millions of business zone workers toil twelve-hour days at subsistence wages. With the health care system now being privatized, free or affordable medical treatment is no longer available for millions. Men have tramped into the cities in search of work, leaving an increasingly impoverished countryside populated by women, children, and the elderly. The suicide rate has increased dramatically, especially among women.

I'm not sure whether an integrated periphery constitutes imperialism., their export of financial capital, however, definitely does! (eg. their debt traps and following decade-long leases)

So yes, from my POV the Global South or rather the periphery in general, (unfortunately) have no strong advocate on the geopolitical stage

(Please bear in mind that I do not claim to have studied the addressed topics in proper detail and all this being my ad hoc take)

So it seems to me that we are in agreement that the PRC is certainly not full Socialism, and definitely has more internal than external funding. In this instance, in a contradiction between US and PRC hegemony, would the Global South be better off with the PRC or US as the global superpower? I understand that we do not fully support the PRC, as it is revisionist in many ways and does enact some level of Imperialism, but in contrast to the US it focuses on Peace and internal development, rather than forever wars.

I guess if we can both agree that neither are good that's a step forward, but I see the PRC as a lesser evil in the global context. It certainly isn't a strong ally for the Global South, but seems to present fewer challenges for the Global South to throw off the reigns of Imperialism themselves and transition to a Social Democracy, or even Socialism outright.

I really do think that's the point here with the PRC vs the US.

What are your thoughts on that?

Imo just bc the subjugation is financial instead of military in nature, does not mean that it's preferable, since it remains subjugation nonetheless.

Idk if that analogy makes sense, but whether you are beat till you collapse, or get the rug pulled from under you, you still end up on the ground.

I also think that it's important to keep in mind that social democracy is not a step towards socialism, but away from it. It is the temporary grant of concessions of the ruling elites towards the working classes. It is one of the defense mechanism of capital to keep the masses complacent, always at the cost of the exploitation of others. The other ones would be fascism or post-modern individualist neoliberalism (the latest stage of the US model which is essentially gaslighting the working population psychologically instead of using material means to keep them complacent. Ofc those are fluid and capital often combines various aspects of them).
But I digress...

I think it's similar to WW1 or Russia's invasion of Ukraine: internationally, Marxists shouldn't support either side of inter-imperialist conflict and domestically employ revolutionary defeatism where possible

Also I'd disagree that China has (so to say) "taken a detour from the socialist road", but entirely abandoned it. The only thing that is left is the hammer and sickle, and the red paint... (even the text of the Internationale is too radical for them, as they only seem to play the instrumental version at the CPC congresses)

tl;dr: I'd rather not pick between "the lesser" of two hegemonic evils, but reject any form of (neo)-imperialist/-colonialist subjugation.

(again this became more like a rant and I am not that well read in general)

also I welcome the change of having a good faith interaction with a more or less like minded Marxist on here :)

I want to start this off by reponding to your closer, I agree entirely, this is a good-faith convo I appreciate among fellow Marxist comrades, and I do enjoy it!

I ageee that it isn't ideal to pick between the lesser of two evils, but I believe one can support a lesser of two evils between 2 evils while supporting good revolutionary or corrective movements within.

As for the bit on Social Democracy within the periphery, I know it isn't Socialism and will never be Socialism, but third world Social Democracies do help focus on domestic nationalization and throw off Imperialism from the Global North. Those movements against Imperialism in my opinion are much better than going along with it, as they increase the revolutionary potential in their neighbors and former Imperialists.

It's like a multi-layered level of support, there are very few truly hard-line Marxist movements, so we have to work with what exists presently. We can advocate for better while also critically supporting movements that would better allow better movements later.

Kinda like supporting Palestine. Even if Hamas is reactionary, Palestine will never move forward socially until it throws off its oppressors, which is why supporting Palestinian Liberation is straightforward.

I appreciate your thoughts!

2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...
2 more...

Interesting list

For another thread on this topic: https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

About !privacyguides@lemmy.one, I posted on !meta@lemmy.one: https://lemmy.world/post/16273266, the instance and community might be a bit abandoned.

For comics, isn't !comicstrips@lemmy.world an option?

privacyguides does seem to have a decent number of active users, comicstrips seems to be more specialised than comics.

privacyguides does seem to have a decent number of active users,

I agree, that's what I mentioned in that thread. But still, we might want to see if the instance is still managed, or if it will go bust like lemmy.film or iusearch.fyi

!comicstrips@lemmy.world content is very similar to !comics@lemmy.ml.

The more specific one is !comicbooks@lemmy.world

So, I’ve been on lemmy.world since I joined last year and everyone’s saying it’s too big. Lemmy.ml is the next-largest so I’m conflicted. What do?

Join literally any other server.

That's the point of distributed networks they're supposed to be distributed if 80% of the content is on two servers that's not distributed. People should move off ml and world regardless of their politics simply because it's not a good idea to have everything all in one place.

Join a smaller instance. You can still see posts on lemmy.world, and you might find a niche you're interested in in the process

Smaller instances are also less likely to get defederated by other instances, so unless your admins or mods are quick on the defederation, you get to see everything the fediverse has to offer. Not everyone likes that, of course, but it can be a good perk depending on the user and their admins and mods.

I also really like the idea of interest based instances. I hope we see those grow bigger rather than everything being put on .World and .ml. I need to post and comment on instances like programming.dev or ttrpg.network more.

Join a server that fits your geographic location. That would lead to a better balance than what we have today.

People say lots of stuff, i am happy on world. As long as we don't only take part in local communities i don't think there's much of a problem really.

The world news community on .ml is just Russian and Chinese propoganda.

And .world is liberal amerikkkan bs then?

(not saying that either one is right btw)

Clearly the American point of view is neutral, the default, and the truth, so it doesn't count as propaganda.

Why are you being downvoted? Is it not obvious enough that your comment was sarcasm?

I had to do a double take because this sentiment is prevalent throughout lemmy.world and other instances.

It's not even about which view is right or neutral. On .world posts and comments critical of the US aren't mass censored like .ml does with posts critical of China, Russia or the former USSR.

That's true to some extent. I don't agree with hard censorship like that, but there is also the risk of getting astroturfed and brigaded like reddit, which had a clear example as far back as 2013 where Eglin Air Force Base, FL showed up as "most addicted city". The goal of censorship is to give your own opinions more space, so I'm not exactly upset if other instances are moderated in a different way when there are plenty of other instances moderated in a different way. The fediverse offers plenty of space.

Please dont use lemmy.world alternatives. World is a much bigger problem in terms of centralization.

Are you on !fedigrow@lemm.ee? That’s a topic we discuss quite often there

I don't care how big .world gets because it's the same thing with mastodon.social or pixelfed.social. Coming from primarily centralized services, people will always be looking for a "main" instance because that's what their brains are used to and that's what will help adoption. The ones who care will use another instance. As long as fedi has the users and not the proprietary alternatives, it's fine. We can manage.

You're partially right, but it would be better if users were evenly spread on many instances.

Imagine if one instance becomes so big and then they de-federate. For normal users, nothing would change, but then we would have created the new R*ddit

This may sound cheesy but this list is the healthy way to solve the issue people had with Lemmy.ml moderation. Thank you for compiling it, I didn't reliaze there were instances for programming and anime. Glad to see a solution where we didn't have to go through the adults (admins and mods in this case).

Also, it's healthy for the fediverse to see communities spread on to many instances but it does make Lemmy harder for your average redditor to understand (but long term goal of a healthy fediverse is more important).

Also !greentext@sh.itjust.works is a bit more active than !4chan@lemmy.world

There's also all of these communities on Reddit if you're truly unhappy that the volunteer owned and run social media you signed up for isn't being astroturfed with US-Israeli state press releases.

Has too much lemmy.world. Downvoted.

(Half kidding. I hope it's obvious which half.)

Everyone should defederate from lemmy.world, the Reddit of Lemmy.

I like to think that a lot of the more "Reddity" Reddit refugees from .world, those who tend toward pearl clutching theatrics like these posts, will eventually head back to Reddit. Maybe they'll find their perfect alternative, where there are no dev or admin issues and everyone has a comforting (for them) center-left to center-right, Western ideology driven political stance that never challenges their preconceptions.

I just block the users who need blocking.

Enjoy segregating all the communities...I guess

Enjoy segregating all the communities...I guess

I do not know what you think is going on here, but that's literally the fucking point of all the Lemmys.

I disagree. The decentralization is thought through at an instance level, not community level. If it was thought through at a community level we'd have tools to aggregate different communities. The current solution is the equivalent of having multiple steering wheels on a car, nobody thought how you'd actually steer the car so you were given the option to steer each wheel separately. It might make sense on a superficial level but if you thought about how users actually use the thing you'd know it's not the best way to do things.

People have the ability to block communities as they see fit individually and also follow whatever communities they want and only browse their subscribed list. (steering wheel)

But when popular communities are on an instance that is very much "get on board or get out" to the point they ban users from every community on their instance for having differing political views, it is very much reasonable to try to start or promote communities run on different instances controlled by better admins. (where the roads go (ok, so building roads is a bad analogy, it is more like when a place has terrible sidewalks so people walk through the grass and they wear in those little dirt-path short cuts and eventually no one uses the sidewalks))

You missed to point. Compare instances to communities.

Instances are not isolated. It doesn't matter much which instance you join because as long as your instance is federated with other instances you can still participate in the communities you want to participate in. If you don't like your instances, you can join a different instance and as long as that other instance is federated the same way you can get get the exact same experience on a different instance. That means instances are decentralized.

Communities are isolated. It matters which community you join because each post and comment is contained within that community. If you join a small community and there's a bigger community elsewhere you won't be able to participate in the bigger community. If you dislike a community and join a different community you can't get the exact same experience because you can't interact with the same posts. All of that means communities are centralized.

The reason we have popular communities in the first place is because communities are centralized. Centralized communities also work against the decentralization as your example also pointed out, because instances can leverage their communities.

This is also what I alluded to my steering wheels analogy. We don't have tools to decentralize communities. We have a steering wheel for each community instead of one wheel for all communities that are essentially the same.

I'm with you, although I'm coming close to booting .ml, and I did block hexbear because that shit is insane.

Love seeing this happen. That shithole needs to be defederated. The mod logs are FULL of butthurt mods banning people over and o Ver again for violating the Don’t Post Shit We Don’t Like rule, or… “Rule 1” to everyone else.

Isn't the point of lem.ee that you get as wide an access to the fediverse as possible? I agree that lemmy.ml is run by terrible people, btw, I'm just wondering why you chose your instance.

We getting one of these a day now?

If you don't like it, petition your admins (via posts on your own instance) to defed.

If they don't want to, find a new instance that does, or stay and block their instance so you don't see their subs.

If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they're more active.

I just don't see the point of these posts when most Lemmy users have been around for a while and know what lemmy.ml is like by now.

Be the change you want to see, post in those communities yourself instead of these daily announcements threads on an instance that's already defederating apparently

Lemm.ee will not defederate over tankie mods, there's a specific policy. As to the change I want to see: Guess what I did just before I posted the list, go through all my subscription and clean it of lemmy.ml.

I very much doubt there's going to be one a day, these kinds of things tend to ebb and flow. Also it would've been much faster to ignore this thread than to reply.

7 more...

I just don’t see the point of these posts when most Lemmy users have been around for a while and know what lemmy.ml is like by now.

I got here about a month ago. I only found out what lemmy.ml was like BECAUSE of these kinds of posts.

You should read the sidebar's at least, they're heavily biased, but upfront about it.

It's been their safe space longer than most other instances have been around. It's also a good idea to look at modlogs when coming across a new sub/instance.

Not everything shows up there though. Like if someone is banned and has all their content removed, it won't all show up in the log. But when individual comments are removed, it'll show you what was said.

Don't just assume everyone online will be upfront about their biases

You should read the sidebar’s at least

Ain't nobody got time for that!

these daily announcements threads on an instance that’s already defederating apparently

Where has LW announced that they would be defederating?

If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they’re more active.

Which is what they are trying to achieve by promoting those communities in this post?

1 more...

I see the same article posted about 15 times for three days, maybe that’s the same thing going on here.

Feel free to be the change you want to see. You are telling OP to stfu about their issues and simply move on rather than complain, yet you seem to be doing the opposite of that yourself, hrm...

If you meant something otherwise, it was not explained well imho.

8 more...

It feels like .world is going to defederate soon, which will likely result in a multipolar Lemmy. Leftists and Leftist-aligned communities, and Liberals and Liberal-aligned communities, with hands-off communities like Lemm.ee being visible on either.

At this point, without any active Marxist communities, and defederating from almost all overtly Marxist instances, it is pretty obvious .world is anti-Marxist, so I doubt Marxists will stay with .world accounts.

Considering .world has a far less leniant defed policy it might just collapse on itself and the user base go back to Reddit, but that won't be a rapid process.

Nobody in the replies mentioned it, but you could easily sign up to an instance that federates with both .ml and .world.

Will automated account migration be the next big feature?

Could be.

Either way if .world defeds, I will probably stick with .ml, I'd rather not deal with what will become of .world if they succeed in becoming both the largest instance and one of the least federated with other large instances among the major instances.

It feels like .world is going to defederate soon,

Are they? The only post I found is https://lemmy.world/post/16233963, and there is clearly no consensus nor communication from the LW admins.

I said "feels like," the communication from Dessalines is that .ml will not defed, so it's either .world does or it doesn't happen yet. Given that .world has already defeded from Hexbear and Grad, the sliding target is now on .ml, and will probably continue on to dbzer0, etc.

For people curious, I found Dessalines comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/16523224/11490454

Given that .world has already defeded from Hexbear and Grad, the sliding target is now on .ml

.ml still have a lot of niche communities, hexbear and lemmygrad didn't. Ironically, if they were to defederate, that might push people to move to other instances, especially now that migration is built-in. Last time, when LW blocked !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, it was not the case.

Nobody is talking about marxists or leftists here, tankies are a breed of their own

What Marxists get the "not a tankie" pass? Marx and Engels both called themselves authoritarian.

Council communists, definitely, functionally that's the same as Syndicalism. Some Trotski and Tito fans. A lot of Cubans, over there authoritarianism seems to be more and more a habit than principle.

So nobody that has actually succeeded in putting theory to practice in hundreds of years, got it.

Don't you think it might be that you're predisposed to not liking any AES countries at all because it's easier to denounce real attempts for not being "authentic enough" than it is to truthfully acknowledge what went right and what went wrong in them?

I'm actually quite positive when it comes to Cuba, and Vietnam might follow suit. The rest range from falling to capitalism to falling to fascism.

Anyhow this wasn't about the success or failure of "AES" countries but making clear that not all Marxists are tankies.

The Marxists you called not Tankies were the ones that haven't done much, except Cuba. Cuba would probably count as Tankie to you though because Che was a Stalinist and Castro has stated that China post-Deng is Socialist.

That's the thing, judging countries not by their purity to Socialism but by how they stand against Imperialism and for their own people is how they should be judged. China absolutely isn't a shining beacon, but it's less Capitalist and far less Imperialist than the US, for example, yet people love to say we should support Biden over Trump while denouncing China more than the US.

That's what I am referring to.

Che was highly critical of Stalin's authoritarianism and cult of personality. The, you know, defining factors of Stalinism in modern parlance.

And I have no idea why you're bringing up the US or how it's relevant to anything, are you American or something they love to do that, all self-important.

With regards to imperialism: Do you know how I earned my permaban from lemmygrad? As a, quote, "NATO propagandist"? By telling them that Russian imperialism evil. I don't even like NATO, short of it being a vehicle to keep the US somewhat on a leash. The month ban from !worldnews@lemmy.ml was for pointing out that Ukraine does not in fact lay claims to Russian territory Ukraine describes as "Historically Ukrainian-speaking". Because they don't. As the article that OP there linked said itself.

As are many. He still openly supported Stalin and read Stalin:

“In the so called mistakes of Stalin lies the difference between a revolutionary attitude and a revisionist attitude. You have to look at Stalin in the historical context in which he moves, you don’t have to look at him as some kind of brute, but in that particular historical context. I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Series of things that are very good.” -Che Guevara

I think it's a bit hypocritical to wash the words of revolutionaries you claimed were good Marxists. Of course he was critical of Stalin, everyone is. He banned homosexuality, was generally a brutal person, and ended up building a cult of personality that partially helped lead to the collapse of the USSR. Che still supported him.

The comparison to America was because people can easily find nuance within liberalism but only accept the purest and most righteous of Socialism, even if it ends up never existing. It loses its revolutionary potential and becomes Idealism.

As for your bans, I don't really have the full picture. Based on what you have claimed and that alone, I believe they went too far, but I would also like to see it from the mod's perspectives.

I think it’s a bit hypocritical to wash the words of revolutionaries you claimed were good Marxists.

I never said "Che was one of the good ones". I called Cuba promising (as in: On its way to proper democratic socialism) and I called Council Communist essentially Anarchists.

If you want me to say something positive about Marx we'd have to talk labour theory of value or such.

It loses its revolutionary potential and becomes Idealism.

See from the anarchist POV most Marxist-type socialisms are idealism, down to mostly two factors: a) no means/ends unity, making failure inevitable, and b) trying to foresee the future. We, at our current level of understanding of human nature and society, influenced by various material factors holding us back in terms of even imagination, cannot possibly craft plans that would be appropriate for our grandchildren: The revolution must necessarily be gradual because that's the only way that our descendants get to put us up against the wall for being counter-revolutionary. Without those things there cannot be theory of revolution that's actually material.

Alright, fair enough. You express support for the direction Cuba looks to be going down, not the figures and movements that allowed that to happen, got it. It's more consistent with your other views, at least.

As for your last statement, I really don't think it makes any real sense. Taking Cuba as our example, Marxism guided the revolution, and it hasn't seemed to fail yet, and in your own words looks to be going down a promising path. Is this not what you are hoping for, or is it a freak accident?

Secondly, if Anarchism is an ever-evolving theory that hasn't really seen any large-scale results, would it not make sense to concede that Anarchism can play a valuable role outside of Revolutionary change while Marxists actually change the whole of society? It seems Marxists have a far better track record in changing the Mode of Production, while Anarchists do a lot of good charity work that is also valuable.

Taking Cuba as our example, Marxism guided the revolution, and it hasn’t seemed to fail yet

The Cuban revolution was not a Marxist one, it was a war of independence and once Batista was toppled and Castro got to make hour-long speeches at the UN, the USSR wasn't his first choice of ally, but the US. The revolutionaries were generally lefties, yes, but far from unified Stalin-admirers. They absolutely would've gone with a vaguely socdem "between New Deal and Europe" like thing with the US as an ally: Workers' rights, unions, yes expropriate the slavers but that doesn't mean we can't have capital in the country. The US wanted to have none of it, just having lost its colony, I mean think of the United Fruit and Bacardi campaign contributions.

As such, when Cuba adopted Marxism-Leninism as a prerequisite of being an USSR ally they adopted it with Cuban characteristics. On their own terms, generally from first principles, without a forge-welded vanguard at its core.

There's parallels of that in Vietnam, of course, also a war of independence.

Secondly, if Anarchism is an ever-evolving theory that hasn’t really seen any large-scale results, would it not make sense to concede that Anarchism can play a valuable role outside of Revolutionary change while Marxists actually change the whole of society?

No, it wouldn't. Because a priori there's no reason to believe that a proper revolution is materially possible when you insist on going for "large-scale results" (whatever that's supposed to mean), and a posteriori there's neither. See means/ends unity. Materialism doesn't care about your impatience. To quote Adorno: Actionism is the anti-intellectualism of the left.

And, no, MLM states didn't change the mode of production: State capitalism is still capitalism. Again, Yugoslavia would've been a better example. Sometimes I do wonder how the world would look like now had Stalin sent another assassin and then Tito his single one.

17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...
17 more...

implying all leftism is marxist

Also this isn't even about Marxism or Leninism as-such. This is about the good ole attempt to expand democratic centralism to a population which is actually revisionist in itself because it either ignores that Lenin conceptualised democratic centralism as a discipline for a party, or because it wants to forego with the vanguard position of the party and expand it to the populace, take your pick.

Plenty of anarchists on those instances you call "liberal", tankies won't be missed.

I didn't imply all Leftism is Marxist, .world doesn't much care for Anarchists either. Hexbear is largely Anarchist and was blocked before they even had a chance to federate, and dbzer0 is largely on strained terms over "piracy concerns."

Not really sure what you mean by spreading "Democratic Centralism" by saber rattling about Lemmy.ml, but that's your right.

It is nice that you admit that all Marxism is tankie, that's refreshing. Most pretend to draw a distinction, but ultimately decide only Marx himself is somehow not a tankie and everyone got his words wrong.

Most pretend to draw a distinction, but ultimately decide only Marx himself is somehow not a tankie and everyone got his words wrong.

Oh he definitely leaned that way for most of the time, all that vanguard stuff I mean and not to mention Engel's infamous (and absolutely gaslighting) "On Authority" (I'll lump the two together), but in his final works he was way more amenable to Anarchist modes of organisation, as a reflection on the Paris Commune.

The "expanding democratic centralism to the whole populace" is basically Stalin's invention. Lenin wanted the party unified and not bogged down in constantly questioning already-made decisions, fair enough, it's quite a different ballpark to expand that kind of unity to a whole population. And that's where I draw the parallel to lemmy.ml's moderation policies: While you only see the whole deal on lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still very much up there when it comes to "We said there were no deaths during the Tienanmen incident, we decided it, it's not to be questioned, no we don't even care for you quoting the CCP itself to contradict us enjoy your ban".

His reflections on the Paris Commune weren't that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can't simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.

Lemmygrad's very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they believe there were no deaths, 300 may be low but is certainly higher than 0. Maybe you're referencing the bit where they say the killings didn't happen on the Square itself, and you took that to mean no deaths at all? An understandable confusion on your part, but not accurate to what even hard-line Lemmygradders say.

His reflections on the Paris Commune weren’t that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can’t simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.

Well he pretty much stopped railing against anarchists being good for nothing idealists who are inherently incapable of getting things done or organised. The Paris Commune made mistakes, also readily acknowledged by Anarchists, but it was also very much run to a significant degree on anarchist principles.

Mao was the one going on a "What was wrong is that they didn't have a vanguard party" rant. I guess Yugoslavia would be a good example of Marx' late positions actually put into practice, without all that Bolshevik revisionism.

Lemmygrad’s very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths.

Honestly I was just pulling the details out of my ass to circumscribe the pattern.

Yep, he softened his bite, but ultimately there are still an extremely small number of successful Anarchist movements compared to Marxist ones. Anarchists can get things done, but usually a lack of organization leads to struggles.

Yugoslavia was supposedly nicer to live in, compared to the rest of the USSR, but I wouldn't say the Bolsheviks were revisionist. They saw their conditions and acted accordingly.

Fair enough to admitting that Lemmygrad bit, but it's an extremely common talking point here that Lemmy.ml "can't admit it happened." Not even Lemmygrad believes it didn't happen, it's deliberately bad actors putting words in people's mouths at this point.

If by "successful" you mean "took over a whole state, sustainably" then there's zero (both Rojava and Chiapas are mere territories), but then the only ML states left are basically Cuba and Vietnam, the USSR collapsed, China has richer billionaires than plenty of liberal democracies, etc.

If with "successful" we also mean "feed the poor, organise the disenfranchised, and punch Nazis" then there's uncountably many. It's all predominantly prefiguration and avoiding liberal democracies to regress, in line with more recent theory.

revisionist

See I'm an anarchist, revisionist is not actually an insult to me. But it surely does rile up MLs if you point out that they're ever so slightly disagreeing with previous canon so I might be using it more liberally than them :)

China is still Marxist-Leninist, just with a strategy of welcoming international finance while maintaining a Dictatorship of the Proletariat to keep the bourgeoisie in check. They saw what happened to the USSR and opted to make concessions, staying intrgrated with global Capitalism while trying to subvert Lenin's idea of Imperialism. Whether or not this pans out in Socialism's favor is unknowable at this present moment.

I do believe feeding the poor, punching Nazis, and establishing Mutual Aid is fantastic, and I agree that in the Global North, Anarchists are more effective than Marxists have been. I still don't see any actual long-term success or movements in Anarchism's favor.

I wasn't calling you a revisionist, I understand that you're an Anarchist. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Deng absolutely was a revisionist.

staying intrgrated with global Capitalism while trying to subvert Lenin’s idea of Imperialism

...and you have to have billionaires for that? Also, heck, the GDR was integrated into capitalism and they had a mostly (asides from the trades) planned economy. They built industrial robots which then churned out cars in Wolfsburg, and stomped a silicon industry out of the ground to keep competitive in that area. Western mail-order catalogues were full of GDR washing machines, fridges, etc.

What's the cutoff point for how much a Capitalist should own? A good amount of China's top companies are state owned, and there is a good amount of planning too, so I am just curious at what point becomes too much.

I am all for good critique of China, but it's the strategy they have stated, and we can only wait and see how it pans out over time.

What’s the cutoff point for how much a Capitalist should own?

Once it has systemic impact. Turn their company into a foundation, put them on the board, rest of the seats go to workers and something like the local university, allow that their kids two generations down the line are rich enough to never have to work a second in their life (if they manage to not squander), but definitely don't allow inheritance of that kind of capital which is what China does. Interesting paper especially about the inheritance thing, ultimately that alone is sufficient to curb concentration of wealth:

We demonstrate that chance alone, combined with the deterministic effects of compounding returns, can lead to unlimited concentration of wealth, such that the percentage of all wealth owned by a few entrepreneurs eventually approaches 100%.

We show that a tax on large inherited fortunes, applied to a small portion of the most fortunate in the population, can efficiently arrest the concentration of wealth at intermediate levels.

3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...
3 more...

Surely the problem is that people are bringing politics into forums which clearly don't require it. Like, why would the political stance of someone matter in a technology forum?

It's a tech forum run by Marxists, there are other Tech forums run by Anarchists or Liberals or even conservatives.

20 more...

“Asklemmy.ml” just asked about if anyone had been at any important event televised events.

Mmmm. Guess what.

I mentioned Tiananmen Square 1989: INSTA-BAN!!!!

It would be funny if it wasn’t such a horrible thing.

You do realize that mod logs are public, right? That’s not why you were banned

I'm not sure how to access monologs, and the Voyager app doesn't support them. Give a noob a quick tutorial?

I go to the web to a post on the user's instance and click Modlog on the bottom. From there you can sort by user and see their banned posts as well as the ban reason. (The commenter's reason is because of Spam)

Is it the stated reason or is it legitimate? I didn't check but I assume they iterate through arbitrary reasons

Don't check, keep your assumptions intact.

You told me not to check but I was a bit naughty and did check it. They got banned for "botspam" for writing one comment. Make of it what you like

They got banned for "botspam" for writing the same comment twice on two different posts, completely off topic. And that exact same comment was spammed by another account.

EDIT: Filter the mod log by users "reddthat.com/corymbia" and "lemmy.today/jobby".

EDIT 2: they were banned before the actual spam, my bad

I wrote a single comment and it was deleted in minutes so I went nuts.

How did you go nuts, i thought you were already banned? How were the mods able to delete your spam if you were already banned?

Also quite obvious that your initial comment was just a troll to provoke a mod action, why get all mad about it when it happens?

Maybe I wasn’t banned. I just got fucking angry and posted what could,

That's actually fair, you did get banned before the spam and the timestamps were too close when I first checked. I can't see the context because the asklemmy post is not available anymore, but from the reaction to the ban and the spam from multiple accounts I can't feel that bad for you :P

You can access mod logs on Voyager. Go to your profile, it's under "Moderator Zone".