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1y ago

Defederation from Lemmygrad.ml

Hello World,

Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.

Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.

At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.

As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one's stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.

We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.

Thank you,

The Lemmy.World Team

809 comments

Lemmmygrad supposedly is for people who support communism, but when talking to them, they really are supporting totalitarian countries which have nothing to do with communism.
- It’s amazing what some state-sponsored troll farms can convince people of. Some people can’t evaluate content they see online critically and gobble up the propaganda
  
  The tactics and attitudes definitely make me think of that. It seems like the same people who showed up and fucked up a bunch of subs on reddit 6-7 years ago, like how conspiracy went from discussing things like UFOs and MK ULTRA to conservative political conspiracy theories and opposing the Democratic Party and politicians.
- Whenever communists or socialists gather, the tankies take over.
  It's been like that since the past 100 years.
  
  I'm not even sure they're really tankies anymore (or the meaning of the word is changing). Actual tankies still ostensibly support communism, but all too often, it's blatantly apparent that they're actually right-wing totalitarians cosplaying.
  
  [Looks around nervously]
  Aren't we gathering here too? This defederation seems like tankies not taking over.
  Anecdotally I was in a bunch of actual leftist subreddits; I only departed because capitalists enshittified the whole website.
  
  Notably - this applies to any governing bodies.
  Fuck communism, it will never work you dumbasses.
- The bit that really irked me was that it was purely performative. It seemed like literally the exact same community that populated the_donald with memes and Trump train bots and the photoshopping of Trump’s pic onto Rambo. Their posts have fuck all to do with communism just like the trump posts had nothing to do with conservative politics. It was just edge faux-outrage and basically taking an opposite position for its own sake. They could simultaneously criticize Gov Newsom for not signing a trans rights bill while praising Putin who is doing his level best to make being gay illegal. It’s a mistake to see it as political discourse when it’s really just trolling. Like on the_donald, they egg each other on and have their in jokes and memes (in both the picture sense and in the actual meme sense) about walls the same way the trumpers did with helicopters.
  Defederation is the best response imo.
  
  It is funny to mention Trump around tankies and watch their heads explode. They can't pretend Trump is a communist, but their propaganda masters don't want them to turn against the Republicans, so they're just in this weird space where the only thing they can do is aggressively avoid the topic at all.
  
  I’ve actually once seen a tankie scream something about how the “imperial coreTM” (America) allows gay marriage, codifying Obergefell into law last year just in case SCOTUS and some red-state AG decide it needs to go and make a serious attempt at it. Some of them actually do think it’s “capitalistic degeneracy”
- That's my problem with it. For some reason they support countries which have nothing to do with being socialist or communist. It makes their philosophies and claims seem really inconsistent and not based on any real ideology. It seems like at most an anti-US, anti-EU ideology, and for some reason they scorn the same US politicians that conservatives here do, while never mentioning any problems with the people in the US who are even more against workers rights and in favor of unbridled capitalism. Also, the tactics of groups of people mocking people and comments reminds me of the shilled-out shit that showed up on reddit several years ago.
  
  You can't understand why or how communists and socialists would be anti-US and anti-EU? Really? Seems fairly self evident to me that that'd be the case. Why would you expect anything but hostility towards the ultra capitalist systems in the US or EU from communists and socialists? Seems like an odd complaint, anti-capitalist sentiment is part of the core of the ideology as I see it.
  
  For some reason they support countries which have nothing to do with being socialist or communist.
  It's all they've got. There are no real Socialist or Communist nations as those ideologies are fundamentally incompatible with groups of people larger than about 150, at least in a world that isn't truly post scarcity.
  It's a shame really but that's just how people are.
- As tankies often do. They are just a different colors of fascist, but damage the reputation of all lefties
  
  Oh you guys do plenty of that on your own don't kid yourself.
- Aww, they're just not doing "the right kind" of communism I guess?
  Show me communism that doesn't end in genocide and totalitarian state leadership, I'll wait.
  
  The biggest problem with communism is not the socialism, it is the totalitarism that is required for it to function. And that's the part that kills people.
  Now that Russia and China aren't even communist, it clearly shows what they are truly after.
  
  I think that's the point: communism had good intentions but always ended up in totalitarianism.

Good riddance
- They can have their little hate fest in private now! I think they wanted that anyways.
  
  They do it to so many smaller forums too. I saw an old board I used to frequent for game faqs and questions turned into one, under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.
  It’s crazy to watch one user create a wannabe cult, user shame everyone and constantly move goalposts with straw men bs. Meanwhile, they had moderators discussing in Discord chats who to drive insane next and pick on. Not to mention using a serious issue as means to divide people that frequent the site by having over 30+ accounts to pad the numbers that agree with their views in topics.
  It’s scary how far they go these days, especially considering the site was relatively respected around Y2K era, and now it’s full of republicans pretending to be trans and liberal for a psychotic gimmick.
- Yeah glad to see those fucks go. There's been an awful lot of bad takes filling up content sections on certain topics, every time I checked who had posted it it was almost always a lemmygrad user.
  
  I need to start checking the instance when someone posts something stinky.
  I’d honestly noticed it a lot over the last few weeks and thought oh well, eternal September.
  There was a nice little period there where’s there wasn’t much discussion around and those actually poking their heads out were really kind of wholesome. Now I see so many people still coming across in that friendly, inclusive way and I realise it’s just a vocal minority ruining it.
  Let’s hold each other to a higher standard.
  One love.
  
  What kind of bad takes?
- Agree
- I honestly don't get the big deal about defederation.
  Free speech doesn't really seem achievable on social media because bad actors will always manipulate votes to ensure that some opinions are promoted more than others.
  For example, the opinions of lemmygrad should probably consume ~1% of the total informed opinion "pie chart" if you will. They can be adequately represented by some idiot posting their opinion in a thread once in a while - yet here we are. Their bizarre takes are sucking all the oxygen out of the room.
  Surely there's a better way to ensure that all opinions on a given matter can be considered rather than just saying we must allow our streets to be overrun with zombies lest we forget they exist.
- The lemmygrad users think the same
  
  Good for all 19 of them
  
  Big assumption with the thinking
  
  You mean they're sharing the same brain cell?

Thank fucking god. It's exhausting being around people for whom any meme, any post, any comment, has to spin into how good communism is, how bad the libs are, how good China is, and how bad The West TM is. It is exhausting.
- Communism good, therefore China good, therefore West bad, therefore Israel bad, therefore dead Israelis good!
  What a fucking worldview
  
  Most of them have never spent time living under China / USSR as well lol. I'd like communism in theory, and I still think there's a possibility of it, but even just in Hong Kong the flaws of the CCP system of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" are very evident — and that's barely with any of the actual communism in Hong Kong.
  
  I have yet to meet a single person who actually thinks like this... I've met many people accusing others of it, though!

Nothing of value has been lost
- Value was gained instead.
  
  Stonks📈📈📈
- Addition by subtraction

I just gotta say, the moderation here makes me so happy I joined this instance.

Thank goodness.
I'm reminded of a story I read a while back - not sure where - about how if you let a Nazi into your bar, you eventually end up running a Nazi bar. I think the same applies to online forums. You let Nazis overrun a forum, everyone else leaves, and eventually you might as well just be running Stormfront.
- Original Twitter post
  I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."
  And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed
  Anyway, asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."
  And i was like, ohok and he continues.
  "you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.
  And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.
  And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."
  And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.
  
  Wiktionary has a fairly relevant definition for "Nazi Bar":
  (Internet slang) A space in which bigots or extremists have come to dominate due to a lack of moderation or by moderators wishing to remain neutral or avoid conflict.
  
  That's the one! Thank you for finding it.
  
  God, I wish there was a shitty crustpunk bar near me... I think that the closest thing to one within 100 miles of me shut down during the pandemic. :(
- Isn't that also kind of what is happening to Twitter right now?
  
  Yep. In welcoming back the Nazis, Elon made it clear he intended to make it a Nazi forum. Oh, he said a few things about "free speech zones" or something, but when you peel back the veneer of idealism, you just find a bunch of Nazis.
  They love "free speech zones," because no one wants to share a forum with Nazis and leave when the Nazis take over.
  
  A stupid thought that I just had. An X is 4 bars from a swastika.
- Karl Popper's "paradox of tolerance"
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
  
  In my other (non-Lemmy) life, I've written extensively about the paradox of tolerance, and how recognizing it de-fangs the arguments of wanna-be totalitarians.
  For people not in the know, Popper proposed that infinite, unrestricted "tolerance" is paradoxically self-destroying, because it necessarily means tolerating attempts to destroy tolerance.
  The solution is simple and obvious in retrospect, but so many people have trouble finding it and worry about whether they're hypocrites or not for refusing to tolerate Nazis and the like. The solution is this:
  Recognize the fact that you never promised to tolerate Nazis.
  No one ever promised to tolerate everything without caveats or restrictions. Instead, we promised to tolerate each other, to respect one another's right to exist. In other words, tolerance is a peace treaty.
  As soon as you realize that, it becomes obvious that you needn't tolerate Nazis, because they have broken the treaty. You are not bound by it when it comes to them. In fact, given the nature of people like that, they were never really signatories to the treaty in the first place, because they start from a basis of intending to destroy it.
  Oh, how they hate it when people realize this and refuse to put up with Nazi bullshit or apologize for that refusal. Well, sorry, Nazi turd burglars, we never promised to put up with your shit in the first place, so y'all can fuck right off.
- Lemmygrad isn't Nazi tho
- These are not Nazis being blocked
- The irony of liberals calling communists Nazis is not lost on me in this comment. It’s genuinely hilarious.
  
  They're not really communists. Hint: Russian trolls are getting paid.
  
  Red fascists: claim to be leftists, behave like Nazis. Leftists: "Fuck off, Nazis." Red fascists: :surprised pikachu:
  
  This whole thread is just a demonstration of "enlightened centrism". Someone above is even arguing that hating landlords makes you a fascist! Just chef's kiss.

I think this is for the best, there are some seriously disturbed people posting on Lemmygrad. I saw comments cheering on and celebrating the Hamas attack and talking about how they hoped the people who were kidnapped get tortured. Whatever your politics, that is super fucked up and not "legitimate discourse".

Tankies mad
- "Cowards" lol
  They literally just ban you if you start to pick apart their bullshit opinions.
  Proudly banned from !GenZedong@lemmygrad.ml
  
  Oh hey me too! High five!
- "You chose to not have to listen to our bullshit? Cowards!"
  
  We don't fear you, we pity you, so we put you in the pity party corner. Come back when you develop emotional regulation. Bye Lemmygrad!
- Lmao posted to the Communism community. How is this about communism? It isn't. It's just that to them, everything is about communism.
- When you're called a coward you know it's a W because it just means you don't want to be dragged down to their level
- beautiful
- 🍿
- tankies gonna tank

Lost all respect for lemmygrad when they deleted a comment i made about voting for the lesser of 2 evils being the correct course of action to advance the interests of the Prolitariat in the United States. They care more about larping as revolutionaries than enacting change that actually helps the Working Class.

Good Job! You make my experience of Lemmy continuously better! You cleaned that CSAM up with the speed of light (I've never even noticed it), you managed the Piracy Community Troubles very well and now you made an well thought through decision about Lemmygrad. Well done Mods! And thank you all very much!
- A well thought through decision that gives no examples or arguments?
  With the timing, I have to assume the reason is "they support Palestine."
  
  you must be a farmer because that's a very obvious strawman
  
  You are 100% free to leave Lemmy.world and join Lemmygrad. There is nothing stopping you. And from the Ratio of the Post the most People agree with the decision of defederating.
  No one forces you to be here 🙂

I understand that they are staunchly pro-communist and also take a pro-Palestine, including some of them (many of them?) a more clearly pro-Hamas stance. And that all of this could annoy many of the centrist liberals that seem to dominate here. But from perusing the lemmygrad link I do not see clear signs of hate speech, certainly not a clear hate speech agenda as you would see with some hate groups. And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.
There may be more to it, I don’t know, but personally I wouldn’t like lemmy.world, an otherwise fine instance by all means, to become a centrist liberal silo where no other opinion outside (mostly US-centric) liberal orthodoxy is heard. So yeah, not convinced that this was the right decision, basically because of a lack of evidence.

You guys were still federated with Lemmygrad this long?
- Most of their communities were blocked since months, that's why you didn't see much of them.
  
  I'm just surprised overall because most other major instances defederated from them weeks or months ago, along with Hexbear and/or Exploding Heads. .ca has been defederated with those probably for at least two months now.
  
  So, how does it work if I'm on lemm.ee? Is this defederation global?
- The phrasing of "an increase in hate speech and calls to violence" suggests that there is a tolerable level of those.
  
  A tolerable level we can handle by moderation. And when even the admins join in it becomes clear there is a big incompatibility and cultural difference.
  But you probably meant something else, right?
  
  Not it doesn't, it suggests there's a finite amount of volunteer moderator time. Don't be a troll.
  
  I'm pro voilence against people who block grocery store entrances because they figured that was the best place to chat with someone they ran into... so yes.
  
  Yeah, there is: using your critical thinking skills, what number comes before 1?
  long pause
  That's right! Zero! Good job! And what do we call it when 0 becomes 1?
  long pause
  And increase, yes! applause
  Tune in next week with Dora the Internet Explorer! Bye for now!
  
  I took it to mean "it has increased to the point we can't deal with it all"
  
  Well there are going to be assholes everywhere but I guess if that instance's admins/mods aren't doing their jobs of moderating their users then it makes sense to defederate so the burden doesn't fall on all other instance's mods.
  The world isn't black and white like your comment is suggesting.
  
  I'm wondering if you're trolling or just ignorant. I'll do you the respect of assuming ignorance.
  There will always be hate speech in any forum. Period. This cannot be stopped short of closing the forum down entirely. If, however, the hate speech is low volume, it can be dealt with individually with post deletion, user bans, community deletions, etc. Standard "tactical" moderation techniques.
  But...
  Shitholes like lemmygrad.ml release a veritable flood of hate speech, as do their right-wing "Freeze Peach!" equivalents. Individual, tactical moderation does not scale to that level without a whole lot more money than a hobbyist-run instance can bring to bear. Thus if hate speech and calls for violence reach the point where tactical moderation can no longer keep up, you start with the strategic moderation. In older-style forums that might be an IP ban. In the Fediverse it's defederation.
  See how that works?
  Now please, prove to me you're not trolling and simply didn't understand how things work.
  
  Yes, there is.
  Example:
  "I hate fascists and they deserve to get punched in the face."

This will be a much better experience for new Lemmy users browsing /All.
- omg it's him
  
  The one and only.

Free speech is important. Every opinion should be heard and considered. However, your freedom ends when it crosses over someone else’s. Good riddance, i had blocked most of lemmygrad’s communities anyways, since all they did was spread propaganda and hate.
Love the mod team (being ex-reddit, never thought I’d say that), the transparency and clarity of their communication with the community is great!

Before I saw lemmygrad: wtf are we doing?
After I saw lemmygrad: glad we defederate..

About time.
Tolerating intolerance will only lead to intolerance.

FINALLY, thanks a lot! 👏

Pretty new to the lemmy thing. Learning the do not and safe zones of the federation.
Lemmygrad is a bit of a rabbit hole from the outside view. Like, holy shit. That place got wicked dark super fast.

There was a lot of it.
Like a lot.

Good, are you defederated from hexbear as well? If not, please do.

Oh, c'mon...
People have been celebrating when governments open their own Lemmy instance to put state services and support there and now we're defederating the very first of such Lemmy instances, that of the People's Republic Of China???!
/s

Thank fuck. I hate those jerks. Good riddance.

TANK U!
Sorry imma head out

Based admin team and moderation team. You guys rock

Good, they fake socialists anyway

I'd never heard of this instance, but the name kind of gives away that it's no big loss.
- I can tolerate communists, but lemygrad is mostly just tankies
  
  They're not communists anymore than North Korea is a democracy...
  Anyone that tries to claim the USSR or China are/were communist regimes aren't worth listening to. They're either lying or don't know what they're talking about
- They're the original lemmy instance iirc
- Its the devs instance. They think the CCP is good.
  
  Which is precisely why I don't donate to the devs.

It's kinda fun watching liberals realize that Bolsheviks aren't leftists

I fully support this. I don't think instances that breed hate and radicalization should be allowed an audience.
I have seen so much propoganda, hate, and lunacy from that instance since I joined Lemmy.

Well, I already blocked any community and user I came across since the exodus in June.
Better late than never.
Keep up the good work.
PS: Free Tibet

Hexbear next.

Thank you so much, excellent news.

I can't even think of ONE good community on that instance

Man this lemmy thing is cooler everyday

Excellent. Those people must be either deplatformed or confined. Thank you .world admins for being reasonable and based.

Thank you, some of the most toxic content in the fediverse comes from there and am happy that this server’s experience will be better now.

I do wonder why we didn't defederate from them long ago, it's not like they recently started showing signs of who and what they really are, they've been very transparent about their motives since day 1. Still though good it was done now before they started spamming things here (not sure if they do that or if it's just hexbear that spams).

i don't interact with lemmygrad much, and i don't really want to. so please could somebody tell me what sort of hate speech was happening there?

Free Palestine

Not a fan of defederations in general, but I can totally see why. Lemmygrad will not be missed.

What, you don't want to be accused of being unreasonable by people that cavalierly discuss the need to murder people to bring about the revolution?

I've read a few posts from that instance and just no. I myself are on the left but both lemmygrad and lemmy.ml is just not places I go to.

Thank god

Good to see that instance go as it didn't contribute to public discourse. Thanks for the practice work!

Well this is a shock, anyone know what kind of stuff they've said exactly?

Thank you good riddence

finally, ty

Good call honestly

Strong move.

Can we get the links/receipts/examples?
I'm onboard with the post, and glad to see Lemmy working as intended. Making a post (instead of silently defederating) is wonderful. That said, I think its very important to say "because of comments like X[link] and Y[link]" instead of "due to severity".
Imagine if the roles were reversed and the CCP was saying they're "defederating from lemmy.world due to severity". Members should be given the 1st hand evidence, rather than 2nd hand opinions/summaries.

Finally.

Hells. Yes.

This is why I have logins on several instances.

Great call, kudos. Absolute trash.

I reported a comment stating that the US genocide of indigenous was "rightful conquest" and it's still up. I totally get defederating.
- Link it? That seems like the complete opposite of their views?
  
  I know that's why it seemed so weird why they wouldn't moderate it.
  But then I saw one of their moderators removed a video about how you can support Palestine for "fuck badempanada" (this badempanada) and just shrugged. Whatever it is is going on there i'm not going to get involved because it's one of those things that usually resolves itself over time.
- Source please
- Lol, no you didn't.
- That's the strange thing. It's all very inconsistent.
  
  Did you know people can just lie on the internet without proof or anything?
  
  It's why there needs to be tools for instance owners to remove comments for their users if they come from other instances. It's completely unreasonable to expect them to defederate the entire instance over a few problem users/comments.
- Do you know what thread that was in?

Bye-bye tankies!

809 comments