this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Lemmy.world Support

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founded 1 year ago
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Dear Admins and Users of lemmy.world,

I am writing to express my concerns about the impact of lemmy.ml on our community. It has come to my attention that lemmy.ml frequently disseminates propaganda and engages in historical revisionism. Moreover, there have been instances where their admin privileges were used to suppress dissenting views, reminiscent of the already defederated lemmygrad instance.

While personal blocking of lemmy.ml is an option, it does not address the broader issue of new users potentially being influenced by misleading content. It is crucial that we protect our users from a continuous stream of biased information.

To illustrate these concerns, I have provided a link to a detailed post on the Fediverse that documents these issues comprehensively [Here].

Given these points, I urge the admins to consider a defederation from lemmy.ml. If their users wish to remain part of Lemmy.ml, that is entirely acceptable, but we should take steps to prevent the propagation of harmful misinformation, especially in their comment sections.

Thank you for your consideration.

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[–] kabe@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (4 children)

There are some good points here, but I think defederation should always be a last resort and especially so in this case, given that we are talking about lemmy.ml here.

Since it was the former flagship server (in activity, at least) before LW came along, there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.

That's not to say that I agree with the actions of the .ml admins, or think that opening a dialogue with them about moderation policies isn't a great idea, of course; I just think it's overall a better approach to let the individual user figure out for themselves which communities/instances they want to engage with and which ones they want to avoid.

[–] Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there

And that, in fact, is my main concern with ml. They have lots of communties which are non-political for sure but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda. At which point the negative outweigh the positive?

And even in the non-political Communities your comments gets censored when they are not on line with their views.

[–] Blaze@reddthat.com 24 points 5 months ago (1 children)

there are still many thriving, non-political communities hosted there. To cut them all off would be a net-negative to the average Lemmy user, I would argue.

Agreed. To address this, I started this thread to see which lemmy.ml don't have alternatives on other instances: https://lemmy.world/post/16235541

Hopefully that can help people who want to avoid lemmy.ml.

I guess at the end of the day, people should be able to choose whether they go to the lemmy.ml communities or the alternatives

[–] kabe@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

See, now that's a much more positive approach. Users making informed decisions and organically migrating is much more in keeping with the Fediverse spirit than admins wielding the defederation hammer, IMO.

[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Agreed, but let's also be honest about this:

The smaller, less visible alternative communities seldom grow. It's the classic case of the biggest and oldest trees getting all the sunlight, while the saplings in their shadow are stunted.

We saw this on Reddit, too. Alternative subreddits, usually born out of protest of the moderation on the original, popped up all the time and never grew. Some did, some even overshadowed the original, but that was rare. The algorithm and search results would always funnel visitors to the old one.

Unless there's an effort made to give more visibility to the smaller and less established alternative, there's a good chance it goes nowhere.

So in reality the user choice you're describing is less about choosing between two communities, and more about choosing between a community or a DND group that gets together once a week, but half the people flake out anyway.

[–] Blaze@reddthat.com 7 points 5 months ago

LW communities are already much more active than lemmy.ml ones, there are just a few missing, I wouldn't worry too much.

[–] kabe@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Absolutely agree, which is why I would advocate against defederation. It's better to let users organically migrate away from problematic moderation than for the LW admins to preemptively make the decision on everyone's behalf.

Lemmy is still a relatively small community, and too much defederation is only going to be detrimental to its overall health.

[–] Ibaudia@lemmy.world 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The non-political communities on .ml are poisoned by mods who ban users based on their political opinions they voice in other communities. If you're critical of China, you will likely be banned from all communities on .ml, regardless of if they're political.

[–] tron@midwest.social 9 points 5 months ago

They banned the Plex mod, who was doing good work, for basically nothing as far as I can tell. Effectively killed the community. Rest in peace BrooklynMan

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

let the individual user figure out for themselves

What a ton of people will figure out is that the fediverse has a serious problem with propaganda and moderation. They'll come check out the Fediverse, see it's full of extremist political content, and go back to Reddit.

I'm thrilled about the potential of the Fediverse to be something great, but I won't even tell anyone I use it in it's current state.

Defederating malicious propaganda instances like Lemmy.ml should be a no-brainer. It's not "people I disagree with," it's a murderous authoritarian government's tool for spreading lies.

[–] kabe@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

First impressions to new users is an important factor, I agree, but is Lemmy really "full of extremist political content"?

Scrolling through the first 4 pages of Lemmy World today, I see no extremist content at all. All of the political posts are standard liberal/left-of-centre talking points and the only things related to .ml content are three posts complaining about tankies, off the back of the original post that made a splash yesterday.

I can't see anything that would be putting potential newcomers off in droves.

[–] awwwyissss@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago

Yes, you're right. I was being facetious and that's not helpful in this situation.

The Fediverse is full of propaganda, but extremist content is usually limited to Hexbear, Lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml.

Hard to forget Hexbear accounts saying they were going to murder me when they started their revolution, but that's not a generally a problem in the rest of the Fediverse.