Does lemmy.world allow criticism of the CCP?

harbo@lemmy.world to Lemmy.World Announcements@lemmy.world – 53 points –

Apparently there's an issue with some instances banning users for criticizing authoritarian governments. Is lemmy.world a safe place to criticize governments?

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Well let’s find out: Free Ukraine! Fuck Russia. Fuck China!

Mao Zedong is objectively one of the worst people in all of human history, and his influence held China back for decades, and continues to harm it to this day.

fuck the orcs. fuck the CCCP. Winne the Pooh shouldn’t run a country

Hey there. This instance currently follows the code of conduct and rules for mastodon.world: https://mastodon.world/about

Discussion and civil criticism of these subjects is allowed, but name calling, ad hominem attacks, and other uncivil behaviour breaks the rules.

Also remember that specific communities here may have additional rules.

It looks like we can't pin comments yet, so apologies if this reply gets buried. For now I'm going to lock this post, as the discussion has degraded and is full of rule-breaking.

i mean lemmy.world server is in germany, but the guy who runs it is dutch so probably has a pretty open policy with freedom of speech i would imagine. And i mean real freedom of speech not the dog whistle for being a dick/racist/phobe

As one of the Admins of Lemmy.World we're pretty open but if you're a dick and unnecessarily a troll we'll kick ya.

I still feel like I need a new term for this. Yet another word co-opted by idiots.

Freedom of speech with consequences?

Nah. I want to defederate from people sharing racial slurs, because I cba with them. If they don't consider that a 'consequence' then I don't really care.

I definitely don't want consequences for people sharing negative opinions about governments.

So I guess I just want freedom of speech + personal curation.

I think the crucial thing that's missing from traditional social media is actual freedom of association, and I think thats the underlying thing that causes all these issues around "free speech." Freedom of association is the natural counterbalancing mechanism for "freedom of speech" in any form, and without the former the latter must either become incredibly toxic and damaging or be suppressed.

One of the interesting things we've lost (up till now) compared to physical, offline communities is that if someone was being a never-ending dick or a sealion, the rest of the community could just start naturally avoiding them and not inviting them of their own individual accord, and over time that would lead to the person being excised from the group — unless there was a reasonably sized contingent of the group that disagreed with that, at which point the two groups would just split, all without totally banishing anyone.

Or you could yourself choose to leave the group and find another one, if they consistently refused to deal with or helped bad actors, while still maintaining access and contact with some people from that group, and the common social setting and contacts you and the group exist in.

In other words, you'd have a natural, gradiated, and horizontal system of social self-policing that could take care of these kinds of things in a distributed manner. There's a natural outlet besides just trying to shut someone down entirely by removing their access to any community in the area at all or trying to shout over them.

These mechanisms are very hard to implement on centralized social media because it is essentially one gigantic social group that you are either fully a part of or fully separated from. Thus any decisions made about who is and isn't part of this social group are made unilaterally for everyone, and there is no room for diversity in norms and expected behavior, because everything is technically this one giant group, so there has to be this centralized compromise set of one size fits all rules. And because of the unilateral and centralized nature of everything, you need a unilateral and centralized decisionmaking procedure, which in practice and up just being faceless top-down moderation either descending to band someone or ignoring people's pleas.

So it ends up being very difficult for social media communities to self-police in a coherent way, because the platforms operate at two coarse-grained a resolution to see those communities, and it's difficult for people to disengage from toxic stuff they don't want to interact with.

This has created all of the problems we see with speech on social media now, where people who want to be dickheads perceive themselves as being oppressed, victims of authoritarian censorship, because community policing has to come centrally from above, instead of happening naturally and horizontally by a bunch of people either telling someone to leave or leaving themselves; meanwhile people who just want to live in peace and share their joy and interests online find themselves with a very little recourse to reliably avoid such dickheads and find places that feel right for them.

Reddit has this problem to less of a degree because it lets you create different smaller subunities of the social network that all have different moderators and different rules, but it's imperfect.

I think the solution to this is partly decentralization and federation, because they allow people to naturally associate and disassociate with one another on a very individual level that more naturally mirrors how communities and social groups work in real life. Communities can form their own rules, norms, and cultures, and push people out in a meanongful way without having to totally banish them from the entire social world, and people can also naturally move between them until they find one that aligns with what they need and their values, with the right degree of openness and closedness to the rest of the Fediverse, without losing contact with everything else and thus avoiding network effects and isolation effects. The fact that instances can de-federate or mute other instances creates this really interesting ability to partially fragment the network without fully fragmenting it so that you can get truly different experiences on different instances.

Doesn't Germany have laws against certain hate speech? Would those laws apply to lemmy.world and it's hosted content?

[IANAL] In Germany only specific types of hate speech are criminal. These are:

  • Use of Nazi symbols and slogans for other than artistic or educational purposes (things like the Swastika, the SS logo, or the Nazi salute, but not more modern versions like the "white power" guesture and similar)

  • Direct calls for violence against groups or individuals

  • Denying that the Holocaust happened or trivializing it's extend

Other forms of hate speech might be cause for civil suits or may oblige the platform provider to remove your speech, but do not rise to a criminal offence.

Again: I am not a lawyer.

All governments should be able to be criticized if we're going to be honest about having genuinely open discussions.

Seeing as having the ability to criticize gov'ts is a fundamental part of democracy I fail to see why any social media site would think banning it should be best-practice.

That said I do take issue with some posters who seem to rant on a specific target without any sort of evidentiary data. The slide into "I don't need proof to back my opinion" is a prolific and dangerous thing these days.

Its always difficult separating held beliefs from personal or social identity. Evidence for or against something is rarely enough to get someone who has an identity tied to a belief to change thier opinions or not react out of a fight or flight response.

I think setting and enforcing boundaries regularly while not ostracizing or demonizing people is a better way to approach it. Its hard, takes time, and isn't guaranteed to work; but it comes from a place of tolerance and acceptance rather than condemnation.

I agree wholeheartedly that letting rants go on unchallenged is a big issue, it provides a rallying point for others with similar beliefs and pushes the boundary back away from accountability and discussion and towards emotional and fear based outbursts. Do you think there is room for healthy discussion here on the fediverse and specifically in this instance?

Do you think there is room for healthy discussion here on the fediverse and specifically in this instance?

Yes. But even just looking through this thread it seems the problems follow the same patterns anyway.

I am an ally of all persecuted groups and I ask for evidence from those who choose to state their opinions. If none is willingly provided I block them. This, to me, is the only way social media can be fairly run. Anything more than that becomes what twatter, f b and reditt have become.

Exceptions to the above will always have to be made tho, ie: direct threats, doxxing, etc. ... what mods are for.

That is definitely one of the issues with any social platform or outlet. There is always the push to form in and out groups based on unifying characteristics, behaviors, social status, etc. I do think a major thing that is missed is calling out behaviors and beliefs that are not supported by facts; e.g. giving the same weight of truth or spotlight to outlandish conspiracy theories vs. scientifically backed data (climate change is a good example)

Hopefully this place can find a happy medium that invites good faith discussion instead of bad faith actors.

Testing, testing, fuck authoritarian regimes, Xinnie the Pooh is a cuck, Putin is a super super gay who likes long big cocks, fuck Trump, fuck Biden, and fuck the crooks in DC. Testing testing.

You can actually use https://lemmymap.feddit.de/ to get an idea of how free a particular lemmy instance is thanks to the option to show blocks. Lemmy.world seems to be the only large instance that has not been blocked by or blocked any other instances

Lemmy.World and Lemmy. Ml are two different places. Lemmy ML was created as a safehaven for people from subreddits that were banned like ChapoTrapHouse. Lemmy. World is designed to be the general Lemmy Community. Lemmy. Ml was the biggest until the reddit issues but I am pretty sure Lemmy World is after overtaking them. Lemmy.ML is trying to steer traffic here because they know that their community wasn't going to be palatable to the vast majority of people. There's a wide variety here so it's very hard to pinpoint where this place's userbase stands politically.

Lemmy. ML and Lemmy.world are different places and it's for the best if we just leave each be and have our own communities in peace.

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Slightly tangential question, is lemmy.ml a Marxist/Leninist instance? I had seen some users insinuate that but I have no fucking clue if they were just saying shit.

So, the creators of Lemmy itself (and it's "home" instance lemmy.ml) are Marxist/Leninists (otherwise known as "tankies").

However, they have been smart enough to contain the most virulent tankie bullshit over in LemmyGrad.ml, which most big instances have specifically disconnected themselves from.

They also seem to be pretty hands-off in terms of censorship/banning/belittling "libs" on lemmy.ml and have kept it pretty open. For instance, I created a LeftistInfighting community and have been allowed to express anarchist views there. (I created it because I was immediately banned from LemmyGrad, which had its own LeftistInfighting community that I had the audacity to engage in and link to wikipedia in a comment)

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I just hope people do not spam it to farm karma like on reddit.

Reads the brave, totally not circle-jerked comments in this thread

What would be the point. There is no points system in the federation.

It's difficult for people to have discussions on the internet that involve disagreement without it becoming uncivilized. I don't think being critical of the CCP is a particularly divisive viewpoint everywhere outside of China. I can't imagine the conversation devolving to such a state that it has to be completely banned from being discussed.

I like China :)

Indeed, many Chinese people are very nice. Interesting language, culture, and cuisine.

But fuck the CCP.

The Romans are great! They build these seriously sturdy roads and aqueducts, promote trade, and they have some literature and stuff. It's too bad that they're in the habit of enslaving people and occasionally mass crucifixions.

I love China, and have a generally positive opinion about their government. I'd say 70% positive and the other 30% is because I hate oppression and censorship.

Edit: Deng was the GOAT

If you check out the instance sidebar, we're basically running on the same rules as mastodon.world (presumably until such time as we need something more Lemmy-specific)

https://mastodon.world/about

I don't know of any as long as it is in the correct community.

Testing, testing, fuck authoritarian regimes, Xinnie the Pooh is a cuck, Putin is a super super gay who likes long big cocks, fuck Trump, fuck Biden, and fuck the crooks in DC. Testing testing.

Keep it in the politics subs.

But I hope there is less censorship, it was a shame that lemmy.ml removed this well-sourced comment (and banned the user) -

You couldn't have cherry-picked a more inflammatory comment to defend. Truly such a shame that people who misrepresent data for the sake of their anti-trans stances have their obvious rage-bait posts removed.

How is writing a high-effort long comment explaining one's viewpoints, with sources to back up the opinion-- ragebait? Ragebait is low-effort content that only seeks to troll.

misrepresent data

You gotta admit, that it's way too much effort to troll?

He could've said something simple, and it would've received the same reaction.

I don't really feel like explaining what bad-faith arguments are to someone who's clearly concern trolling so I'll just leave it at that.

The post you're replying to is very well thought out, and you're just saying that they're "misrepresenting data." Please be more specific than that, because right now you are not very convincing and they are.

Edit: I am positive this thread is being brigaded now, probably with alt accounts from this Amby person. They get upvoted in waves, not gradually like how everyone else has been. Pretty pathetic if you ask me.

I don't really feel compelled to engage with such a bad-faith argument but i'll humor you a bit.

In all my research I couldn't find a single study, anywhere, demonstrating an objective quality of life improvement. These would be measurable metrics like: * Life expectance. ** * suicide rate.** * ...

They ask subjects how they feel about suicide. This is an effective proxy for, "are you happy with the major medical procedure you just asked for?" Unsurprisingly, this is subject to enormous bias. Instead I found evidence that *not* transitioning is a much better, much more effective treatment for children.

Followed by 2 links that... don't talk about suicidal ideation but instead about no longer feeling dysphoric.

And then the poster goes on to claim that somehow this reduces suicidal ideation in children who may be trans. This entire section does nothing to address the fact that reaffirming a trans child's gender does, in fact reduce suicidal ideation in trans children. Obviously If a child isn't trans, they won't feel suicidal if they're not allowed to transition.

Just because a thought is well worded and lengthy, does not mean it's worth listening to.

But just because you don't think it's worth listening to, doesn't mean it should be banned.

Ban outright spammers and attackers like this - https://lemmy.world/u/darknightfggot (I don't know if his posts are still visible, I blocked him) but don't try to ban ideas just for apparent wrongthink.

"white collar" or "clean" bigotry is still bigotry. Someone doesn't need to shout slurs at every possible moment to spread hate and attack people's identitie s or rights to exist.

Bigotry does not need to be tolerated full stop. It doesn't matter how much someone dresses it up to appear palatable or how much someone claims they're "just asking questions/just want a respectful debate" when the topic is someone's immutable identity and right to medical treatment.

I don't want to participate in this conversation, but I want to leave a note for any people who may be casually scrolling this thread, reading the exchange, and wondering how you feel about it.

You are witnessing, in real time, a technique that has been popularized by alt-right influencers like Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder as a means to be racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic/etc online and then play the victim when people get mad about it.

The first step is to post something that at first glance seems rational, logical, and supported by facts, which portrays a particular minority group in a bad way. There are lots of these kinds of "arguments" available all over the web, and I'm willing to bet the "well thought out" comment that got the above user banned was mostly copy/pasted. It's similar to the "despite making up X% of the population, black people cause Y% of crime" thing you see posted from time to time, as @thoro@lemmy.ml mentioned. They often use real facts and data, but typically skewed or taken out of context to push a particular agenda.

The next step is ideally to have someone from that minority group get mad and call them a bad word. Then they can sit back, sip their tea, and say, "See? I told you that gays/jews/trans/blacks/whatever are the REAL bigots! I'm just trying to have a conversation and they start calling me names and banning me."

In cases like this, where @Amby@lemmy.blahaj.zone is attempting to call them out in a civil tone, they play the "you're just mad because you don't agree" card. Or the "you didn't provide a master's thesis counterargument" card. Or the "I never actually said a slur so how is it hate speech" card. No matter what you say to them, no matter how you try to approach the "argument", they will twist it around so that you are wrong. They'll keep doing it until you finally lose your cool, which goes back to the first step.

In the worst case, no one takes the bait and they get ignored. But even this is still a win, because it means they get to spread their hateful propaganda freely. And a lot of times there will be casual onlookers, with no strong feelings about the matter, who see the exchange and think, "Hmm, that person is being civil and reasonable and all these pro-trans people are getting angry and calling them names. Maybe they're right, and trans people ARE all mentally unstable. I'm going to save their 'well thought out' comment for later." And so it spreads.

Call it gaslighting, call it trolling, it doesn't matter. Think of it like this. Imagine two young brothers riding in the back seat on the way to Disneyland. The older brother is tormenting the younger brother by poking him constantly. "Mom! He's poking me!" says the younger. "Stop poking your brother" says the mom. So what does the older brother do? He puts his finger right in front of the younger brother's face. Not quite touching him, but close enough to be extremely annoying. "Mom, he's still bothering me!" says the younger. "No, I'm not actually touching him" says the older, laughing. Finally, the mom has had enough. She turns the car around and says the trip to Disney is cancelled. The older brother, now furious, points at the younger brother: "LOOK WHAT YOU DID!"

The exchange you're looking at is basically the grown-up version of the big brother in the backseat. They don't want to have a discussion. They don't even want to argue. They just want to piss of whichever minority group they hate, without technically breaking any rules ("I'm not actually touching you!"). And then, if they do get banned, they move on to the next space and say "Those out-of-control gays/jews/trans/blacks/whatever banned me from the last forum, but I'm sure THIS forum actually supports free speech and honest discussion. Did you know that despite making up X% of the population..."

Unfortunately, the best thing you can do is ignore them and hope the moderaters clean them out. It becomes a problem on big sites like reddit where mods are already swamped with thousands of other issues. But hopefully in the federated world, communities will mostly stay small enough to be manageable.

Thank you for writing this. I was almost roped into writing an at-length response to the "reasonable" comment, because it's all canned "Gender Critical" arguments I've seen and debunked a thousand times before, but it would've been an incredible amount of effort that would've been wasted because they'd just respond to me with an even longer and more specious comment, or ignore me.

Yeah, I'm sure that kind of "polite instigation" has been used for as long as civilization has existed. It's damn effective.

Sad part is, I imagine there are some people who genuinely aren't meaning to be hateful, but get caught in the trap and inadvertently spread those same talking points. And like you mentioned elsewhere in the comments, when you rely solely on top-down bans to remove the potential dickheads, it does start to seem pretty authoritative. It's a tough problem.

But like you said, hopefully the ability for horizontal movement among other instances will allow for more "peer moderation." I like how someone else in this thread put it: "it's not alt accounts, you just walked into the wrong bar to start picking this fight."

If the comment was about "black people causing the most crime in the US", would you think it's worth listening to? Something having citations and being written in a "civil" tone does not necessarily mean it's high level discourse.

Some people hear dog whistles. Some don't.

If the comment was about "black people causing the most crime in the US", would you think it's worth listening to?

If they had facts and hard data to back it up, it would at least be worth discussing.

The problem is too many have opinions based on feelings, and feelings are not stable or permanent ... they can change from moment to moment, hour by hour and day by day.

Something having citations and being written in a "civil" tone does not necessarily mean it's high level discourse.

In your opinion ... unless you have facts/data to back that up.

A statistic can be factual and tell a misleading or incorrect story. A study can be flawed or one could say x and be shared while another says y and is ignored. And these can all be used together to push

...opinions. Often this can be employed to push opinions that a consensus of people determine is harmful.

This is an Internet forum not a debate hall, so people are in no way owed to be rhetorically dueled with a riposte of links and citations.

If a community decides it's not a place to debate the merit of trans people existing and being accepted (or any other topic), it has that right.

It's not alt accounts. The base users of Lemmy platform as a whole ( pre blackout lemmy.ml, et al) do not want to see cherry picked, anecdotal, transphobic concern trolling disguised as civility

It's clearly alt accounts lol

Users read and upvote comments you disagree with

Must be alt accounts.

Why did you create alts to down vote Amby and my comments?!

What did you think was going to happen if you defend anti-trans activism in a community where the majority of people support trans rights? It's about time for you to have a reality check.

"Anyone who doesn't agree with me is rage-baiting especially if they use data to do it."

Wow, that's insane. How is the discourse going to be going forward if high effort replies like that one get removed and gets the user banned

It isn't high effort. It's a bunch of canned "gender critical" arguments that we've all seen a thousand times before combined with arbitrarily dismissing all of the evidence in favor of gender affirming care for kids using specious reasoning and then citing long debunked studies like the "80% desistance rate" one.

Their bias is even more clearly demonstrated by the fact that the first study they cite isn't hosted on any legitimate source of medical science, but on "transgendertrend." That demonstrates that they didn't find their data via PubMed or Google Scholar or anything, they found it by looking for cherry picked medical studies from people with an anti-trans agenda.

It's transphobia and perpetuation of misinformation disguised as a polite conversation. It's the same level of "discourse" as "blacks make up 12% of the population and commit 50% of the crime."

Edit: not only is it arbitrary and awfully convenient for cherry-picking purposes to leave out longitudinal studies of mental health, since mental health is what's at stake here, and "objective" measures are susceptible to many confounding variables and often not relevant, and standardized tests of mental health are regularly used to ascertain the efficacy of many procedures related to psychology, there are also studies that use "objective" measures such as the ones he wanted, where applicable. Here's one that's somewhat infamous due to one of the young adults getting a fatal complication from a surgery, but such surgeries are not performed on minors, and are not particularly dangerous, so it's largely irrelevant: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25201798/. Here's a list of 16 studies on this: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202201/the-evidence-trans-youth-gender-affirming-medical-care.