Lead Lemmy Developer, Dessalines, denying the Tiananmen Square Massacre and praising the Uyghur Genocide
https://sh.itjust.works/post/8419342
Dessalines AKA “parentis_shotgun” on Reddit, is the main Lemmy dev, also the admin of lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml.
Their post and discussions on Reddit (archive as the original post must have been removed):
Please join the discussions for Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem:
https://lemmy.world/post/16211417
And the discussions for finding/creating alternative communities on other instances:
https://lemmy.world/post/16235541
What is a tankie?
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support acts of repression by such regimes or their allies. More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical.
I may not agree with the devs political view, but I think their work developing lemmy is excellent and made me subscribe to monthly donation on opencollective. Lemmy is an open source project where the devs have absolutely no say over how the software being used, as evidenced by so many lemmy instances defederating from lemmygrad and lemmy.ml. Their political belief won’t affect other instance.
Most instances are federated with Lemmy.ml, it’s Hexbear and Grad that .world and a few others have defederated from, among the major instances.
It seems like they have some strong say when it comes to their own instance. According to some recent posts, ML admins (and maybe even mods?) have the ability to erase any record of mod actions, for example disappearing critique of the CCP’s brutal actions in Tiananmen Square that were posted on ML. That left no record in the public mod logs, and the users were never informed that their contributions had been (completely) deleted.
I’m only a 1yr Lemming myself, but I never saw such a critique aimed at any other instance, hence why I’m skeptical that the devs don’t have influence over how the software is used.
That isn’t an example of them having a say over how people use the software. That’s them using their own property as they wish.
It’s more than just that IMO. It’s breaking the stated aim of open federation by tampering with comments, posts and mod records, which in turn get propagated or de-propagated to connected instances, right?
Yes, you may say that ML is of course free to screw with their own instance, but 1) one instance (particular a significant one like ML) affects other instances, and 2) they’re breaking the spirit of their own software by shamelessly abusing admin powers, in turn helping to normalize that behavior to the Lemmy side of the FV.
What’s the point of leaving oppressive, commercial social media only to run in to the same kinds of abuse of power on a supposedly transparent, user-run, P2P social network?
all instance admins have the ability to do this on their own instance, the functionality was added to deal with doxx info being posted so it wouldnt be visible even in the modlog, and it was used a lot to deal with the CSAM spam attack too - basically whenever this happens the relevant message will still be in the modlog but it will be changed to “Permanently Removed”. Currently there’s no evidence or even accusation that this functionality has been used for anything except the stated purposes though so i wouldnt worry too much.
That’s fine on ‘paper,’ but can you seriously not understand how it’s being shamelessly abused on the Tankie / ML front?
well i havent seen anyone even claiming its been used against them or pointing to their post being permanently removed from the modlogs unjustly, only people saying that maybe it could be used in this way, so no i dont think that the ML tankie front are using it that way. and since i know it has been used for its stated purpose to fully remove actual doxx information and child porn i dont see why it should be removed as a feature, at very least until there’s some evidence of it being used maliciously
Well then, good for you.
Meanwhile, there’s been a legion of solid users here pointing out across the FV that the ML has in fact been abusing its admin powers, or did you think that the whataboutism of CSA would somehow, magically erase that shizzle?
If so, then shame on you.
I didnt say that lemmy.ml mods havent been overbearing with their moderation i said “i havent seen anyone even claiming its been used against them or pointing to their post being permanently removed from the modlogs unjustly”.
if you want me to spell it out slowly i can:
In that case, then congrats for living in your own little delirium, apart from the many, many reports people have made reporting those specific abuses.