I know they’ve always been on Lemmy, but it seems like the past few weeks it’s slowly increasing, making me want to just stay on beehaw /local. Showing up on more communities, even on instances that ban that type of trolling explicitly.
Anyone else notice this?
Note: When I’m saying Tankie here, I’m not referring to far leftists, socialists, anti-capitalists, etc. I’m talking about trolls that act leftist but their actual intent is to cause infighting and support authoritarian regimes. Sealioning, all that stuff.
I chose this instance to explicitly avoid having to deal with Tankies or RWNJs. I don’t think your characterization of Tankies as trolls trying to divide the Left is accurate, though, they’re just auth-Lefties. There’s nothing inherently anti-authoritarian about the Left; most people on here aren’t anarchists, for instance, so they’re a hell of a lot more authoritarian than I’m okay with, but I don’t think that makes them fake Progressives or Leftists.
My biggest issue with Tankies, and what makes them so damn frustrating, is that most of them just straight deny reality in order to avoid admitting that they just don’t care what their authoritarian government(s) do. Makes it impossible to have an actual productive debate with someone when they know you’re right but don’t care, and won’t admit it.
A good portion of them are absolutely paid foreign agents/LLMs pushing political extremes in order to divide the US and some European countries.
They masquerade as communists, fascists, anarchists, and more.
A good portion of them
This could mean anything, it’s essentially a moving target. Do you mean “a majority”? Because that would be a hell of a claim, sans evidence.
There are a lot of different views out there, and if you just assume that people who (even massively) disagree with you, despite being on the same rough political “side”/“axis”, are trolls, you’re probably just building a little echo chamber of beliefs. The “Left” encompasses a LOT of different views, many of which don’t play nicely with each other.
Are there sophisticated agitprop accounts for state actors out there? Of course. Can you readily identify their accounts, or attribute individual posts to larger campaigns? If you’re being honest, no you can’t.
They’re just Auth-Lefties
I’m not sure they’re even that, to me it seems like it’s people with so much hatred of their life that they then blame on western culture, which means they much criticise anything the west do and praise anything the enemies or alternatives to the west do, including praising authoritarians and terrorists as they’re against the west and so are fighting for the same cause
I think there’s a lot of “letting your rhetoric eat itself” in Tankie circles, where they let their performative support of ML rhetoric become more and more extreme, and more and more exclusivist, until the only rhetoric that remains is “ML good, non-ML bad”. It’s almost like a self-imposed descent into Orwellian NewSpeak (or the affirmative language of the Ascians, if you prefer Wolfe).
I don’t like Capitalism or Imperialism or Settler-Colonialism, and would prefer we all collectively adopt a Mutualist (or other ansoc structure) system, but I can acknowledge that not everyone within this shitty system is attempting to reify and strengthen it, and I don’t make espousal of my specific brand of resistance a litmus test to tell whether other people are good or
capitalistbad.
It’s been very good on Beehaw for avoiding them so far, they seem to just be straying out more and more to other communities lately.
I don’t think your characterization of Tankies as trolls trying to divide the Left is accurate, though, they’re just auth-Lefties
That’s fair, most of the times I’ve seen them has been from hexbear and spamming that pig image and just dogpiling people so I was under the impression that it was almost entirely trolls, that combined with not understanding how someone can unironically support authoritarian governments behavior or act fully oblivious to it
spamming that pig image
Not knowing what “that pig image” is makes me think my choice to limit myself to Beehaw was the correct one. :)
not understanding how someone can unironically support authoritarian governments behavior or act fully oblivious to it
I thought this as well until in college when I became good friends with a Chinese guy, and started hanging with him and other students from China. It was wild sometimes how they would say shit that you just couldn’t believe, but was just normal to them, and not just in denial about stuff (I didn’t bring up “sensitive” topics like Xinjiang or censorship with them), but just like casually saying the numerous homeless people around (in San Francisco) should be disposed of, and you’re like screaming in your head while they laugh about it.
I talked with that friend years later, after he’d been working and living here for about a decade, and he was like, “man, some of the stuff I used to believe was crazy”, and I was basically like, “I didn’t want to say it, but yeeeeaaaaah.”
/r/all was a fucking nightmare on reddit, and I don’t think the equivalent here is that much better either, if I’m being honest.
I find that life is more pleasant when I stick to local and/or my subscriptions, block the communities I’m not interested in, and filter out whatever remains.
I agree, but at the same time, I think a lot of people are still trying to build out their subscribed communities list here - especially because a lot of would-be communities are fragmented across multiple instances. Outside of just stumbling across communities you like because they’ve been mentioned in a comment section, or checking out communities that links have been crossposted to, looking at the all feed is the best way to discover things, I think - unfortunate though it is.
To be honest, I’d love to see a “weighted all” feed, if that’s even possible. So include everything, but let the user set custom weights for communities, so ones you weight highly show up more often (and nearer the top) and once you weight lower show up less often. There are some communities that I only really see if I look at my subscriptions because they don’t tend to show up in the all feed much. And there are some communities - a lot of meme ones, for instance - that I’ve blocked because they were clogging up the all feed; if I could just weight them lower so if still see them but far less often, I would do that instead of blocking them.
Personally, I do not get scrolling through /all … pretty much the opposite of what social media is about as far as I’m concerned. Explore for new things etc, sure. But that only makes sense occasionally. Treating as a main feed just seems insane to me.
It doesn’t make sense to me to put yourself in a corner where you only ever see people who think like you. It seems counter to services that provide connections between people across the globe.
I guess different strokes for different folks :)
Like I said, explore all you want to find new things. But treating /all like a feed to the point that you get concerned about what shows up on there, especially on the fediverse, seems like a poor choice.
It’s not just about echo chambers. Please break out of echo chambers (though it’s ironic that this comes up under this patent post). But it’s social media, finding your people or the ones that push your boundaries is the point, building communities in those spaces, contributing and helping and creating good vibes. Not tuning into the chaos tv of the firehose and then getting upset at some antagonistic politics.
If there’s a real moderation issue to consider here, act on it, find the accounts, bring receipts and work together. But this thread/post just seems silly and inflammatory to me … my communities are doing just fine, I’d bet whatever trolls were seen were in the sorts of communities you’d expect.
If there’s a real moderation issue to consider here, act on it, find the accounts, bring receipts and work together. But this thread/post just seems silly and inflammatory to me … my communities are doing just fine, I’d bet whatever trolls were seen were in the sorts of communities you’d expect.
People are allowed to point out issues in things, no offense intended. I’m not going to sit and pretend nothing is going on and let the equivalent of a nazi bar form silently.
The trolls are on very large instances, and have continued to have accounts, despite reports, as well as rules against that behavior in those large instances, some of those trolls being community moderators on large instances. Not all of them are from the ones you’d expect, quite the opposite. I’m not pointing out names specifically for the reason of not stirring drama. Reports have already been made, to both those instances admins again, as well as Beehaw directly, with receipts to let them all figure it out how they feel best to do so for the community. Now is just discussion about the overall issue in a community that’s intended for discussion of topics that don’t fit anywhere else.
There isn’t any harm in not being silent on an issue that Lemmy notoriously has had very blatantly since its inception. This is a process that happens every time these groups stray outside of their usual areas.
All good … I’m personally very happy for you to have this chat FWIW. If I came as someone trying to shut down a conversation, I apologise. It wasn’t my intent. I was replying to a comment about /all which resonated with me so I thought I’d add my thoughts.
And if my tone comes off as too negative/harsh … I can see that too.
Otherwise, as far as my personal general motivations are concerned (again, FWIW) … I’m just not sure about this concern over trolls. Yes they’re here, as well as a number of blatently rude people. IMO, a cultural issue that the fediverse can suffer from is context-free drama and rumour milling. Thus my call to actually acting on moderation issues with evidence and cooperation etc. I’m not saying you’re engaging in that sort of behaviour, but this post did seem to me to be heading in that direction (thus my comments).
For me, the issue is that constantly looking out for the “bad people” decays into insubstantial fear mongering and purity policing and eventually “balkanising”. For the simple reason, IMO, that it’s an addictive behaviour with a built in positive feedback loop from the engagement it tends to procure. Within that sort of dynamic, accuracy gets lost, rumours are milled, echo chambers built and a generally unpleasant community may ensue. On the other hand, organising others, collecting information, setting up communities and infrastructure, is likely to do more good and has a built in negative feedback loop from being unrewarding work such that those who persistently do it tend to really care about it (for better or worse depending on the person and cause). Maybe one is better at warding off nazi bars than the other, but I think both are capable and that the relevant factor there is how sensitive one is to “disliked” opinions, which is a valid sensitivity to be had but also an interesting dynamic in how people can disagree on how to form these spaces.
I hope that doesn’t come off as me trying to lecture you (I’d presume none of this is something you haven’t heard before) … just sharing my general background perspective on this if it’s relevant or anything.
That’s fair, I appreciate the insight on it. It tends to be a complicated issue so I don’t think there’s really any right answer to it, all the ways of trying to solving it have huge pros and cons. Guess we do really just have to trust that all of our instance admins are on-top of this stuff at the end of the day
Guess we do really just have to trust that all of our instance admins are on-top of this stuff at the end of the day
Well, moderation can be a problem too on the fediverse, right? As instances get bigger, the scaling makes moderation harder … or at least it seems that way. That’s where the call for small instances comes in … as it enables more localised moderation across the board. And I personally think that makes a lot of sense. But it’s also unworkable for any open platform/fediverse, IMO, as people tend to aggregate and the instances dynamic just doesn’t work for many (eg BlueSky is full of people that just hated the instances experience on mastodon, which IME can get more toxic than anything happening here, as, I believe, communities help with that sort of thing).
Point being (sorry, clearly I’m ranty) entirely trusting admins isn’t something I’d subscribe to either. I’ve recently pushed off from engaging on the communities on a particular instance on finding out that the mods/admins there likely suck (if you know, you probably know).
If I’d offer any attempts at helping solve the problem … I’d probably say be rules based, be clear and open about intentions and policies, all along the way, to the point of self-examination, trust that a system is better than no system but that they also have to be organic and get strength from cooperative feedback across the system especially when done in line with the other ideas.
Sorry … ranty … it was in my fingertips.
Good chat! All the best!!
I want connections across the globe that add something to my day, if I wanted random BS then I’d turn on the TV.
If you think that only things that you understand and are comfortable with will add to your day… you’re free to think that :)
But I don’t see things that make me think or challenge my worldview on all. It’s just pages and pages of pointless memes.
If I want that, I have to seek it out in specific communities, which I then subscribe to.
Yep. They come in waves whenever there’s a hot-button issue happening. Same thing as all the RWNJs. They away their programming and then hit the message boards/forums with their up-to-date-rhetoric.
This was weird to come across. Yes, actually, I did come across something just the other day. I was banned from world news @lemmy.ml for saying something along the lines of “It’s a bummer that the protests in Hong Kong didn’t work out and that the government crushed opposition.” The post in question was talking about how people from Hong Kong are traveling to mainland China for cheaper goods.
I noticed in the comments it seemed a lot of people were in support of this which seemed odd to me. But nobody had said anything that stood out to me as immediately tankie oriented.
To be fair, I don’t know if that’s why I was banned. But it’s the only thing I said, and I wasn’t given a reason. When I tried to reply to the person who replied to me, it just said I’m banned from commenting, lol.
Edit: I also have no idea what I’m doing with lemmy or how the different communities work. I came from reddit last year and my usage has dropped significantly. So it could be that I stepped into the lions den and had no idea lol
Not sure how to get to it on the apps but on the Lemmy sites there’s a modlog button at the bottom, I went to Lemmy.ml on the modlog and searched your name and it says ban reason was “Orientalism/British Colonialism” which is their usual cop-out ban reason to silence any anti-Chinese government messages over there on .ml
Edit: you definitely stepped into the lions den on .ml lol, their admins are very pro-authoritarian, anti-civil rights over there. Lemmy.ml, lemmygrad, and hexbear are the lions dens, beehaw has lemmygrad and hexbear blocked, .ml isn’t though. Unsure of the reasoning but .ml is a bit more “tame” than the other two.
Interesting lol thanks for the extra information, that’s good to know. I’ll be avoiding that section then.
I find it fascinating that people can have such varied ideas/morality. I would have never thought my take would have been considered controversial for others lol.
I think your experience is probably similar to a lot of people’s that join Lemmy. There’s certainly a lot of people on this platform with quite extreme views. Many instances got sick of them and blocked them, and in turn they think we’re liberal fascists.
I think most people by now have received bans from the world news community on lemmy.ml, including myself. I wouldn’t worry about it!
Personally I have not but my instance is defederated from several of these.
Unfortunately, I think there’s no reason to believe these people are insincere in their beliefs.
I’ve seen a few different replies on various posts that, while different, all repeat nearly identical sentiments about having to “purge” fascists with violence, for the good of humanity or whatever. I don’t think they’re bots, probably paid trolls. I believe the goal is to push a violent agenda, at least the appearance of one, in leftist communities.
You can block by instance yourself (hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the main offenders)
But this only seems to stop their threads appearing, not the users themselves. I don’t know if this is a bug in Lemmy or intentional.
How do I do that in Beehaw please, or do you just mean blocking them on mastodon itself? Thanks!
For what it’s worth Beehaw already has hexbear and lemmygrad completely defederated
That’ll be why I don’t see them! Excellent. Many thanks.
Not sure you can, Beehaw doesn’t appear to be upgraded to Lemmy 0.19 or higher.
When they do, it’s in your settings page with the other block lists.
Ah right. OK - many thanks 😊
Noticed and elected not to install a lemmy client on my new phone because of it. I think it’s a mix of astroturfing by the Russians as they push for another offensive in Ukraine, dumb dumbs who have fallen for Russian astroturfing in the past, and trolls who just think it’s funny. I think @Ignacio@beehaw.org is right on the money that the real problem isn’t the amount of input, it’s the amount of filtering. I’m mostly more active on the microblog section of the fediverse because the moderation out there is more mature than it is in here in the threadiverse.
Moderation on Lemmy is so miss or miss. I once got banned from an “inclusive” comm for sounding “pompous”. I have NPD, pompousness is a symptom. And it wasn’t a situation where I was causing any problems, a power tripping mod just didn’t like my tone of voice.
I got harassed by tankies even after pointing them out that I have ADHD and ASD. That was months ago, when I was commenting from time to time on a lemmy.ml community. And mod did nothing, obviously 🤷♂️
Honestly I might just go back to Reddit at this rate. Yeah, it’s giving content to a capitalist, but it also means not subjecting myself to as much transphobic and ableist abuse
Imagine if you could easily tell if someone was an unhinged asshole IRL if they had a tattoo on their forehead that said “Grad” or “Hexbear.”
Fortunately on Fedi it’s exactly like that and you can see which home instance people come from right next to their usernames.
I don’t think that tankies are the real issue. Obviously they’re an issue, but the real issue is that mods/admins allow them to post and comment as they please, and they don’t remove any of their posts and comments, and they even don’t ban them for good.
Yep. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but but they’re definitely some kind of (Russian?) bots. Their argumentation is non-existent or too dumb even for a tankie and most of them cosplay being from some random country of the global south.
I’m so glad people are starting to realize this.
I haven’t noticed much of an uptick per se, at least in the posts I’ve seen browsing all. There was a recent uptick in low-effort America bad posting out of certain communities, but I haven’t seen much in the way of red fascist bs.
Not really since i’ve been focused on beehaw insteadof lemmy.ml, but I’m also happy to see someone articulating what these trolls are: shills for authoritarian regimes.
Wasn’t HexBear down for a bit and a lot of people were making accounts on Lemmy.ml or something.
The accounts I’ve seen are in other locations. It also doesn’t feel like the Hexbear crowd as they have a specific way of arguing.
I’m not sure. It could have to do with certain instances connecting to new communities or maybe there was a popular post bringing more people to the fediverse.
Might be worth seeing if there was a surge in new members.
.ml is really just a way for the hexbear clowns to circumvent their defederarion. If you filter that shithole out also, it’s a lot better experience here.
I think they were more on grad, at least there was an admin post there telling the refugees to behave.
Thank you for the correction. I think you are right.
A few days ago, a mildly critical comment of mine against Netanyahu was removed by the lemmy.world mods.
I said something like, both Netanyahu and Hamas want this war. Not too controversial, I would think.
It was in a thread on lemmy.ml
Anyway, I ditched my lemmy.world account and made this alt my main.
But yeah, the bots and propagandists have found lemmy, too. They seem to be focussing on the bigger instances.
That would be removed for saying that hamas want the war not for criticism against bb. You can’t be even the slightest bit anti Palestine.
Damn
.worldmods going into other instances to police the comments of their own users.Fucked up.
The more I read about .world the more I’m convinced it’s run by feds.
The more I read their moderators comments the more I can’t help but feel similarly. Such a strong condescending tone, it’s like every comment has the clown emoji embedded into it.
I think the reality is much simpler, they’re run by people who see themselves as mainstream social media providers, just on the fediverse. And along with mastodon.world, they’re not wrong.
