this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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programming.dev does not get it. Can you explain?
It is kinda obvious that maxist ideas are aligned with the open source ideas. Are they very much against commies?
Not exactly. This started yesterday, when a user accused mods on .ml of, "tankie censorship," (meaning censorship by tankies, not of tankies). He also came with some pretty good receipts that appear to show .ml mods removing criticism of China that, whether you agree with it or not, didn't seem to violate any rules, and was well within the bounds of what most people would consider civil discourse. He also claims to have received bans from all of the .ml communities he'd ever participated in for pointing this bias out. It's possible he's presenting all of this with his own slant, but what he showed seems legit, and I'm not sure he could have provided more evidence without encouraging brigading.
This is now starting to snowball, with users starting to call for defederating from .ml. One .world user also posted on .cafe about Dessalines previous tankie comments, while another user has posted about finding replacements for the largest .ml communities.
So, saying what's happing on .world is anti-communist isn't accurate, as most the criticism has been anti-tankie. However, .world has a much higher level of liberals than most of Lemmy (they created a little echo chamber for themselves on Political Memes), and most of them are incapable or unwilling to understand the difference between a tankies and communists (or tankies and leftists...or tankies and criticism of Biden...). So, it will probably only be a matter of time before this group tries to blur the line between valid criticism of baised moderation from authoritarian apologists to general criticism of leftists.
So, tl;dr: .world isn't broadly anti-communist, but a large portion of the community is upset about what appears to be biased moderation from tankie .ml mods, and there is a small contingent of .world liberals who I'm sure will take this opportunity to bash anyone to their left.
They are very active though, and they don't lose their chance to mention and antagonize .ml, which I think is kind of shitty. It happens even in threads where people are commenting about stuff unrelated to politics. lemmy.world is constantly looking for targets to defederate from.
edit: I'd like to mention that I'm not disagreeing with you, I'm just giving my perspective on it.
Oh, yeah, they're a very loud, obnoxious little group, and removing users that are only interested in picking fights is perfectly valid. But the screenshots from the original post really only seemed to be talking about China's censorship of Tiananmen Square, and while it's impossible to say without of context, their tone really didn't seem to be combative. They just seemed to be expressing opinions about China that didn't align with the .ml mods' beliefs, and that's troubling.
What's more, Dessalines gave a response that's kinda telling about all this. A user called .ml out on censorship (in a very respectful tone), and Dessalines basically replied saying asking questions is OK when it's done in good faith, but a lot of people only ask them to start fights. When the user replied that he was actually talking about people being censored for expressing opinions in good faith that run counter to .ml mods beliefs, Dessalines chose not to reply.
I really seems like .ml wants to remove opinions that run contrary to the mods beliefs about communism. If that is the case, fair enough, but then maybe it does make sense for instances that don't moderate that way to defederate. I don't want to worry about policing myself on a bunch of the communities in my feed because I might get banned for my opinion on a news story.
Maybe these fears are unfounded, and this whole thing is being blown out of proportion, but none of the .ml mods have addressed the original post yet. Dessalines has left several comments on the Ask Lemmy post Are You a Tankie, but he's chosen not to reply to the censorship claim. Given the silence, I have to assume the worst.