In an attempt to better understand Lemmy I’m wondering if some of you can shed a light on what the deal is between.ml and .world. The history, any significant event or a betrayal, how did we all run away from spez only to come here and throw mud at each other?

I’m sure it confuses a great deal of Reddit refugees who just signed up with the largest instance because of (in my case future proofing) reasons.

I’m wondering how this historic feud came to be and how I can be called a “Zionist” just because of my instance, and they are called “fascists” even though I’ve come across some pretty levelheaded people from that instance too.

Please, keep it civil!

I’m not trying to start a fight or mud slinging, it would be good if several people could say their piece and nobody shame or attack them for it no matter how much you disagree.

Thanks

  • asudox (only for mod, alt)@lemmy.worldM
    87·
    3 days ago

    I’ll be locking this post, as I know for a fact that nothing but debates (which generate a flood of reports) happen with these .ml questions. I hope 197 comments is enough for you.

    You can find info on .ml (and probably even .world) and their behaviour in other comms, such as !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works.

    !fediverselore@lemmy.ca (even though it is currently locked) also has some info, if your instance has the posts.

  • cm0002@lemy.lol
    191·
    3 days ago

    I think my crossposting explainer should suit, in general, admins of .ml are Tankies (authoritarian communists) who support and defend authoritarian countries in all the things they do like Russia, NK and China.

    They propagate Russian propaganda on Ukraine (They’re just being “liberated”), deny chinas genocides and NK is actually truly a socialist country and it’s authoritarianism is just western propaganda.

    The megathread linked below documents and has a more robust explainer

    You’ll get banned for showing support for Ukraine or going against Russian narratives or if you remind them of Putlers promise to not invade or just shit talking Putler in general

    Or calling out propaganda sites - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522

    Or so much more, I actually haven’t updated the megathread in a few months, but there’s more recent stuff on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

    Join the lemmy.ml boycott today and help foster a better Lemmy-verse! No more posts, comments (except to counter their propaganda ofc!) or upvotes on any comms on the Lemmy.ml instance! To make this easy you can do an instance block at Settings > Block Tab > Scroll to bottom > Input “lemmy.ml” and apply And consider donating to individual instances instead.

    Why am I cross-posting .ml content?

    I cross-post from .ml to the nearest relevant non-.ml comm to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly, the instance as a whole, to help vitalize non-.ml comms and make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don’t want to defederate is because .ml still has some very large comms and some active niche comms.

    Megathread on the issue

    Some highlights from the link:

    Dessalines, head .ml admin, lead Lemmy dev actively spreading genocide denialism https://sh.itjust.works/post/61371958

    .ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 The original transphobic Comment from Nutomic: https://lemmy.world/post/18236068

    “If you don’t support Russia then you just don’t understand geopolitics” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

    "Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

    “See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

    “NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

    General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

    And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can’t even put them all here because this comment would be really long.

    I believe the behavior of its admins (the main admins are Lemmy devs) does harm to the overall growth of the Lemmy-verse and maybe even the Thrediverse (since Lemmy kinda kicked off the Thrediverse) because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform to spread harmful propaganda

    On the outside, bringing up Lemmy frequently leads to comments like “Lemmy? Isn’t that the place with a bunch of tankies?” Or “Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left”. The best way forward from that I see is to either widely defederate from .ml like the rest of the Triad, or pressure them to put a fair and unbiased as possible admin team.

  • okwhateverdude@lemmy.world
    326·
    3 days ago

    I don’t think there is any organized feud, as such. A lot of instance population is actually self-selecting. Ideological instances are common. .ml happens to be one of the bigger ideological ones. Unfortunately, they tend to support authoritarian narratives coming out of countries that like to invade their neighbors. Lots of russian disinformation comes from that instance in particular.

    • AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish
      186·
      3 days ago

      i don’t think it’s so much a feud so much as .ml folks are much more hardcore and they actively proselytize their beliefs and .world users aren’t as aggressive in that way. .ml is more active and .world is more reactive, at least in my experience.

      generally you also won’t get banned in a .world community for disagreement, you will absolutely get banned for any non-group think in a .ml community.

      • Calfpupa [she/her]@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1315·
        3 days ago

        .world users have the benefit of all current propaganda pushing their positions so it makes sense they don’t feel the need to talk about it. I have been banned by many .world subs simply for linking evidence against claims, while I only was banned from .ml once when I unintentionally promoted hurting someone (and was unbanned when I messaged mods about it, which has yet to happen on any .world).

  • Sergio@piefed.socialEnglish
    19·
    3 days ago

    “See, the problem is, that this is the fediverse,” the Cat said. “You are now among weird people.”
    “But I don’t want to be among weird people here,” OP remarked.
    “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all weird here. I’m weird. You’re weird.”
    “How do you know I’m weird?” said OP.
    “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”

    • 🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      “Fish!” said Cat.
      The machine responded, “Today’s fish is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!”
      Cat then said, “Fish!”
      “Today’s fish is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!” said the machine.
      “Fish!” exclaimed Cat.
      “Today’s fish,” said the machine, “is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!”
      Cat replied, “Fish!”
      The machine cheerily replied: “Today’s fish is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!”
      “Fish!” Cat repeated.
      “Today’s fish is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!” dutifully replied the machine.
      Once again, Cat cried “Fish!”
      The machine again said, “Today’s fish is Trout a la Creme. Enjoy your meal!”
      Said Cat: “I will!”

  • ambitiousslab@feddit.ukEnglish
    241·
    3 days ago

    I’ve come across some pretty levelheaded people from that instance too

    This was me (for some definition of level :D)

    I joined .ml before I really understood the differences. Even once I realised the connotation, I didn’t switch until I realised that !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works was blocked on that instance. That made me think about what instance I wanted to join (based on what communities I was most active in) and then I switched over here.

    So, there are definitely a mix of people on each instance. It makes me sad when I see people jump to conclusions based on instance, although I also understand it if 90% of their experience is of a particular type of person.

    • Alex@lemmy.ml
      8·
      3 days ago

      I keep meaning to find another instance although as far as I can tell it hasn’t limited my access to the communities I’m interested in (FLOSS software, technology and UK politics). Part of the inertia also comes from my experience on Mastodon which occasionally sees waves of server shutdowns when the costs become too much for individual admins to absorb. At least while the core contributers continue I can be reasonably certain the server will stay up.

  • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
    3013·
    3 days ago

    I know nothing about lemmy.world, but lemmy.ml and hexbear.net are filled with tankies (aka angry teenagers IMHO) and have been defederated with a lot of instances.

    lemmy.ml is writing the original source code of Lemmy, but I don’t remember any betrayal. Most users are not throwing mud, we mostly and politely ignore each other I guess.

    (anyway, come to https://piefed.social/ instead because it’s the best frontend!)

  • chunes@lemmy.world
    161·
    3 days ago

    I keep some lemmy.ml communities on my feed because it’s refreshing to see news out of china that while likely propaganda, is at least not the usual flavor of propaganda.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    165·
    3 days ago

    There’s no specific instance wide feud between the two or anything. At a high level, .world is just the biggest Lemmy server currently by MAU and .ml is just the oldest and flagship ones run by the main developers of the Lemmy software.

    Now, the moderation philosophy between the two differs a fair bit, which is where the rivalries and the bad blood develops between users. On most general topics you’d see very little difference, but as soon as discussion touches the Russia-Ukraine conflict, anything negative about China, and the Israel-Palestine war, the mods on ml are aggressively one-sided in their moderation, and consider anything that goes against that perception as hate-speech against Russia/China/Palestine even if that’s not what you are saying. If you want an illustrative example, look in the modlog at the ‘nazi apologia’ comment I was tempbanned from !memes@lemmy.ml for.

    Still, as community and instance managers, that’s their right. There’s significant overlap between lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml where moderation is more overtly this way, and hexbear.net where users like to communicate with image macros more in ways that I think most other server members find annoying. Some on world don’t like that so certain users crosspost discussions from ml communities onto world communities. Some users call the ml folks tankies for their disdain of violence committed everywhere except where committed by Russia, China and its allies. Some ml users (and many lemmygrad+hexbear users) call users on other servers libs for the converse reason, excusing or not pushing back hard enough on atrocities and oppression caused by Western governments. Some users like to generalize these characterizations to every user of an instance, it seems.

    Aside from high profile defederations with ml or world and some servers for various reasons, refederations, redefederations between hexbear and other servers, there have not been any specific incidents that have caused .world and .ml to grow apart. I think it’s fine to let each server have its space.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
        111·
        3 days ago

        Hey, I’m aware I have my own biases. I’ve tried to describe the situation in a fair and reasoned way as best I can, based off the experiences I’ve had over the last 3.5 years, including before lemmy.world even started, your experience may differ from mine and that’s okay. I donate quarterly to the Lemmy devs and occasionally to my homeserver’s foundation, so please feel free to accuse me of bias in either way.

      • SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.socialEnglish
        145·
        3 days ago

        I find it’s quite accurate.

        Try going on a .world community and talking about the genocide of Palestinians then try going on a .ml community and try talking about the genocides of Ukraine and Uyghurs and get back to me.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          46·
          3 days ago

          Try looking at Gell-Mann amnesia, CIA meddling and psyops, psychological denial to the point of being unable to consider different perspectives and explanations and get back to me.

            • Maeve@kbin.earth
              47·
              3 days ago

              You’ve been offered our views multiple times and refused to consider for an instant. I’m not doing it again. You know where to find the information and reflect.

                • Maeve@kbin.earth
                  23·
                  3 days ago

                  You’ve been offered our views multiple times and refused to consider for an instant. I’m not doing it again. You know where to find the information and reflect.

          • SatansMaggotyCumFart@piefed.socialEnglish
            63·
            3 days ago

            One other point on this I got a couple month instance ban from little spez on .ml for talking about the genocides of Ukrainians and the Uyghurs and I’ve never got one on .world for defending Palestine and talking shit about Israel

  • lokalhorst@feddit.org
    2414·
    3 days ago

    Lemmy is strongly left-leaning and well you probably know the joke where two leftist enter a bar and 3 splinter groups come out.

    My general advice is to instance block lemmy.ml and avoid the war in Palestine/Israel.

    Lemmy.ml is the flagship instance of the authoritarian lemmy developers @nutomic@lemmy.ml and @dessalines@lemmy.ml and they unfortunately are not separating development and server administration. As Lemmy.ml is the oldest instance, many newbies think it is “the main Lemmy instance”, way before they realize what the concept of federation means. ml’s influence has weakened in the last years, but it’s still influencing the discussion a lot. Check !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works to get an idea about ml.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
      1212·
      3 days ago

      You people are exhausting. What is authoritarian and please give examples of non-authoritarian states.

    • ZeldaFreak@lemmy.world
      45·
      3 days ago

      In my opinion this is what kills the fediverse. When instances block other instances, you just fragment the whole thing. I think what is needed is a Proxy. What do I mean with that? I can host a read only instance. This way I can control what instances I want to access and which I want to block, but this instance doesn’t host accounts or posts. I would still need an account with a regular instance. The proxy instance would allow multiple accounts at the same time, so you don’t need to worry about to change accounts or URLs, just to see a few other communities.

      The whole federation thing is quite neat, but you need so much information beforehand, to choose your “right” community. Of course there are some very isolated instances, that do get blocked by most regular instances, but between the regular instances, there are quite some differences. For example some instances forbid NSFW. Hetzner (server hoster) does not allow NSFW in their ToS and a while back, a lot of instances used Hetzner. Some instances got surprised by that, because they didn’t read the ToS.

      Also I have the fear that when some governments could make the life worse for instances and make them accountable for other instances, that you can access through their instance. As an example could be the age verification, that some countries do require now.

      • AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish
        36·
        3 days ago

        people kill the fediverse because they can’t keep their insane beliefs to themselves, and feel compelled to harass and intimate anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs.

        including the incessant demonization of anyone who isn’t as extreme as they are.

        • ZeldaFreak@lemmy.world
          11·
          3 days ago

          Different countries, different laws about free speech and expectations of free speech. Also different countries, different propaganda and their leaders/governments pushing certain agendas. Within their country, they are not wrong. A lot of centralized websites are US based and do follow US laws but you can’t expect that the Internet follows US or EU laws and their culture. Obviously this creates problems and the thing is, that every country tries to fight it their own ways and try to push their agenda. One example would be the GDPR. Some US sites just geoblocked EU IPs, because they didn’t want to deal with these laws, that aren’t even from their country.

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
    91·
    3 days ago

    It’s over blown tribalism imo. There’s a handful of accounts that are always fighting each other. The rest are just normal people.

  • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
    157·
    3 days ago

    It’s libs Vs commies on an instance level. And, with Lemmy being a Western online space, libs are more numerous. 👍

    • cm0002@lemy.lol
      7·
      3 days ago

      .ml admins are Tankies, they’re authoritarian communists

      As defined

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie

      Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

      Here’s a megathread on them

      You’ll get banned for showing support for Ukraine or going against Russian narratives or if you remind them of Putlers promise to not invade or just shit talking Putler in general

      Or calling out propaganda sites - https://lemmy.world/post/32776038 | https://lemmy.world/post/33416433 | https://lemmy.world/post/34051329 | https://lemmy.world/post/35919522

      Or so much more, I actually haven’t updated the megathread in a few months, but there’s more recent stuff on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works

    • yeahiknow3@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1712·
      3 days ago

      They’re not communists. They’re tankies: nationalistic authoritarians who defend police state brutality and “alternative facts” to spread disinformation courtesy of Russia and China. They’re obsessed with a west vs east tribalism and nationalism.

      Also, I don’t think you mean liberals strictly, but socialists — demsoc, socdem, anarchists, whatever.

      Anarchists don’t respect nation states or arbitrary class divisions, which clashes hard with tankies’ rabid nationalism.

      • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
        115·
        3 days ago

        i don’t see it as east/west tribalism or nationalism at play, it’s generally people identifying what they see as a lesser evil in the situation. when it’s not interactions with hostile liberals i see plenty of earnest discussion in these spaces, literally ‘putin is someone lenin would have had shot’.

        for me if i’m referring to liberals it’s anyone with a reformist orientation towards capitalism. if people are pushing that then they are more likely to compromise on important issues if given any individual power

        MLs share my analysis of capitalism and imperialism. i can have disagreements with them about organization and process while agreeing on the fundamentals. plus they won’t call the cops on me.

        with liberals half the time i’m arguing about whether capitalism is even the problem, or having to point out to them that war is actually bad. that’s a much bigger gap than disagreeing about revolutionary strategy.

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.worldEnglish
          66·
          3 days ago

          Having strong opinions about reforming vs overthrowing capitalism doesn’t make you a tankie. Apologetics for state violence and Russian and Chinese totalitarianism certainly does; just as defending Israeli wrongdoing makes you a Zionist; and defending Trump makes you a fascist, etc.

          • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
            105·
            3 days ago

            They’re obsessed with a west vs east tribalism and nationalism.

            Having strong opinions about reforming vs overthrowing capitalism doesn’t make you a tankie. Authoritarianism and defense of state violence and the Russians and Chinese dictatorships certainly does.

            isn’t this just the tribalism that you were just complaining about? every state is authoritarian and has plenty state violence, if i’m going to have issues with that it’s going to be with the states i actually live in.

            not wanting to engage with propaganda narratives about state enemies from my own state doesn’t mean it’s automatically a defense of what other states are doing

            • yeahiknow3@lemmy.worldEnglish
              33·
              3 days ago

              No. I don’t care about any nation state, only about the badness of dictatorships. Tankies defend Russian and Chinese dictatorships in particular.

              Interestingly, they don’t defend (and often even condemn) other dictatorships. This is a feature of their tribalistic ideology and a product of propaganda. Concepts like “state enemies” are meaningless to me. I apply moral rules universally to all people and hold their behaviors to the same standard, regardless of their imaginary nation.

              One last thing. Russia’s favorite propaganda is that everyone lies and democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their wrongdoing (the way China does), they embrace it with whataboutism. Saying “all states have violence” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly Taiwan and China have very different approaches.

              To whit, I have no rights in China. They could literally disappear me for this comment.

              • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
                34·
                3 days ago

                then we share a position that all states are bad; i have particular ire for ones that are outright dictatorships of capital. that includes the US, all of its allies and some of its enemies.

                i live in the US, so i am going to be loudest about about what my state is doing internally and what it’s sponsoring abroad. i am going to treat the propaganda narratives it produces about its enemies with suspicion, and that should not be construed with ‘defending’ anything.

                it often does though.

      • hunnybubny@discuss.tchncs.de
        75·
        3 days ago

        No you libtard! Marx wanted name calling and calls for slaughter of entire nations.

        Remember, ever threatening and ever weak and disgusting enemy is the base idea behind communism.

      • Maeve@kbin.earth
        27·
        3 days ago

        What of authoritarian? Can you give examples of states that aren’t?

        • yeahiknow3@lemmy.worldEnglish
          42·
          3 days ago

          Russia’s favorite propaganda is to claim that democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their own wrongdoing (the way China does): they embrace it with whataboutism.

          Saying “all states are authoritarian” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly citizens of Taiwan and China have different relationships with their governments.

          To whit, I have no rights in China. They could disappear me for this one comment.

          • Maeve@kbin.earth
            25·
            3 days ago

            Hysteria isn’t a good look. Unless your family are wealthy corrupt.

  • Stormy@thelemmy.club
    104·
    3 days ago

    That sub is ran by people with a serious agenda. Its like the propaganda farm of lemmy. The mods beg you to stop reporting outright disinformation and the users are argumentative for no reason and aim to radicalize people of both persuasions.

  • Ephera@lemmy.ml
    115·
    3 days ago

    Be mindful that it’s often just a handful accounts that post this stuff.

    Well, alright, it’s actually 36 accounts with the username “cm0002”, but you get the idea.

    • cm0002@lemy.lol
      81·
      3 days ago

      Yup, it’s just me who stands against .mls authoritarianism lmao

      Why am I cross-posting .ml content?

      I cross-post from .ml to the nearest relevant non-.ml comm to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly, the instance as a whole, to help vitalize non-.ml comms and make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don’t want to defederate is because .ml still has some very large comms and some active niche comms.

      Megathread on the issue

      Some highlights from the link:

      Dessalines, head .ml admin, lead Lemmy dev actively spreading genocide denialism https://sh.itjust.works/post/61371958

      .ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558 The original transphobic Comment from Nutomic: https://lemmy.world/post/18236068

      “If you don’t support Russia then you just don’t understand geopolitics” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/27352415

      "Don’t worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167

      “See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn’t count!!” ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342

      “NK is actually good and anything counter to that is Western propaganda!” ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035

      General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet ~davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/27426510

      And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can’t even put them all here because this comment would be really long.

      I believe the behavior of its admins (the main admins are Lemmy devs) does harm to the overall growth of the Lemmy-verse and maybe even the Thrediverse (since Lemmy kinda kicked off the Thrediverse) because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform to spread harmful propaganda

      On the outside, bringing up Lemmy frequently leads to comments like “Lemmy? Isn’t that the place with a bunch of tankies?” Or “Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left”. The best way forward from that I see is to either widely defederate from .ml like the rest of the Triad, or pressure them to put a fair and unbiased as possible admin team.