Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
Some core developers of Lemmy are hardcore tankies and that attracts others.
Also, for someone from Africa it’s weird to claim they are not involved in this. China is strategically investing in African countries. If your country has any mineral or other strategic resources, China is no doubt already there.
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cripes.
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I love to see dirt on china but I wish there was a better source than BBC since it’s not the most credible outlet (right wing aligned).
Do you have any other sources for this?
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Has the political stance of the devs ever impacted lemmy in any way? From what I can tell they do a pretty good job isolating their views to their instance. Honestly apart from a few comments I rarely see any tankies.
Yes. As per OP, tankies are everywhere in Lemmy. More so than other platforms, it’s hard to miss. OP isn’t wrong about that.
If a user isn’t aware of tankies, they could easily be swayed by the constant posting of pro-CCP crap here.
I keep reading about this, can you show me some examples of pro-CCP sentiment? Tbf I block political communities anyway but I’m curious what tankie behaviour people keep referring too.
Tbh there is little evidence. There is a lot of shitposting people socialists are pissed off being called “tankie” or communist as a slur. I mean this shit is old. McCarthy would love this “oh you’re a tankie!” shit.
The worst I’ve seen is a communist community discussing that Stalin needs to be rehabilitated for his role in building up the USSR despite his “mistakes” (The big oopsie of 3.3 million dead in the great purge). I mean that is just stupid.
The larger issue is the laser focus the liberal community has on tankies, it’s not the fascists that are currently rising or already ruling, noooo it’s the “authoritarian tankies” that are at the lowest of their power ever. Whoever has been putting money into this tankie meme is brilliant. Just amplify that shit and stoke that hatred. Fascism bad, but oh please don’t be too radical lol.
So basically lemmy failed as a platform precisely because the neoliberal have managed to already cut out the socialist heart of lemmy.
I’m sorry but not one part of your comment shows any problem with lemmy. We’re using federated social media specifically so any instance/community can exist is a vacuum, and that includes those you do not agree with.
There are plenty of comms not having anything to do with politics that thrive, politically loaded content does slip into my feed and discussion is rarely uncivilised - on par with early reddit days.
This is exactly my problem, you think lemmy is one platform. It is not. It’s interconnected but seperate bubbles of activity that are brought together by federation, which has always been optional.
Very early on there was a hard-coded slur censor list that was eventually changed to be settable by the instance admin, that’s about it.
From what I understand, the devs are not injecting their political views into the Lemmy code. That does not mean they have not had a pro-tankie influence on the Lemmy community. As the original developers, they also set up the first major instance, lemmy.ml and they moderate that instance to have a tankie lean. Since it was the first instance, many people created their first account for it and it was the de facto standard place to start communities. As far as I know, it is still one of the most active instances.
Judging by active users, lemmy.world is the default, .ml isn’t even top 3. I’m getting pretty tired of people referring to Lemmy as a single platform while it’s entire purpose is to have a decentralized network where federation is always optional.
Lemmy.ml is tankie breeding grounds.
I’ve yet to see this impact the rest of lemmy when a simple defederation is sufficient.
I love that you think Africa’s dog in the fight is because China is strategically investing in Africa and chasing mineral and strategic resources when nearly every single African country’s borders were defined by the West, when entire countries were created and colonized by the West, when the US is actively bombing multiple countries in Africa and has been for decades, when the West was literally torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering, and mass murdering Africans all over the content for centuries, when many African countries are economically subjugated by Western countries to this day by control over currency, predatory loans and structural adjustment programs designed to create dependencies, etc.
Africa’s dog in the fight between the West and Asia comes primarily from the West’s total subjugation of the continent.
And there’s the tankie whataboutism I have been expecting. Everything you said is true, but my point is that China is strategically investing and they don’t care about Africa, only China. African countries very much need to be aware of that.
Yes, sure, it’s not altruistic. But there’s a huge difference between non-violent trade relationships which benefit one party more, and also benefit the other party, just less, and purposefully ensuring that an entire continent is in a constant state of civil war and desperate poverty so you can extract the maximum amount of resources through slavery. China’s foreign policy is absolutely for its own benefit but they’re taking a “rising tide lifts all boats” approach there and while there are some specific things which are fair to criticise it’s way better than what other major powers are doing.
Holy shit? You think this history is whataboutism? The OP said “I don’t have a dog in this fight [because I am from Africa]” and you said “[you should have a dog in the fight because of China’s behavior]”
Hello? Reading comprehension? How does establishing that OP should have a dog in the fight because of Western history in Africa become “whataboutism”?
This is thought termination at its finest
As a westerner, is it really true that all Chinese investors in Africa really don’t care in the continent? It might be true but I have seen no stories showing positive relationships. That may be by design in western media?
Also, what the hell would it mean to you for one country to “care about” a continent? You’re basically doing the meme:
We have a winner
The west decimating Africa shouldn’t mean China gets to, too.
This is irrelevant to OP’s point about Lemmy being pro-CCP.
Are you literally just going to ignore the entire other half of the post asking about why people are anti-western and saying they don’t have a dog in the fight because they are from Africa? Are you that committed to attacking your political opponents that you can’t even see the words that aren’t about your desired debate position?
Found the tankie!
See, this is the issue. Someone doesn’t absolutely obliterate China and the .world liberals all wake up and spout their state department talking points. “China BAD! Leftists tankies!”
What about any of that was untrue? Where’s the tankie part? Cite examples.
Who’s the tankie? The person saying that China hasn’t bombed anyone in over 35 years or the person saying “I don’t know why they hate the US so much” when the US attacked over 15 countries with tanks, bombs, drones, and missiles over the exact same time period. Might need to check yourself
Ok tankie.
These are the people complaining about lemmy being “overrun by tankies”, annoying redditers who are angry they don’t get showered with updoots here for mindlessly spouting Reddit catch phrases
Cope