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?
The .ml admins are, to put it mildly, far left. That’s why it’s great to have other instances like lemmy.world, feddit.org etc. If you don’t agree with how the admins run an instance you can make an account somewhere else without missing out on content.
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Hmmm, it seems that trolls have invaded AskLemmy.
I wonder if it will be somewhat better here.
If you host your own instance, you have complete control over what gets posted. If not, you have to follow your instance’s rules.
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.
That’s just basic bot detection, like a captcha. Karl Marx’s works are out of copyright, and Lemmy’s lead developer is a communist, hence the choice.
it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
In general, instances don’t expect you to agree with their mods on politics or religion, but the content hosted on that instance would be somewhat biased towards the mods’ tastes. So you go from lemmygrad (far-left) to lemmy.ml (centre-left) to lemm.ee (centrist) to shitjustworks (centre-right) to lemmy.world (right-wing). Personally I’d avoid the first and last, but it’s up to each person to decide what’s right for them.
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Is lemmy.world particularly right-wing? It seemed mostly shitty liberal from what I’d noticed, thought admittedly I don’t actually pay much attention to people’s instances
They referred to ML as “centre-left”, so their perception is obviously very skewed.
…fair enough, missed that
Liberals are pro-capitalist, which inherently makes them right wing. American politics would have you believe otherwise, but American politics are severely skewed to make the populace accept the dominance and power of capital as an unassailable truth.
.world also makes a habit of denying ongoing genocides and shutting down any criticism of the parties involved in said genocides. Many of their users go out of their way to shit on left-wing instances and deride anyone left of them as a tankie.
Not to mention the sheer volume of woman bashing I’ve witnessed in gender-related threads.
So, all that considered, I think it’s perfectly fair to consider them right wing.
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The admins seem to not crack down on misogyny, transphobia and so on. If they’re doing it on principle - refusing to censor and letting the bigots make fools of themselves in public - then I guess I can respect that. But on the other hand, sometimes silence can be seen as approval.
This seemed very sketchy to me.
👻 A spectre is haunting @Social_Discussion@lemm.ee ☭
Some of Ayn Rand’s earliest works are out of copyright now. Would that have made you more comfortable?
Welcome to the Fediverse! Somebody has probably told you this, but I just realized that I forgot to hit “Post” before I went to dinner. Here it is anyways.
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.
The applications and copying of a particular line is a simple form of spam prevention. The fact that the line is from “The Principles of Communism" is probably because the owners of that particular instance (who are also the main developers) are communist. I believe they also run Lemmygrad, which is full on Marxist, and one of the more commonly blocked instances. Lemmy.ml is intended to be a more mainstream instance but like much of the Fedi leans hard left.
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
Lemmy is censorship resistant, but not censorship free. There is a difference. Censorship (or moderation, depending on your view point) happens at 3 levels, user, community, and instance. You can’t do much if other users find you obnoxious and decide to block you, but if you find the moderation of a community to be over bearing and if your current instance allows, you can create your own community from your current instance and mod it how you see fit within the guidelines of your instance. If you find your instance’s moderation to be overbearing, you can create your own instance and moderate it however you see fit. However, you will still be subject to the moderation policies of the communities (and their home instances) that you subscribe to.
In the Fedi you have absolute freedom of speech, but nobody is required to give you a soapbox or megaphone and nobody is required to listen to you.
most people have answered your questions so i want to chime in with the information that i wish someone had told me when i first joined:
a lot of people came to lemmy from reddit like you and i both did and also mostly for the same reasons. most of them went to lemmy.world because it was the first search result on the big search engines like google & bing. those people have turned lemmy.world into a mini reddit and ended up recreating the same problems that reddit has plus more; hence the bot check that you ran into when you signed up.
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent; i think of it like if r/politics; r/anarchy/; r/communism; r/socialism; etc. went off and created another social media platform and then started discussing everything like reddit does, but from this perspective. instances is the name given to individual servers and all those servers combined is nicknamed the lemmyverse, or lemmy, for short.
the fediverse is the nickname given to the pubg protocol that’s shared between all the platforms that use it like lemmy, mastadon, kbin, threads, bluesky, etc and that means that the conversations from all of those platforms are shared amongst each other so it’s possible to be on lemmy and have a conversation with someone on kbin, for example. i stick with lemmy because it’s doesn’t have any venture capital investors pushing the admins to enshitify it to maximize profits like has been happening to reddit and bluesky; i’ve been moving from one social media platform to another because of enshitification like reddit’s since the 1990s (before it was called social media) so this last part matters to me a lot.
i started off on lemmy.world like most ex-redditors did and discovered that they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations so i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody due to fact they’re the primary instance where lemmy development takes place. the federation is what makes lemmy decentralized and when you defederate; you cut yourself off from the rest of the lemmyverse, but lemmy.world and some of the other instances that got most of the ex-redditors like the star trek instance use it to try cut off content and people from the instances that they don’t like and that’s their right since it’s their instance. lemmy is decentralized so trying to cut out people & content only serves to cut yourself off and that’s intention behind the fediverse; to make it so that no power tripping mod or ban happy admin can stop the conversation like they do on reddit.
everything is done by volunteers and donations and, if you don’t like one instance; you can move onto any other one and still get a similar experience. i don’t like letting other people decide what i can & can’t see and who i can & can’t talk to so i mostly stick to the instances that don’t defederate with anybody like lemmy.ml and i use the block-people and block-communities features when i feel like i need them for myself.
they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations
I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don’t have to agree! However:
i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
oh yes, i keep forgetting about the fascist and corporate shill instances; they were also the reason why i went with lemmy.ml and why i think it’ll take longer for it to enshitify. thanks for correction.
the fediverse is the nickname given to [instances using] the pubg protocol
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent
[Bonus info]
Reddit has a history of big events when a clump of subreddits get banned all at once when a newspaper reports on them. A lot of right-wing ones went to Voat and later *.win, and some socialist ones (notably /r/GenZedong) went to Lemmygrad, which became the largest federated instance at the time. /r/chapotraphouse also made their own fork, Hexbear, although while it was the largest, it wasn’t federated with the rest for years. Most instances were either hard-left (e.g. Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml, SLRPNK) or a slight left, but tge third most populous for a while was Wolfballs, a ‘free speech’ instance, de facto alt-right (US right-Libertarian style instance), which ended up defederated from almost all the others due to constant bigotry and rule breaking when posting on other instances. Wolfballs admin eventually shut it down before the Reddit API exodus because, among other reasons, they realized the neo-Nazis among their users were serious and not just trolling.
Overall, the few right-leaning instances are alienated from the bulk of federation and become islands or vaporize, but most just dismiss Lemmy or even the Fediverse at large as a left wing commie thing.
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
yes, that’s what i get for going fast; thanks for the correction and the history lesson.
Open source is inherently political and you depend on software being developed by communists. We are here to evade corporate censorship, censor reactionaries, spread agitprop, and discuss raising the quality of life of all working people.
Not just tech workers. Everyone.
Lemmy didn’t used to be just a reddit alternative. Before the Exodus, it was a safe space for tankies (in short, people glorifying the type of communism practiced in the Soviet Union).
Just pick another instance. On lemmy.ml you’ll be banned as soon as you criticize Russia or China anyway.
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Because dessalines is legit in competition for the most cringe person on the internet.
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You spelt militant anti-capitalists wrong, its spelt “tankie”
All Marxists and Anarchists are “tankies?” Lol.
You’re catching on well done
Why do people keep repeating this? Every time they do someone corrects them but they seem to just assume that’s what .ml is without so much as a google search about it.
So .ml isn’t an intentional reference to communism?
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Where do you get these insights?
The domain was initially managed by Sotelma, a Malian telecommunications company. After Sotelma was privatised in 2009, the .ml zone was redelegated by IANA to the Agence des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (AGETIC), a Malian government agency, and the process completed in 2013.[1] The agency then announced that it would give away .ml domains for free in partnership with Freenom with a view to improve the usage and the knowledge of the IT industry in Mali. It was the first African nation to start giving away domains for free.[2][3][4] The ten-year contract with Freenom expired on 17 July 2023. Since then the registry is operated by AGETIC itself and the free domain offer was discontinued. All paid Freenom .ml domains were migrated to the new system.
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So, there are a few different categories of TLDs.
com,net, andorgare among the original generic TLDs, which had the ideas of being for specific types of site, but in practice have always been available for pretty much any purpose.Then there are country-code TLDs, your
au,ca, andtvdomains. In these, the registrar of that particular country sets the rules. au domains require some specific connection to Australia, while Tuvalu has seen it as a good source of income for the country to sell.tvdomains to sites that want to have a domain that recognises their primary purpose as relating to video.In 2012, ICANN opened up the ability to buy new TLDs with almost no restrictions beyond the minimum 3 character length. Though technically
com,net,org, etc. are considered generic TLDs, when you see people say gTLD they almost always mean those created under this new scheme. Examples includezone(which my instance runs on),new(owned by Google and restricted to people who use it to perform “new” actions, like Google’s own docs.new which creates a new Google Doc), andtokyo(intended for use by things related to Tokyo, but not restricted to such. Other city gTLDs also exist, likemelbournewhich restricts to businesses and citizens of Victoria). gTLDs are very expensive to create, but whoever owns the gTLD can choose what rules it applies to domains registered under it.So if you want a domain name that calls to a particular thing, you can find a gTLD that matches that thing and is open for registration for your purpose, or you can spend big to register a gTLD for yourself, or find a ccTLD that’s open to those outside the actual country and which fits your purpose.
Mali’s a weird one because the reports were that .ml domains not related to Mali were being restricted last year, and fmhy.ml lost their domain over that. So it’s weird that lemmy.ml did not.
It was free making .ml domains good for web development.
I’m sure @dessalines and @nutomic has a chuckle about it. Definitely a fitting TLD to use, especially for lemmygrad.
I understand that, but I’m asking whether a .ml domain was chosen as a quirky little reference to communism? Like, I can start selling contacts on contacts.contact. I’m curious about the intent
Wait? What’s the reason? Like, the tld is for Mali, but lemmy and lemmygrad use it as “marxist-leninist” as a joke. Or at least that’s what I thought the story was
They were free up until 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ml
This part is funny
Employees for the United States Armed Forces regularly misspell emails—suffixed with the .mil TLD—with .ml. In 2013, Dutch internet entrepreneur Johannes Zuurbier took on the .ml TLD. He attempted to contact the United States government about classified information being sent to army.ml and navy.ml in 2014 through Dutch diplomats.[citation needed] The contents of these emails include crew and staff lists, maps and photos of installations, naval inspection reports, and passwords. Emails that were sent to the .ml TLD include the travel itinerary of chief of staff James McConville on a trip to Indonesia in 2023, information about Kurdistan Workers’ Party efforts in the United States, and Australian Department of Defence documents detailing issues with Australian F-35s. On 17 July 2023, Zuurbier’s contract expired and control was reverted back to the Malian government.
This part is funny
I am sorry but you are wrong: This bit is beyond funny.
It’s been speculated they paid for theirs because other sites and at least one instance had their free .ml domains revoked
??
Emphasis on speculation, but I found the instance that had its ml domain taken away
Maybe Lemmy.ml had a free domain but they got to keep it because they had it for a longer time. Who knows?
Amazing. Wish the chinese had caught that first, like they caught the secret CIA websites that allowed them to kill hundreds of spies
To be fair, it is a large coincidence. I get that it’s wrong, but it’s widespread because the dots are close enough the brain closes the gap by itself.
It’s not exactly wrong, though. It’s clearly intentionally chosen because people are gonna connect these dots.
I’ve been told directly by the admins that it was picked because it was free. I don’t doubt that the reference wasn’t thought of, but the driving factor was that the domain is free.
Fair enough, then.
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Is it a coincidence or did they pick the Mali domain space for that reason? That’s the story I heard
LOL. It does not stand for Marxist-Leninist. That’s some grade A trolling if I saw it.
The .ml domain stands for the country of Mali, but lemmy.ml definitely chose that domain because it can stand for Marxist-Leninist.
.ml is actually Mali’s TLD. That it happens to also be an initialism for Marxism-Leninism is a coincidence.
That they picked it specifically is not a coincidence, though.
Mali also happens to be under attack by US funded terrorists. The same pattern repeats itself over and over and over
The ccTLD was free when lemmy started. And developers like to test out things on free resources. The ccTLD just became paid last year.
Repeating the same thing for the 1000th time doesn’t make it the truth.
Yes they’re tankies, have awful censorship and are thin skin snowflakes. but making out the whole .ml ccTLD a marxists-leninist agenda just makes them see you as conspiracy nuts.
For what? a couple domains you’ve noticed to fit your narrative? Holy fucking batman. LMAO!
… when did I say everything on .ml domain is marxist-leninist? It’s not any kind of conspiracy lol.
I said they picked this one because it was an obvious reference. Apparently some other people have spoken directly to them and said it was purely because it was free. Which I didn’t realize, and also makes sense.
Right, but .ml doesn’t stand for Marxist-Leninist is the thrust of what I’m saying.
I used to think it stood for machine learning.
It does stand for Tuvalu. It is a happy coincidence for Twitch and any other media company that wants to use that TLD that such a seemingly in theme TLD exists (so long as you only use the abbreviation and never spell out what the TLD actually stands for), but .tv 100% refers to Tuvalu. There isn’t a Television-land that it’s reserved for.
In general, no. In this context? It does
They used that TLD because it had the same letters as Marxist-Leninist, not because they’re from Mali. They’re not from Mali.
So you are a mind reader now?
Sometimes people write their reasons for doing things down and other people read them and they don’t need to read anyone’s mind to know why they said they did something.
Ikr? I’m honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out
Oh no you had to read something you disagree with! Better go back to your echo chamber on
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren’t shy to enforce their views, which gets reflected in their instance, lemmy.ml, which is considered to be fairly tankie.
However, as Lemmy is federated, you can join any other instance and view whatever interests you without having to recite political literature to sign up.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated; although it defederated from certain instances, which might make you feel limited. I found lemmy.today as a way to be connected with anything and everything, from Hexbear to Beehaw, to, well, Lemmy.world
There’s a list on GitHub of instances by most federation. It’s where I found mine.
Good option! Could you please share the link to the list if you still have one?
Sure, I’ll PM you.
For anyone else, it’s easy to find by search, but it feels like one of those things that could be ruined if it got too well-known.
Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren’t shy to enforce their views
Their evil enforcement, our righteous peace keeping.
In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated;
Being “apolitical” just means they’re neoliberal. Which tbh sounds perfect for OP.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it’s a country with 99% of Earth’s population) is everywhere. If Lemmy.world would ask people to recite Adam Smith, I’d absolutely be pissed.
For the record, I am communist, I just don’t want to be bombarded with politics at every corner and I refuse to analyze crochet through the prism of the class theory. It is possible to abstain from politics on .world, but it is often hard to escape on .ml (thankfully, Linux communities are generally neutral), or Hexbear (although it tries) or, Marx forbid, Lemmygrad, latter being a straight up shithole where politics is everything, people are as politically uniform as clones, and you can be banned for saying Stalin could be wrong in some of his decisions (I’m serious, it happened).
People need to have a place to relax and unwind, and endless political circlejerk is not a good environment for that. Politics is important, but not really when people just proclaim the same things over and over again as a form of leisure.
Nah, I take similar issue with liberals who scream about their views everywhere, asked or not, and do their best to turn Lemmy into a place where politics (and, especially, American politics, as if it’s a country with 99% of Earth’s population) is everywhere.
I doubt that; otherwise you’d be screaming at everyone, all of the time. Politics are life, life is politics; ESPECIALLY if you’re not white-- this whole bullshit sounds like exactly why I don’t organize with white “leftists”; 'cause you ain’t no damn comrade of mine with a take like that. I don’t get to just “opt out”. I walk down the street, it’s side-eyes from settlers over the melanin in my skin, side-eyes from settlers over the coarseness of my hair, side-eyes from settlers over the size of my lips and nose, side-eyes from settlers over why I’m even in their space when I lived here half my fuckin life.
I don’t get to opt out, so neither do fuckin you.
Well, believe it or not, I do take issue with this liberal pseudo-left everywhere. Big part of the reason I stopped following politics on Lemmy is because it’s mostly a uniform blob of liberals that consider themselves “the left”, and the actual left “tankies” and dangerous psycho radicals because most of their kin of “left” are American exceptionalists who really believe not being a fascist means you’re left now. And that took me a LOT of filter rules, not just unsubbing politics-related communities, to finally silence that shitflow.
We all are victims of the current political situation - some more, some less. Even trans folks, which are probably under the heaviest of fires right now, often prefer NOT to immerse themselves in the political debates and news more than it is required to merely survive - and that’s totally understandable, because when politics hits you heavy every day, some people need to take a breather. Don’t deny them that.
And me being white male doesn’t mean I’m free from any oppression. While you may experience more of it due to additional traits, such as you being black, that’s not alpha and omega of it, and the more we split, the less effective we are at uniting where we can and where it is equally if not more important - to fight for the working class. A black billionaire lives an infinitely better life than I do, and he does it by exploiting us all - white, black, male, female, nonbinary, cis and trans. That’s not to say racism isn’t real or some shit - a white billionaire would do even better - but there are many axis of oppression, and it’s not like you’re oppressed and I am not. Besides, I’m all for the demolition of racism, and while I could be less vigilant, I’m not much more tolerant to it.
There is no coming together with the settler when it is the settler in the way of my people’s liberation; and it’s frankly contemptuous that you think there somehow is. The state of race relations in this country is so positively abysmal that I would sooner put my faith in the Chinese than ever consider white Americans worth the time or effort expended. There is no ‘coming together’ with you and yours as long as we are unreparated and unliberated. You may as well just come out with it and say you feel you’re entitled to my camaraderie rather than trying to orate yourself around that particular elephant in the room; there’d be more dignity in it.
No, I’d rather say you have an extreme case of “race/gender over everything” mentality that permeates so many pretentiously left liberals among others.
I’m not a “settler”, I live where I was born, and I never (at least knowingly) discriminated against anyone on the basis of race. You seem to suggest that I owe you something for other people, for the severe oppression of the black people back in the days neither of us was even born, and for the milder (although very real) forms of it permeating today to which I hold no relation. I don’t have to reparate you anything, and I refuse to give you some special status you seem to feel entitled to; but if someone actively discriminates black people (or hispanic, or even whites for that matter - that is a thing in certain societies, world doesn’t end outside America), I am willing to take the side of the oppressed, and more people could join black liberation movement if you yourself wouldn’t piss everyone off.
If you, however, still want to be treated in some special way, I don’t need such camaraderie. You are either a comrade, an equal fighting alongside me (and me alongside you), or you’re not. And the most I can hope for is your realization that we have issues we both struggle with, and end this splintering of the left that makes us weak and useless, infighting over fighting our common enemy. At least the right are ready to unite, so…here we are. Enjoy the fruits of your personal liberation.
eat your hands you worthless fucking asshole
Damn, you’re not just a cracker but a dumbass too
No, I’d rather say you have an extreme case of “race/gender over everything”
I’m not a “settler”,
You seem to suggest that I owe you something for other people,
to which I hold no relation.
I don’t have to reparate you anything,
If you, however, still want to be treated like a princess, I don’t need such camaraderie.
You really hit the settler-leftist bingo with this one, no free space necessary. Every last thing you’ve said reeks of uninvestigated white supremacy; and I’d suggest self-crit if I believed for a half a second in your bonafides.
That said, thank you for justifying why I put more faith in AES than white leftism, justifying why I consider there to be no revolutionary potential in the western settler, and justifying why I will only ever organize with Black formations. You, and everyone like you can’t even bear to cop to the thread of history which your story is sewn in, let alone figure out how to rectify that state. This is exactly why I have no time, faith, or camaraderie for the white ‘left’.
As usual, we’ll have to get it our own damn selves, with you people constantly in our way. What I get for discoursing with people John Brown would’ve turned into a speed loader. And no, that you consider true, fully-reparated Black liberation to be 'Black supremacy exactly the same as the white variety", I fucking spit on you; and have no further interest humoring your eurofascist ass. I hope when they find you, it’s in shrapnel-studded pieces.
The .ml admins (and devs of Lemmy the software) are from that crowd, basically. If you don’t like it, try another instance.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There’s no connection to Mali.
Edit: .ml is for Marxist-Leninist, even. There’s no connection to Mali.
this is a literal lie, its because the servers are held in mali not because of ‘marxist leninist’
Mali is a Saharan country with low population, spotty, super expensive internet and unreliable power; I’d be surprised if the machines are literally there. And anyway, Dessalines has never mentioned being from a Malian background, but he does identify as ML.
Welcome. Admins and mods of every instance, not just ml are very trigger happy to enforce their opinion. Going as far as fully disabling users accounts. Not by using an automatic word filter though.
Each instance has different political opinions you need to agree with. This one likes communism. Upside is no email verification required, so it is very private.
Lemmy is much more wild west than moden Reddit. Similar to old Reddit. Enjoy the ride.
As the internet should be.
