How good is Lemmy dealing with censorship and why does the sign-up process on lemmy.ml involve having to copy a sentence from "The Principles of Communism"?
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?
LMAO that's a "new" (to me) requirement, I guess they're full mask off now. They, along with their sister instance lemmygrad, and their cousin spawned from chapo trap house called hexbear, are rabid authoritarian communists (aka tankies) who want to kill people to enforce their ideals "for their own good." They honestly believe that once they take over and kill all political dissidents the state they install to accomplish this violent goal will "wither" on it's own. Clearly, they're insane and can mostly be ignored, unless the topic is entirely apolitical. Also heads up, .ml (and grad, not hexbear) are the instances run by the devs that originally made lemmy, and jerboa (the app) is made by one of them as well.
A few corrections regarding your misconceptions of Communist theory, for anyone scrolling by but unfamiliar with Marxism:
Marxists advocate for revolution, because Capitalism cannot simply be voted out. Given that following Marxist analysis to its correct conclusions necessitates transitioning to Socialism, this can be seen as a "call to violence." Yes, it is, but out of necessity. Marxists don't advocate simply massacring everyone of slightly different beliefs, rather, Marxists are not Blanquists and thus believe revolution is only possible with mass, popular support.
The Marxist conception of a State is a tool of class oppression, not all instances of government. Rather, Marxists advocate for working towards full Public Ownership of Capital and Central Planning by the government. When Marxists say they believe the State will wither away, they mean eventually all property will be folded into the public sector and thus the concept of "classes" will cease to exist as well, gradually as property is folded into the public sector to the degree to which markets have formed Big Industry and Monopolist Syndicates. From Engels:
"When ultimately it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself superfluous. As soon as there is no social class to be held in subjection any longer, as soon as class domination and the struggle for individual existence based on the anarchy of production existing up to now are eliminated together with the collisions and excesses arising from them, there is nothing more to repress, nothing necessitating a special repressive force, a state. The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society -- the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society -- is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not "abolished", it withers away."
Communism or not the people you associate yourself with and defend (.ml, grad, and hexbear) advocate violence, the mod team supports it, and you know it. Stop trying to pretend you don't.
Edit: Oh look, the mods removed the photo evidence of their users calling for violence. Wonder why, anyway it's over on meanwhileongrad where they can't do shit about it. Tough break.
Enough of them have told me by now that I believe them, yes. If you're unaware you haven't been paying enough attention or don't ask hard questions like "what will you do if someone doesn't want to give their property to your collective willingly?"
So I've certainly read some leftwing stuff on lemmy but I have yet to encounter, ant current recollection, any posts / comments which advocate violence. Not saying they don’t exist but would be curious to see some examples (if you have some on hand).
You will in time, there's plenty on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works. the latest I can remember is "the French deserve a thousand Charlie Hebdos" (Charlie Hebdo being a magazine, ironically left-leaning no less, that was shot up with 12 people murdered and 11 injured for publishing a cartoon depicting Muhammed in 2015).