I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
Another tip I haven’t seen yet:
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It varies by client, but Markdown generally works, here.
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Spoiler tags seem to still be a separate extension from regular Markdown.
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Many of us try to be more careful to include ALT Text with images, as it supports both blind users, and anyone whose server is just being slow to load images:
Example of Image with Alt text in Markdown:
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Here’s one I haven’t seen mentioned yet: many of us explicitly state our intended tone after our comments, to avoid miscommunication. Particularly in busy threads.
We have some great accessibility outreach communicators here, some of whom have shared how much it helps them or people they know.
Some examples:
- (Sarcasm)
- (Genuine)
- (Joke)
Sometimes these are abbreviated, but we often even avoid abbreviation - for general clarity, but probably mainly because we’re always gaining new users who might not recognize the abbreviation.
I think (absolutely IMHO) Reddit commenting is more confrontational. Sure, we have that here, but on Reddit I would get slapped down often, because I’m not that smart and I make mistakes. My clumsy way was chum in the water for the sharks.
Not here. I feel like people here, EVEN WHEN THEY GET MAD, can be spoken to, even apologized to, and together you can be okay. Not agree necessarily, but not ugly or unkind.
I’ve seen a few new people here try the “smack em for being stupid” technique, and mostly it gets them downvotes and criticism. I really love that about being here.
It feels much safer for the sensitive.
This is a great point.
There’s also very convenient block mechanisms for rude folks, and a “block and move on” culture for those who don’t keep their communication civil.
Yes, I do block the rude.
I think partly this is due to there being no karma on this platform. Garnering up votes or downvotes in a single thread is largely meaningless outside of it.
That’s refreshing to hear actually. Reddit can be a pretty unfriendly place depending on what corners you spend your time. I think in today’s tumultuous and divisive political/cultural landscape we need neighborliness more than ever.
Here is a great 30 min explainer presentation on the activitypub network in general: https://conf.tube/w/d8c8ed69-79f0-4987-bafe-84c01f38f966
It covers a lot of the philosophical and design differences that a lot of us are very passionate about. Welcome.
Understand this is not reddit. There is no “reddit hivemind” on Lemmy because Lemmy is federated. You will find that this type of thing still exists within certain instances in various ways, but know that you are leaving a single large echo chamber and entering into a series of smaller, federated echo chambers. There is much more representation of human beings with differing morals, ideals, and beliefs here as compared to reddit.
Based on my own experience, you would do well by yourself to learn to not take what other people are thinking personally. You don’t have to believe in what anyone else thinks, but other people don’t have to believe in what you think either. Don’t make the mistake of believing you know what is best, or that you know everything.
I have seen this have a culture shock effect on newer users, because they often expect that everyone thinks, says, does, or feels all the same or similar things as them about anything and everything, and quickly find out that it is not necessarily the case here.
An example of this I have seen on multiple occasions is where new users are shocked when they make a post about wanting some kind of change to the entire platform “to attract users”, and are quickly informed that many user’s do not necessarily want, or care that the platform attracts users, because for many, that is not the point of the software Lemmy, rather that is the point for a business like reddit. If a user really wants some huge change, usually the response is for them to make an account on an existing instance like what they are looking for, or to host their own.
You will find much more actual individualism on Lemmy. It is important to be aware that not only is everyone not the same, but that they don’t have to be either.
People are also less likely to react positively to comments that are not offering actual thought. If you enter a thread to comment “this”, or just to make jokes without a point, you may find you receive a different reaction than what you would receive on reddit.
Do not read a title or a comment, hammer a reply into your keyboard, and then hit send so that you can move on to more content faster, like other social media has trained you to.
Read posts and comments and think about them. Weigh your replies. If you think you know the point you want to get across, consider what responses others may have, adjust what you are writing until you believe your reply thoroughly covers what you actually think about the subject matter as whole with consideration to what you think might be follow up questions and others thoughts, and then send it.
Of course if you have further thoughts later on, feel free to edit what you said to clarify or add to your thought (as I am doing this very moment, 40 minutes later).
Lemmy is an excellent opportunity to practice communication, because as it stands, you will find the degree of conversation is much more engaging than what reddit turned into over time. If you have a well thought out, beautiful, or powerful thing to say and go through the trouble of saying it well, you may find you are rewarded by someone else doing the same in return.
Just because the format is similar to that of reddit does not mean that Lemmy is the same platform.
In short I feel that Lemmy is not a platform that is there to work for you necessarily, instead it is a platform that enables you to work on yourself. But only if you will let it.
I feel called out with the “this” example, but I promise I was playing into the basic bitch redditor trope.
I appreciate the time you spent in crafting this thoughtful reply, and the insights you shared. It can be very easy to get trapped in a mindless content loop, so I think a reminder to slow down and be present is always timely.
I was (very) recently reminded of the love I once held for writing and it’s prompted me to begin forcing myself to be more mindful and patient with my own writing process, rather than hammer out only what’s necessary to convey a thought. So it’s an especially poignant reminder for me right now!
Thank you, and I am glad to hear that you were recently reminded of something you had love for. I had a similar experience when joining Lemmy about 2 years ago. It drove me to begin keeping a general book for journaling.
To that end, if you intend to take your rediscovery of your love of writing further, a recommendation of mine would be to find both a book and pen that you like. Something with a cover or paper which you enjoy, and something which makes it feel easy and smooth to write with. In doing this I have found that it has reminded me to write and allows me to enjoy doing so much more.
In my case I found a green, hard covered book, with a relief of a tree on the front. The cover has a soft wrap which makes it feel good to hold and warm to the touch. It has two tongues for keeping place.
My pen is a very cheap but nicely made Muji brand aluminum fountain pen with which I use Waterman black ink. It writes smoothly and the pages soak the ink in well. It is also not so expensive that I would be worried if I lost it. It has a knurling which makes it easy to hold, and the cap posts in the back in an unconventional manner.
I have found writing for myself has helped me when writing for others, the only difficult part was remembering to begin.
I have no fucking clue what federated is and no one seems to ever explain it lol. What does it mean?
Every instance is like a different forum, and they can choose to “federate” with others to provide a somewhat seamless experience. You only have an account at one instance but others recognize that and vice versa. Each instance can have communities, similar to subreddits, focusing on different content. You can follow, comment, and post in communities hosted on other instances that federate with your instance. Each instance has its own rules and culture.
How is that different than subreddits? Not tryna be argumentative about it it just sounds like Reddit and subreddits. I got banned on reddit but have grown to hate it and other than the constant US hate subs which I’ve slowly but surely come to block I like it here much more. Just wish there were more communities that weren’t political
To try to clarify for you:
Imagine you could have your own entire reddit that you can install on a server and let other people join and use. On your reddit, they can create subreddits, make comments, make posts, and everything else you would expect.
Now imagine other people do the same thing. Many other people. They make their own reddits on their own servers which have their own subreddits, users, posts, comments, etc. Imagine I am one of these other people, and I have my own version of reddit on my own server.
Federation is where between you and I and everyone else, between all these peoples own personal reddits, posts and communities will show up from all of the reddits on everyones front page, and everyone can interact with them regardless of whose reddit they are actually on.
You might make a post on your own reddit, in a subreddit there called “mySubreddit”. Even though I am on my own server, I see this post you have made on the front page of my server, and I can comment on it, make posts on “mySubreddit”, upvote and downvote, everything you would expect.
This works both ways. I can make posts on the version of reddit running on your server, see its communities etc, and you can do the same on mine.
Now replace the word “subreddit” with “community”, the word “server” with “instance”, and the word “reddit” with “lemmy”, and this is how the platform works.
This means you can have a large group of people like reddit does, interacting with one another, but without any one person or a business having to buy and manage entire server farms, moderate an enormous platform, or any of the other major logistical stuff.
It means that no company owns it as well. Lemmy also can’t “go down” like reddit, because reddit is not federated. If reddits server has an issue, no one can access reddit. If lemmy.ml goes down, you can still see lemm.ee, lemmy.world, lemmy.one, or any of the other lemmy instances, because they are different entire servers owned by entirely different people that are managed and configured separately from one another.
Your account is on lemm.ee, which is an instance of lemmy on someones server. My account is on lemmy.ml, which is a different instance - someone elses server. And yet, we can hold this conversation because of federation. The community (subreddit) this conversation is taking place in is lemmy.ml/c/asklemmy, which is a community on my home server where my account is stored. Your account does not exist here, but you didnt have to create a lemmy.ml account to see this community, or the post, or my comments, or to reply to me, because federation allows your account to work on lemmy instances that are federated to your lemm.ee home server.
This also keeps you from getting banned from the entire platform over ridiculous things. At most, you can be banned from an entire Lemmy instance. This is good because if an instance has a change of ownership, and the new owner is an asshole, you can’t be locked out of the entire platform, you can always just create another account on a different lemmy instance without fear of being banned again (so long as you follow the respective rules on whatever instances you are communicating in). Furthermore, the mod logs are public data, and can be viewed from the sidebar of communities, so it is easy to see if a mod or admin is an asshole.
I’m glad to take any follow up questions or provide further clarifications.
Okay that helps a lot I was always wondering what the instances were. How do you go about browsing different ones? Finding one that suits you? Is that possible?
If you want to browse a different instance directly, you just type in that instances URL into your browsers search bar, though this is not how most people look at other instances.
In the upper right, you will likely see a magnifying glass icon for search. When you click on it, you will see a page like this:
The first box in the upper left that reads “All” (The one to the left of “Subscribed”) let’s you choose the type of result you want from your search. Using this box you can search for all, comments, posts, communities, users, or URL.
The selector to the right with the choices Subscribed, Local, All, Moderator View (if you moderate communities) allows you to scope the source of your search results. Subscribed will only show results from communities you subscribe to, local will only show results from your home server (lemm.ee in your case), All will show you results from everything lemm.ee federates to (such as lemmy.ml, lemmy.one, and many more), and moderator view will show results from communities you moderate.
If you set that first box to “Communities”, set the selector to “all” and then search “asklemmy”, it means you want to see communities from all federated instances that match your search. The result will also show how many users are subscribed to each.
This is what I see when I do this. As you might notice, there is more than one ask lemmy community, because each instance can have their own! If the result is not on my home server, you can see that it adds the name of the instance it is on (for example the first result is the asklemmy on my homeserver, but then the second result is the asklemmy on lemmy.world, so it shows this.
If you leave these settings the same, and enter in two spaces as your search term, it will return everything, and you can paginate through every federated community that you can go visit, subscribe to, and communicate through. Alternatively, you can click “Communities” at the top of the screen on your main page and change the selector there to see this.
As to your question about finding an instance that suits you, there are a few pages like https://join-lemmy.org/instances which will let you browse instances. Each instance typically has a description explaining what the purpose of the instance is. Some are geared towards hobbies, others are for general use, some are for specific locations, some are for ideological beliefs, etc. On your main page on lemm.ee, at the top, you will see that same selector for “Subscribed, Local, All, Moderator View”. When you browse “Local”, you will only see posts from other users on your own instance and it’s communities. This is really great because you can actually come to get to know other people pretty well on your home instance. It’s the same as being able to see what is going on in your own town, and have a smaller community of people interested in the same general theme, but then also being able to interact with every town in the world by browsing “All” instead.
Instance owners have the power to do a few things which are important to know. They can turn off new user account creation for their servers (because if they are paying for server space, it is a problem if suddenly you have 10,000 users on your instance creating content) so you can’t necessarily create an account on any instance. If you hit join on one of them on that page though, it should let you know if they are open for new accounts when you go through the sign up process.
Instance owners can also defederate other instances. This is a feature for cases where, let’s say you have someone create a lemmy instance which is there just to make a group of mean people, who go to other instances to be mean. If every other lemmy instance were to defederate them, they become like a single standalone website without federation. Their comments and posts, votes, etc do not show up for anyone except them, and their content can no longer be searched for or seen by those who don’t federate with them.
Wow! Thanks! I’ll definitely be saving this comment for reference for a while. I appreciate you!
Reddit is like one big instance, subreddits are our communuties. However, federated instances can visit the subreddits (communities) of other instances. This leads to decentralization of power, and cool niche instances that don’t all need to have everything.
As for politics, most people here are going to be more political than Reddit, as coming here instead of staying on Reddit is an ideological choice, often times.
It’s like posting on digg via Reddit except both are self hosted instead of corporate. Instances will also defederate if they decide they are incompatible.
Communities are the subreddits here. Instances are just what server you’re using/viewing. Some Instances block others, some Instances have special rules (viewed in the sidebar).
subreddits are all part of reddit, there’s a top part that can decide over all subreddits and make rules and ban people etc. Lemmy does not have a central point of authority. lemmy.world can only make rules and control lemmy.world, lemm.ee can only decide over lemm.ee. If you want your own rules, you can make your own instance and be as valid and part of lemmy as any other instance. The main point is: there is no level above this that controls all instances. Each instance is the top level of authority for that instance, and anyone can create an instance if they have the knowledge and resources.
Another aspect is that technically you could also interact with mastodon, peertube, etc, but that isn’t seamless and there’s no consensus if it’s even a good idea to pursue that, but it’s technically possible.Oh that’s actually really cool
You’re gonna look around and see a few old accounts and think you missed the early bus. You didn’t. We’re still pioneering.
If you think “why isn’t there a community for this” or “why isn’t anyone posting to this community” it’s because we’re small and we need people like you to fix those issues!
For some reason nobody gave any suggestions for a client to use. If you are familiar with Apollo for Reddit, there is a spiritual successor here on Lemmy called Voyager: https://vger.app/
There are no recommendation algorithms for content, you are one! Search for communities based on your interests and subscribe to them. The Communities view of your home instance and Lemmy Explorer are good for that. Because Lemmy is decentralized, all discussion isn’t centered around one site like on Reddit, which may at first give an impression of emptiness.
I also wrote an extensive guide about Lemmy few weeks ago.
Welcome!
Yeah it felt a little empty here at first, but then I realized I get way more replies on most of my comments here than I did on reddit where most people just scrolled right past it.
Right? I think Lemmy is way more conducive to conversations than Reddit.
You make a great point.
I fire off comments without thinking much at about the same rate as I did on the other website but get replies on about ~50-60% here vs. ~20% on centralized media.
It’s really nice honestly. /gen
(And people are much nicer about tone tags here!)
Indeed, I quite like it, cause I’m here for discussion not just shouting into the void.
I find myself commenting far more often than I did on Reddit. I remember once that I lamented that Lemmy doesn’t have a “super upvote” in the way that Reddit gold used to be (which is a silly thought, given that I have never, and would never pay money to gild a comment). However, I realised that on this more discussion based platform, a short but meaningful comment can readily function as a super upvote. I think the lack of karma accrual for comments/posts also promotes this.
Same, I’m engaging more often here than I did on Reddit because it feels less like shouting into the void. I just wish there were more active communities for philosophical/political/religious debate on lemmy.
Also I didn’t even realize there wasn’t a karma system here, but that seems like a good call. I never paid attention to it on Reddit either (I couldn’t even tell you off the top of my head how much I have.)
That guide is helpful. Thanks!
Very nice, thanks!
I’m going to be honest, I would prefer having some sort of algorithm. Not only it would the things I’m uninsterested away, but it would occasionally show something new to me. I’ve seen people with “cjrated feeds” saying something about it being boring. The problem is not algorithms, it’s how they are constructed.
That’s a good point. That said, I do have options for finding unusual stuff when I want something fresh, so I’ve never felt uninterested. (It also helps that I’m tired of dopamine holes trying to create a never ending novelty coaster like regular social media)
take all of the things you hate about Reddit comment culture and do your best to perpetuate them here
This
Karma does not persist and there is no minimum karma or account ages to comment anywhere.
Not entirely true, Solarpunk’s Pleasant Politics comm has an automod that bans and unbans based on recent karma ratios. The bot going back and forth on banning and unbanning me is the bulk of my modlog, lmao
[…] Solarpunk’s Pleasant Politics comm has an automod that bans and unbans based on recent karma ratios. […]
Do they have any documentation for that behavior? If so, could you link it?
https://slrpnk.net/post/11069853
That’s where they discuss it. You can check my modlog to see it in action, lol
Karma does not persist […]
I’m not sure what you mean; if I look at your account, for example, I can see all of your past vote scores [1].
References
- Type: User Account. Publisher: [“geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml”. “sh.itjust.works”. “Lemmy”.]. Accessed: 2025-03-28T02:12Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml.
- Outlined in red are the vote scores for some of the user’s most recent comments and posts.
it’s different than karma. points from every post have to be added to get the “karma”, which may can be done unofficially by using some scripts, but officially lemmy doesn’t do that,
- Type: User Account. Publisher: [“geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml”. “sh.itjust.works”. “Lemmy”.]. Accessed: 2025-03-28T02:12Z. URI: https://sh.itjust.works/u/geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml.
No awards, so you have escaped the cringe “thank you, kind stranger!” comments.
In all seriousness, I would curate a bunch of pages that interest you so you have a home page relevant to your interests. There’s a lot of competing communities but I just add all the big ones that are relevant.
Beans
ECCE HOMO QVI EST FABA
You have to curate your feed yourself. Personally I use the all feed and block what I don’t like because I enjoy seeing new communities. I also recommend the jerboa app if you have an android, its free, open-source, made by lemmy devs, and doesn’t have ads.
Also many of us are communists or anarchists so prepare for political takes you aren’t used to.
Right on lol. I’m a socialist leaning democratic socialist but I can appreciate that communism gets a bad rap—and the current US administration is radicalizing me more than ever, so I’m happy to get pulled further to the dark side.
Since you did ask, I made an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list after the US election in the hopes of helping those increasingly radicalized along their political journeys! I also wrote a post on how to determine if an overall system is Capitalist or Socialist, from a Marxist perspective.
As a side-note, Socialism is generally seen by Marxists as the intermediate stage between Capitalism and Communism, with Communism as a fully publicly owned, global democratic economy with thorough planning, and Socialism as a society where Private ownership has become subservient to the public sector and now Public ownership is the principle aspect, which is the method of getting to Communism. No country has achieved Communism, which must be global, but many have achieved Socialism.
A bit on “Democratic Socialism,” and how it differs from Marxism-Leninism:
Democratic Socialism usually can refer to either something like the Nordic Countries, which would technically better fit the term "Social Democracy* as private ownership of Capital is the principle aspect of their economies, or as Socialism achieved through electoral means, ie public ownership as the principle aspect of their economies.
I say “principle” as no system is “pure,” every country has a public and private sector, but the public sector in China and Cuba, for example, has far more power than the Private through having firm control of large firms and key industry, while in the Nordics the public sector is in support of the private. The Nordics also rely on international exploitation in order to fund their safety nets, meaning it isn’t a system that could be adopted by just anyone with the same results, it requires winners and losers.
As for how it compares to Marxism-Leninism:
- Both Democratic Socialism and Marxism-Leninism are democratic. The model of democracy most MLs support, however, usually isn’t focused on having many parties, but more direct influence from the workers within government at large. Here’s an example from the Soviet Union:
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Democratic Socialists usually wish to achieve Socialism through elections, while MLs are revolutionary. Just like you can’t just ask a billionaire to give you their money, MLs don’t believe you can simply ask them to implement a system that dramatically weakens and eventually erases their power when they control the State.
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Democratic Socialism is generally a far less defined, while Marxism-Leninism has a rich history of testing theory to practice, and changing over time. This is because Marxism-Leninism is almost always going to be the underlying ideology of any country deemed “Communist,” such as the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, DPRK, former USSR, and more. This means MLs are usually more in agreement than disagreement with each other.
And that’s enough to go off of, I think! Let me know if you habe any questions, though the reading list is my recommendation for a good place to start. It even has audiobooks for most of the listed works as alternatives, as well as links to epubs or pdfs.
I appreciate the breakdown. I’ll crack into the reading material tomorrow and get back to you. Thanks!
No problem, feel free to leave feedback! And don’t worry about getting back in any soon time period, take your time with it and get out of it what you want to. This isn’t homework, you’re not joining a Communist Party by reading anything on the list, haha.
Now, I will have considered it a fantastic success if it leads you more down that path, of course, but even reading the first section or two so you can get a better idea of what Communists here are talking about and why will already be a big benefit for yourself and a point of pride for myself.
Haha. No I’ve actually been genuinely interested in learning more about this for a little while now. I think this is the time for radicalization, if there ever was one. Still trying to figure out what that looks like for me personally. Thanks again for the resources—and I welcome any others, across any medium.
Not to toot my own horn, but I saw the recent election results as a good opportunity for further outreach, which is why the list is in the format it is, such as frontloading with Parenti’s work, who directly is speaking to a US-based audience and can help tackle Red Scare mythos that permeate the western Left.
Contrary to what anticommunists will have you believe, Communists don’t believe all instances of AES (Actually Existing Socialism) are perfect or free of struggle, but instead that we can learn from their successes and their failures, as many of their problems will be faced by any Socialist country, and many of their successes can be replicated or improved.
As yet another recommendation, for if you aren’t feeling theory but instead want general history, I’m a big fan of Blowback, a very well-produced and thoroughly researched podcast that goes over the US Empire’s involvement with various wars and conflicts over the Cold War and until today. It manages to be funny at times, heartbreaking at others, but frequently it’s bittersweet or even hopeful, such as in the Cuban season. Lots of interviews with experts from the countries they talk about and various academics as well.
It’s great that you want to learn more, by the way!
500 word mini-essay on demsoc vs socdem inbound. ETA in 3… 2…
I went over 500 I think…
1…
Definitely this. Lemmy isn’t that big, so it pays to browse all. Just block any topic you don’t like. I had to block a lot of furry and meme communities because they don’t interest me.
And lemmy.ml communities are often managed by pro-communists and they don’t like if you don’t trash talk capitalism as much as they want you to
That’s a sad part of Lemmy
Oh yes, Lemmy opposing the far-right, so evil and awful.
Time to make accounts in lemmy.ml
I don’t think they are that dogmatic too.
Like, they seem to support China lead by a Socialist/Communist/Marxist political leadership, that declares its aim as transitioning into socialism by 2050 or so.This is absolutely nitpicking, but China is already Socialist, and considers itself as such. They have a “stages” theory of Socialism itself, 2050 is for the next stage in Socialism. They are Socialist becuse Public Ownership is principle in their economy, ie large firns and key industries are state owned and controlled, while smaller and less critical industries are privately owned. A rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory, to give a quick example.
They often leave a dogmatic impression when someone says something which is completely normal to hear and say in (for example) the USA, but is unknowingly bigoted or ignorant misinformation. The .ml admins have no time for that and I think its unfortunate that there’s little attempt at linking them to resourced that explain why their post was prejudiced, because it’s usually not intentional or heartless.
One can absolutely critisise China there and you’ll probably end up banned if you aren’t critical of the Russian Federation. I’ve made posts on Lemmygrad challenging their notion of China’s form of worker democracy. But certain popular critiques are just bigoted or unfounded propaganda which the admins will ban people for, so it comes off as just shutting down opposing viewpoints. And that’s really unfortunate.
Aah.
Is there something like the automod feature in reddit?
That would be solution to common misconceptions, right?Good idea. I have seen some instances using mod-privileged bots for automating some tasks, like making weekly posts in communities, but I don’t think I’ve seen an auto-moderation bot yet.
I personally think having pre-filled ban reasons is a great moderation tool which would be useful for Lemmy.
Said China doesn’t respect human rights because they’re doing a Uyghurs genocide, got banned from !memes@lemmy.ml
Yea, China #1, we love that they spy on their citizens, and don’t have freedom of speech
In the comment that got removed and got you temporarily banned, you just said “China is a place where human rights aren’t respected,” nothing about the Uyghur people or how the PRC treats them.
Either way, I recommend you read the UN investigation report and China’s response, both linked here.
As for spying on citizens, Western countries are just as, if not more guilty, of doing as such. Freedom of Speech doesn’t truly exist in the West either, when corporations dominate the media and the US State Department funds propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia in order to drum up hostility towards its geopolitical rivals. “Freedom of Speech” is more often a way to allow corporations unlimited control of speech through flooding the information space with information they want you to see. True Freedom of Speech would require placing restrictions on the power of lobbyists and corporations to dominate.
There’s a lot that can be legitimately criticized about the PRC, of course, but a lot of the common “criticism” tends to be either distorted or exaggerated, or from holding China to a higher standard than other countries, which makes genuine debate more difficult to find.
I got temporarily banned for a month indeed, but what does that change? Not a lot in my opinion. I won’t be going back anyways.
Why do I need to explain my reasoning when it’s pretty well known that China isn’t the best place to live for human rights? On the other hand, I get banned with no explanation, apart from a “Don’t be rude” rule, like what??
Companies censoring speech isn’t the same as a country censoring speech. As far as I’m concerned we still have some sort of freedom of press. Btw, where did I say the USA was perfect? I would put it in the bad countries for human rights due to how they treat non-US people (you probably know the many wars/conflicts they’ve been into and how they feel like they have every rights on other territories like how Isreal was created, or that they can kill civilians in military operations).
Surely the political opponents in Hong Kong are fine and not persecuted as well.
From the little I’ve read about the report you sent, which I don’t have the time to read rn, but might later, I saw multiple things like acts of “disruption of social order” can be considered as terrorist activity. We know that in countries with strong control of the government like China, “terrorism” is often used to justify repression against political opponents. It’s even stated in the report (didn’t saw that it was as I was writing this)
However, again, a number of the activities listed remain stated in vague and/or subjective terms without further clarification as to the content of what these may encompass, e.g., “disruption of social order and other serious social harm”.
What I’m reading is a lot of bad things. The report is rather incriminating.
It changes the nature of the ban, being given a slap on the wrist vs being permanently shut out, like I have been for calling out the Democrat’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians on .world comms, or giving a nuanced take on what Socialism should be considered on a comm moderated by PugJesus.
Either way, you need to explain because anti-China views are only really common in Europe and the US/Canada, Australia, and their allies like Japan. Pro-Chinese views, and views of a good nature on their Human Rights, are more common among people globally. Why does this discrepancy exist? Because western countries are not given free reign to plunder China economically like they do elsewhere, and thus manufacture outrage paid for by the US State Department.
It isn’t about calling the US perfect, it’s about weighing problems in China specifically more than problems elsewhere. China is not perfect, but at the same time it is better than contemporary powers.
As for speech censoring, the speech gets censored, why does it matter more to you that companies be able to do so?
As for HK, about 3/4s of the population want integration with the PRC, with some wishing more autonomy but very few wanting a hard break.
To return to the issue of Uyghur sepparatism, there is a well-documented history of violence in the region, such as the 2009 Urumqi Riots. There was factually a problem. We can critique the Chinese response, but this was a real problem China addressed with reeducation camps. Claims that these camps are for genocidal reasons aren’t backed up by UN investigation, though, such claims come exclusively from Christian Nationalist and US and UK government-funded propagandist Adrian Zenz, who believes China is the antichrist and it is his mission from God to condemn them.
Again, we can absolutely have real critique of China, but blindly repeating claims with dubious origins and generally maintaining a distrust of the Chinese on the basis of having a strong Public Sector is not real critique, hence why I wanted you to look at the UN report. This is a similar situation to the Iraqi UN Weapons Inspectors, who never found WMD but the US lied and invaded anyways. Real events are distorted so the US can pressure into economic capitulation, and even justify invasion, and then apologize if ever called out later for it.
So you spouted the standard route “China bad” takes.
Sure. China bad, USA bad, Russia bad. So? Doesn’t make my criticism invalid, nor misinformation.
There’s just a biased moderation that censors people that have strong takes against some countries.
It’s the same tedious thought terminating cliches that western chauvinists are pre-progammed to repeat. Many of them are misinformation, (like the “Uyghur genocide” narrative), but most of them don’t even have enough substance to even get to that level.
If you’re into political censorship and echo chambers, good for you. I value free speech, debates with diverse opinions
Going against the standard western viewpoint with respect to China is not an opinion that can be formed in a vacuum, so it isn’t going to be a real echo chamber. If you want to actually debate, I think Lemmy.ml is one of the better places on Lemmy to do so, assuming you aren’t just saying “China bad.” Do you have an example of an instance that is better for genuine, high-effort debate surrounding China?
any opinion or viewpoint can be an echo chamber
Saying terrorism is bad is a standard viewpoint, but people that are into it are often in a complete echo chamber
An echo chamber is a deliberate shutting out of opposing viewpoints. This is possible in areas where an ideology represents the status quo of an area, like a pro-US website in the US, but antagonistic views towards the status quo cannot divorce their context from that status quo.
I can be a Marxist-Leninist, but cannot avoid seeing mainstream pro-US media, it’s something I have to engage with to live my life in the US. On the contrary, it is very easy for a USian to completely shut out all interactions with Marxist-Leninists.
How do you feel about Stalin?
Overall positive.
I’ve heard that he supported the development of India. As an Indian, positive view here.
After joining lemmy, seeing arguments about him, got to know that he faced personal losses too, with his son, a soldier in the WW2, dying in a Nazi concentration camp as a PoW.
Have read that there were purges of officials and repression in fear of Nazi and other spies and that excesses did happen under his govt.
But considering how they were able to reduce poverty and were able to industrialise their nation, making them able to fight the Nazis, I see them overall positively.Have heard about the famine too. But not sure if it was purposeful like how Churchill took away foodgrains from Bengal. So negative view on it, but not sure how to see it. Whether it is intentional or natural cause or inefficiency.
How do you feel about Hitler?
Thurston and J Arch Getty have good books on Stalin. They’re both pretty well respected historians, so you can read stuff about the famine from their books. It’s not a pretty picture. Also, which part of India, if you don’t mind?
Famines are never going to be pretty, right?
I have seen pictures online of the Bengal and Mangalore famines that India suffered under British rule.My doubt on it is how much of it is natural and how much is intentional.
What do those historians say about that?I have seen people arguing and discussing about it online, with everything ranging from intentional punishment to bureaucratic inefficiency to feudal farmlords burning their produce and animals during the famine to how famines were common in the region until the 1950’s and also mentions of grain export
Also, which part of India, if you don’t mind?
Southern India
Are you Indian too? Which part?Dude, I know. I am an Indian too, and a socialist. Getty and Thurston definitely aren’t cold war propagandists. It is Robert Conquest, Anne Applebaum and more recently, Timothy Snyder who portray the famine as an intentional genocide done by evil Soviets. Getty and Thurston, especially Thurston was actually notorious for taking a more pro-Soviet stance. Wheatcroft and Davies did important work showing that the famine was caused by a combination of bad harvest and poor planning. As far as I am aware, the popular genocide/deliberate starvation line is not the historical consensus and has not been for some time after the opening of Soviet archives. Even liberal historians like Fitzpatrick and Krotkin debunk the many capitalist lies about the famine. People discussing it online generally have a very strange assortment of sources - from Snyder’s terrible book ‘Bloodlands’ to obsolete books like Tottle’s ‘Fraud, Famine and Fascism’ which was written before the opening of Soviet archives. r/AskHistorians is a good source for finding both Marxist and liberal sources, and it generally avoids neoconservatives like Conquest.
I am from the South too but am Marathi.
And other ones of us are just idiots.
One of us!
It’s small now, but growing. You can’t scroll infinitely for new content. It’s grown a lot in the time I’ve been here. The smallness can be a positive if you work to have genuine interactions with people. There’s no “karma” and some instances have disabled down votes entirely. You have sometimes subscribe to more than one community of the same topic (each on a different instance).
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Read the global feed. There’s lots of content if you spread the net wide.
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Block annoying posters and communities.
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Be nice to other lemmites.
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