Hey everyone, I’m new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here (on the official site it says “Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.”).
The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the “lemmy.ml” server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers”.
So I thought I try that one when it’s from Lemmy’s own developers. When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?
it’s not sketchy, it’s basically a captcha to keep down automated bot sign ups, and they link to that document in particular, i assume, because the devs are marxists and figure folks who are vehemently anti-communist would refuse and thus keep down their moderation load.
The most correct answer here honestly.
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.ml is actually Mali’s TLD. That it happens to also be an initialism for Marxism-Leninism is a coincidence.
That they picked it specifically is not a coincidence, though.
Right, but .ml doesn’t stand for Marxist-Leninist is the thrust of what I’m saying.
Except it does stand for that in this context. It’s like saying “the TV in twitch.tv doesn’t stand for television, it’s Tuvalu”, like, yes the ccTLD tv is Tuvalu’s, but twitch wouldn’t have chosen that TLD if it weren’t for the “coincidence”.
I used to think it stood for machine learning.
It does stand for Tuvalu. It is a happy coincidence for Twitch and any other media company that wants to use that TLD that such a seemingly in theme TLD exists (so long as you only use the abbreviation and never spell out what the TLD actually stands for), but .tv 100% refers to Tuvalu. There isn’t a Television-land that it’s reserved for.
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Mali also happens to be under attack by US funded terrorists. The same pattern repeats itself over and over and over
The ccTLD was free when lemmy started. And developers like to test out things on free resources. The ccTLD just became paid last year.
Repeating the same thing for the 1000th time doesn’t make it the truth.
Yes they’re tankies, have awful censorship and are thin skin snowflakes. but making out the whole .ml ccTLD a marxists-leninist agenda just makes them see you as conspiracy nuts.
For what? a couple domains you’ve noticed to fit your narrative? Holy fucking batman. LMAO!
… when did I say everything on .ml domain is marxist-leninist? It’s not any kind of conspiracy lol.
I said they picked this one because it was an obvious reference. Apparently some other people have spoken directly to them and said it was purely because it was free. Which I didn’t realize, and also makes sense.
They used that TLD because it had the same letters as Marxist-Leninist, not because they’re from Mali. They’re not from Mali.
So you are a mind reader now?
Sometimes people write their reasons for doing things down and other people read them and they don’t need to read anyone’s mind to know why they said they did something.
Why do people keep repeating this? Every time they do someone corrects them but they seem to just assume that’s what .ml is without so much as a google search about it.
To be fair, it is a large coincidence. I get that it’s wrong, but it’s widespread because the dots are close enough the brain closes the gap by itself.
It’s not exactly wrong, though. It’s clearly intentionally chosen because people are gonna connect these dots.
I’ve been told directly by the admins that it was picked because it was free. I don’t doubt that the reference wasn’t thought of, but the driving factor was that the domain is free.
Fair enough, then.
So .ml isn’t an intentional reference to communism?
The domain was initially managed by Sotelma, a Malian telecommunications company. After Sotelma was privatised in 2009, the .ml zone was redelegated by IANA to the Agence des Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication (AGETIC), a Malian government agency, and the process completed in 2013.[1] The agency then announced that it would give away .ml domains for free in partnership with Freenom with a view to improve the usage and the knowledge of the IT industry in Mali. It was the first African nation to start giving away domains for free.[2][3][4] The ten-year contract with Freenom expired on 17 July 2023. Since then the registry is operated by AGETIC itself and the free domain offer was discontinued. All paid Freenom .ml domains were migrated to the new system.
I understand that, but I’m asking whether a .ml domain was chosen as a quirky little reference to communism? Like, I can start selling contacts on contacts.contact. I’m curious about the intent
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It was free making .ml domains good for web development.
I’m sure @dessalines and @nutomic has a chuckle about it. Definitely a fitting TLD to use, especially for lemmygrad.
So, there are a few different categories of TLDs.
com,net, andorgare among the original generic TLDs, which had the ideas of being for specific types of site, but in practice have always been available for pretty much any purpose.Then there are country-code TLDs, your
au,ca, andtvdomains. In these, the registrar of that particular country sets the rules. au domains require some specific connection to Australia, while Tuvalu has seen it as a good source of income for the country to sell.tvdomains to sites that want to have a domain that recognises their primary purpose as relating to video.In 2012, ICANN opened up the ability to buy new TLDs with almost no restrictions beyond the minimum 3 character length. Though technically
com,net,org, etc. are considered generic TLDs, when you see people say gTLD they almost always mean those created under this new scheme. Examples includezone(which my instance runs on),new(owned by Google and restricted to people who use it to perform “new” actions, like Google’s own docs.new which creates a new Google Doc), andtokyo(intended for use by things related to Tokyo, but not restricted to such. Other city gTLDs also exist, likemelbournewhich restricts to businesses and citizens of Victoria). gTLDs are very expensive to create, but whoever owns the gTLD can choose what rules it applies to domains registered under it.So if you want a domain name that calls to a particular thing, you can find a gTLD that matches that thing and is open for registration for your purpose, or you can spend big to register a gTLD for yourself, or find a ccTLD that’s open to those outside the actual country and which fits your purpose.
Mali’s a weird one because the reports were that .ml domains not related to Mali were being restricted last year, and fmhy.ml lost their domain over that. So it’s weird that lemmy.ml did not.
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Where do you get these insights?
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The .ml domain stands for the country of Mali, but lemmy.ml definitely chose that domain because it can stand for Marxist-Leninist.
You spelt militant anti-capitalists wrong, its spelt “tankie”
All Marxists and Anarchists are “tankies?” Lol.
You’re catching on well done
Welcome to the Fediverse! Somebody has probably told you this, but I just realized that I forgot to hit “Post” before I went to dinner. Here it is anyways.
When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism” which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I’ve never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it’s part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.
The applications and copying of a particular line is a simple form of spam prevention. The fact that the line is from “The Principles of Communism" is probably because the owners of that particular instance (who are also the main developers) are communist. I believe they also run Lemmygrad, which is full on Marxist, and one of the more commonly blocked instances. Lemmy.ml is intended to be a more mainstream instance but like much of the Fedi leans hard left.
I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn’t publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here
Lemmy is censorship resistant, but not censorship free. There is a difference. Censorship (or moderation, depending on your view point) happens at 3 levels, user, community, and instance. You can’t do much if other users find you obnoxious and decide to block you, but if you find the moderation of a community to be over bearing and if your current instance allows, you can create your own community from your current instance and mod it how you see fit within the guidelines of your instance. If you find your instance’s moderation to be overbearing, you can create your own instance and moderate it however you see fit. However, you will still be subject to the moderation policies of the communities (and their home instances) that you subscribe to.
In the Fedi you have absolute freedom of speech, but nobody is required to give you a soapbox or megaphone and nobody is required to listen to you.
Seems like a simple task to help verify that you are not a bot. It might also help deter applicants who are anti-communist. I guess you solved the problem for yourself by choosing a different instance.
Probably this, I have had to do the same for private tracker sign ups.
.ml is treated as a bit of a bogeyman around here - most of my interactions with their instance and users has been good. I realise this could be different for others. But, yes, they are Marxist-Leninist so, obviously, their opinions and content will be closely aligned with their political philosophy. In my personal opinion and experience .world seems to have vacuumed-up a tremendous amount of people from the other site you mentioned (Robbit?). Their netiquette seems to have not changed. Also, myself and some others have noticed that on .world it’s not unusual to see comments that express views from outside what the majority believe get deleted. Fortunately the “mod logs” are public record so you can see why comments were deleted, whom by and what the original post/comment was. (I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed) I hope you enjoy your time here. Welcome.
(I guess with the exception of illegal content that has to be scrubbed)
Correct. There is a “purge” feature, but I’ve not yet had to resort such measures after several months of admining.
Thank you (and your fellow admins) for all you do and the time you sacrifice. It is appreciated, by me at least. I don’t even want to consider what vile obscenity you run the risk of exposing yourselves to and I’m happy you’ve not yet had to purge anything; but there’s some sick individuals out there and I’m glad you’re a bulwark against that.
Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.").
Yes, exactly, you can host your own or sign up at one someone’s already hosts. The resistance is in the ability to choose which admins you trust and align with your views while still interacting with the rest of us.
The devs run their own and have their own rules and censorship but you don’t have to sign up there. Does that help?
Helps a lot, thanks for your answer!
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Yeah when I joined IIRC I just had to write a sentence about why I wanted to join. The communism thing made me laugh though!
The fact that each instance can have its own rules and culture is f a b. I love that’s one of the criteria. Mander.xyz should have a ‘identify all the creatures from the Triassic’ image captcha.
I don’t know how to set up a specific image captcha, but I like that idea! I have added that to the registration form 😛
Open source is inherently political and you depend on software being developed by communists. We are here to evade corporate censorship, censor reactionaries, spread agitprop, and discuss raising the quality of life of all working people.
Not just tech workers. Everyone.
The developers of Lemmy are Communists, they don’t hide this fact.
To answer your first question, there are no “free speech” instances in wide use, depending on your point of view an instance might be “censoring” or fighting “misinformation.” It’s up to you to pick an instance you want.
Yeah lemmy.ml is full of commie bastards…😂😂😂
Why don’t you move if you are aware of it?
It’s phrased in a positive manner, sarcastically.
Indeed. Anytime someone asks for my ideology I always say “I’m a filthy commie.” 😂
You misunderstand: that is why we’re here.
There’s plenty of censorship on Lemmy, but unlike Reddit, the censorship is orchestrated by the individual server, not by a corporation in control of the whole ecosystem. Go post something pro-capitalist on lemmy.ml, or something claiming climate change is a hoax on slrpnk.net, or something anti-trans on lemmy.blahaj.zone and see how fast it gets taken down - you could consider that censorship, but the reason Lemmy is better than Reddit in this regard is that you can go post that same thing on another instance, in a community that supports those views, and it’ll stay up. It’s all up to the administration of the individual instance.
Even if you can’t find an instance / community that will espouse your unique views, you can create your own, and post whatever you like, and everyone who federates with you will be able to see it. That’s how Lemmy is resistant to censorship.
I’m not touching the lemmy.ml question with a ten foot pole, someone else can field that one.
I only use lemmy.world and find it more open to free speech than reddit ever was. Reddit has gotten worse over the years. I was never a big reddit user, but just a few weeks ago I was in a non political non controversial group. None of my comments violated the rules. Out of the blue I was banned. I was scratching my head. I was told that the asshole mod of the group went through my post and comment history and found “one” comment unrelated to the group in question that they didn’t like and therefore banned me. The mods and Admins over there are dedicated to the hive mind. I am never going back
The fediverse is not really about avoiding censorship as it is about providing choice. That means the choice to listen to who you want to listen to (i.e. what servers to (de)federate from/to), the choice to post whatever you want (but you might get banned from your own instance or any other instance, that’s their prerogative), the choice of administrators and moderators (i.e. which instance you sign up to and what communities you participate in).
All of that stuff doesn’t really have to do with censorship directly, but it has implications for censorship. The fediverse is not built primarily to avoid censorship though, and in some cases it is made to make “censorship” (moderation) easier, rather than harder.
most people have answered your questions so i want to chime in with the information that i wish someone had told me when i first joined:
a lot of people came to lemmy from reddit like you and i both did and also mostly for the same reasons. most of them went to lemmy.world because it was the first search result on the big search engines like google & bing. those people have turned lemmy.world into a mini reddit and ended up recreating the same problems that reddit has plus more; hence the bot check that you ran into when you signed up.
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent; i think of it like if r/politics; r/anarchy/; r/communism; r/socialism; etc. went off and created another social media platform and then started discussing everything like reddit does, but from this perspective. instances is the name given to individual servers and all those servers combined is nicknamed the lemmyverse, or lemmy, for short.
the fediverse is the nickname given to the pubg protocol that’s shared between all the platforms that use it like lemmy, mastadon, kbin, threads, bluesky, etc and that means that the conversations from all of those platforms are shared amongst each other so it’s possible to be on lemmy and have a conversation with someone on kbin, for example. i stick with lemmy because it’s doesn’t have any venture capital investors pushing the admins to enshitify it to maximize profits like has been happening to reddit and bluesky; i’ve been moving from one social media platform to another because of enshitification like reddit’s since the 1990s (before it was called social media) so this last part matters to me a lot.
i started off on lemmy.world like most ex-redditors did and discovered that they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations so i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody due to fact they’re the primary instance where lemmy development takes place. the federation is what makes lemmy decentralized and when you defederate; you cut yourself off from the rest of the lemmyverse, but lemmy.world and some of the other instances that got most of the ex-redditors like the star trek instance use it to try cut off content and people from the instances that they don’t like and that’s their right since it’s their instance. lemmy is decentralized so trying to cut out people & content only serves to cut yourself off and that’s intention behind the fediverse; to make it so that no power tripping mod or ban happy admin can stop the conversation like they do on reddit.
everything is done by volunteers and donations and, if you don’t like one instance; you can move onto any other one and still get a similar experience. i don’t like letting other people decide what i can & can’t see and who i can & can’t talk to so i mostly stick to the instances that don’t defederate with anybody like lemmy.ml and i use the block-people and block-communities features when i feel like i need them for myself.
they’ve duplicated the censorship thing that reddit likes to do with defederations
I disagree that defederation is censorship, but no worries, we don’t have to agree! However:
i switched to lemmy.ml since it doesn’t defederate with anybody
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
One of my primary criteria when I needed to make a new lemmy account (due to problems with my original instance) was to be sure I picked an instance that had pre-emptively defederated from Threads. (as .ml does, but there are a lot more in that list)
If you switch to the “blocked” tab you’ll see that this is absolutely not true.
oh yes, i keep forgetting about the fascist and corporate shill instances; they were also the reason why i went with lemmy.ml and why i think it’ll take longer for it to enshitify. thanks for correction.
the fediverse is the nickname given to [instances using] the pubg protocol
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
the original instances of lemmy all have a strong leftist bent
[Bonus info]
Reddit has a history of big events when a clump of subreddits get banned all at once when a newspaper reports on them. A lot of right-wing ones went to Voat and later *.win, and some socialist ones (notably /r/GenZedong) went to Lemmygrad, which became the largest federated instance at the time. /r/chapotraphouse also made their own fork, Hexbear, although while it was the largest, it wasn’t federated with the rest for years. Most instances were either hard-left (e.g. Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml, SLRPNK) or a slight left, but tge third most populous for a while was Wolfballs, a ‘free speech’ instance, de facto alt-right (US right-Libertarian style instance), which ended up defederated from almost all the others due to constant bigotry and rule breaking when posting on other instances. Wolfballs admin eventually shut it down before the Reddit API exodus because, among other reasons, they realized the neo-Nazis among their users were serious and not just trolling.
Overall, the few right-leaning instances are alienated from the bulk of federation and become islands or vaporize, but most just dismiss Lemmy or even the Fediverse at large as a left wing commie thing.
Haha I’m guessing that was meant to say ActivityPub
yes, that’s what i get for going fast; thanks for the correction and the history lesson.
If you have an email address, you’re already used to the federated service pattern. When you sign up for a gmail, you’re making an account with Google to be able to send emails to anyone else with an email address. And there’s nothing stopping Google from making you fill out a “sketchy” application to get an account.
On Lemmy, each instance has its own set of rules, and if you don’t like them, you just make an account on a different instance.
As far as censorship, each “community” (analog to subreddit) lives on a certain instance and the rules of that instance apply.
Edit: also on the topic of communism, however you feel about communism in the physical world is irrelevant when it comes to the digital world. Free and Open Source Software makes the world go 'round, and is often communist in nature, even if done unintentionally. The pattern of people developing software for their own purposes, and then sharing it freely with others is the purest form of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” That said, running an instance isn’t free, so make sure to kick your instance a few bucks if you appreciate their work.
Okay but implying that a given instance is the main community for Lemmy by promoting that it’s run by Lemmy’s developers and then making people repeat phrases from the Communist Manifesto just to make an account ain’t exactly the best first impression to give, no?
If they’ve been trained to immediately recoil at the word “communism”, and don’t understand how federated moderation works, then yes, it’ll probably scare away a good number of users. But on the flip side it’s not a for-profit business trying to hook DAU using predatory and emotionally exploitative patterns, so who cares about first impressions? The people who use Lemmy know why they’re using it.
It’s not the context of the article, it’s the presumption of solemn affirmation as a requirement to entry that is agregious, no?
You’re just restating what OP said. I refer you to my original post.
Yeah, you’re discussing communism specifically. I have no beef with communism or any other political ideology. Except perhaps capitalism, I might have beef with that. Digressions aside, the ask could be for quoting an article about Spongebob Squarepants and I would have the same grievance. Can we discuss the action itself, without going into a discussion about communism?
If you don’t like SpongeBob, pick a different instance, that’s federation.
To me this is like having a problem with the flags someone else has in their yard. Not your yard, not your flags. You’re free to not like their flags, but if your grievance is with the action of them peacefully demonstrating free speech, that’s a you problem.
Sure, maybe that guy also happens to work at the flag factory down the street. Probably explains why he has so many flags. Doesn’t mean he’s going to make you put the same flags he likes in your yard.
Edit: for the record, I’m not downvoting you, I think you’ve been very reasonable in this discussion
I appreciate you addressing the downvoting; I had noticed the trend and it’s very easy to jump to the “I’m under a personal attack” conclusion.
While I believe 107% that each instance owner can do what they want; if this given instance is the first instance to which most people will be introduced, being the closest thing to an “official” instance, should they have a duty, or at the very least, an interest, in maximizing the inclusitivity of their community?
Ensure you aren’t a bot I guess, and if somebody programs the paste text they can switch the text to copy from?
