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 [email protected] for documentation of it or checkout this list of curated documentation

On bans and censorships:

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://lemm.ee/post/65494823

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

https://lemmy.world/post/27054157

https://lemmy.world/post/27008261

Allowing altered headlines and permitting known propaganda outlets:

https://lemmy.world/post/30843744

https://lemmy.world/post/28275465

https://lemmy.world/post/27428838

https://lemmy.world/post/27416097

https://lemmy.world/post/27314050

https://lemmy.world/post/27288953

“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

  • @[email protected]
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    302 months ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      92 months ago

      they are more or less the same side of coins as conservatives, they even whine and post the same way.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 months ago

    I always go in and argue with those Tankie fucks when I have time, but I haven’t even seen them in the feeds lately.

    • sunzu2
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      22 months ago

      Active Operators will block know counter propaganda operatives since they know it is a futile exercise.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        Lmao, nah

        The intention of the exercise is not to appeal to propogandists. It is to inform readers who stumble upon propoganda.

        If what you claimed were true then the offending instances would not ban us for speaking the truth. They need to scrub clean our presence because we’re effective.

    • @[email protected]
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      52 months ago

      I occasionally see people sying this but where does it come from? Afaik Ukraine has as much of a white supremacist problem as Russia, but it is not mainstream or the majority

      • @[email protected]
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        92 months ago

        It comes from one of Putin’s justifications for invading Ukraine. One of the “objectives” was to denazify Ukraine. Tankies will point to neo Nazis like the original Azov Battalion fighting for Ukraine as proof Putin was right. Has 0 basis in reality but tankies dont live in reality.

          • @[email protected]
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            11 month ago

            Yes they are, but they’re a minority. Like finding one spider and burning down your house to take care of your “spider problem”.

      • Alphane Moon
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        31 month ago

        Afaik Ukraine has as much of a white supremacist problem as Russia

        Source? Keep in mind I am a non-white Ukrainian who has lived in both Russia and Ukraine and I speak the languages.

        • @[email protected]M
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          21 month ago

          Both the most veteran and largest battalions for Russia and Ukraine are promninently filled with neo-nazis in their leadership and within their history.

          Azov and Wagner

          • Alphane Moon
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            1 month ago

            There is broad agreement among observers that at its formation in Spring 2014, the Azov Battalion was associated with Neo-Nazi and far-right ideas, including through the use of symbolism and the political associations and statements of its leaders and cadre.[71][281] However, there is disagreement about the subsequent course of its evolution. Several researchers have stated in the years since that the Battalion’s successors have depoliticized or deradicalized, identifying key landmarks in that process as its November 2014 incorporation into the national guard, a 2017 expulsion of some far right radicals, and Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022

            Don’t lie! You clearly have no fucking clue what you are talking about and your reference to “white supremacy” in Ukraine is more of an attempt to establish a weird aesthetic. I dislike the term, but virtue signalling is an apt description of what you are doing.

            The fact that you think racism in russia Wagner (or even just Azov in Ukraine) shows that you can’t even conceptually evaluate a concept such the prevalence of racism.

            I was in Kyiv during russian siege in Feb 22. Every 100 m there was a military checkpoint on the road by my place. So you are saying I was discriminated against when I passed those checkpoints and I am lying because I am a “Ukrainian uncle tom”?

            We then left to the west of the country. We had the security services come to our rental apartment (standard procedure to check for saboteurs). So you claim that I am lying when I say my white relatives were far more freaked out by the interview than I was, because well Ukraine is extremely racist and they had to harass me in such a situation?

            And the fact that you think racism in russia is limited to Wagner means that you’re saying I never regularly encountered racism from both security services and regular russians (you probably don’t consider racism against Ukrainians to be racism, but that’s what I encountered in addition to being discriminater against and harassed because I am not white).

            Honestly, there is an abstract beauty that you are so confident in your ignorance that you had the gall to show me (a non-white Ukrainian who has lived in both russia and Ukraine for many years) Wikipedia articles for Azov and Wagner as your source.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮
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    162 months ago

    Switching accounts will result in the same for many of these grubworms, as they will simply be blocked at the individual level when they start saying shit that nobody wants to hear.

    • AwesomeLowlander
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      142 months ago

      There’s a lot of clueless users though, it’d be good to have them join the rest of us outside that shithole

  • @[email protected]
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    342 months ago

    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.

  • @[email protected]
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    22 months ago

    To paraphrase an old saying… Socialists will freely make us the rope to hang them with.

      • @[email protected]
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        92 months ago

        Yupp. Be socialist or even fricking MAGA all you want, as long as we can discuss in good faith and stick to the facts.
        The moment you say vaccines causes autism or that China is a democratic heaven, you can kindly kiss my posterior.

  • @[email protected]
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    102 months ago

    Haha ok. I would never be happy sitting behind some blockade on the fediverse, unable to even see what others are saying. Its funny that you are so afraid of their opinions that you have to lock yourself in the basement. But you do you. :)

    • guy
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      62 months ago

      Ignoring the misinformation, support for genocides and authoritarian regimes, no one is afraid of their ‘opinions’.

      It’s just that most .ml users are absolute cancer to discuss with

    • @[email protected]
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      282 months ago

      Yes, “Mao was good actually” is terrifying to me. It’s such a fresh, novel, and revolutionary concept that I feel my mind unraveling every time I see a brave ml warrior post it. Same with “war is bad so Ukraine is bad for defending against invasion.” The sheer intellect required to achieve such a unique understanding of these concepts is truly intimidating.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      182 months ago

      Haha ok. I would never be happy sitting behind some blockade on the fediverse, unable to even see what others are saying.

      There’s a difference between a veteran Lemming making a conscious choice to “see the other side for themselves” and a tentative-ex-Redditor checking the vibes of a new unknown place.

      Its funny that you are so afraid of their opinions that you have to lock yourself in the basement. But you do you. :)

      Lol, no. I’ve read their opinions, debated them multiple times even, and have come to the conclusion that their “opinions” are as toxic and/or dangerous misinformation as far-right “opinions”. Authoritarianism is authoritarianism whether it’s right or left shaded.

      If anything, I’m afraid of the potential damage it’s doing to the Lemmy-verse.

      Every person that comes here, is another person Reddit has lost and another notch against corporate social media. And that’s a beautiful thing worth protecting IMO

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        100% agree with the last part. But misinformation is fought by having discussions about it, not by censoring it.

        You say you are afraid of the potential damage its doing to the fediverse. Well, now you have removed your voice from the discussions. They will still be there, even if you are not looking at them. You just walked away from it.

        You know when you “protect” kids by not talking about something, it only becomes more exciting to them? I dont know, I rather just talk to the kids about it. Have a laugh about how weird the world is together.

        And I agree, debating them is not really worth doing. But state your opinion and walk away. I have some unpopular opinions too that Lemmy doesnt like. But I keep saying them. Because i still think im right about those things. But im not going to debate for long. Its not worth our time.

        • @[email protected]
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          122 months ago

          But state your opinion and walk away. get dogpiled by tankies calling you a western propagandist and then banned.

          Fixed. Seriously just scroll this comm to see what kind of “discussion” they allow.

          • @[email protected]
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            12 months ago

            Its understandable that tankies may react that way. But im not a tankie and I think their response leads to complete ignorance about what the world actually is.

            So maybe we shouldnt act like tankies ourselves, being members of the western world, with a more democratic view of what people deserve to have and be?

            • @[email protected]
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              72 months ago

              Nah, no civility-pill crap. Allowing an echo chamber so detached from reality to remain connected to the largest instance will only serve to alienate people who don’t fellate a statue of Stalin every morning. If it were possible to actually have nuanced discussion there, I would feel different, but it isn’t, so I don’t.

    • @[email protected]
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      312 months ago

      No one is afraid of their opinions. Everyone who has been on the fedi for a while has heard them, over, and over, and over. The mods, and the portion of the users who are grouped in with them, are campists who will defend anything places like China do, even if it is the exact same shit as the western imperialists. They also tend to spout a lot of apologia for harsh, punitive, legal systems, and police states, as long as it calls itself socialist. Hell, don’t even need to do that anymore, just have to be like “hey NATO imperialism bad!” and they will come to defend the honor of a country that is actively annexing, and colonizing, other states, because imperialism is acceptable when it isn’t the west. It is just them defending themselves, and/or liberating oppressed people, just like the US claims every time it bombs somewhere into the dirt. I have witnessed multiple instances of .ml users automatically dismissing any data from any source “western”, while claiming you aren’t capable of having a good faith argument, if you dismiss information from the CCP, in kind.

      I find that the large body of .ml users are not like this, but their mods, and a significant portion of the users, namely the most commonly seen names, are very much this way. There is no argument to be had, there is no fruitful discussion here. They are in their camp, and they can’t seem to truly understand people can hate both camps, and actually not want what either offers. So why interact at this point?

    • @[email protected]
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      162 months ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    112 months ago

    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.

    • HarkMahlberg
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      152 months ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      282 months ago

      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

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        Lemmy itself is apolitical

        This is an absurd statement.

        Its birth was political.

        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.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      2 months ago

      Edited, but I wasn’t aware it was needed for direct posts URLs, does it not work on your client if there’s no exclamation mark?

      Reverted

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        You had it right originally. You can’t do what he’s asking for, which is unfortunately something that Lemmy doesn’t support today. See my response to him. The exclamation syntax lets you make a link that, when viewed by viewers on different home instances, will take them to a view of that community on their own home instance. Can’t be done (today, anyway) for posts or comments, which is what you’re linking to.

        EDIT: Looking on fedia.io, it looks like unlike lemmy, mbin automatically converts links to other instances to local links, without any special syntax. All of your links on fedia.io’s view of your post are to views of the posts on fedia.io.

        I suppose that mbin’s approach might get a bit annoying if you want to link explicitly to the other instance, for troubleshooting or something, but I think that it’s probably addressing the most-common situation that people want correctly.

        EDIT2: Looking at piefed.social, piefed appears to have lemmy-style behavior rather than mbin-style behavior and doesn’t convert the links to local ones.

        EDIT3: And for completeness, since my own home instance runs a number of alternate lemmy Web UIs, and those could theoretically do the conversion in the frontend:

        EDIT4: Oh, wait. Voyager is working. It just doesn’t use the same URL path syntax as the other frontends.

        Voyager does not do the conversion, so lemmy-style behavior.

    • @[email protected]
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      282 months ago

      He can’t.

      Unfortunately, lemmy only supports instance-agnostic links (like, that are written to link to a user’s own home instance) to a community. It has no syntax permitting for this with links to posts or comments.

      If you’re using Firefox, you can install the Instance Assistant for Lemmy & Kbin, and it will modify pages on non-home instances to have a button in the right sidebar that will take you to the post on your home instance. With that, after you follow a link to a non-home-instance post, you can bounce to the corresponding post on your home instance.

  • AItoothbrush
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    202 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      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”

      • @[email protected]
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        52 months ago

        And when you say anything anti-Hamas or Stalin you get people who just continue to insult you and downvote bomb you.