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 [email protected] 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 [email protected].
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]
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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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 [email protected], you can subscribe to a different one or create your own.
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
Go learn about free TLDs in the market instead of spreading baseless conspiracy theories on the internet.
Political discussion is crucial for the success of this platform. I hope it is just an outlier and they can address this. Perfectly valid concerns.
Nobody should be banned for expressing political beliefs. I prefer a platform that allows people to have some freedom over reddit. Though if that were true I’d be happy to move my ass over to another instance.
I did like the look of beehaw but I noticed you can’t create your own communities which I’m a little sad about.
Join “Lemmy.world” ; here you can create your own communities 🙂
Respect and thanks to the creators of lemmy-software, pretty sure they have friends (states) with big pockets 😆 !
I’m not 100% sure what you meant, but that would actually be pretty awesome if China funded the development of free, open source, federated services like Lemmy. Imagine all that could be achieved.
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?
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?
Keep baiting and weaseling, it will not work.
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.
oMgGg cULtuRaL mArXisT!1!!1111 how dare China Russia defeat my daddy Nazism??? - least fascist Anglo nationalist
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 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.
Beehaw disables downvoting and tolerates xenophobia. Does not look like a civilised instance to me, or a good generalised instance.
tolerates xenophobia
I didn’t know this :(
That’s because it doesn’t, the dude is talking out his ass.
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.
c/pokemon shouldn’t be here then
LOL gtfo liberals, go be a xenophobe elsewhere. Go to sopuli, Finnish admin is pro NATO racist and a Russophobe, I bet you will like the vibes there.
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
The instance where downvotes are disabled and all the liberal fashies are migrating to? Wow, no surprise it will be tolerant of xenophobia.
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 @[email protected] and @[email protected], 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
There is nothing racist about calling out white chauvinists doing chauvinism. You must be one of those blue lives matter people.
If you are a card carrying communist, I am Karl Marx himself. You are just a western chauvinist ignoramus.
https://prospect.org/politics/congress-proposes-500-million-for-negative-news-coverage-of-china/
Its like everyone got holed up in beehaw and sopuli… just like I have continued to point out for months at this point.
“orientalism”—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones
That’s not what is meant here.
Since the publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term “Orientalism” to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies.
So this would fall under the “no bigotry” rule.
This is the case, yes. Orientalism is the condescending and patronizing attitude (think rudyard kipling) many westerners (especially those from the US, who have been pumped full of sinophobia non-stop since the trade war began) towards other peoples they view as inferior. Anything from a Middle-eastern, Chinese, Indian, or Russian source is seen as illegitimate, evil, sinister, “authoritarian”, whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc. Its 100% an instance of breaking rule 1: no bigotry, and alienates most of the people on the planet.
Side point, but I was watching a documentary from 2011 (I think inside job? about the 2008 financial crisis), before the trade war began, and its night and day. Not a single negative thing said about the PRC, and this was just a few years ago.
whereas anything from a western source is seen as cultured, measured, dignified, etc.
No leftist has ever believed that, and it is a bad faith argument.
It’s not that they “believe” it, but it’s a glaring blind spot that takes time to be acknowledged and contended with.
You can go out and be the biggest leftist of all and support LGBT rights, universal healthcare, whatever, but it’s not like people understand every page of socialist theory and worldview on Day 1. There are many Western leftists at this early stage who have not studied topics like the Chinese Revolution (for instance) from a socialist perspective. Naturally, they are going to tend to repeat liberal talking points until they’ve done that.
Sure they one can be a “leftist” who is fighting for “the right thing”, but for me, I know that I have grown massively in my understanding of the world (modern and historical), and continue to do so. I assuredly have blind spots of my own that I have yet to deal with.
but for me, I know that I have grown massively in my understanding of the world (modern and historical), and continue to do so. I assuredly have blind spots of my own that I have yet to deal with.
This is basically where I am. I’ve learned a lot in my years to see that the world is very complex and nuanced and many assumptions I had were completely baseless. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am far too ignorant of the history and geopolitics of the USSR/China to really feel like I have an informed opinion that isn’t influenced by cold war propaganda. And I just have not had the time to rectify that yet.
Totally, and once you get there you can and should have criticisms of both countries and how they have operated and the decisions their leaders have made. It’s not that they are above criticism, but its exhausting to hear criticisms from people who obviously haven’t done their homework and they let the propaganda (seated in racism/orientalism/whatever Red Scare shit) do the talking.
but its exhausting to hear criticisms from people who obviously haven’t done their homework and they let the propaganda (seated in racism/orientalism/whatever Red Scare shit) do the talking.
Yep. This is why I’m really leaning more on the side of the mods and general culture on this instance (and others) than the users flinging loaded language and spreading FUD about the platform.
the users flinging loaded language and spreading FUD about the platform.
Extremely dorky to do that on a federated site. Set up an instance and federate.
Nobody seems to give a shit that all major social media is owned by sketchy billionaires who actually have the power to fuck shit up, but one FOSS developer is an ardent communist (but not known to be a member of any org or party where he could actually do anything (no offense)), and all of a sudden that somehow is an issue for just using the software (as intended by the dev!)
It’s fine to acknowledge tat you don’t have the background information.
Just trust the consensus and intersecting beliefs and analysis of professional academics and historians over internet tankies. Because one group lies more than the other, and it isn’t the academics.
Some of the very first articles I read that pushed me toward leftism were The Responsibility of Intellectuals and Manufacturing Consent. So no I’m not apt to blindly accept the consensus of academics and Western elites without looking at it as closely as I can.
I’m not saying blind spots don’t exist. What I was doing is calling out a genocide denier for using bad-faith arguments.
If you are a leftist, I am Mao Zedong. Stop pretending to be a leftist while all your posting reveals you being in the other direction.
Being critical of a totalitarian and Imperialist ethnostate - by which I mean the Chinese state - is not bigotry.
Do you know what the most common profession for members of the NPC, the national people’s congress, the main governing body of the PRC, is? Industrial engineer
Guess what the most common profession is for liberal democracies? Lawyers.
I don’t say this because I don’t like lawyers 🤣 , I have one in the family. I say it only to point out that most of what you’ve learned about China, is coming through a heavy media filter, from a media who only seeks to demonize a country they’re in a trade war with.
Actually, a lot of what I’ve learned about China comes from books written by Chinese people and scholars.
Since you’re engaging with me, I’ll ask you.
Is there a genocide in Xinjiang? I’m ready to hear your evasion and denials.
Most of the world disagrees with you, especially the middle east:
Are what those countries saying untrustworthy?
I say it only to point out that most of what you’ve learned about China, is coming through a heavy media filter, from a media who only seeks to demonize a country they’re in a trade war with.
Most of the world disagrees with you, especially the middle east
China is an important and powerful trading partner to many countries, so there is an incentive not to speak up. If you are skeptical about the western media, I think you should also be skeptical about the stance of these governments.
To me the situation in Xinjiang is very concerning because humanitarian organizations like Amnesty International speak out against the treatment of Uygurs. I think they don’t have a reason to turn a blind eye like many of these governments do. And quite a few of them don’t seem to be bothered by human rights violations, violating them themselves in horrific ways. Looking at you, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Syria etc.
Again, I agree that the west has a political motive to slander China. And the west also does and has done horrible things. But I don’t think the same goes for humanitarian organizations.
A lot of these western “humanitarian / rights” orgs, came out of the cold war, as part of an active effort to carry out regime change against socialist states and stop the spread of communism. Amnesty international for example was co-founded by someone who worked for british intelligence, and its other founder had close links to the FBI, and even had a hand in the FBI killing of Fred Hampton.
I trust what Muslim and global south countries, as well as the Uyghur people themselves have to say about their treatment, and not these western “human-rights-complex” orgs hailing from countries who have done nothing but bomb the middle east for 60+ years.
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A map like that isn’t really reflective of any substance. Do you know what most maps of the US look like when defining political opinions by states? It’s a sea of red. But it clearly doesn’t tell a valid picture of popular support. And I’m not even arguing that makes any particular opinion more valid or not, all I’m saying is that its very easily misleading depending on what narrative you want to sell.
https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/E7LSY66ODVCFHEVJ7TTGJKPHSU.jpg
Clearly the vast majority of the country supported Trump based on that map…Except that’s not true.
Are you dismissing information about plight of Uyghur Muslims even though Muslim countries of the world found no issue with it? How does majority of the world support Trump with that map, and why are you distorting and misrepresenting information to armtwist the narrativr?
In fairness, before I walked onto Tiananmen Square when visiting China, my local guide strongly implied that we should not mention anything but weddings or vacation spots (no massacre) if we didn’t want to be arrested.
Being there was surreal and terrifying. Police with shotguns everywhere. The level of authoritative oppression is worse than visiting a small town in the South.
The “heavy media filter” represents exactly what I experienced as a young&dumb tourist who didn’t know about any media filter in the first place.
EDIT: More info. Every time I walked past banks, or any possibly-questionable spot… police/soldiers with shotguns. Sure it’s a culture difference, but I live in the most gun-friendly country in the world and their authorities walk around packing heavy weapons. And the complete lack of public protest was noticable and staggering. All I have to do in the US to see protest is drive down any highway. In China? Nothing.
EDIT2: And hey. I’ve worked with dozens of Chinese expats. You know what they all have in common? They would never live in China again. Mostly because of how oppressive they feel the government is. A lot of coworkers were “rural Chinese” and were second-class citizens behind the “urban Chinese” (confirmed by expats from the latter who were friends/coworkers with the former). The former had a passport that excluded them from entering cities because they weren’t “good enough”. The latter had passports to go anywhere.
China has 1.4 billion people. Do you really think they have the ability and/or need to “squash” protests and prevent any protest from ever happening? No. They have a healthy democracy where people are involved in voicing their opinions, and protesting if it ever comes to that. Please stop ingesting so much xenophobic propaganda and learn more about the countries of which you speak
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.
I see no issues in banning liberal trolls, just because they want to parrot nonsense takes on the internet, and are now seeking to find a new Reddit to vomit onto. Lemmy is not going to be your Reddit 2.0, if you desire to replicate this behaviour. Learn some manners and stop the western vitrolic reactionary groupthink behaviour.
If such content should be banned, then the admins or mods should put it in the rules. Simple.
Otherwise, it is a violation of the site’s stated policy and what we call “power-tripping”, individuals promoting personal beliefs through site moderation abuse. There are communities like Lemmygrad which are (more) clear on what users and staff expect from each other.
Read through below comments explaining what is going on. The more alerting issue is liberals parroting and carrying over Cold War McCarthyist nonsense from Reddit onto here, putting fingers in their ears and even refusing to listen and debate the other side, while also calling devs, communists and Lemmygrad users “genociders” and what not. Other instances’ “pro-Anglo freezepeach” devs are encouraging their own beliefs by letting Cold War McCarthyism flourish, which looks like them importing Reddit’s racist culture into Lemmy and Fediverse.
This does not even acknowledge the critique of this post or my reply. You’re apparently not listening or discussing our side.
We’re not saying those new users’ attitudes aren’t an issue!
We’re also not saying that such people shouldn’t be banned!
We’re saying it’s being handled inappropriately by people who don’t apply the rules they are obliged to enforce.
In a situation, like you said, their offense isn’t “orientalism”. Their offense may be vitriolic bad-faith discussion, and if it isn’t, then the rules should be updated to align with moderation standards.
On the other hand, things like orientalism are very much a thing. Westerners love to portray East countries in a certain demeaning manner constantly, attempting to hide their xenophobic intentions. I was constantly observing Senokir’s posting and it has been abrasive to say the least. OP is merely pointing out things without calling out the larger context inclusive of western imperialist biases. I do not think something like xenophobia or racism against East needs to be separately mentioned in rules, it should be a normal thing to assume this is unacceptable behaviour, even if racism and bigotry was normalised on Reddit.
it should be a normal thing to assume this is unacceptable behaviour, even if racism and bigotry was normalised on Reddit.
It should be, I agree!
It isn’t a normalized thing, and the current policy of staff isn’t helping to make it normal. They have a good opportunity to teach people normalized orientalism is xenophobic, but this opportunity is squandered through their poorly-explained ban reasons and rules. Very simple steps can make it clearer to offenders that they are being chauvinistic when they (mistakenly!) think they’re being anti-racist. The way things are, they think they’re being banned “for no reason” and will just do the same thing again.
The issue is that they don’t realize their attitude is demeaning, it’s not that they think racism or xenophobia is ok, they just actually don’t understand why what they’re doing is racist or xenophobic, and so small adjustments to the rules page (such as “racism and xenophobia, including orientalism” with a link to an explaining page) would provide an up-front opportunity to explain that they are being chauvinistic and give a chance to learn.
