This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781
It has also been posted to lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/591991
Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it’s important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone’s politics, and I’m certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.
My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.
This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing “orientalism” as the reason for the ban.
Screenshot of my own instance’s modlog, as viewed by an admin
I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in !worldnews@lemmy.ml that had been removed with the reason “Orientalist article”.
Screenshot of banned user’s history on lemmy.ml
Here’s the article that was removed, titled “China may face succession crisis”. It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having “a slight to moderate liberal bias” and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/
I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml’s rules that would suggest that “orientalism”—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance’s front page, and not in !worldnews@lemmy.ml.
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml
There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.
This is where I went from confused to concerned.
Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml’s moderation log.
Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It’s hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance’s mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I’ve done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can’t be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.
Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China’s racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism
Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don’t know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn’t behave like China. by @balerion@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism
These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance’s or community’s explicitly stated rules.
Banned @0x815@feddit.de reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago
Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Rule 1 and 2
I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml’s moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It’s only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.
I’d like to raise some awareness about this, and I’d like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.
I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don’t share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml’s rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.
Locking this thread as the discussion isnt going anywhere productive. If you dont like the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml, you can subscribe to a different one or create your own.
Locking this thread as the discussion isnt going anywhere productive. If you dont like the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml, you can subscribe to a different one or create your own.
I have not complained about the moderation in !worldnews@lemmy.ml. I am not asking that there be any change in moderation. I feel that I was very careful in making this clear, in the post.
What I have asked is that the moderation policy be stated more clearly and openly. I believe that it is in everyone’s interest that people coming to lemmy.ml understand the rules that they are expected to follow.
This is a teachable moment for Lemmy users, and Lemmy itself as a whole.
I’m not here to judge anyone’s opinions but to clearly state the facts. And the fact is: at least one of the admins of the largest lemmy server considers anti-CCP/Russia sentiment/argument to be harmful and worthy of a ban. That is their decision.
Thus, anyone who disagrees with that, would best move to another server if they wish to discuss those opinions. A worldnews sublemmy on another server such as lemmy.one can be the place where anti-CCP and anti-Russia attitudes are not considered harmful, possibly encouraged at lemmy.one admins and mods’ discretion.
This probably will not affect apolitical areas like lemmy.ml/c/pokemon for the most part. However as annoying as this situation is for some, this is why federation is a great thing. Otherwise all of Lemmy would be under rule of admins with these opinions.
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The thing I find wild here is that this presumably Marxist mod is banning criticism of 2023 Russia and China. Russia in 2023 is straight up fascist and China while with more communist dressing is also a capitalist hellscape - like most of the world.
China while with more communist dressing is also a capitalist hellscape - like most of the world.
The Chinese economy is still populated in large proportion by private markets, but that doesn’t mean it’s the same as the rest of the world. I think it’s a pat little excuse to not investigate things further just like how to dumb reactionaries China is just “authoritarian communist”. It’s like how radlibs will tell you the USSR was antisemitic while the far right both of the time and today will tell you it was controlled by Jews, the real goal isn’t to advance a specific thesis but to serve a range of theses to a range of people that pit them against an enemy of western imperialism.
Yeah, support to Russia makes no sense to me. And comparing NATO expansion with Russian try to expand with the war in Ukraine is a really bad take imo
China while with more communist dressing is also a capitalist hellscape
Well, they did a pretty good job at developing their country and capitalists have way less power than in the US or Europe for example.
If you compare it to India, the difference is flagrant. In 1990, they had a similar GDP per capita ppp (source). Now it is 3 times higher. They also take serious actions against poverty according to world bank (source)
However, the ban are clearly excessive. People should be allowed to denounce what happen in Xinjiang and Tibet
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The one thing I’m hopeful about is as you say, these issues will sort themselves out in the long term. Lemmy.ml gets to be the popular one out of virtue of being first, but other instances have the ability to grow a lot over time as well.
Lemmy isn’t perfect, it has many issues but I think it’s got the right structure and ingredients to allow for thoughtful, active communities.
Now, when I joined, I was somewhat taken aback by the sheer amount of propaganda on Lemmy in general, and the somewhat belligerent attitude of some users.
With the new users it should change to be more centrist and we should see less and less this kind of post as they will get downvoted
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God forbid it becomes “centrist.” This is not your space; go make your own centrist instance if that’s what you want; you have no right to dictate the nature of this one just because you’re here. This space was set up by communists to be communist.
Can’t wait until Hexbear federates here and libs stop trying to take over.
This space was set up by communists to be communist.
Was it? Seriously question. That wasn’t made clear to me when I signed up. I never would have signed up had I read that. I suspect the intensity of your views and those of the owner of this instance differ somewhat.
You would be wrong. Research who owns it, look at their profile picture and you’ll know in an instant lmao. Just head to the github repo and you’ll see.
This is not your space;
Wtf ? Keep it cool man. I joined like one year ago, when it was still labeled as a leftist instance. So I’m okay with it being leftist
A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers
However, it is not labeled as such in the sidebar anymore. So, I thought it was going to become a more generalist instance. If not, we should recommend beehaw.org
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
Also, it is against rule 2 to be that exclusive.
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tolerates xenophobia
I didn’t know this :(
That’s because it doesn’t, the dude is talking out his ass.
c/pokemon shouldn’t be here then
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is anti-any nation harmful and worthy of a ban? Or is it just anti-CCP/Russian sentiment that’s worthy of a ban?
A worldnews sublemmy on another server such as lemmy.one can be the place where anti-CCP and anti-Russia attitudes are not considered harmful, possibly encouraged at lemmy.one admins and mods’ discretion.
I think that beehaw’s news community is the place to do so
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Well, reddit liberals will be better over there, wouldn’t they ?
I prefer lemmy.ml to stay a leftist instance
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You’re right. I will stop recommending other instances
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I’d just noticed something similar to this myself, a user banned for saying something about “Russian Trolls” and another banned for saying “I hope so. All the russian and chinese apologists on here make me mad.”
This feels quite extreme and I am wondering “will commenting on this get me banned”
I think calling someone a “Russian Troll” should absolutely be a bannable offense unless you actually have evidence that they are a Russian troll and not just someone saying things about Russia you don’t agree with. “Apologist” has negative connotations but I personally don’t agree with banning someone for that.
In any case, if you can resist namecalling, it sounds like you’ll do fine?
Guess we all know what the .ml is referring to now
Please tell?
Marxism-Leninism, a lot of people on the lemmygrad sub use ML for short
Ok thanks
I can support Marxism without supporting Stalin or Mao though
Apparently you can’t according to the people over at lemmygrad
Imma be looking into raddle.me along side lemmy(I have a beehaw login though) because I don’t trust the lemmy devs despite the way the fediverse and lemmy are designed.
I was interested in Raddle until I saw their pinned post about “abolishing psychiatry” on their mental wellbeing community. As someone who needs psychiatric meds in order to not kill myself–and no, fellow libertarian leftists, that would not change under fully automated luxury gay space communism–I was pretty appalled. Psychiatry can be oppressive under capitalism, but anything can be oppressive under capitalism.
I do also have some ideological disagreements with them, not technically being an anarchist, but those concern me less.
Did you read the article posted, because the point of the article isn’t to take away whatever diagnosis you have or the care that you need. It’s about the relationship of the power structures in our society and their use of psychiatric diagnosis to pathologize and marginalize people. The ideological agreements with them is a fair concern I suppose as an anarchist I more strongly align with them than I do the Marxist Leninists developing Lemmy
Edit: to be clear I’m just trying to make sure we’re on the same page about the article, I’m not trying to invalidate your opinion outright.
Marxisms has its own flaws as an ideology, but absolutely, there is nothing in Marxist beliefs that requires authoritarian or totalitarian beliefs.
How do you expect marxist nations to defend themselves? Allende tried to preserve liberal democratic norms. The west couped him and installed a fascist dictator. Countless socialist nations and movements have been crushed by the west. Millions of people have been slaughtered. A million socialists were butchered in Indonesia alone. Millions more died in Korea and 80% of the buildings were leveled. Millions more in Vietnam. Progressive governments were toppled in the middle east and replaced with religious extremism that continues to dominate the region to this day. Everyone wants democracy, communists want democracy, but when you abolish capitalism in your country the west won’t let you have democracy.
the ml stands for Mali. People use .ml domains because they are free to register.
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Hey, look, my comment was removed.
Want to bet that the prior comment calling me a fascist and (weirdly) monarchist (which, ??) for being critical of the Chinese State is still there?
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That’s alarming behavior, and it’s coming from the core Lemmy developers. I had hoped they would keep it confined to LemmyGrad, but I’m not feeling so confident in that any more.
The only thing alarming thing here is the sheer amount of racism and orientalism spewing out of beehaw in this thread.
I fail to see racism and orientalism present in this thread. What I do see are people linking to lists of human rights violations committed by the CCP, people complaining that unequivocally pro-CCP messaging is disingenuous, and people upset that a ban reason was not adequately explained.
I’m a card-carrying communist who sees a lot wrong with China’s handling of political dissidents and ethnic minorities. From what I’m seeing about lenny.ml, it seems like milquetoast criticisms are being met with bans and censorship, and I see prominent users defending this practice citing “imperialistic anti-China propaganda” as being the reason why the uninitiated doesn’t blindly praise the CCP. This belief is rooted in some fact - American media tends to portray eastern countries in a harshly negative light - but I hardly think that means that all criticism is made in bad faith.
I’m reminded of unequivocally capitalist sites banning mentions of communism and critiques of capitalism, and I believe that this trend does nothing besides foster the echo chambers that I, at least, have been trying to escape from.
The fact that you fail to see the racism and orientalism in this thread is precisely the problem. The narrative about human rights violations by the CPC comes directly from US propaganda outlets, and has been debunked in detail repeatedly. Yet, racist westerners continue to regurgitate it because it fits perfectly with their chauvinistic world view. American media doesn’t just portray eastern countries harshly, it lies shamelessly about them.
Fighting what you perceive as racism but pushing your own racist views seems like a strange stance to take. But I would be lying if I said I was surprised.
pushing your own racist views
What racist views are they pushing?
Yet, racist westerners continue to regurgitate it because it fits perfectly with their chauvinistic world view. American media doesn’t just portray eastern countries harshly, it lies shamelessly about them.
Right there. If we are going by the rule of “Being critical of a country or group of people makes you racist” then statements such as that would surely qualify.
Aside from the fact that you’re basically doing the “when a black person calls me cracker, they are being racist” thing, the quote you give stipulates the group “racist westerners” and there are many westerners on this board, perhaps even including themself, who they are surely not calling all racist, so I don’t see the problem. There is a subset of the population of westerners that behaves in just that way. Supremacist thought isn’t as popular in China as in America, due to historical reasons, but Han people with racial chauvinist beliefs do certainly exist, and if you wanted to talk about Han people who are chauvinistic, you can. That is not the same as just saying offhand that China’s a fucking ethnostate, like multiple people in this thread have.
The main thing is that generalization is inconsistent in its implication when it refers to in-groups versus out-groups, so a speaker generally should be more specific when referring to out-groups with generalizations. If we had a Chinese communist here that you were talking to and it was clear the two of you both valued racial equality, and then you said something about “Han chauvinists” in Chinese society, I think it would be pretty clear that you don’t mean all Han people in Chinese society or even the bulk of them. If it’s just people with little personal experience of or connection to China talking and someone remarks about “Han chauvinists” with little context, it becomes less clear.
Again, for ease of understanding, imagine a white and a black stranger talking about black crime vs a bunch of white strangers from white communities talking about it. The latter group can still talk about it, but if they don’t want to be misunderstood, they should probably make sure they are all on the same page first.
Being critical of a . . . group of people makes you racist
No one is asserting this?
There is nothing racist about calling out white chauvinists doing chauvinism. You must be one of those blue lives matter people.
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Modderation Log might be a good feature so that moderators can moderate their fellow moderators
Dang. I wish we could have moderators that just removed trolls instead of people with opposing views.
But they are allowed to do what they want. I’m just talking about having a Lemmy instance with moderators like I described.
Describing tankies as ‘leftists’ seems a bit disingenuous
Marxist-Lenninists are the most common form of communist, with the most successful Socialist states in history, I do not understabd yout hostilities.
Communists don’t constitue all leftists and there are plenty of communists that aren’t authoritarian apologists and genocide deniers.
While true, the left/right axis becomes meaningless if we allow each side to define themselves by only their well-behaved adherents. For example, it would sure be convenient for Republicans in America to claims that Trump isn’t really on the right, and he doesn’t represent their views. In this case, the values embraced by Marx overlap heavily with values often held by people who describe themselves as leftists.
That said, I actually do think the left/right axis is meaningless. Humans are so much more complex than a reductive spectrum.
That’s a really good point. My criticism could be interpreted as saying Tankies aren’t leftists, while what I meant was not all leftists prescribe to that particular subset of leftist ideology.
That makes total sense.
Remember that the largest political party on the planet is the Communist Party of China. I regret to inform you that factoring in Georgists for the sake of argument does not change the math very much.
“Genocide denier” sure seems like a harsh thing to call someone without substantiation. Do you believe that Tibetans were genocided in the '90s like western media told us at the time?
Ah yes, China’s only political party. I wonder why they have so many members? I’m sure everyone is a staunch believer of the party and it’s values too.
Banning people under the guise of ‘orientalism’ for mentioning the genocide as the OP raised above doesn’t seem unsubstantiated. I’m taking about the genocide that’s currently happening. You ever met a Uyhgur whose family has been disappeared and are unable to return home?
China has multiple political parties, your statement needs more qualifiers. If someone wants to hold a municipal office, they can join other parties for that and many people do.
Also, you don’t need to be a member of it to participate in Chinese civil society, and in fact become a member is somewhat difficult in spite of the volume of membership.
I’m sure everyone is a staunch believer of the party and it’s values too.
This is a lame excuse because the same can be said of any organization, and yet even western sources acknowledge the high degree of support the CPC has.
Banning people under the guise of ‘orientalism’ for mentioning the genocide as the OP raised above doesn’t seem unsubstantiated. I’m taking about the genocide that’s currently happening. You ever met a Uyhgur whose family has been disappeared and are unable to return home?
I don’t think you have either, since people don’t get “disappeared”. The matter of their detention is public record and they typically can return home on weekends, and have generally already gone home because the detention is not indefinite and the program is winding down.
But I’ve seen this song and dance before: https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/3182072
China has multiple political parties, your statement needs more qualifiers. If someone wants to hold a municipal office, they can join other parties for that and many people do.
Oh you’re talking about the eight subservient parties that must acknowledge the CCP’s primacy in order to be allowed to exist? Sub-parties maybe, but even that is generous.
This is a lame excuse because the same can be said of any organization, and yet even western sources acknowledge the high degree of support the CPC has.
It’s not an excuse, it was calling out the unfounded assumption you were asserting in your comment. I’m sure the survey data of people who’s communications are closely monitored are entirely accurate and not at all influenced by fear of retribution. Let me guess, China’s internet is open, uncensored, and unmonitored too?
I don’t think you have either, since people don’t get “disappeared”. The matter of their detention is public record and they typically can return home on weekends, and have generally already gone home because the detention is not indefinite and the program is winding down.
Making more unfounded assumptions. I have been fortunate enough to befriend Uyghur’s who have had family members abducted by the Chinese government. It being a matter of public record is laughable. Do you honestly believe ANY government would create a paper trail let alone make it publicly available for people being held in indefinite detention? Since you’re so knowledgeable I’m sure you can produce some documents. I’m looking forward to looking them over.
Linking a cherry picked articles from two decades ago isn’t the slam dunk you seem to think it is. I’m sure I can jump on google scholar and find a contradicting source.
Yeah once I discovered the general lean of that instance, I made a decision to make my account over at Beehaw given the more inclusive policies and structure. I’d direct more users to either sign up there or consider creating a new instance.
To your point, they are entitled to their leanings and I welcome that (also follow some of their communities), but overall I don’t think it’s a great first representation of whats possible on Lemmy.
Yep, will do the same, ain’t no fucking way I’m staying at this instance. Hopefully tankies get crushed with number from reddit soon because this community of chinese/russian propaganda is depressing as fuck
Yeah, I heard rumors* about it but I’m hoping their admins and moderators can be better people and… Allow criticism of government? Like, as a minimum bar?
*Rumors being in regards to denying genocide, which, ouch.
Imma shrug off the tankie part and maybe leave it at “don’t take down posts critical of China like you work for them”…
The truth is unfortunately worse than genocide denial. One of the main lemmy.ml admins has spoken seemingly in support of the Xinjiang genocide (and presumably, implied, is also pro other genocides carried out by the Chinese State).
At no point did I support a genocide, I just agree with most of the world, including the Islamic world, that disagrees that a genocide is taking place.
White supremacists are convinced there’s a white genocide going on. If you were to disagree, does that make you a genocide denier?
Also you should consider the source. The US dropped an average of 60 bombs a day, every day on the middle east, during the Obama era, and western media was 100% complicit. Are these trustworthy sources to tell you what their enemies are up to?
I’ve been reading your comments and I see a worrying trend of false equivalency. As others have pointed out, two facts can be true without excluding each other.
You are being absurd by pretending that “100%” of Western media was complicit. You know full well that isn’t true.
Societies where in independent investigation and discourse is able to take place - Those societies are more able conduct independent and non-politicized research.
There are more of those societies in the West, not by some inherent positive quality of the West, but by historical intricacy.
Though honestly I think you know most of this, and that you are choosing intentionally to ignore the Chinese’s state abuses of its ethnic minorities. If you were intellectually honest there would be no way to deny the surrounding facts.
One thing does not exclude the other. You can both be right.
Not sure that holds logically. Part of the claim here is that there are untrustworthy sources of information involved. All of the “but the US bombed …” argument, as I read it, isn’t so much about two wrongs making a right, but about what biases our news sources have.
Of course, arguments over what is and isn’t trustworthy information get messy real quickly, and basically don’t work on the internet IME. But when it comes to the US/Anglosphere and China, without really knowing, personally I’m inclined to hear the argument out.
Yeah, could do without the straw man arguments and deflective non-answers.
Yea, I’m not entirely sure the response here is full of straw man and deflective arguments. Don’t get me wrong, they could be wrong as far as I know, but a big part of their position seems to be that western anglophonic news sources are not trust worthy (as messy as an argument that becomes) and that’s the relevance of what western military efforts were or were not criticised by western sources.
Of course, I imagine that there are or could be news sources that were critical of both the US military and the CCP. I don’t pay enough attention to know of them, but it’d be interesting to see for sure.
Only problem for me is that I have for sure known “progressive” white middle class people who were definitely a little too quick to shit on China in a way that was clearly mildly racist. So you know, I wouldn’t put it past some progressive media outlet to kinda be a little bit that way too.
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Poor ban reason is absolutely a major issue, and unfortunately not a new one.
While some of those posts actually do deserve bans under existing rules, even those are very poorly done.
The last example correctly cites a clear violation of “[Global] Rule 2” in the deletion, albeit confusingly not mentioning Global and a flimsy citation of Rule 1, and also gives a justified and appropriate 1d ban for [global] Rule 2. But even so, this is confusing when there are global rules and community rules. So staff should make an effort to mention whether the rule they enforced was global.
Another example [EDIT- see reply from CriticalResist8] of a justified but poorly given ban was this recent one. It’s a clear global rule 2 violation, but the reason “not nice” comes off as if no rule was broken, they just didn’t like the post. Ideally, it would be something like “Global Rule 2: Disrespectful”
Unfortunately it’s hard to know who is responsible due to the username redactions in the modlog by default (is it an individual rogue moderator, or accepted staff policy?) and therefore harder to resolve. Tagging @dessalines@lemmy.ml and @nutomic@lemmy.ml, because this is a systematic issue that potentially affects the global staff, with significant negative impacts.
While I know there may be more pressing development issues, I think it would be excellent to add to the roadmap a feature for instance staff and community staff to write a list of rules, and have them as selectable options in the ban reason/length form. This will incentivize staff to give descriptive, valid and more consistent bans and deletions, which don’t give the impression of arbitrary and personal deletions.
I believe the log entry you shared comes from a beehaw moderator, as the comment was made on one of their communities and I know they sometimes remove comments or ban people with this reason.
The moderation log is shared across all federated instances. I.e. since Lemmy.ml federates with beehaw, they both contain each other’s entries. It’s a bit confusing and I’m not sure why this feature was added, it didn’t use to work like that lol. But it wasn’t a removal done by the lemmy.ml team.
I doubt it was intentional but it’s hilarious that they criticized lemmy’s moderation with a mod action done on fucking beehaw.
While some of those posts actually do deserve bans under existing rules, even those are very poorly done.
Those posts / comments were reported and removed for orientalism, which is breaking rule #1. If you would have left those posts stay on your instance, that’s fine! We’re not demanding that you moderate according to our standards.
Well, I think (since it’s a common offense and not one a typical newcomer will understand as ‘racism’ or ‘bigotry’ in typical western discourse) I think it would be helpful to add the word “orientalism”, maybe even with a link to an explanation, in the rules.
While it may be obvious to us, I think it’s reasonably expected that a new reddit-refugee wouldn’t understand that. It would prevent avoidable drama, lowering mod workload.
My objection isn’t the actual decision to take those posts down, it’s that the ban message leaves a typical user guessing and the rules can make it more clear to newcomers what not to do.
We could add an explicit no orientalism to rule 1 I suppose, although to me its pretty clear that orientalism falls under racism.
Hey I saw your reply and I couldn’t really grasp how this would be so I want to engage in dialogue, feel free to ignore this if you don’t want. I’m not looking for a fight.
I was on reddit when the bulk of HK protests and the crackdown happened. There were many people posting about their own government treated them brutally and violently to suppress the protests. What has struck with me was the story of a person who was lured to the railway station, forcibly taken on a train to the mainland and beaten until he agreed to sign a confession. Do you think these people sharing those experiences or sharing news articles highlighting their plight are somehow racist?
Now, I’m not a white person, neither am I Chinese. However my grandfather has undergone similar experience as a young person when he tried to protest against authoritarian actions of the government in our country. This makes me perhaps more empathetic to plight of people sharing their experiences from HK and sometimes I share this with others? Does that make me racist/orientalist?
Lastly, I’ve known a handful of people from China of which most were extremely nice and hospitable to me. Many of them are my friends. After seeing struggles they face under this government and their past experiences, I honestly want them to be able to live under a system where they suffer less. I really have nothing against people of China. They’re amazing. That doesn’t extend to whatever government they might live under.
I appreciate your response, and I understand that seeing that content on western-controlled media platforms like reddit, can be very jarring.
I maintiain many megathreads on these topics, but I’m convinced they’d be met with a negative reaction. People just do not tolerate anything positive being said about China. They’ve been inundated with a constant flow of anti-China atrocity propaganda from the western media giants, every single day, for years, in a way that warps their perspective, in the same way that some of my older family members have been made increasingly more racist by fox news.
It took me many years of being lied to consistently, growing up in the US during its wars on Iraq and the peoples of the middle east, to question the source, and subject everything that comes from these platforms with a high degree of scrutiny, especially when the US is the one doing the demonizing.
I appreciate your response, and I understand that seeing that content on western-controlled media platforms like reddit, can be very jarring.
You don’t really no. How much “appreciation” really goes into not adressing the meat of their comment? But instead attacking the fact that oppressed Chinese turn to international forums to voice their grievences? Your “appreciation” is hollow; valueless.
People just do not tolerate anything positive being said about China.
Look up any content on Chinese electric vehicles, the country’s investments in renewable energy, or even the tit-for-that trade war in semiconductors with the US, and tell me that is true. Claiming people “can’t tolerate anything positive being said about China” is nothing more than hyperbolic FUD, and it’s especially disengenious to claim that in response to a question specifically about how the experiences of Chinese oppression elicits posts from outsiders, many of whom have themselves been oppressed and feel comraderie with Hong Kongers or the Uyghurs.
Again, you’re not actually adressing their question - is it “orientalism” to comment in opposition to the CCP’s oppression on Lemmy.ml or not?
They’ve been inundated with a constant flow of anti-China atrocity propaganda from the western media giants, every single day, for years, in a way that warps their perspective, in the same way that some of my older family members have been made increasingly more racist by fox news.
China turned a loitering couple being thrown out of a hotel while on vacation into a diplomatic incident with my country, and then attacked, among other things, media freedoms (a fundamental right here) when a satire “news show” (think Last Week Tonight) covered the fact that China’s ambassador demanded an apology from the government over it and had threatened “major consequences” if we didn’t meet their demands.
China’s behaviour needs no crooked lens to make people dislike it, even without taking into account whatever the CCP is doing at home.
It took me many years of being lied to consistently, growing up in the US during its wars on Iraq and the peoples of the middle east, to question the source, and subject everything that comes from these platforms with a high degree of scrutiny, especially when the US is the one doing the demonizing.
Again - you are not answering their question!
Hey, thank you for responding to the above comment. It is a topic close to me and seeing how the response indicated they hadn’t really heard anything I had to say, I felt like I couldn’t really reply at that point except to fight and I wasn’t in a place to do that.
Forgive me if I misunderstood, are you implying OP’s friends and other first hand accounts were influenced by the US media?
Hey! Thank you for calling out what they said. I had decided to not respond given that I felt I couldn’t really engage in a dialogue after reading that.
So a thought I had, does this kind of reasoning extend to western sources talking about western issues? I think a lot of people would agree on the principle of scepticism towards sources originating from places with a completely different political climate, so extending that to include many different political leanings and not only orientalism, would be a lot easier for people to stomach. As I said, just a thought
I think a lot of us agree with you, but it’s a potentially missed opportunity to educate those who are oblivious is all.
Having posts removed with reasons given is education. It looks more like it’s an unwelcone lesson, which isn’t the fault of this instance. This site should not tolerate xenophobia just because Redditors build and embrace it.
Also anyone banned can just leatmrn the lesson and make a new account.
Good on you for trying to find a solution in a very respectful and diplomatic manner so that everyone can gain something from this :)
I would be curious to know if the admins responsible are the actual lemmy devs or someone else administering the lemmy.ml instance.
I remember first browsing lemmy without an account on jebora and being a little bit scared by some of the content that was showing up. Which is why I ended up making an account on beehaw.
They are the devs, based on reddit posts when the project was first getting started.
And you can see the main developer’s comments in this same thread defending these actions.
Just saw that. That person was saying these comments criticizing Chinese government are racist. A statement that I’m not able to digest. If a Chinese dissident posted an article criticizing the governments actions, they would be considered racist?
My two cents of opinion:
I feel like the part (the flagship instance, lemmy.ml) and the whole (this “chunk” of the Fediverse - including lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml, beehaw.org, lemmy.one, and so many more) should have different names. Because what’s happening is that people invite each other “to Lemmy” (the whole), people hit “lemmy” (the part) and that creates some conflict. It’s simply a matter of clarity.
Regarding lemmy.ml itself, and its rules: the logical consequences of a rule might be obvious for someone who’s better informed, but not for someone less informed. As such, perhaps “orientalism” should be explicitly listed as an example of rule #1. It would further discourage those people to come to lemmy.ml, and instead join or build other instances; thus reducing overall moderation work for the admins, and I feel like this would be rather quick to implement.
