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

  • takeda
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    1 year ago
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    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.

    • SatanicNotMessianic
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      1 year ago
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      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.

      • Cryophilia
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        1 year ago
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        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.

        • mashbooq
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          1 year ago
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          I’ve seen them actively celebrate that they don’t suffer from “Trump derangement syndrome” like liberals (supposedly) do. The longer you watch them, the more pro-fascism you see slip through

          • RenownedBalloonThief
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            1 year ago
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            I’ll clear that one up since everyone here seems to be boldly making inaccurate claims. They say that because media outlets and people will spend more time analyzing and critiquing Trump eating McDonalds or typing covfefe than the US, say, drone striking innocent Afghani people or the utter shit show that Libya has become due partially to the efforts of Clinton and Obama.

          • assassin_aragorn
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            1 year ago
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            Don’t forget the classical “liberals are the real fascist allies”

            • Omega_Haxors
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              1 year ago
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              Nazism was basically just liberalism taken to its conclusion. Rich people get to live in comfort as poor people die in a mass genocide.

              • assassin_aragorn
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                1 year ago
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                Uhhhh. No. That’s not how it went at all. Rich Jews did not get to live in comfort, they had their wealth stolen and were killed all the same. Nazism was ethnic cleansing, antisemitism, and purging society of the “unideal”, rich or poor. The only German Jews who I think could get amnesty were those who fought for Germany in WW1 – soldiers do not tend to be rich, and their families were not extended the same amnesty, from what I recall. Otto Frank had military service but it did not save his family.

                It’s rather disgusting to ignore the antisemitism and homophobia that led to genocides and reduce it to only economics.

                • Omega_Haxors
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                  1 year ago
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                  I don’t think you’re really considering that liberalism does a lot of the same shit, only their targets are different groups which you don’t consider because it makes you feel uncomfortable.

    • jeffw
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      1 year ago
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      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

      • zeppoEnglish
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        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.

          • zeppoEnglish
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            No, I didn’t intend any meaning like that. I just said it was the sort of thing discussed on the sub prior to a bunch of bullshit.

    • alvvayson
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      1 year ago
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      Whenever communists or socialists gather, the tankies take over.

      It’s been like that since the past 100 years.

      • explodicleEnglish
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        1 year ago
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        [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.

        • qevlarr
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          Maybe you just didn’t recognize it. Reddit leftist spaces were famously led by tankie mods.

          • not_that_guy05
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            1 year ago
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            Yup, you would call out their BS and you get banned. The system was perfect and no one is allowed to fully criticize it.

      • kescusay
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        1 year ago
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        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.

        • LemmysMum
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          Yep, it’s easy to bait them too. You make a post or comment calling out tankies for supporting authoritarianism, and out of the woodwork scurry all the “socialists and communists” to downvote you.

          Thing is, a real socialist or communist hates authoritarianism too.

        • DaleEnglish
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          They’re tankies in the original sense. The word came from an incident where there was an actual honest to god socialist movement when workers were seizing the means of production, and “communist” Russia sent literal tanks to shut it down. A reporter happened to observe the whole thing in person and tried to write up the story, but his editors would only print the official U.N. statement that the tanks were stopping a fascist movement.

  • jeffhykin
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    1 year ago
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    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.

  • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙
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    1 year ago
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    Amazing, Lemmy.world admins are giant cucks who try to censor other people based on their beliefs.

    You can ban me all you want but I’ll keep coming back.

  • Moghul
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    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.

  • Roflmasterbigpimp
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    1 year ago
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    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!

    • mycorrhiza they/them
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      A well thought through decision that gives no examples or arguments?

      With the timing, I have to assume the reason is “they support Palestine.

  • gcheliotis
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    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.

    • PiersEnglish
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      1 year ago
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      I expect you need to look in the Lemmy.World moderation log to see to what degree lemmy.ml users were or were not problematic (I’ve no idea either way.)

      • gcheliotis
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        Good idea, if anyone can point me to it or to specific examples, I would appreciate it. Also do not care enough to start an investigation by myself.

        Fwiw, I wouldn’t judge an entire instance by a handful individual posts. Users will be users. But still, some evidence would be a lot better than no evidence. Plenty of evidence would be even better.

        • WoahWoah
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          No one owes you anything. If you don’t like it, move instances. If you want the evidence, go find it. It’s pretty easy, and you don’t need to be handholded to get there. You’re talking like you’re a decision maker for a decision that’s already been made and for which you have no authority.

    • TheBlue22
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      1 year ago
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      Hexbear and Grad users defend genocidal regimes like Ruzzia and China. They excuse their crimes and argue in bad faith. I had so many insane discussions before I decided to block both of these instances entirely.

      They are, by every single sense of the word, tankies.

      Tankie is not just an oblivious term that has no meaning. It signifies a red fascist. It’s like arguing that it’s bad that we don’t let neonazis in discussions. They do not care about discussing. All they want is to spread their disgusting ideas while hiding them behind leftism.

      By defederating from these instances, we don’t become less leftists. These people are not leftist.

      This is not a slippery slope. It is a necessary step to ensure the growth of this website and actually worthwhile discussions.

      • aidan
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        These people are not leftist.

        Why not?

        • TheBlue22
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          If you support brutal totalian regimes, with your only excuse being “America bad, you only use leftist as a label, not a belief system.

      • ArcaneSlime
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        I mostly agree, except:

        These people are not leftist.

        They are leftists, on top of the genocide they support they’re also all for workers owning the means of production. Leftism isn’t “when good, right isn’t “when bad, left and right are economic distinctions symbolizing the people on one side and the aristocracy on the other. There can in fact be “bad leftists” just as there can be “bad rightoids. Bad people exist everywhere, not just at republican conventions.

  • Ab_intra
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    1 year ago
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    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.

    • solrize
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      Lemmy.ml is perfectly fine and I’m there sometimes. I signed up there because it was described as being specifically free-software focused, though in reality it’s mostly a meme farm just like here. Lemmygrad is much weirder and I only looked at it for a minute or so. Its crazier political angles looked like mostly trolling to me, but who knows.

  • cryptosporidium140English
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    Oh no! How will I stay informed about the great utopias of places like China and North Korea???

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

  • kescusay
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    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.

    • glnpf148
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      Isn’t that also kind of what is happening to Twitter right now?

      • Donjuanme
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        A stupid thought that I just had. An X is 4 bars from a swastika.

    • lwadminOPM
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      Most of their communities were blocked since months, that’s why you didn’t see much of them.

    • SheeEttinEnglish
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      The phrasing of “an increase in hate speech and calls to violence” suggests that there is a tolerable level of those.

      • vettnerk
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        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.

      • Number1SummerJamEnglish
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        What’s the deal with lemmy.ml? I’ve noticed a more aggressive/4channy tone to it compared to lemmy.world but I can’t find any more information about it

        • smoothbrain coldtakes
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          Lemmy.ml is one of the major main Lemmy instances, and it has a bunch of the development crew for the project on the admin team and moderation squad.

          The ML, incidentally, was picked to stand for Marxist-Leninist. The core Lemmy devs are very politically left leaning, but that usually doesn’t cause many issues because there are enough instances running the software that you’re not locked into their echo chamber.

        • Mario_Dies.wav
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          It’s got a lot of tankies. Also, they’ll ban you if you say you hate tankies because they love tankies on .ml

    • goldenlocks
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      Most likely yes. The worldnews community is evidence of this.

      • sub_ubi
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        And they immediately blocked all the piracy communities. Most of the .world and .ee users sound like AI posts. It’s likely a massive AstroTurf

        • Lifecoach5000English
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          Didn’t those get unblocked though too recently?