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.
Ok so I’m no one here and not on the .world team.
So don’t take what I’m saying personally or anything bc I’m not meaning it in any kind of angry or combative way. Not trying to argue with you or anyone.
I’m not of the same beliefs that .ml or the developers are. So I guess you can say you and I agree that yea their messed up I get it.
But that’s the issue with the whole fediverse thing. Even though I do agree with you about .ml
People are allowed to do whatever they want and believe whatever they want. That’s not up to you. Don’t Take that as an attack, I’m not meaning it as one.
Think of it this way:
It’s like .ml making this post but about your personal beliefs (they probably already do)
OR
let’s pretend lemmy was heavily conservative instead of liberal making this exact post. You’d think wtf ?
You get what I’m saying ?
But that’s not up to them to get what I’m trying to say ? Yea it’s fucked up but ppl are allowed to believe whatever they want. Even if what they believe is shitty. The thing is, one person doesn’t and shouldn’t get to make that call for everyone else.
No one person knows what’s best for everyone
let’s pretend lemmy was heavily conservative instead of liberal making this exact post.
I think you misunderstand the issue, so as you mentioned conservative, let’s illustrate it with an analogy.
The situation with lemmy.ml right now, and apologies for the reddit analogy, is the equivalent if on reddit the batshit crazy mods of formerly /r/the_donald or /r/conservative could ban you from /r/linux because you said something bad about Trump on /r/memes. At that point it’s not about dissenting opinions, it’s about them wielding power they shouldn’t have over those dissenting people.
An instance that operates like that shouldn’t be part of mainstream lemmy and host general purpose communities. The only way to take that power from them is to shun them, i.e. defederate.
No one person knows what’s best for everyone
But we do know what isn’t best for everyone, and that’s lies and disinformation.
Thank God you’re not in charge of anything important in real life lol
so… you think lies and disinformation is good? what the hell is wrong with you?
So…you think youre in charge of what everyone gets to believe 🤔
Get the fuck outta here 🤣
someone has to be. with retards like you walking around…
Someone who believes they should control what others believe and think by managing social media typically exhibits *authoritarian or controlling tendencies, and have developmental issues such as a lack of empathy, an overdeveloped sense of superiority, authoritarian personality traits, insecurity and control issues, poor socialization, low emotional intelligence, cognitive rigidity, and moral absolutism
That ends up leading to a problematic worldview where they feel justified in imposing their beliefs on others undermining individual autonomy and stifling diversity of thought.
That type of developmental background results in poor interpersonal relationships and ultimately harming societal harmony and personal freedoms.
Might wanna seek mental assistance
I also got banned from all communities on .ml that I had participated in after making a joke about how Tienanmen Square was like a glue trap for tankies. Really bad image for Lemmy. Considering we’re growing as a community, I don’t see why we should allow authoritarians to participate. Allowing that will just ingratiate their standards into the culture of the platform.
Calling to defederate merely on the basis of political opinion might be premature. However, I suspect defederation will happen for legal reasons: they host users who openly support terrorist organizations designated as such by the EU. LW is subject to Dutch law - hosting such content is more of a gray area than CSAM, but still very much illegal in most countries.
The reason I’m not pushing here with examples is because I have not yet contacted the mods/admins to remove said content. They may have simply not been aware and I’ll give them that chance. But even seeing that content has a chilling effect on users who would contribute - even in unrelated communities.
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.
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.
but, these communities come along with an assortment of lies and Propaganda.
So block those individual communities that post what you consider propaganda. Hell, even block the whole instance - that option is readily available to you.
At which point the negative outweigh the positive?
With a server like, say, Hexbear, this would be an easy calculation. Defederate and what does the average user miss out on? Not a whole lot. On the other hand, .ml has a wide variety of technology, open source, gaming, hobby, etc. communities that don’t even touch on politics.
I regularly visit many of them, so for me at least, it would take a lot more on the negative scale to even break even.
For sure I can block them for myself (as I have mentioned in my Post itself) but this won’t solve the Problem of policing non political Communities and injecting them also with propaganda.
To what extent is this actually an issue? What examples do you have so far?
Pardon me but have you read the Post i linked? He talked about politics, granted, but banning him from non-political Communities (in fact, ALL Communities) is completely out of proportion. And that is just for reciting established facts!
Yes I have, which is why I’m asking. While I agree that the admin response was totally out of all proportion, this is not evidence of either of the things you previously claimed.
If you’re going to justify defederation based on non-political communities being policed and injected with propaganda, you need to provide some concrete examples of that happening.
First and for most my main reason for defederation is that they straight up lie and mislead.
If you demand prove I will unblock ml again and will try to find it. I would have thought that you would have seen this yourself since you seem to be more on ml than I was.
