LeninMeowMeow

Reddit@lemmy.world – 200 points – 3 months ago

u/LeninMeowMeow moderates a large amount of big subreddits, r/therightcantmeme, r/gamingcirclejerk, r/animememes, r/greenandpleasent (a known russian propaganda subreddit source: Center for European Policy Analysis (think Lemmygrad)) and much more.

Anyways on r/lemmy, he says that lemmy.world is right-wing and thatcherite. I reply that it is more social democratic.

I instantly get banned from the subreddits he moderates and blocked by him. I have not commented or participated in any of their subreddits before, and this is my first ever encounter with them.

Weird and concerning behaviour. I fear that tankies are taking over most left wing spaces on reddit (not that I really use reddit for politics anymore, that’s why I’m on lemmy, but for the implications to our democracies, as a non-negligible chunk of voters are politically influenced by reddit).

This sounds almost like he's been paid to denigrate Lemmy in hopes of keeping some of the rapidly declining Reddit population from leaving... It's clear he's never actually used Lemmy which is way more left leaning than Reddit honestly

I'm so glad I left the corporate cesspool that Reddit has become

Reddit? Pay their mods?!

No but I agree. It's very sus to say the right has taken over Lemmy, and then laude lemmy.ml and hexbear for their left wing positions.

Like yeah they're... Left wing... All the way oof the cliff, denying Tiananmen Square and trying to get actual social democrats to join sketchy Chinese communist parties.

This mods take on Lemmy is either paid for or he's a tankie.

There was also a controversy over on r/redditalternatives with recommendations for Lemmy being taken down

I'll see if I can find the thread sometime

Now it's much better, Lemmy is mentioned every other day

neoliberal thatcherites and reaganites that carry out digital mccarthyism

Buzzword mad-libs.

The words themselves make sense but... not for lemmy.world lmao

Eh. It has its moments. More like Clintonites though.

The more big words you know, the smarter you are, duh.

KremlinGPT cranking that propaganda hog.

I didn't know the power mod situation is that bad. I already started avoiding r/gamingcirclejerk when I saw them banning users for correcting easily disproven misinformation about the "bad people" they meme about.

The internet is getting weird. It used to be that I only had to worry about alt-right trolls. Now I have to look out for authoritarian fake leftists infiltrating and taking over my spaces. I don't even care about leftism. I just don't want to participate in spaces where I could get banned for arguing that communism doesn't work.

Any Reddit super moderator who survived the Rexodus bent the knee to Spez and did not maintain closures. They valued their stance as a moderator over others more than the shit getting pulled. He absolutely would have been present for those meetings and message rooms during that time. Anyone like that is not a friend of the average user of any platform.

Edit: my client is acting up, putting my comment under the wrong parent comment

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It's reddit, you get what you get. That's why the majority of us stopped using it.

That therightcantmeme subreddit is absolutely full of tankies and has been for quite some time.

I still remember when they took it over. That was a weird week. Out of the blue a ton of “Stalin did nothing wrong” posts sprung up. Made it clear it was time to leave that sub after vocally calling out their bullshit.

Yeah, same. The subreddit just suddenly kicked a lot of normal mods and installed tankie mods. Used to be a fun place to dunk on regressives. Now it is run by regressive authoritarianism lovers.

And ironically enough their Stalin memes were complete shit

Should be regressivescantmeme and then they'd just be producing appropriate content for it.

I was permabanned from !politicalmemes@lemmy.world for pointing out (quite rudely, tbf) that some of the accounts had been recycling transparently laughable propaganda. E.g. they had said elsewhere that they were upset that Biden had undone Trump's insulin price cap, and now they were showing up trotting out some somewhat more subtle talking points (you know the ones...)

would be interested to hear you elaborate on this.

Dude I would fuckin LOVE to. Spending extensive time whining about moderation decisions is rarely productive, but I was definitely a little salty about it and I'm happy to discuss. Disclaimer; I'm aware that I was being a cockhead at certain points during the thread, which certainly factored into the decision, but also some of my perfectly reasonable comments were being deleted and a lot of people who were way more (and are way more consistently) cockheads didn't earn a permaban for it. It remains sort of a curious moderation decision to me.

Here's the thread. There was quite a lot of discussion in it about the presence of shills clearly distorting the discussion. I'll reproduce some of the threads including restored versions of comments that were deleted by mods (you can verify all of this on the modlog.)

I'll indicate deleted comments with a strikethrough.

OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country

Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates

Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.

You can have the best product in the universe, but if you can’t sell it, then it doesn’t matter. When trying to argue a douche is better than a turd, you really need your presentation going. None of the American politicians (except maybe Bernie) are remotely qualified to run a country of any size, so stop trying to make it about who is the most qualified.

~~Aw man~~

I tried to set you up to say something like, yeah but what has Biden even done other than “not Trump” (as if that “doesn’t count” somehow as a reason to pick him instead of Trump), but you didn’t take the bait. You just came out with conflating “which product is best marketed” with “which is the product we actually want”, and somehow came down on the side of best-marketed. Idk what that’s about. And then you simply said that no one is qualified.

~~Idk, that’s a little bit close to teeing up what I wanted to say (talking about Biden’s qualification), so I’ll go ahead and put it up anyway.~~

~~40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030~~

~~15% minimum corporate tax~~

~~Actual labor people in charge of the NLRB for the first time in God knows how long leading to all these union wins~~

~~Hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan forgiveness~~

~~Big wage gains at the bottom end of the scale even when adjusted for massive historic inflation~~

~~That’s a partial sampling. And that was with a pretty hostile congress and Supreme Court; most of it was watered down versions after he tried to do more aggressive stuff.~~

That's a weird removal, no? Reason given was "stalking."

I'll have to reply to myself to talk more about the stalking; I'm meeting the character limit. Ask me if I'm still salty about these events. 🙂

I think the assertion was that I was following around particular users and posting hostile comments... which, I was doing the second thing, not the first. Here's a relevant exchange that deals with the removal more directly (from this thread during the same unit of moderation action):

Wind dat same shit I always post in these threads back selecta!

If you’re reading this and you don’t want to vote for biden or trump, consider party for socialism and liberation. They’re running Claudia de la Cruz for president this year on a platform of Palestinian statehood and ending arms shipments to Israel.

It’s okay to not want to vote for Biden or trump.

~~Hey let’s talk about how Biden shut down Trump’s insulin price cap~~

~~You already explained to me how that happened, I know, but explain it again for the rest of the class~~

How come you stopped replying to me in the thread where we were talking about that?

Why are you dragging that into this thread? Why did you drag it into that thread (I’m pretty sure it was off topic drama there too)?

~~Because you were talking nonsense… I’m not obligated to keep talking to you indefinitely about why water is wet and world is round~~

Go on, tell ‘em what you told me. I’ll let you figure out why it might be relevant to this conversation. Oh also how Trump’s a formidable stage presence and Biden should be worried about having to go head to head with him in a debate. But let’s start with Biden shutting down the insulin price cap. The people need to know! If they are thinking of voting Biden when he wants their insulin prices un-capped.

Please stop stalking me. Thanks.

Stop stalking political threads and posting propaganda. I’m not going out of my way to find you, but since I saw a post of yours, I thought it was relevant to throw it in there that you have in the past posted explicit propaganda of a type so dishonest that anyone here will be able to see through it. Why would that not be relevant to what you’re saying now?

If you mean me tagging you when I used you as an example of a person posting propaganda, I can stay away from that in the future if you want. I was meaning to do it so you could defend yourself if you wanted to try, but I’m fine with not doing that if you prefer. If you’re just ordering me not to point out your propaganda when I happen to see it, then no, I think I will continue.

Removed ("stalking") and permaban. I reached out to the mod and said hey I can see I was being a dick (it happens sometimes), but I wasn't stalking and what's up with this permaban. No response.

Just as a random additional data point, here's a post of mine that was also removed from the same threads:

~~Let's say this:~~

~~I have no idea if you are a shill or a genuine person. But, there are some behaviors that are bad things to do regardless of which you are:~~

Recasting your opponents' views as other ones that make less sense and are easier to argue against, consistently, as a way of muddling the discourse, instead of being honest about what you're saying and what you are disagreeing with and why, and just letting your point of view speak for itself whether or not I personally would agree with it

~~Consistently posting a drumbeat of memes in support of your viewpoint (within that same dishonest framing)~~

I mean, you can do what you want to do. I'm not gonna try to tell you you are or aren't allowed to say whatever suits you. But to me, saying "fuck the whole US politics join my coalition for positive change we need a level of change that the current system will not allow" would make sense. Sounds great. I actually would be right there in that coalition. Anything from Bernie Sanders to Ralph Nader to someone further out-there who is working for something to produce actual change in some other way.

But if instead of that, you misrepresent the "other side"'s viewpoint "fascism is so bad that we need to resist it even if the alternative involves continuing the US's longstanding policy of allowing some war crimes," as if it was "I <3 war crimes and genocide", and post a drumbeat of attack against specifically the least war-crime-friendly big contingent in US politics, I think people will wind up accusing you of bad faith. They've got a right to say that too.

I mean, does that seem fair? If you were posting a big stream of memes about how to put pressure on Biden to do more (like, a fuck of a lot more) to stop the crimes, or in favor of some faction that was plausibly able to produce a better outcome, I don't think you would be getting near this level of derisive responses. But the message you're sending doesn't match the outcome you say you want. I think that's why you are getting these maybe unfair accusations.

Removed, civility

Reading through all that, I’d have to say I’m on your side, as I don’t really see evidence of “stalking”.

I reported an account for stalking once on politicalmemes that got permabanned, but thats because in the three minutes after I replied to them, they went out of their way to comment insults on random posts of mine from MONTHS ago.

The same memes over and over “both sides are bad don’t vote” usually decently downvoted but still appears in my feed just the same are really annoying on c/politicalmemes, so I really get where you’re coming from.

I have to note its a funny coincidence that I couldn’t find your original thread as turns out the account you are arguing had been previously blocked by me.

Yeah. Which users are the bad users is generally blatantly obvious, I feel like.

It is wild to me that there's such a consensus among the "normal users" about certain things (MBFC bot is bad, the shills are a problem, which users are the shills), and such an opposite consensus among the mods. IDK where even this "mod versus user" mentality came from (on both sides, honestly -- part of the reason I try not to complain about moderation is, WTF, they're all volunteers doing an important job and it's impossible for any human to be perfectly patient and evenhanded when dealing with the tide of nonsense they put up with in order to create a good space for conversation.) But it is still very weird to me that there's a visible "mod viewpoint" and "community participant viewpoint" and that they are different from each other.

Yep. I’m very confused though because the tolerance towards tankies makes me think the mods are further “left” (authoritarian left) then the userbase, but then the MBFC bot makes me think the opposite.

I really, really, doubt there are actual shills on Lemmy. People that hire those types of people don’t know we exist.

But there are lots of weird people with weird beliefs about politics.

I am also confused by why there would be organized shills on Lemmy. But to me the evidence is pretty clear (e.g. an account that's super into talking about US politics that one day uses $5.000.000 with decimal points to separate thousands in a number, and people ask hey what's up with that are you not from the US? and they get hostile and pretend not to understand the question) (e.g. a strong correlation between accounts that say "Democrat party" and that want you not to vote for the Democrats claiming to come from a left wing point of view) (things like that).

IDK, there are a few tens of thousands of people on Lemmy; maybe it makes sense to allocate a single person from a troll farm to run a bunch of accounts. I have no idea. It also seems weird to me, I get what you're saying, but to me it does seem clear that quite a few of them are here.

There are lots of foreign people who take an interest in US politics, I don’t think that’s sufficient evidence personally.

But it’s really hard to prove or disprove anyone is a shill so who knows.

Yeah, that part makes perfect sense. Getting hostile and pretending not to understand the question is what seemed more damning to me about it.

You’re right that there’s no way to know for sure. But to me the circumstantial evidence is very strong.

Yeah I didn’t comment on that because I’d have to see the whole context to make an assessment. I’ve definitely been known to respond with hostility when accused of being a shill (though that rarely happens since my views don’t line up very well with any authoritarian groups that tend to be behind these efforts). So I could see a sarcasm or willfully playing dumb being mistaken for a different kind of obfuscation.

Here's the context for the thousands separator thing. They seem willfully committed to pretending not to understand the question or realize why it might be something someone would ask about, in a way that seems like a very unlikely way for a non-shill user to respond. To me.

Here's another one where the user is posting a pretty steady tide of propaganda (like, literally, videos from channels which are featured on rt.com) and not wanting to answer questions about what they're posting. I get that the questions aren't phrased real friendly-like, but they're not like random or senseless questions, and the user doesn't seem fazed at all by them or interested at all in the idea of demonstrating that they're posting in good faith.

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I think the mod v. user viewpoint is why moderators are so cagey and timid about banning the Usual Suspects. I remember when mods actually followed through and temp banned one of them (iirc it was givesomefucks?) and pretty much all of Lemmy lost their collective shit. If you just read that one thread, you'd have left with the impression that Lemmy mods were a bunch of far-right, protofascist, power tripping assholes hellbent on silencing dissent.

The lesson I took from that episode is that Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority that either agrees with what the Usual Suspects are saying, or at minimum don't think it's banworthy. They might also think there needs to be a bright line rule violation (and either don't recognize or don't care that every good troll is well-versed in skirting the rules and gently pushing the line, but almost never clearly steps over them).

Yeah, 100% agree

Lemmy has a sizable, vocal minority

This part I think is the key portion

But it is still very weird to me that there’s a visible “mod viewpoint” and “community participant viewpoint” and that they are different from each other.

It might be specific to political communities? I haven't seen this in other communities, be it as a mod or a standard user

Yeah, it totally is. That's what I mean. You don't see like an animal pictures community where the mods are like "NO MORE FOXES that is the rule" and the users get all confused like "but... bro half the pictures are porcupines, can we do something about that, no one thinks it's too many foxes and anyway we like fox pictures" and the mods say "like all of you I am concerned and fearful to think sometimes that I might be in a community with too many porcupines, but I can assure you that it's not true" or anything like that.

My analogy is very bad but hopefully the point comes across

It does, no worries ha ha

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A reddit mod being a piece of shit? Say it isn't so! How could this happen?

Tankies gonna tank.

"I'm a communist, I can't be a far right conservative!" - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

It’s weird because I also commented in that thread and my comments were arguably more confrontational. But I didn’t get banned for whatever reason.

They did say I would be banned in any socialist space for truthfully talking about the history of Leninism but they didn’t actually do it.

The tankie takeover of online left spaces is a problem but I’m not sure what to do about it. I guess try to politely point out that it’s not just a harmless difference of opinion whenever it comes up in more neutral spaces. Their preferred system means the murder of dissidents. That’s not what left politics should be about. And maybe try to create more open and non-violent left spaces where the truth can be discussed.

not sure what to do about it

Defederation from Hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml would be a decent start, but since they have support from the Kremlin/CCP it'll probably turn into ongoing whack-a-mole.

What do you mean by support? Like ideological support or more direct support?

Things like the internet research agency (russian keyboard army propaganda organisation ) and chinese equivalents are far more widespread than most imagine

Is there evidence they’re on Lemmy? I find this hard to believe given the anonymity of the platform.

Impossible to prove or disprove, but grad ML and Hexbear follow the exact leftist ideologies these agencies try to push.

They also push extreme right ideologies too, anything that destabilises and improves relationship with russia china is good for them.

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More direct support. I think a large portion of the accounts on those three instances are bot/shill accounts run by the CCP and Kremlin. I suspect the CCP runs lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Not sure about Hexbear.

To be clear, I generally don't have a problem with Marxists or communists. I think that's a facade used to cover up the propaganda. No intelligent communist or Marxist would support either the Kremlin or CCP at this point.

The fediverse is a fantastic place for propagandists. There's no central censor, absolutely no budget for countering propaganda.

No intelligent communist or Marxist would support either the Kremlin or CCP at this point.

Yeah. MLs are neither. It's not necessarily bots, they're just that stupid.

Agreed there are real people. Apparently the term is "useful idiots," kind of sad

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maybe hexbears and lemmy.grad are trolling on reddit or smth and i have never seen far right stuff on lemmy.world communities

Those creeps think anyone who disagrees with them are on the far right.

Its an intentional move by whatever authoritarian piece of shit propagandist runs the instance and its bots/shills.

People have started calling them out and those instances have lost most credibility, so they're trying to bring legit instances down to their level and spread confusion.

bruh

!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

I've seen those comments too, thank you for posting here

That's because only yes bots are allowed on reddit now! No seriously, insane amount of generated and copied content.

Careful if you have any Reddit alts. This particular moderator has the ban evasion filter set to the highest sensitivity on all of his subreddits (it's a Reddit feature that flags suspected alts of banned users based on account details and device fingerprinting) and will report every case of suspected ban evasion to the admins. They normally don't care but will look into it if a mod reports it. If you accidentally post on any of his subreddits with an alt the admins will permanently ban all of your accounts.

Thanks for the warning but he doesn’t mod the subreddit this discussion was in. I replied with an alt because he blocked me so I couldn’t see his messages anymore.

So he’s just against signing up for .world or …? Because my instance is federated with Hexbear (though even we can’t stand grad).

What do you fear are the tangible consequences for US elections of tankie takeover of leftwing spaces on reddit?

There are one or two million eligible US voters on reddit by estimate. A decent chunk of those are progressive left. People like u/leninmeowmeow have been increasingly taking over left wing subreddits, and pushing pro-russia and “don’t vote both sides bad” propaganda, which does impact US voters.

I had a health emergency in June 2023 and was pretty much unable to use reddit until April 2024. Going back, the same subreddits felt like a different world. A bunch of subreddits I frequented, that had been social democrat and pro-ukraine, became subtly pro-russia. This is the reason I left reddit for lemmy. I felt like my political ideology (idealistically I’m an anarcho-marxist, but I still vote for the better candidate to shift the overton window, and I’m critical of Chinese and Russian imperialism, and really all the authoritarian “communist” regimes) had no place on reddit anymore.

None whatsoever. It will ultimately result in these subreddits becoming an echo chamber for a bunch of pro Russia bots to troll each other after everyone else leaves

It's more just annoying than anything else since it means these spaces are now unusable for their intended purpose

These are the same bots that have inflamed for real real-world riots in the UK right now, and in my opinion probably had quite a bit to do with getting Trump elected the first time around. I know people IRL who have their whole worldview formed by what these bots want them to believe. I'm not sure how big a real world problem it actually is on any given platform, but in the aggregate, it's a fuckin HUGE problem IMO.

^^^