In advance, this is NOT a complain, but just myself looking for some opinions, views and experiences around this topic. Also, the screenshot is marked as NSFW because it contains language that might be sensible for some people (and that’s also present one time in the post itself).
I’ll start it short: I’ve just been banned for 14 days from the memes community on the official Lemmy instance (!memes@lemmy.ml).
Why?
Apparently, just critizicing chinese state and authoritarism in front of some China’s authoritarism deniers (and, maybe, some CCP infiltrators [I have to I must clarify that the latter is just my speculation, but the possibility is not zero and does not seem low, and as a hypothesis I think it is sufficiently solid]), it seems like pointing up chinese’s government authoritarian character is sinophobia and “not being sufficiently polite” (as it shows in their modlog).
Censorship and FLOSS
This raises me a concern. I can’t say that happens in all of Lemmy.ml communities or that’s anything that they are condoning that; I understand that they give autonomy to the moderators of each community and everything else, and I also do not want to attack the moderators of that community with this, or anything similar. But, seeing that I have already seen several similar cases being reported throughout the Threadiverse, and that the majority of the Fediverse tends to the left (which is not necessarily bad either, I myself am center-left), I have noticed a growing radicalization and a growing polarization within the Fediverse, and that worries me because that was exactly one of the things that attracted me to it, outside of the obvious fact that it is Free, not proprietary like shit in Silicon Valley.
And with that, I increasingly notice a greater spiral of silence here. I’ve been lurking on Lemmy for quite some time, but I only recently created my account on Disroot when I felt ready to start socializing and I felt like I understood the fediquette well enough, but being banned for not thinking the same as the rest of the pro-Chinese people there doesn’t give me a good taste in my mouth; It doesn’t bother me so much that they insult me (in fact, they can do it all they want, I’ll just laugh in their faces and move on xD) and that they don’t let me express myself freely, especially when I live in a country where freedom of expression is a luxury and there is a humanitarian crisis of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of political prisoners and tens of thousands of deaths for precisely that reason.
I really can’t say that they want to censor me since it is one of my first interventions there and it is the first time they have banned me, it would be drawing conclusions too hastily, but I am still worried about this ideological homogenization. Mainly due to the asymmetrical application of that rule, since I never insulted or denigrated anyone and they constantly did. Probably the only failure that would justify a ban is the fact that I wished the death of all the politicians and governments in the world, but it is difficult not to do so when my country is hell on Earth and I can barely trust in any of them. What raises my concern more than anything is the fact that they do it without even having notified me beforehand (really, I never received a notification where they warned me, or any warning, or anything like that, and I have moderator notifications activated by all means in my client, not a message, nothing like that), which makes me feel very arbitrary, especially when they only vaguely mention “Rule 1” in the moderation logs.
I would like to know what you think; Is it just my paranoia and trauma, or is there really a culture of conformism that tends to silence ideas that are foreign to their ideological views, creating a spiral of silence?
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There is no freedom of speech on Lemmy. There should be no expectation of free speech on Lemmy. Your comment is going to be hosted on someone else’s hardware. They should have the freedom to choose what they host on their hardware.
Admins/mods can ban you. Other users can block you. You are not entitled to anyone’s attention,or resources.
So, solutions.
Find instances/communities tolerant of your speech.
Host your own instance, and use your own hardware that you control. Decide whether you will allow Tankies/Nazis/Zionist/Anti-Semites to use your hardware, be thankful you have the controls to kick them. Be featured in a post just like yours on how you’re banning stuff you don’t want on your hardware.
Not everybody has the resources—mental and material—to self host—and that’s my case too. And the entire point of my post is to remark the fact that’s really hard to find truly free speech-oriented Fediverse instances; it was truly a miracle to find these three in Pleroma, and though many other exists for other software (let’s say, Mastodon or Lemmy), they’re way more hidden and most of them use a language I don’t speak.
You should think twice about that sort of things before telling “just self-host bro”, take this as an advice.
You should think twice about that sort of things before telling “just self-host bro”, take this as an advice.
I provided 2 solutions, if you can’t do one, do the other. At risk of repeating myself: you can’t self-host, that’s fine, find someone willing to host the things you want to say and thank them for the privilege. That requires no resources mental or otherwise. You might notice I provided that solution first, in its own paragraph no less, here it is:
Find instances/communities tolerant of your speech.
You may also notice it’s preceded by the word “solutions”, plural, because I provided more than one solution.
Thank you for the advice, mine to you is: read the entirety of what you’re replying to. You aren’t entitled to other’s attention, effort, or resources. Here’s the point in comic form hope that helps.
[T]he entire point of my post is to remark the fact that’s really hard to find truly free speech-oriented Fediverse instances
They do exist, they turn in to Nazi bars fairly fast because that’s what happens to freezepeach places, no-one else is willing to host them. Then they’re defederated: because who the fuck wants to hang around a nazi bar. Then they disband: because freezepeach people always wanna yap, and refuse to listen, it’s no fun yapping if no-one is listening. It’s not called “free-listen” is it?
Perhaps you could launch a “free-listen” platform? Where you’re free to listen to any, and all perspectives. Implying you don’t ignore, or talk over their perspective. Just listen, analyse, internalise, and move on.
Those really are your choices: find like minded individuals willing to pay money, time and effort to host you (it really does require money, time and effort, lots of money time and effort). Or, host it yourself.
Exploding-heads was the last nazi bar I heard about, I think they disbanded when everyone defederated them, but look them up? Maybe hilarious-chaos? I think they did the same thing
You may also notice it’s preceded by the word “solutions”, plural, because I provided more than one solution.
Yeah, and I can’t do neither of the two, it’s that so hard to understand? I don’t have good hardware, I don’t have a good socioeconomic situation, I don’t have good internet and it’s hard to find these, miraculously I found those three.
They do exist, they turn in to Nazi bars fairly fast because that’s what happens to freezepeach places, no-one else is willing to host them. Then they’re defederated: because who the fuck wants to hang around a nazi bar. Then they disband: because freezepeach people always wanna yap, and refuse to listen, it’s no fun yapping if no-one is listening. It’s not called “free-listen” is it?
That’s a slippery slope fallacy. The problem is that you are again confusing freedom of speech with freedom to say or do harmful things. They are not the same. An environment that respects freedom of expression (which is not a fundamental right for nothing, without it you, or I, or both, would probably be going to jail for saying things that someone doesn’t like) does not imply an environment free of rules and moderation. Of course I’m not going to make it so easy for literally Nazis, or literally Zionists, or literally Jihadists, or literally authoritarian communists, or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean that if I criticize a government with good arguments then I should be banned just because some moderator thinks differently. People also leave those places and in fact those are better known for becoming radicalized and becoming worse echo chambers.
Yeah, and I can’t do neither of the two, it’s that so hard to understand? I don’t have good hardware, I don’t have a good socioeconomic situation, I don’t have good internet and it’s hard to find these, miraculously I found those three.
I’ve told you why that is: freedumb of speech instance opens up, it fills up with freedumb of speech people, others defederate because they don’t want to listen to the freedumb of speech, the freedumb of speech people disband because they’re not a freedom of listen platform.
That’s a slippery slope fallacy. The problem is that you are again confusing freedom of speech with freedom to say or do harmful things.
No, you’re confused what freedom of speech is, and what Lemmy is. See the comic. They, Lemmygrad, just don’t like what you’re saying, and they’re showing you the door.
You see how you, a freedumb of speech person, is just yapping and not listening? Both of these points are wholly dealt with in the comment you replied to? You could have listened, and I wouldn’t be repeating myself. Twice, you made me repeat myself due to an inability to listen? What will you make me reiterate this time?
Of course I’m not going to make it so easy for literally Nazis, or literally Zionists, or literally Jihadists, or literally authoritarian communists, or anything like that, but that doesn’t mean that if I criticize a government with good arguments then I should be banned just because some moderator thinks differently.
That’s a fine line to draw, you’re free to draw it where you like when it’s your hardware. Lemmygrad drew it elsewhere, and they have the freedom to decide what’s hosted on their hardware? You see how that works? They don’t want to host you, they don’t have to host you, they showed you the door [see the comic, please for the love of god read the comic]
There are two options, find like minded freedumb people willing to pay the money time and effort to host you, or host it yourself. You can’t find one, I’ve told you why, they’re short lived. I showed you why, using you as an example why they’re short lived. My second piece of advice is to listen, analyse, internalise and move on.
There is no freedom of speech of Lemmy There should be no freedom of speech on Lemmy. Admins have the freedom to not host what they want. Mods have the freedom to ban you as they please. Lemmings have the freedom to block you as they please. You’re not entitled to anyone’s attention, time, effort, or resources.
You have the solutions, do what you want with them. There are all sorts of instances, and they’ve all drawn the line for acceptable content in different places, perhaps your inability to find one that lines up with where you would draw the line is a hint to introspect. It’s not often I agree with lemmygrad, but they might have got it right with you.
I have read the comic, and I disagreed, I’m on my right of doing so. And again, I have found instances that draw the line where I do: real damage. But again, the problem that I’m pointing is that it is worrying that people so unjustifiably and illogically expand the line of what constitutes hate speech in their spaces (and I speak for both extremes, not just those on the left, as incels are also unbearable), because in part thanks to that is where all the current polarization arises (and pay attention, in part, it is multifactorial of course). At least we agree that others have the right to block others if they don’t want to read them, but I think banning is much trickier territory. Exactly in part the DECLARED purpose of these networks―that is, the Fediverse― is that there is more freedom of expression and thought than in, say, Blueshit, Shitter or Reshit, where moderators can ban you for absurd things. Do you think that only state censorship represents a problem? No. Any type of censorship, even personal, is a serious problem. Think about it, it is a problem that LGBTQ or racialized people cannot express themselves freely on traditional networks because that affects their scope of action and perpetuates their marginalization. The same thing happens with those of us who criticize totalitarian regimes.
Oof that’s a wall of text. Formatting please. I’ll do my best to parse it.
Ok you disagree with the comic, they (lemmygrad) disagree with you. What’s the issue?
But again, the problem that I’m pointing is that it is worrying that people so unjustifiably and illogically expand the line of what constitutes hate speech in their spaces (and I speak for both extremes, not just those on the left, as incels are also unbearable), because in part thanks to that is where all the current polarization arises (and pay attention, in part, it is multifactorial of course).
That’s a long sentence, I kept looking for the full stop for the quote, mostly it’s what we call “blah blah blah”. But, it isn’t unjustisfied. It’s their hardware and they have the freedom to host what they want, that’s the justification. Simples, you fundamentally do not understand the situation.
I’ll make it really simple for you: you cannot force people to host things, on their hardware, that they do not want to host. You understand how entitled/authoritarian you are right? It’s their stuff, their money, their time, you have no entitlement or authority to tell them what to do with it. I keep telling you this, it’s just not going in. It’s a simple concept, do you not understand, disagree, haven’t heard it?
Lemmy isn’t what you think it is. Lemmy is a bunch of little fiefdoms run by little dictators that can do whatever they want, whenever they want.
Find a fiefdom you agree with, don’t go to the fiefdoms you don’t. Or do, and they’ll show you the door, see comic. That isn’t a freedom of speech issue, you go where you aren’t welcome and you will be shown the door.
Exactly in part the DECLARED purpose of these networks―that is, the Fediverse― is that there is more freedom of expression and thought than in, say, Blueshit, Shitter or Reshit, where moderators can ban you for absurd things.
Again, you don’t understand what Lemmy is. It isn’t “I can go to .ml and say Marx was an anti-semite and they have to host that”. It’s: I can go somewhere and say Marx was an anti-semite, or make somewhere and say Marx was an anti-semite.
You again don’t understand what freedom of speech is, they (.ml) haven’t violated your freedom of speech, they’ve shown you the door.
Do you think that only state censorship represents a problem? No.
Is that you asking me a question and answering it for me? You know when I said you’re all yap and zero listen? Please introspect. As it happens I’ve made my view on moderated content on Lemmy very clear, thanks for listening.
No. Any type of censorship, even personal, is a serious problem.
You don’t believe that. You have already told me how you believe the environment should have rules and moderation. You already said there is a line, you disagree with people where the line is. Get off your high horse, it’s embarrassing.
Think about it, it is a problem that LGBTQ or racialized people cannot express themselves freely on traditional networks because that affects their scope of action and perpetuates their marginalization.
Again you don’t understand Lemmy, the exact opposite happens here, Blahaj.zone (spelling?) flourished. Exploding-heads did not. LGBT+ people made their own little fiefdom: people like being there, because they’re nice people and it’s a nice place to be. Exploding-heads made their own little fiefdom, and the nazi bar cycle happened. You see how my hypothetical played out in reality, and the opposite of yours happened? Would you like to consider why that might be? You called it a slippery slope fallacy, round here it’s observable reality.
Just gonna say, if you really hate or you really feel hurt by whatever someone says on the internet, just block them and/or use a blacklist of words.
A) The entire purpose of FOSS software and hardware is that you can fully control it, should you choose to. If you don’t like something, you do it differently. Lemmy especially can be hosted on an old laptop if you’ve got any kind of solid home internet connection.
B) The reason ‘free speech’ instances don’t exist long in any fediverse space is because of CSEM and hate speech. From there, since you legally have to censor that speech depending on where you are in the world, and morally should, then it’s easy to go ahead and ban the things leading to those extremes. Since as neoliberalism.
Responding to B: The problem is that what I’m saying is not hate speech or CSEM, and you are making a false equivalence between allowing or defending free speech and defending hate speech and harmful content. Apart from that, you do not take into account that all the time, and increasingly intensely, the concept is inflated to encompass anything that the person evaluating it does not like, even though logically derived there is no support or any valid argument to show that this is hate speech.
I don’t have a good internet connection, my old laptop has a bad battery and runs slow as a snail, not to mention that it overheats and shuts down for whatever reason. To that we add that my main PC is a desktop, and in my country the electricity service is rubbish (we can go up to 8 hours without electricity), AI has left me without a good income from work (I am a freelance musician and I have been able to see how demand has decreased dramatically), so the money with luck and effort is enough for me to survive month after month, with a currency that is constantly devalued and arbitrary price increases (even in foreign currencies, like dollars), and I do not have the time or energy to keep everything in order. order. Also, the router in my house isn’t mine, it’s a guy’s, so I can’t open ports, and buying or renting a VPS isn’t an option either because, first, there aren’t any that support registrations from my country and, second, we’re back to square one: my income is meager and uncertain.
Please, think a bit before speaking, not everyone has a decent socioeconomic situation.
There is no “official” Lemmy instance. Five years ago: What is Lemmy.ml?
Recently there seems to be some of misunderstanding what the lemmy.ml instance is about, especially from newer users.
Lemmy.ml has always been a niche site, and it will most likely stay this way. We don’t have any intentions to turn it into a mainstream instance, or set a goal of getting as many users as possible. Our goal is simple: make an instance that people like to use. I would say that we have been successful in this, but obviously it is impossible to satisfy everyone.
The reason for this is that @dessalines and I are paid to develop Lemmy, while donations from lemmy.ml users only make up a negligible part of our income. Besides, having more users would force us to spend more time moderating, and less time for development. Lemmy works quite differently from big tech sites like Reddit in this regard: while they get more money with each extra user through advertising, for us it is the opposite. So we would much rather have a smaller, non-toxic, and friendly userbase, than a large one.
Part of the problem might be that lemmy.ml is described as “flagship instance”, which can certainly be interpreted to mean “mainstream” or “general purpose”. I struggle to come up with a better, more accurate description. If you can think of one, please comment here.
If you dont like the way lemmy.ml works, thats okay. Federation exists exactly to solve that problem, let different groups have their own instances, with their own rules and political views. You can see the list of existing instances, and instructions for setting up a new one on join-lemmy.org.
In particular, I would like to see someone (or a group of people) create a mainstream, or liberal instance. That should help to avoid further drama, and avoid attempts to turn lemmy.ml into something that it is not. @dessalines and I would certainly be willing to help with any technical problems that such an instance runs into, and include it on join-lemmy.org (just like any other instance that meets the code of conduct).
Edit to add: The modlog of your main account: https://scribe.disroot.org/modlog?userId=12363563
I’m actually communist and got banned from there, too (on another account I had).
That’s extremely common actually. Check out slrpnk.net for actual communists.
Tankies are alternative left, closer to American MAGA than to actual communism.
Oof, that’s a bit too much… 🫨
Yeah, I’m communist and don’t support China or the USSR. One of the main differences is that I’m an anarcho-communist, not an authoritarian communist. Not to mention, China still has sone capitalism to undo.
.ml that’s your problem.
Not a single blade of grass touched between the entire lot of them.
Classic ml. They’re just CCP MAGA over there. Way better at reading than maga, but completely unable to self reflect or see through their own propaganda.
There’s an “official” Lemmy instance?
Calling .ml the “Official” instance is a disservice in my opinion.
Yes, I only called them that way as a saying, and because in practice they operate as a de facto one, similar to how mastodon.social holds the title in Mastodon.
I searched and found only one single comment in the entire Threadiverse to the term “Lemmy official”. It had no upvotes.
A search instead for “official instance” reveals many comments saying that it is not an official instance. So saying that it is an official instance is disinformation, easily disproven by spending roughly two seconds looking it up.
Probably you meant it as a tongue-in-cheek meta-commentary, but those of us who are too unintelligent to be able to read your exact thoughts can only glean information from what you actually shared with us? This detracts from your very real point when you interject your own biases, without a clear distinction - like a /s would have gone a long way there, but especially for the title, you would have gotten better responses if you had just left that phrase out entirely. Sometimes life isn’t about IQ, it’s about wisdom, specifically knowing when not to do something.
What is more relevant is that the instance is used for testing new code prior to deployment across the rest of the Lemmy instances. Except even then there are so many loopholes and caveats, the top one being that PieFed, Mbin, nodeBB, and soon(-ish?) flarum all exist on the Threadiverse alongside Lemmy, but also several instances barely ever update their codebase and/or otherwise have an extraordinarily heavy modification process (e.g. beehaw.org, Lemmy.World and Hexbear.net). As one of the comments in my second link explains:
The whole “the flagship instance is a sandbox test instance” is kind of a sometimes-true sometimes-not situation.
In short, read more before speaking if you want a higher quality discourse, and also show concern enough for others to speak your mind clearly and succinctly. Otherwise people will simply ignore the noise and move on.
As I said before, I just said it as a saying, no malice intended, and as I said too, they’re de facto similar to mastodon.today, so that’s why I called them so. I could be more clear and specific? Of course, but I don’t have infinite mental—and mental too—energy, and I didn’t had sufficient of it at that moment. You shouldn’t thus make hasty conclusions about the intentions or thoughts of another person. You can of course ask for more details if you want, but you’re not about to know the circumstances under something was wrote or said—in my case, I was hugely tired so I hadn’t time nore energy to lose 30 minutes of my life searching on internet for something that at the very end isn’t really important to the point of my post.
About the IQ, where I said something about that? I don’t really understand where do you take that from; I never boasted about any of that, you can read my post again so you can see that I never made any comments about my IQ or anyone else’s. It’s taken totally out of nowhere.
And about your disinformation claims, that’s defamation and I feel (although of course I can’t say for sure, so I won’t affirm or deny anything about it) that there is some kind of malice behind it, because again, as I mentioned before, you are completely going around the bush, taking a lot of things out of context and inventing others, and on top of that exaggerating something that is not even the point of the post and at most is a stupid mistake due to oversight, without even trying to take the context into account.
As an explanatory note, it’s nothing against you, it’s just a defense of how I expressed myself; I’m trying my best to be civil, cordial and respectful—as much as I can—, and I ask you to be reciprocal on that.
There may be a broader discussion to be had here about censorship on Lemmy and perhaps the internet as a whole. But I will say that Lemmy.ml is the worst and most censorious instance most people are likely to encounter. Just don’t visit their communities and you’ll reduce this issue by a good 90% already.
I’ve seen many such posts over the years - the vast majority tend to get removed quickly.
Isn’t it ironic.
In a way, I’m a little sorry that the actual situation ended up being “.ml gonna .ml”, because I do think there needs to be a talk about how we (that is, the Fediverse) approach political discussion and censorship overall. Not that this makes the actual answer here any less valid, but I’m sorry that bigger talk isn’t happening.
Yeah I just wasn’t sure if OP was wanting to have that conversation or just talk about .ml specifically. And also I wasn’t sure I had the energy for the bigger topic as it’s complex, contentious, and I don’t feel totally confident of my viewpoints either.
Yes, I was thinking about the broader discussion; targeting more .ml because that is where it is most visible, but it is not as if it does not happen in other instances or even in other Fediverse spaces; I had to go to fsebugout, poast and veenus.art on Pleroma for the same thing, and I’m doing pretty much the same thing on Fediverse in general. It’s a shame how it’s evolving, even if in theory you can just migrate to another instance or create your own, it won’t actually be a solution if everyone defederates from your instance and then you isolate yourself, because that will create another echo chamber on your side; That’s how 4chan started and that’s how any tabloid starts.
Your comment is relevant, but if carried to the extreme touches on whataboutism. Lemmy.ml may only be the most visible example, but it still serves as a model for others that want to be like it to follow.
It is also relevant how the codebase itself reflects the values of the devs: moderator reports do not federate until the upcoming v1.0 (Lemmy works on their flagship instance, hence the functionality of the wider Threadiverse is a lower priority), notifications are not sent to the user that they have even been banned or had their content removed (authoritarian-style, where the rights of the end user are insignificant compared to that of the instance owner), there is no ability to appeal such a decision (even Reddit offered multiple routes of communication - modmail for one, mail to Reddit admins for another). Lemmy is in some ways even more highly authoritarian than Reddit!!
The bigger talk happened and the fediverse was invented precisely to allow multiple ways of discussing politics instead of one approved way for everyone that is then universally policed
point of order: tankies are no more “left” than russia and china are
Why would tankies offer people a platform to criticize tankie ideology?
Read something about Machiavelli and you won’t wonder anymore why the vast majority of stuff that gets done in the world is done the way it is.
Absolutely none of this is a secret.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, this is their first rule: “Be civil and nice.” Just that:
They might be referring to the lemmy.ml instance rules:
Rules
- No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
- Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
- No porn.
- No Ads / Spamming.
Of course, general criticism towards the governments of China/Russia shouldn’t actually fall under that either, but pretending it’s racist/xenophobic makes it seem more valid than just saying you were being mean. The Winnie the Pooh thing especially seems to be a trigger over there.
Yes, and it’s not like I was saying anything false, Xi Jing Ping is known for being very egomaniacal and having a brutal image cult around him, and the reason he banned it (Winnie the Pooh) was because he was constantly compared to poor Pooh (who did nothing to deserve such a comparison) and he saw it as a direct affront to his authority. 1984 literally. Just like my country, which is an ideological and political ally of yours (or was, I don’t know now that Delcys and Trump started playing at being little friends).
On top of that, it’s not like I’m saying “the Chinese should die”, and in fact on the contrary, I feel genuinely outraged by how they live, because it reminds me a lot of how we live in my country. But for them it is seen that anything that does not support their fantasy of a Chinese utopia is too dangerous.
A real shame.
They decided that Winnie the Pooh comparisons are racist because of Pooh’s yellow fur, as well as the rest of the original meme comparing Obama to Tigger (which is also racist since Tigger rhymes with “nigger”). Hence they consider it a rule 1 violation.
It’s a very narrow view of the meme, ignoring all other reasons why the comparison was made. The supposed “racism” towards Xi seems hard to argue for when it was Chinese netizens making the meme in the first place.
What started as am adorable meme on Chinese social media was twisted on Western social media into a racist trope. There aren’t, conversely, mean-spirited Tigger memes on Chinese social media.
I honestly haven’t seen a Tigger meme on western social media either, only the meme regarding Xi. Regardless, the Winnie the Pooh memes were banned on Chinese social media, so ultimately the CCP did not consider it very adorable.
block the community and use another one. thats how I do it.
I find it easier to block the entire instance - so very many of the most batshit insane comments tend to come from there (or hexhear or lemmygrad) that eventually I just gave up on it altogether.
I am much happier on the Threadiverse as a result of that decision.
Problem with blocking the instance is it blocks both communities and users. I wish they would make it so when blocking instances you could choose users or communities or both. My only use case for instance blocking is honestly to block things that are to big so I can catch thing on smaller communities. I have a pretty high threshold though I think so by the time I might block an instance it gets defederated or something.
I recall when it used to block only users but not communities. It was quite odd as the posts were mostly empty of comments. Remember that someone responding to a comment is still filtered if the parent is filtered, including the OP themselves, so it only showed content where a non-ML user posted to those ML community and then under those it would show only non-ML users commenting on that and then responding to those comments. So… usually quite empty.
For me that’s a feature not a bug to block the users. You don’t even need an account to read content on the Threadiverse - posts, comments, do searches, etc. - and I can read any of that anytime I want. But I don’t need it being platformed and highlighted in my feed - there’s enough spam posts there already with like zero to one comments (I wish the default Hot filter would work a bit differently than it does).
A lot of those types on Lemmy are quite toxic, politically speaking. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the right or the left. I said in the past in a YouTube comment that I’m openly center right (better than far or alt-right) due to me being anti-Jesuit (boy do I make Catholics and Jesuits on Lemmy hissy).
Despite that, however, the biggest issue has to do with how dumbed down most Lemmings sadly are. I’m probably one of the only 140+ IQ individuals on here (120 IQ as a base, but ~22-25 points higher using AI with adverserial collaboration), and talked about it in this post: https://lemmy.today/post/44452910 (Yes, it’s a Lemmy Today link, as that’s the instance I use)
Being an intellectual is jarring and infuriating for those on Lemmy or elsewhere on the Fediverse, as if you have a higher IQ, people should just… not understand you. I learned that while using the Fediverse myself, so I get this struggle.
Ranting and raving about how Jesuits and Catholics are related to every topic doesn’t make you smart, it makes you mentally unstable and needing of therapy, dude.
You didn’t understand what I said, because my IQ is apparently too jarring for you.
I don’t think anyone with a high IQ would literally ever once say they do. Let alone repeatedly say so like you are lol.
It’s got to be some kind of bit. 🤪
There actually are people who disclose their IQ. A South Korean dude, for example (one who has a 270+ IQ, which is possible), had disclosed it on Twitter.
It doesn’t even matter if you believe that person, it’s just an insanely cringe look to do that. It would be of course a lie 95% of the time, but that’s not even really the point. You may as well have said you’re not very smart, because that’s the impression other people are going to get when you say these things.
You are very smart
Repeating CIA propaganda kinda does get you banned from a lot of places in the world given the massive damage CIA propaganda has done. Once you step outside the Western bubble that you’re used to english-speaking websites having, you’ll find this attitude pretty much everywhere.
As to how it relates to FOSS, you cannot realistically both believe CIA propaganda, and also support communist ideals like Free and Open Source Software. Those two things are ideologically incompatible.
The issue is that OP was dissing both sides, not just the MSS (Chinese intelligence) and CCP shenanigans. This was something I caught almost immediately when viewing the image provided.
Of course. I always say this: I’m polliticaly pessimist, and although I tend more to center-left, I have many points in common with left, right, center and center-right equally. My basic axiom is that all politicians, parties and governments are bad, not one is good; at much, you can find less bad governments, but that’s far from being good.
IMO governments are just baskets. It’s politicians that have a short shelf life.
The biggest issue, I think, has to do with not realizing that we can be free by seeing our potential as fractals of infinite consciousness.
