Hey everyone, I’m new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here (on the official site it says “Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.”).
The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the “lemmy.ml” server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”.
So I thought I try that one when it’s from Lemmy’s own developers. When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?
This is only a few paragraphs in; on a larger screen you don’t even have to scroll.
This industrial revolution was precipitated by the discovery of the steam engine, various spinning machines, the mechanical loom, and a whole series of other mechanical devices.
What is so objectionable about that, or so hard about copying it?
Being required to read something for less than 60 seconds isn’t a violation of your rights- in fact, this is less than 1% of the time a EULA or ToS takes. It also takes less time and bandwidth than many of the AI-training Captchas nowadays.
If you have a problem with reading 30 seconds of something you have a feeling you might disagree with, the real problem is you not being willing to peek outside your bubble.
Filters out conservatives pretty well and stops bots because it requires the user to read.
Welcome. Admins and mods of every instance, not just ml are very trigger happy to enforce their opinion. Going as far as fully disabling users accounts. Not by using an automatic word filter though.
Each instance has different political opinions you need to agree with. This one likes communism. Upside is no email verification required, so it is very private.
Lemmy is much more wild west than moden Reddit. Similar to old Reddit. Enjoy the ride.
As the internet should be.
it’s not sketchy, it’s basically a captcha to keep down automated bot sign ups, and they link to that document in particular, i assume, because the devs are marxists and figure folks who are vehemently anti-communist would refuse and thus keep down their moderation load.
The most correct answer here honestly.
Yeah lemmy.ml is full of commie bastards…😂😂😂
based
Why don’t you move if you are aware of it?
You misunderstand: that is why we’re here.
It’s phrased in a positive manner, sarcastically.
Indeed. Anytime someone asks for my ideology I always say “I’m a filthy commie.” 😂
Ikr? I’m honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out
Oh no you had to read something you disagree with! Better go back to your echo chamber on
The .ml admins (and devs of Lemmy the software) are from that crowd, basically. If you don’t like it, try another instance.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There’s no connection to Mali.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There’s no connection to Mali.
this is a literal lie, its because the servers are held in mali not because of ‘marxist leninist’
Mali is a Saharan country with low population, spotty, super expensive internet and unreliable power; I’d be surprised if the machines are literally there. And anyway, Dessalines has never mentioned being from a Malian background, but he does identify as ML.
lemmy was made by communists. if you don’t like it go back to reddit.
I suspect the devs wouldn’t even agree with this take.
Edit: really? They’d rather everyone align with their views 100% or fuck off to reddit? Why even make something like lemmy then?
C’mon dude, they just asked you to copy a quote from the Capital, not to recite a whole brochure with the latest analysis on imperialism. And/or swear by it,
It is the most basic common ground for every left wing person and a monumental text in modern Western literacy.
Most people I would care to discuss with should have a basic understanding of what is written in there, and I believe it is the same for people running their own instance.
If you take such a vehement stance against “quoting” Das Kapital, then you probably you lie so much off center that I would personally could have no productive discussion with you.
I mean, even the notion that this is some kind of pledge of allegiance is suspicious enough in its own sake, like letting us on you believe leftists are somehow indoctrinated[^1]. I you weren’t a little removed about Das Kapital you could even subvert the text by quoting something out of context so that it says something unintended by the authors.
But indeed, if you are turned off by this playful screening question, then it only shows that such screening serves its purpose most effectively.
[1]: To be frank lemmy.ml does not even defederate neoliberal instances, so perhaps there is a paradigm shift for you right there.
How about freaking No!
Lemmy might be written by communists, but nothing stops you using it on an instance that is not.
Also, there’s other threadiverse apps out there that work fine with the federated network if you really don’t want to use one created by “communists”
I don’t think making this place a total echo chamber, by telling people to “go back to reddit” is in any way a good thing.
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren’t shy to enforce their views, which gets reflected in their instance, lemmy.ml, which is considered to be fairly tankie.
However, as Lemmy is federated, you can join any other instance and view whatever interests you without having to recite political literature to sign up.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated; although it defederated from certain instances, which might make you feel limited. I found lemmy.today as a way to be connected with anything and everything, from Hexbear to Beehaw, to, well, Lemmy.world
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren’t shy to enforce their views
Their evil enforcement, our righteous peace keeping.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated;
Being “apolitical” just means they’re neoliberal. Which tbh sounds perfect for OP.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it’s a country with 99% of Earth’s population) is everywhere. If Lemmy.world would ask people to recite Adam Smith, I’d absolutely be pissed.
For the record, I am communist, I just don’t want to be bombarded with politics at every corner and I refuse to analyze crochet through the prism of the class theory. It is possible to abstain from politics on .world, but it is often hard to escape on .ml (thankfully, Linux communities are generally neutral), or Hexbear (although it tries) or, Marx forbid, Lemmygrad, latter being a straight up shithole where politics is everything, people are as politically uniform as clones, and you can be banned for saying Stalin could be wrong in some of his decisions (I’m serious, it happened).
People need to have a place to relax and unwind, and endless political circlejerk is not a good environment for that. Politics is important, but not really when people just proclaim the same things over and over again as a form of leisure.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it’s a country with 99% of Earth’s population) is everywhere.
I doubt that; otherwise you’d be screaming at everyone, all of the time. Politics are life, life is politics; ESPECIALLY if you’re not white-- this whole bullshit sounds like exactly why I don’t organize with white “leftists”; 'cause you ain’t no damn comrade of mine with a take like that. I don’t get to just “opt out”. I walk down the street, it’s side-eyes from settlers over the melanin in my skin, side-eyes from settlers over the coarseness of my hair, side-eyes from settlers over the size of my lips and nose, side-eyes from settlers over why I’m even in their space when I lived here half my fuckin life.
I don’t get to opt out, so neither do fuckin you.
Well, believe it or not, I do take issue with this liberal pseudo-left everywhere. Big part of the reason I stopped following politics on Lemmy is because it’s mostly a uniform blob of liberals that consider themselves “the left”, and the actual left “tankies” and dangerous psycho radicals because most of their kin of “left” are American exceptionalists who really believe not being a fascist means you’re left now. And that took me a LOT of filter rules, not just unsubbing politics-related communities, to finally silence that shitflow.
We all are victims of the current political situation - some more, some less. Even trans folks, which are probably under the heaviest of fires right now, often prefer NOT to immerse themselves in the political debates and news more than it is required to merely survive - and that’s totally understandable, because when politics hits you heavy every day, some people need to take a breather. Don’t deny them that.
And me being white male doesn’t mean I’m free from any oppression. While you may experience more of it due to additional traits, such as you being black, that’s not alpha and omega of it, and the more we split, the less effective we are at uniting where we can and where it is equally if not more important - to fight for the working class. A black billionaire lives an infinitely better life than I do, and he does it by exploiting us all - white, black, male, female, nonbinary, cis and trans. That’s not to say racism isn’t real or some shit - a white billionaire would do even better - but there are many axis of oppression, and it’s not like you’re oppressed and I am not. Besides, I’m all for the demolition of racism, and while I could be less vigilant, I’m not much more tolerant to it.
There is no coming together with the settler when it is the settler in the way of my people’s liberation; and it’s frankly contemptuous that you think there somehow is. The state of race relations in this country is so positively abysmal that I would sooner put my faith in the Chinese than ever consider white Americans worth the time or effort expended. There is no ‘coming together’ with you and yours as long as we are unreparated and unliberated. You may as well just come out with it and say you feel you’re entitled to my camaraderie rather than trying to orate yourself around that particular elephant in the room; there’d be more dignity in it.
No, I’d rather say you have an extreme case of “race/gender over everything” mentality that permeates so many pretentiously left liberals among others.
I’m not a “settler”, I live where I was born, and I never (at least knowingly) discriminated against anyone on the basis of race. You seem to suggest that I owe you something for other people, for the severe oppression of the black people back in the days neither of us was even born, and for the milder (although very real) forms of it permeating today to which I hold no relation. I don’t have to reparate you anything, and I refuse to give you some special status you seem to feel entitled to; but if someone actively discriminates black people (or hispanic, or even whites for that matter - that is a thing in certain societies, world doesn’t end outside America), I am willing to take the side of the oppressed, and more people could join black liberation movement if you yourself wouldn’t piss everyone off.
If you, however, still want to be treated in some special way, I don’t need such camaraderie. You are either a comrade, an equal fighting alongside me (and me alongside you), or you’re not. And the most I can hope for is your realization that we have issues we both struggle with, and end this splintering of the left that makes us weak and useless, infighting over fighting our common enemy. At least the right are ready to unite, so…here we are. Enjoy the fruits of your personal liberation.
No, I’d rather say you have an extreme case of “race/gender over everything”
I’m not a “settler”,
You seem to suggest that I owe you something for other people,
to which I hold no relation.
I don’t have to reparate you anything,
If you, however, still want to be treated like a princess, I don’t need such camaraderie.
You really hit the settler-leftist bingo with this one, no free space necessary. Every last thing you’ve said reeks of uninvestigated white supremacy; and I’d suggest self-crit if I believed for a half a second in your bonafides.
That said, thank you for justifying why I put more faith in AES than white leftism, justifying why I consider there to be no revolutionary potential in the western settler, and justifying why I will only ever organize with Black formations. You, and everyone like you can’t even bear to cop to the thread of history which your story is sewn in, let alone figure out how to rectify that state. This is exactly why I have no time, faith, or camaraderie for the white ‘left’.
As usual, we’ll have to get it our own damn selves, with you people constantly in our way. What I get for discoursing with people John Brown would’ve turned into a speed loader. And no, that you consider true, fully-reparated Black liberation to be 'Black supremacy exactly the same as the white variety", I fucking spit on you; and have no further interest humoring your eurofascist ass. I hope when they find you, it’s in shrapnel-studded pieces.
Damn, you’re not just a cracker but a dumbass too
eat your hands you worthless fucking asshole
There’s a list on GitHub of instances by most federation. It’s where I found mine.
Good option! Could you please share the link to the list if you still have one?
Sure, I’ll PM you.
For anyone else, it’s easy to find by search, but it feels like one of those things that could be ruined if it got too well-known.
Welcome to the Fediverse! Somebody has probably told you this, but I just realized that I forgot to hit “Post” before I went to dinner. Here it is anyways.
When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
The applications and copying of a particular line is a simple form of spam prevention. The fact that the line is from “The Principles of Communism" is probably because the owners of that particular instance (who are also the main developers) are communist. I believe they also run Lemmygrad, which is full on Marxist, and one of the more commonly blocked instances. Lemmy.ml is intended to be a more mainstream instance but like much of the Fedi leans hard left.
I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here
Lemmy is censorship resistant, but not censorship free. There is a difference. Censorship (or moderation, depending on your view point) happens at 3 levels, user, community, and instance. You can’t do much if other users find you obnoxious and decide to block you, but if you find the moderation of a community to be over bearing and if your current instance allows, you can create your own community from your current instance and mod it how you see fit within the guidelines of your instance. If you find your instance’s moderation to be overbearing, you can create your own instance and moderate it however you see fit. However, you will still be subject to the moderation policies of the communities (and their home instances) that you subscribe to.
In the Fedi you have absolute freedom of speech, but nobody is required to give you a soapbox or megaphone and nobody is required to listen to you.
To their credit, I think the Principles of Communism thing is partially meant as a floodgate, since the devs really do believe in their project and want to avoid over-centralization from everyone defaulting to one instance. They know many people will go “What the hell? No!” and go somewhere else and that’s exactly the point. I’d be surprised if they really thought it would get almost anyone to engage with Marxism with the prompt, especially since you can copy the first sentence of the text and not read anything else (and even just reading it is not engaging with it). I think it’s more like a little joke.
Also, copying a sentence of your choice to a pamphlet is not a pledge and I think it’s silly to view it that way. If it helps, iirc, one of the sentences that appears is “No.” and they will accept that as an answer.
But assuming this was “promoting an ideology directly,” would you find it less sketchy for an instance to promote ideology indirectly? Because if you aren’t directly doing ideology, that just means you are indirectly doing it (sometimes very deliberately). Personally, I appreciate transparency.
I think it’s very funny that a lot of people will post “omg communism boogeyman? is this legal???”, but they won’t do a very basic introspection of ideology and online community moderation which is at the core the entire intent here.
Almost every lemmy instance has the same rule 1, those rules textually are often the same, those rules are often have the same meanings, but those rules are unevenly enforced between instances based on the ideology of that instance. That’s why you can be a transphobe on .world without actually getting the same amount of mod action going your way as if you were a transphobe on hexbear/lemmy.ml/lemmygrad/blahaj.
Furthermore there’s sociopolitical drama between the instances like between blahaj and hexbear on what transphobia actually is and what level of irony is allowed.
A lot of people interpret rule 1 as “don’t be mean” rather than “be mean in ways that aren’t racist/bigoted/sexist/transphobic/etc”. Which is why they often complain that certain communities they can’t post certain words, but user can dog pile them with community approved shitposting.
And then there’s the lib instances who think that being mean to the Ukrainian war effort online is rule 1 and if not it’s rule no disinformatsiya.
It’s like when Twitter had to clarify, you cannot call for violence unless it’s a call for violence that is part of the United States of America’s foreign policy, because Trump as POTUS called for violence over Twitter as part of US FP. But we gotta always put the the damn commies under the microscope for making us copypasta Marxist thought.
This wasn’t around when I joined. I suppose this serves two purposes:
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Stop conservatives from joining the instance.
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An additional filter to make it a bit harder for bots to make accounts.
I think that’s killing two birds with one stone.
Yeah when I joined IIRC I just had to write a sentence about why I wanted to join. The communism thing made me laugh though!
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most people have answered your questions so i want to chime in with the information that i wish someone had told me when i first joined:
a lot of people came to lemmy from reddit like you and i both did and also mostly for the same reasons. most of them went to lemmy.world because it was the first search result on the big search engines like google & bing. those people have turned lemmy.world into a mini reddit and ended up recreating the same problems that reddit has plus more; hence the bot check that you ran into when you signed up.
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent; i think of it like if r/politics; r/anarchy/; r/communism; r/socialism; etc. went off and created another social media platform and then started discussing everything like reddit does, but from this perspective. instances is the name given to individual servers and all those servers combined is nicknamed the lemmyverse, or lemmy, for short.
the fediverse is the nickname given to the pubg protocol that’s shared between all the platforms that use it like lemmy, mastadon, kbin, threads, bluesky, etc and that means that the conversations from all of those platforms are shared amongst each other so it’s possible to be on lemmy and have a conversation with someone on kbin, for example. i stick with lemmy because it’s doesn’t have any venture capital investors pushing the admins to enshitify it to maximize profits like has been happening to reddit and bluesky; i’ve been moving from one social media platform to another because of enshitification like reddit’s since the 1990s (before it was called social media) so this last part matters to me a lot.
i started off on lemmy.world like most ex-redditors did and discovered that they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations so i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody due to fact they’re the primary instance where lemmy development takes place. the federation is what makes lemmy decentralized and when you defederate; you cut yourself off from the rest of the lemmyverse, but lemmy.world and some of the other instances that got most of the ex-redditors like the star trek instance use it to try cut off content and people from the instances that they don’t like and that’s their right since it’s their instance. lemmy is decentralized so trying to cut out people & content only serves to cut yourself off and that’s intention behind the fediverse; to make it so that no power tripping mod or ban happy admin can stop the conversation like they do on reddit.
everything is done by volunteers and donations and, if you don’t like one instance; you can move onto any other one and still get a similar experience. i don’t like letting other people decide what i can & can’t see and who i can & can’t talk to so i mostly stick to the instances that don’t defederate with anybody like lemmy.ml and i use the block-people and block-communities features when i feel like i need them for myself.
the fediverse is the nickname given to [instances using] the pubg protocol
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent
[Bonus info]
Reddit has a history of big events when a clump of subreddits get banned all at once when a newspaper reports on them. A lot of right-wing ones went to Voat and later *.win, and some socialist ones (notably /r/GenZedong) went to Lemmygrad, which became the largest federated instance at the time. /r/chapotraphouse also made their own fork, Hexbear, although while it was the largest, it wasn’t federated with the rest for years. Most instances were either hard-left (e.g. Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml, SLRPNK) or a slight left, but tge third most populous for a while was Wolfballs, a ‘free speech’ instance, de facto alt-right (US right-Libertarian style instance), which ended up defederated from almost all the others due to constant bigotry and rule breaking when posting on other instances. Wolfballs admin eventually shut it down before the Reddit API exodus because, among other reasons, they realized the neo-Nazis among their users were serious and not just trolling.
Overall, the few right-leaning instances are alienated from the bulk of federation and become islands or vaporize, but most just dismiss Lemmy or even the Fediverse at large as a left wing commie thing.
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
yes, that’s what i get for going fast; thanks for the correction and the history lesson.
they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations
I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don’t have to agree! However:
i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
oh yes, i keep forgetting about the fascist and corporate shill instances; they were also the reason why i went with lemmy.ml and why i think it’ll take longer for it to enshitify. thanks for correction.
The developers of Lemmy are Communists, they don’t hide this fact.
To answer your first question, there are no “free speech” instances in wide use, depending on your point of view an instance might be “censoring” or fighting “misinformation.” It’s up to you to pick an instance you want.
Lemmy.ml is explicitly a Marxist Leninist instance of the Lemmy software. It’s why it’s called .ml. You can use a different instance if you aren’t a Marxist Leninist. Lemmy.world is a Hitlerite instance.
Federation is censorship resistant, but each instance is still going to remove gross content for the sake of their users and instance culture. You can see removed content in the modlog, it’s public for every instance running unmodified Lemmy.
As for why you need to copy/paste the sentence – It sounds a lot like an anti-spam measure. Captchas and the like are extremely common, I’m surprised you find them novel. Are you asking this because you’re planning a spam-attack and need to make sure the spam isn’t removed? Your spam will be removed. While it’s technically possible to go find, no one will care enough to do so.
To clarify, Hitler and Marx are not in any way related. Hitler was a fascist, racist dictator (like Trump and Putin). True Marxism would be if the government of the USA was formed by, and responsive to the working class. A Marxist government (true communism) has an obligation to take care of it’s workers, not let them die because they can’t afford health care.
It’s a short explanation, but it’s pretty much correct. Join any server, and change later if you’re not comfortable.
Whenever people try to imply hitler was in any way leftist I like to point out that the first mass privatizations were done by the nazis.
I think it’s incredibly stupid to call Trump or Putin dictators just because you don’t like them. Fuck I even predicted Trump would win the popular vote this go around.
Hitler and Marx are related if you’re a believer in horsesh
itoe theory or in Hannah Arendt’s totalitarianism. You’ll never guess who funded and promoted Arendt (who unsurprisingly came from a wealthy family) and her theory.One of the centerpieces of the cultural cold war was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), which was revealed in 1966 to be a CIA front. Hugh Wilford, who has researched the topic extensively, described the CCF as nothing short of one of the largest patrons of art and culture in the history of the world. Established in 1950, it promoted on the international scene the work of collaborationist academics such as Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt over and against their Marxian rivals, including the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” She pretty much nailed it, didn’t she? Fuck up education has been the Republican playbook since Reagan, and clearly successful.
As an aside, I was impressed by the Marxist kibbutz started in Israel when it was formed by the Brits (legally or not). They were wildly successful. I don’t know of any other true Marxist orgs.
Considering every socialist state invested heavily in education once they came to power, no, I would not say she “nailed it.”
