Good job everyone blocking and boycotting .ml! It’s having an effect, users are noticing and MAUs on their comms are falling!
And for anyone asking “Why are we boycotting/blocking lemmy.ml?” Here’s a quick recap:
Lemmy.ml is an instance run by admins who are hardcore tankies and will enforce their ideology on their instance through various means from allowing (and pushing it themselves) propaganda (Such as Russia being justified in some way to invade Ukraine) and known propaganda outlets (Like RT) to removing content on their instance critical of their favored authoritarian regimes such as Russia or China and even banning users for such speech or speech critical of them if it’s off their instance (Just like the Reddit mods of ol!).
If it was just some random instance it would have been defederated from long ago like the rest of the “Tankie Triad” (Hexbear and Lemmygrad), but they’ve positioned lemmy.ml as the “flagship” instance and abused that position and influence to become large enough to keep other instances from defederating from them.
Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse’s overall growth and outside reputation. I have seen it come up before on Reddit threads (and other testimonials from people who came back and tried it again) that “They tried Lemmy but it was a bunch of tankies and went back to Reddit”
I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer Lemmy to not end up with the reputation for being "Tankie Central " or even worse “Voat 2.0”.
So if you haven’t joined the boycott yet, join today and help us foster a better healthier Lemmy-verse!
You can take a look around here on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation
Evidence of bans, censorship and bias to push their "ideology":
https://lemmy.world/post/32298242
https://lemmy.world/post/32292143
https://lemmy.world/post/32222856
https://lemmy.world/post/32426343
https://lemmy.world/post/32058315
https://lemmy.world/post/32426884
https://lemmy.world/post/32191006
https://lemmy.world/post/32298242
https://lemmy.world/post/32292143
https://lemmy.world/post/32221990
https://lemmy.world/post/32222278
https://lemmy.world/post/32222991
https://lemmy.world/post/32223697
https://lemmy.world/post/32224698
https://lemmy.world/post/32425984
https://lemmy.world/post/31569892
https://lemmy.world/post/31368129
https://lemmy.world/post/31329952
https://lemmy.world/post/31596159
https://lemmy.world/post/30665418
https://lemmy.world/post/30876228
https://lemmy.world/post/31090903
https://lemmy.world/post/31329952
https://lemmy.world/post/31368129
https://lemmy.world/post/29490804
https://lemmy.world/post/29507466
https://lemmy.world/post/29878102
https://lemmy.world/post/29980157
https://lemmy.world/post/28480760
https://lemmy.world/post/28481615
https://lemmy.world/post/28482147
https://lemmy.world/post/28480936
https://lemmy.world/post/28482273
https://lemmy.world/post/28481272
https://lemmy.world/post/28481064
https://lemmy.world/post/27674360
https://lemmy.world/post/27674117
https://lemmy.world/post/27673934
https://lemmy.world/post/27673724
https://lemmy.world/post/27577337
https://lemmy.world/post/27378634
https://lemmy.world/post/27346630
https://lemmy.world/post/27341283
https://lemmy.world/post/27288224
https://lemmy.world/post/27156418
Allowing known propaganda outlets and permitting altered headlines:
https://lemmy.world/post/32323822
https://lemmy.world/post/32283425
https://lemmy.world/post/32289824
https://lemmy.world/post/32337368
https://lemmy.world/post/30843744
https://lemmy.world/post/28275465
https://lemmy.world/post/27428838
https://lemmy.world/post/27416097
“NK is actually good, and anything counter to that is Western LIES” ~dessalines, .ml admin, head Lemmy dev https://lemmy.world/post/31595035
Spreading Russia talking points like the Ukraine invasion just being a “negotiating tactic” !https://lemmy.world/post/27012640
General negative sentiment to other instances who haven’t “seen the way” yet: https://lemmy.world/post/27426510
Open declaration of support for Russia (direct from dessalines (head admin)) https://lemmy.world/post/27352415
“concentration camps were just reeducation camps and weren’t that bad” https://lemmy.world/post/26985447
"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
“The China censorship tool isnt actually censorship! And if it is, it’s actually a good thing a state has that much power!” ~Tankies of .ml https://lemmy.world/post/30010789
Rooting for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war https://lemmy.world/post/29274763
Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558
Update 6/1/2025 - adding additional links since original post
Update 6/14/2025 - adding additional links since last edit
Update 6/19/2025 - adding additional links since last edit
Update 6/30/2025 - adding additional links since last edit
Update 7/03/2025 - adding additional links since last edit/formatting changes
@goat@sh.itjust.works do you think this thread would make a good candidate for a sticky?
I’m updating this fairly frequently as my megathread now LMAO
ye sure. maybe edit the title to make it a megathread? or have the title be something about examples of extremism from the lemmy developers?
Updated, this should work better: “Documentation of Lemmy.ml’s Extremism [Megathread]”
hanks pal
Every time a ml/hexbear community that I might be interested in pops up on my feed, I block it, then manually search for a non-tankie version of the same thing and immediately subscribe. The amount of pro-authoritarian content I’ve been exposed to has dramatically dropped.
I just instance blocked them, good riddance. Too bad I do occasionally have to see posts from their users on other instances.
I just instance blocked them
How do?
On the website, you can go to your profile and there should be a list of blocked instances you can add them to
im on the browser, so you can go to: profile>settings> BLOCKS tab> scroll down and you will see the instance option.
You can block the users too! At least on connect, and I think on voyager as well.
i started blocking a ton of ml users, i was wondering why they kept showing up, thier posts keeps appearing on my feed until i blocked the instance.
I’m on boost and it doesn’t have that option (I think)
You can do it one user at a time, I don’t think you can block all of them.
you can instance block, just foundout by going to SETTINGS>BLOCKS> scroll down all the way to the instance option and block them there.
I frequently look up 2 different .ml users posts and comments just for their delusional content XD
In a recent discussion in the Matrix chat, it was mentioned that donations to support development have recently fallen off quite steeply. I mentioned my reason for not donating anymore is because I can’t support anyone who runs an instance like .ml. @nutomic@lemmy.ml said I could donate directly to him since he doesn’t do as much moderation over there, but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.
Also nutomic is a transphobe
https://lemmy.ml/post/18761554
Which is reason enough to not give them any money in my book
Checks the screenshots. Extremely mid take regarding sports that’s shared by a lot of people that aren’t terminally online. Transphobe, alright.
Transphobia is bullshit no matter what. Deal with it.
“biological men” is a dead giveaway. Just because a lot of people are transphobic doesn’t mean it’s okay.
This is the idiot who was saying the Queer comm are the bourgeois and that trans women in sport are a dead cat strategy. fuck’em
You too embarrassed to use your main to post this?
Nutomic also said that trans identity was western propaganda and has doubled down on that statement several times.
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You see comrade everyone gets their assigned gender in the gender line at the age of 10, is simple no?
Read this in a shitty Russian accent that is slowly becoming a vaguely Ukrainian accent because I have played too much Stalker.
I really need to play disco elysium
Can you link to that?
just a post about nutomics post, but at least there is a screenshot:
https://lemmings.world/post/23484515
I could donate directly to him since he doesn’t do as much moderation over there
I’m in the modlog a lot so I can confirm that that is true, however, like @fiddlesticks@lemmy.dbzer0.com he shares a transphobic flavor of their mindset sooo yea
but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.
LMAO “Don’t directly to me and you won’t have to worry about it! Butttt it’ll still go to the exact thing you’re opposed to.”
If we all stop donating to Lemmy just because the devs are being tankies, how will Lemmy survive?
I don’t want to go back to the bot-ridden reddit with its elon-simping CEO.
If the devs being tankies kills this space then it doesn’t matter.
I like Lemmy too, but i don’t like it enough to financially support transphobic fascists.
Every service or product we use is owned by powerful people far worse than the Lemmy developers.
If we all boycott lemmy and let it burn then we have go back to profit oriented bot infested social media at the end. By design lemmy isnt owned by lemmy devs and we can block their instance by a single click.
This is something i can choose to contribute to.
If I didn’t have to buy food from megacorps I wouldn’t.
How are pro-genocide fake-communists (russia is an authoritarian capitalist state, China is a capitalist society) any better than American oligarchs?
Ideologically, they’re not. In practice though, the tankies of Lemmy have virtually no power, while the tech bros behind Trump control or influence much of the Western world.
The publicly stated dictatorship instead of the still struggling democracy is the main difference.
China has a dictator who will erase you if you step out of line.
In the US I step out of line every day and am still mostly protected by free speach laws, if the fascist regime ever tries to hurt me or my family/friends I also am allowed to own guns to defend them with.
There is always another site or an community.
That’s a fair question, and maybe we should be concerned. They’re already saying development will stop without more donations.
There are alternatives. Projects have died or been forked before because of the actions of their developers. OrganicMaps comes to mind (they are both a fork of something, and recently a new fork was started to detach from the developers (I can’t think of the name).
I’m just one person, but I’m not going to give .ml any financial support, you can be sure of that.
Glavset must be tightening its belt.
Nutomic is .ml, not doing much moderation is an excuse probably because he has underlings to do it for him.
but also mentioned that donations for development go towards server costs for .ml. Hell no.
Having taken donations for similar shit before: isn’t that illegal if they aren’t open about it? Had I done that with my donated money I’d have been sued out my fucking ass
@nutomic@lemmy.ml said I could donate directly to him since he doesn’t do as much moderation over there
Having observed a few different types of small team dynamics in my time, my speculation from a distance is that nutomic is the sensible one who does the bulk of the actual work, and dessalines is the other one.
He kind of has my sympathy and I do like Lemmy as software and it is clearly a good thing, but at the same time, at this point in the world if someone on your team is working to silence anyone who talks about Russia in unflattering terms, you can go fuck yourself as far as I am concerned. I am happy their instance is failing and I hope it keeps on failing until they stop doing legwork for murder, tyranny, rape, and torture. Honestly, “I wish my internet place had more users and people didn’t make fun of me so much” is a pretty mild negative consequence to experience from that.
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Given how the tankie mind works, that probably means that they are actually russian propaganda.
Lol good point
Cutting off funding because of political differences is stupid. Would you rather this go down the same path as Reddit?
If you peddle propaganda and justify genocide and wish more genocide on the world, I side with the people you deem stupid every single time.
By the same logic you are supporting genocide by using the platform they developed. See how you can make dumb connections like that?
Just had a ml user tell me russians never did a crime against humanity since all they did was kill nazi collaborators and continue to do so today.
You are doing your mental gymnastics to side with people like that. Not a nice look .
And you are using the platform made by .ml admins so you are doing the same. I’m not condoning anyone’s politics or opinions. Just be morally consistent. If you don’t support their views then why are you using a platform they developed?
Because i was not aware those pieces of shit developed it. Because i am on a federation made by people those monsters want all to be genocided and im not paying a single dime. Thus they are working for free to improve the platform i’m on. Platform that is used to counter russian propaganda.
Lol ok bud. Maybe calm down with the rhetoric. Far left is never going to have the amount of power you think they currently have meanwhile there is an actual Nazi uprising all over the world.
Its a delicate balance for sure. ML also servers as a test bed for the rest of the instance.
It’s not political differences, really. Go ahead and be communist, I don’t care. It’s the heavy handed moderation style. It’s a 1 sided instance and anything to the contrary gets deleted and a time limited ban. They go against exactly what they think they stand for.
If the political difference is between building a multistory carpark or underground carpark with a park on the ground level, sure, it’s stupid. If the political difference is “Russia does nothing wrong, Ukraine deserved to get invaded because of nazi” and “Russia is to blame for being the aggressor”, then it’s definitely not.
You’re allowed to fund propaganda machine, and people allowed to not do it.
Why are you using the propaganda delivery system they created?
I’m not using lemmy. ml
Lemmy was made by .ml admins. Why do you use Lemmy?
See you all on reddit ✌️😁
(different user here)
No, but I want the funds to only be used for Lemmy development, not for their tankie server. They are the ones that make it impossible to do one without the other.
Ok have fun going back to reddit then when the platform becomes abandonware.
Ooor I can make it clear where I draw the lines, and hopefully get the developers not to spend the donations on their tankie server. Weird how that works, right?
Guess you can’t draw the line at using the platform they developed however.
And why should I? Can you make an argument for how using their platform is supporting their tankie server on a comparable level to sending them money?
A bit hypocritical to continue benefitting off of their labor and time by using the platform but their political views is where you draw the line, yet you continue to use the platform. Maybe if you actually believed in what you said you would stop using the platform and go back to reddit. But do go on and preach from your virtue signaling high horse about how paying $30/per month for their server coet (which they use as a testing bed) is too much for you to handle.
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The amount of “both sides” is gross tbh.
Only like 3.5% of the world’s population lives in the US. So if you happen to live in a country that has been negatively affected by US foreign policy in the last 50 years and don’t much care what happens to people inside the US right now, or what labels and pins they put on their jackets, yeah there is little difference between red and blue. Like if you ignore what ideological they profess to and simply look at their actions on other countries.
Empathy can be “disabled” though certain ideology or religion. Saying such radical things like “no difference” is an attempt help people snap out of this “sociopathic trance”. Or at worst an attempt to mock or scold you for defending an imperialist regime that has caused countless deaths and immense suffering over the last 7 decades.
Obviously this is futile. And lemmy is much more pleasurable when blocking such people.
Yeah, blocked hexbear too.
Those people are absolutely fucking unhinged and do not engage in any sort of good faith argument.
After one round, I got name called, after round two asking for clarification, I just left.
Time is precious, the squirrels in my yard are more coherent than these chucklefucks.
Hell, even two crows would be better
they are more or less the same side of coins as conservatives, they even whine and post the same way.
Lemmy .ml is partly why I switched to an instance which defederates them. The admin and mod behavior over there is gross. If it weren’t run by the Lemmy devs it would be widely blocked.
You know, the differing opinion isn’t so bad. It’s that they’re such pricks.
well put. and every Marxist-Leninist I’ve met irl has been cool, these pricks are either misrepresenting the entire movement or doing it in the worst, most alienating, factually challenged kind of way.
if the opinion is annoying and doesnt provide constructive conversations, opinions almost one-sided anyways and holds bias, i always block them if they become annoying.
Lemmy.ml seems to just downvote different opinions in masse without responding with respect.
After a few attempts to engage respectfully and just getting negative interactions I just blocked them entirely.
I’m new here and did not realize that, at first, I was only seeing .ml. I was so uncomfortable with the Russian/Chinese propaganda I created an account and ended up switching to this community mainly by accident. Glad to see my discomfort was justified.
since alot of us have migrated from reddit we see the same type of content, so it was easy to recognize it here, and i usually block them.
If they can’t outright censor it (such as if it’s off-instance) then mass downvoting is all they have left to try and control the narrative.
I wish feddit.org blocked lemmy.ml. I keep getting vitriol and queerphobia from their users.
cause nobody wants to get dragged into a ten page discussion about why China and Russia are the most democratic countries in the world
I joined Lemmy in November. By New Years I had independently figured out what was wrong with .ml and its users.
The less of that garbage, the better.
What app so you use to browse lemmy and how do I block .ml?
I was against blocking them because i dont want to create an echochamber(and i still support this on an instance level) but after they banned me and just keep downvote bombing anyone whos not a fucking poo tin or whinnie boot licker i had to block them.
they were never posting/arguing in good faith, ml and hexbear are insular echo chambers. the amount of posts i accidentally entered in ml and hexbear were all badfaith arguments. i pointed out sg1 in some propaganda discussion, and they called it to “liberal propaganda”
And when you say anything anti-Hamas or Stalin you get people who just continue to insult you and downvote bomb you.
Which I believe is harmful to the Lemmy-verse’s overall growth and outside reputation.
Those admins you say are hurting lemmy are literally the developers who made it.
Also, fuck growth. It’s the cancer that drives enshittyfication and destroys our planet.Open Source Software can be forked. There’s no reason to tie code to its creators, and no reason for Lemmy’s code and platform to inherit their creators’ terrible reputation.
Those admins you say are hurting lemmy are literally the developers who made it.
We’re all well aware, just because someone does something good does not give them a license to do whatever they want. Lemmy itself is apolitical, its code for a link aggregator type of social media, nothing more nothing less.
Also, fuck growth. It’s the cancer that drives enshittyfication and destroys our planet.
Growth for the *sake of profit * is cancer yes, but growth of the Lemmy-verse and the Fediverse at large means a tiny bit less traffic on the cancer that is corporate centralized Social media
Lemmy itself is apolitical
This is an absurd statement.
Its development model, licensing and network structure is political.
Its anticaptialist financial model is political. And this is not trivial or disposable. This is why there’s no ads or addiction-driven features shoved in the code. That’s why it’s not subject to venture capital and prone to enshittification (in the original sense of the word). That’s why people and communities can host diverse instances. That’s why you can join lemmy.world and block lemmy.ml. Those aren’t decisions in a vacuum or ideals arising from moral purity, these are the results of choices based in ideology. And even if an instance claims to be apolitical or even contradictory in politics, or even if a fork of Lemmy does this, this does not invalidate or evaporate Lemmy’s political factors, it only adds others. For example, lemmy.world is infamously liberalist, and bans people in congruence with that ideology: see Luigi discussions for a clear, well-known example, as well as being more tolerant of bigotry: see /c/conservative
What Im talking about isnt idealistic or hypothetical. To see this idea in action, see the beginning of BlueSky enshittification already forming. And look at the much older Mastodon which has resisted these same pressures. Mastodon can avoid the enshittification because its political structures are not beholden to profit and popularity, while BlueSky is pressured, e.g., to comply with Turkish state censorship to avoid losing market share.
Idk, I personally find that ML isnt that bad. Granted I may be a bit biased as a leftist but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world. Furthemore whenever I see massive Transphobic spam attacks its 9/10 from world. In addition I have had far more genuene conversations on ml communities and with ml users. However I cannot say the same for world users/communities which are known to shut down discussion by calling it “tankie” (yes even Anarchist discussion). Due to that it has become abundantly clear to me that the term “tankie” has very little if anything to do with authoritarianism and everything to do with leftism.
but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world.
What kind of censorship are you seeing? I usually don’t hang there so I’ve only really seen their liberalist “anti-violence” suppression of Brian Thompson posting. Which honestly is enough reason to avoid, but I’m curious.
Also, agreeing from experience with the transphobia and hilarious ignorance of rabid anticommunists.
Generally that and “civility” anti revolutionary sentiment. It leads to people being more accepting of fascism than real antifascism.
significantly less censorship than world.
Haven’t been on this comm much eh?
I have, I have also seen world comms ban even mild critique of the Democrats. For people who claim to hate tankies y’all do enforce blind loyalty to the party quite often.
I’ll go say fuck Pelosi, fetterman, and whoever else you want on world if you say “free Taiwan” on ml and we’ll see what happens.
For decades Taiwan was little more than a fascist puppet for the US, now theyre just another neoliberal state in east Asia.
If I wasn’t on Lemmy, I would have thought this is satire.
It’s honestly very entertaining to see this being posted without irony.
You guys read like bots when you do this, have you no self-awareness?
“Ooh, someone said something about Taiwan, generate a short sentence about it that’s entirely unrelated to what was said!”
Granted I may be a bit biased as a leftist but when I discuss my Anarchist positions I see significantly less censorship than world. Furthemore whenever I see massive Transphobic spam attacks its 9/10 from world.
The modlog just doesn’t reflect that, there’s no widespread issue on .world as far as I’ve seen in all my time in the modlog.
What I do see from .world is a bunch of moderators doing moderator things and very little admin actions, which is what you would expect from any instance of size. It’s the opposite with .ml, and that should be a huge red flag in of itself.
Are there bad mods and bad mod decisions? Sure, that’s going to happen anywhere, but I don’t see the .world admins in every comm across .world removing posts and comments critical of a certain agenda or to push a narrative, like on .ml.
As far as “transphobic spam attacks” that can happen on any instance, .world being the biggest (literally double in size from the next biggest) means it’s going to be targeted more. And again, I see it being dealt with accordingly in the modlog, in fact that’s one of the main times I do see non-.ml admin actions in there, site banning actual bigots.
Plus if .world really had a transphobe problem, ada would have defederated from it by now.
However I cannot say the same for world users/communities which are known to shut down discussion by calling it “tankie” (yes even Anarchist discussion).
Have you seriously not seen .ml tankies throw around “liberals” or “shitlibs” in the exact same way
What I do see from .world is a bunch of moderators doing moderator things and very little admin actions
Yeah that gets annoying when you’re the moderator of a non-world community and I am. They rarely ban people and they allow anyone to make a new acc very easily.
but I don’t see the .world admins in every comm across .world removing posts and comments critical of a certain agenda or to push a narrative, like on .ml
I keep seeing people say that but I havent personally seen that and I have said a lot against authoritarian regimes
I see it being dealt with accordingly in the modlog, in fact that’s one of the main times I do see non-.ml admin actions in there, site banning actual bigots
I have been called a “self hating trans person” for being a leftist and had my entire gender invalided, called “fake” more times than I can count by world trolls and I have found nearly every time they were applauded.
Plus if .world really had a transphobe problem, ada would have defederated from it by now.
There are talks and serious considerations, many blahaj members want this
Have you seriously not seen .ml tankies throw around “liberals” or “shitlibs” in the exact same way
Tbh there are many times shitlib is more than justified and I see it very often. Common shitlib arguments include “we should compromise on the Israel-Palestine conflict, what if they only genocide half as many civilians?”, “yeah I support Trans rights, but what if you gave up sports and trans youth as a compromise?”, “yeah the system is rigged but if you dont vote blue no matter who you’re not trying hard enough”. Shitlib makes sense, it says you are a liberal and you are full of shit. Meanwhile tankie is just a blatant attempt to categorize the entire left as authoritarian.
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