this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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MeanwhileOnGrad
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18 users here now
"Oh, this is calamity! Calamity! Oh no, he's on the floor!"
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Meanwhile On Grad
Documenting hate speech, conspiracy theories, apologia/revisionism, and general tankie behaviour across the fediverse. Memes are welcome!
What is a Tankie?
(caution of biased source)
Basic Rules:
Sh.itjust.works Instance rules apply! If you are from other instances, please be mindful of the rules. — Basically, don't be a dick.
Hate-Speech — You should be familiar with this one already; practically all instances have the same rules on hate speech.
Apologia — (Using the Modern terminology for Apologia) No Defending, Denying, Justifying, Bolstering, or Differentiating authoritarian acts or endeavours, whether be a Pro-CCP viewpoint, Stalinism, Islamic Terrorism or any variation of Tankie Ideology.
Revisionism — No downplaying or denying atrocities past and present. Calling Tankies shills, foreign/federal agents, or bots also falls under this rule. Extremists exist. They are real. Do not call them shills or fake users as it handwaves their extremism.
Tankies can explain their views but may be criticised or attacked for them. Any slight infraction on the rules above will immediately earn a warning and possibly a ban.
Off-topic Discussion — Do not discuss unrelated topics to the point of derailing the thread. Stay focused on the direct content of the post, rather than engaging in unrelated arguments.
Brigading — If you're here because this community was linked in another thread, please refrain from voting, commenting or manipulating the post in any way, this includes alt accounts. All votes are public, and if you are found to be brigading, you will be permanently banned.
You'll be warned if you're violating the instance and community rules. Continuing poor behaviour after being warned will result in a ban or removal of your comments. Bans typically only last 24 hours, but each subsequent infraction will double the amount. Depending on the content, the ban time may be increased. You may request an unban at any time.
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Is it just .ml or is most of lemmy instances run by tankies?
It's mostly the Tankie Triad consisting of Hexbear, Lemmygrad and .ml
I tend to focus on .ml because Hex and Grad are generally defederated from by most major instances because they are even more extreme than .ml on top of the fact that there's a perception among instances that if they defederate from dessalines' (head Lemmy dev, main .ml admin) .ml instance there will be retaliation in the form of pull back of technical support for their instance (Which, yea, I could totally see him doing that)
There are some communities and some users who also lean tankie. !world@lemmy.world is often pretty crazy, and I have the feeling some users of slrpnk and dbzer0 also go nuts from time to time
dbzer0 has a ton of great communities but they've had some real weirdo niche mods come to light lately. I'm hoping they address it, it'd be a change of pace from the general admin approach on lemmy which can feel extremely hands-off on most instances.
There's definitely something changing with dbzer0 when it comes to Tankies. They actively avoid criticising them now.
oh yea i couldnt put my finger on dbzero, are they are tankie or not, ive seen quite a few users with pro-extreme rhetoric.
dbzer0 is the pro-piracy instance. That's the entire political stance. Most users are some kind of anarchist, some are tankies or tankie sympathizers who are there because dbzer0 don't defederate from Hexbear, and I've spotted a libertarian once, but all users on dbzer0 think piracy is a good thing to one extent or other.
piracy's great! i pirate literally everything if i can, with the exception of indie-stuff, I like supporting the lil guy
though they do arrest pirates in china
What’s a decent lemmy instance? The ones named above are the ones I use lol.
slrpnk and dbzer0 are both fine, and .world is a bit fractious but still quite solid. Blahaj is good too! Really the only instances I'd suggest avoiding are Hexbear, Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad
Bahaj is a pretty nice place. The mods I've interacted with there seem to have their heads screwed on straight. We will see how long that continues.
but dbzer0 federates with hexbear...
people are fine, as long as they dont visit the main politics.world communities, or anyof the affiliate. there some semi-wierd pro-ziolnist thing going on.
I was permabanned from the political and news subs for writing, WITH REPUTABLE SOURCES, Russia's election meddling AND for saying feminist things. I spoke with the mod who banned me publicly and he was unable to support his ban based on the rules, but kept it intact. Those subs imo are compromised by their mods
yea i just skim those subs, prior to being purged as effort by reddit to reduce user numbers on the site. too easy to get into conflict with trolls and get yourself banned.
Blahaj 😂
That must be one of the most authoritarian ones. Not tankie, but the lgbt tankie equivalent
Got any examples? Blahaj was founded on the principle of protecting trans people, and I have yet to see anything here that people are claiming as mods abusing their power that didn't turn out to be people getting upset about being banned for being transphobic.
There's definitely some tankies here, but the biggest complaint I have about Blahaj is that you can't see downvotes so the most controversial posts can look like the most agreed on takes.
That's exactly the thing: bans for transphobia are often about non-transphobic speech. Not agreeing on specific subjects doesn't mean one is transphobic. Thinking a cisgender person can have an opinion on laws or regulation regarding transgenders is not transphobia. Having your feelings hurt over an opinion while you are a trans doesn't make it transphobia. Transphobia is hate speech.
Source: I have been instance-banned from blahaj on an older account. Maybe twice? Not sure. I'm not willing to share the accounts' names, but I try to respect my instance bans. Don't want to interact there anyways
spoiler
people will assume I'm transphobic because they know me better than myself, apparentlyI mean, it's more that you say inherently transphobic things like:
that shines some light on the potential reasons you might have been banned from the instance.
Inherently transphobic? You’re just assuming and extrapolating
Don’t assume it’s malicious, they might just not know. Aren’t we here to discuss? Being wrong doesn’t mean I should be banned, but I should be corrected. Closing debates when I’m respectful isn’t useful to anyone
I just like to question things, not take and accept them just because the person is concerned by the topic, especially if they have a sensibility or opinion on the subject
The problem is you're approaching interaction with the assumption it's appreciated - but Blahaj isn't set aside as an educational space, it's a queer space - and people coming in and retreating to just asking questions when challenged is a really tired trope. You can be unfamiliar with a topic yes, but people are under no obligation to explain themselves or engage in a discussion with you just because of that. Calling a group "LGBT tankies" because you don't understand this may be justified under your own guiding principals, but it comes across as the same kind of petulance as when incels encounter a women's-only space.
You're mad because you were banned, and you have a history of expressing transphobic opinions regardless of your internal motivation. It seems pretty straightforward what happened here.
Well yea, if you don’t want to debate, don’t. Don’t falsely claim the person is transphobic if you don’t know. Don’t censor the message. If you do, don’t be surprised that I call you authoritarian and full of shit
You invested an history of things I haven’t done. If you believe what I have said is transphobic, then you have a problem and are actively engaging in defamatory speech. You keep assuming stuff about me which I partly what I’m calling out
Sadly, safe spaces often turns out to be safe for some people, and xenophobic of other people. Authoritarian people thrive there and confirmation bias is king
Not being able to discuss in a community focused on this subject is really sad. I would never recommend an instance or community where only a single opinion is allowed
You just said a transphobic thing, though. It's in the quote I used. That thing you said is transphobic, ergo you have a history of saying transphobic things.
You're either misunderstanding or misrepresenting what I said. You're welcome to engage with discussion within the community (well not you specifically because of the ban), but there's no obligation for the community to educate you just so you'll feel included. Just like I'm not interested in litigating the details of why 'asserting that you would consider a hetero relationship containing a trans person to be a gay relationship' is transphobic.
It's not an unfair assumption to assume that what someone tells you they believe is, in fact, what they believe. You have expressed transphobic views, so since the only information I have with which to judge you is based on what you've expressed, I can safely take you at your word that you at very least hold the transphobic opinion you have said you hold.
I suspect your inability to accept that rejection based on the things you say doesn't automatically entitle you to defend yourself is also part of the reason for your instance bans.
Again, you're just assuming bad intention. So I guess I must do the same with you? What if my question is legitimate? How can you know I'm just trying to piss of people? You're just persuading people that I'm acting in bad faith, and I'm not.
Still can't see any quote. What exactly is transphobic?
Just a sign of a bad community, but you do you. You're free not to interact.
Then, can you really blame me for calling this out because I believe it's not transphobic and you're just censoring people and bullshitting?
So believing a person is homosexual if they like trans people with the opposite gender but same sex is transphobic? I think we can stop now, there's no point in arguing. You just have a vastly different definition of transphobia from mine. I thought it was the hate or discrimination of trans people.
This is just fucking dumb and depressing. You're creating enemies that aren't there. Congrats.
I loathe quote-replies, but like the saint says...:
Nnnnno... no I'm not assuming anything about your intention, just your message. You've apparently conflated "you've said this transphobic thing" with "you must be a transphobe". To be honest I think you're probably well meaning, you just show a real lack of social skills and you treat criticism as an attack on you personally. To be clear, I don't actually care what your intention is in saying transphobic things, only that you've said them. That's been the explicit thesis of every one of my responses.
In order:
I don't actually know how to make this more explicit, I'm going to be uncharitable and assume this was just you being truculent (since you go on to respond to the quote in question, this too seems like a fairly safe assumption)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here (sorry)
Yes. It inherently implies that biological sex is their (in this case literal) defining feature, disregarding their gender - which is the much more important aspect of a person in every situation except medicine. It's the exact same rhetoric being used by transphobes the world over to justify all their horrendous oppression.
Discrimination being "The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions", your categorization of people based on the fine distinction of the interrelation of their gender expression and sex is very literal discrimination - and by your definition, that's transphobia.
Please stop trying to make this about me characterizing you as anything but a rude person that has having difficulty accepting that even well-intentioned people can hold transphobic views, and that bringing said views into a space regardless of intentions is bringing transphobia into a space where it's wildly and explicitly unwelcome. I don't care about you enough to be doing anything more than that.
So Warl0k3 had a pretty good conversation on the matter, but as the original asker I just wanted to add something.
In this regard, Blahaj is no more authoritarian than a lesbian bar. That's the analogy I use to describe how Blahaj is run - it's like a gay/lesbian bar. It's not a place meant to be an open floor of debate or something, it's a place for trans people made by trans people. Blahaj is supposed to be a place where people can get away from the "just asking questions" or having to defend their existence constantly like everywhere else on the internet and real life. And just like a lesbian bar, if you bother the clientele or staff, you can and will be thrown out.
Can't the same be said for the usual suspects like lemmygrad, hexbear, .ml...?
Lemmy is meant to be used to discuss with people. When you try to enforce your rules outside, you go too far.
I still don't think it's a great instance to point people to. Not with an admin actively silencing 'opponents', defaming and spreading misinformation
Your defense is basically "it's meant to be authoritarian"
A bar is not a forum. Lemmy's goal is to discuss and share things. If only a specific point of view is allowed, it ceases to be a "safe place" and becomes a circlejerk. Like it if you want, I find it dumb and will never recommend biased or opinionated instances if they don't allow other opinions.
How do I put this, your belief of what Lemmy and a forum are intended for are...misguided? Not quite the word I'm looking for, but close.
A forum is a 3rd space, like a bar, a restaurant, a community garden, a local store that runs tabletop games, or even a park. A gathering space for people to intermingle. But that doesn't mean that a forum has to allow everything. 3rd spaces still have rules to be followed. When you enter Blahaj, you agree to abide by the house rules. And some of those rules are there specifically to stop sealioning behavior, which trans people are subjected to endlessly everywhere else on the web and looks exactly like this:
There are places where those kinds of questions and debates are okay (as long as they're sincere and not malicious), but Blahaj is designed to be a space where trans people can get together and not be bombarded by those sorts of questions endlessly.
Hello 👋🏻 :D
Piefed social seems to be a good alternative.