Hello World,

Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.

Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.

At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.

As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one’s stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.

We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.

Thank you,

The Lemmy.World Team

  • gcheliotis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I understand that they are staunchly pro-communist and also take a pro-Palestine, including some of them (many of them?) a more clearly pro-Hamas stance. And that all of this could annoy many of the centrist liberals that seem to dominate here. But from perusing the lemmygrad link I do not see clear signs of hate speech, certainly not a clear hate speech agenda as you would see with some hate groups. And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.

    There may be more to it, I don’t know, but personally I wouldn’t like lemmy.world, an otherwise fine instance by all means, to become a centrist liberal silo where no other opinion outside (mostly US-centric) liberal orthodoxy is heard. So yeah, not convinced that this was the right decision, basically because of a lack of evidence.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I could not agree more. Not only are comments removed, and users banned way too easily, is the nuclear option, defederation, used perhaps a bit lightly too.

      In my personal experience I much more enjoy the comment sections of the more open instances. Feels much more like the thing I enjoyed most about reddit.

    • phoneymouse@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yes… agree with this take. I’m disappointed in the Lemmy World Admins for this move…

      If Lemmy World is going to just defederate from instances where the opinions of users of one instance annoy the admins, then I will withdraw my monthly donation and go elsewhere.

      Also, seems like there should be more of a process involved in defederation than a knee jerk post where the admins assure us it was a decision made with lots of deliberation. Despite that, it all feels very abrupt and top down and driven more by the admins’ personal geo-political opinions about recent events than other factors.

        • hperrin@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Can we transfer our account like on Mastodon, or just create a new one? (I don’t currently plan to, just wondering.)

          • Sunforged@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Just gotta create a new one unfortunately. It’s a highly requested feature but real low on the devs priority.

    • TheBlue22@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      Hexbear and Grad users defend genocidal regimes like Ruzzia and China. They excuse their crimes and argue in bad faith. I had so many insane discussions before I decided to block both of these instances entirely.

      They are, by every single sense of the word, tankies.

      Tankie is not just an oblivious term that has no meaning. It signifies a red fascist. It’s like arguing that it’s bad that we don’t let neonazis in discussions. They do not care about discussing. All they want is to spread their disgusting ideas while hiding them behind leftism.

      By defederating from these instances, we don’t become less leftists. These people are not leftist.

      This is not a slippery slope. It is a necessary step to ensure the growth of this website and actually worthwhile discussions.

    • Piers@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I expect you need to look in the Lemmy.World moderation log to see to what degree lemmy.ml users were or were not problematic (I’ve no idea either way.)

    • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.

      Edit: If lemmygrad truly are tankies, then the collapsed doesn’t apply and I’m misinformed. I’m just concerned we did a sentencing hearing. if they truly are being cult like, “soaked in the enemie’s propaganda” and intolerant, okay we have a different situation. we should still limit our anger before we whip ourselves into a mob.

      (written during anger)

      Its true and im rather disgusted by it. Its depressing to see the largest face in the fediverse self isolate make bitter enemies with a different shade of hateful. One bad Hexbear user made me want to defederate, the second one made me think otherwise. I used to want to defederate from hexbear, now I really don’t. Ive seen toxic people from every instance, including our own.


      lemmygrad’s perspective

      Fuck you reddit 2.0, took you long enough. Thanks though, we’ll stop seeing your crap posters pollute our comment section from now on.

      90% of people we ban come from world. Very funny that they said they saw a rise of hate speech from our instance though considering the worlders we ban are fucking genocidal maniacs and fascists. You can check the modlog (it’s unfortunately federated), we are one of the tamest instances when it comes to banning people and deleting comments/posts.

      For any worlder that was based and liked interacting with lemmygrad (you will notice we did not ban good faith participants), I recommend you make an account on a third-party instance that federates with us, like ml or ee until they also defederate from us because we have principles 🙃

      The post is as idiotically angry at world as world are at them.


      I will likely change my primary instance from now on to one federated with both world and lemmygrad because your and their people can hopefully exist in harmony there. the anger on both sides is frankly unsettling I want to be neutral on this matter.

      Take better care of yourself, Hikikomori lemmygrad and Hikikomori lemmy.world. (stop being a prick, @HelloHotel)

      The fact that this whole thing may be secretly abou the war bugs me too.

      • HappycamperNZ@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I mean, im pretty sure more than 90% of people who join started at .world so it makes sense.

        The above quote tells me all I need to know it was a good choice. This wasn’t a mature, unbiased response that understood there are different values and opinions in the world, or that wanted to address issues between the two - no instance owes any other anything unless they want to try get along and these clearly don’t.

        • Hello Hotel@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          no instance owes any other anything unless they want to try get along and these clearly don’t.

          that’s absolutely fair but tragic. They have the right, absolutely. I updated my comment to hopefuly have more clarity

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Thank goodness.

    I’m reminded of a story I read a while back - not sure where - about how if you let a Nazi into your bar, you eventually end up running a Nazi bar. I think the same applies to online forums. You let Nazis overrun a forum, everyone else leaves, and eventually you might as well just be running Stormfront.

  • takeda@szmer.info
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    1 year ago

    Lemmmygrad supposedly is for people who support communism, but when talking to them, they really are supporting totalitarian countries which have nothing to do with communism.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      The bit that really irked me was that it was purely performative. It seemed like literally the exact same community that populated the_donald with memes and Trump train bots and the photoshopping of Trump’s pic onto Rambo. Their posts have fuck all to do with communism just like the trump posts had nothing to do with conservative politics. It was just edge faux-outrage and basically taking an opposite position for its own sake. They could simultaneously criticize Gov Newsom for not signing a trans rights bill while praising Putin who is doing his level best to make being gay illegal. It’s a mistake to see it as political discourse when it’s really just trolling. Like on the_donald, they egg each other on and have their in jokes and memes (in both the picture sense and in the actual meme sense) about walls the same way the trumpers did with helicopters.

      Defederation is the best response imo.

    • jeffw@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s amazing what some state-sponsored troll farms can convince people of. Some people can’t evaluate content they see online critically and gobble up the propaganda

      • zeppo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The tactics and attitudes definitely make me think of that. It seems like the same people who showed up and fucked up a bunch of subs on reddit 6-7 years ago, like how conspiracy went from discussing things like UFOs and MK ULTRA to conservative political conspiracy theories and opposing the Democratic Party and politicians.

  • Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Good Job! You make my experience of Lemmy continuously better! You cleaned that CSAM up with the speed of light (I’ve never even noticed it), you managed the Piracy Community Troubles very well and now you made an well thought through decision about Lemmygrad. Well done Mods! And thank you all very much!

    • mycorrhiza they/them@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      A well thought through decision that gives no examples or arguments?

      With the timing, I have to assume the reason is “they support Palestine.”

  • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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    1 year ago

    That’s a bummer. I’m a serious Capitalist but I kinda liked the Tankies and Pinks, they brought a fresh perspective and occasionally produced damn good memes.

    The good news is that since I moved to another instance I’ll still get their stuff, kinda stinks for those of you homed on lemmy.world though.