this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Perish the thought! The reason is that during Rexodus, the more conservative/right-leaning instances (mainly exploding-heads.com) were so strongly hard-defederated from basically every single Lemmy instance across the board that nowadays there basically are none left. Maga.place is a brand-new one (oldest post is 3 months) and, looking in the side-bar text, I see that it has only 3 active users per month. So it is both new and highly irrelevant to the wider Threadiverse except the notoriety of it representing conservatives.
In fact most communities on the Threadiverse with names such as "conservative" are actually trolling conservatives rather than representing them. Also, a fun historical tidbit: exploding-heads quickly turned on itself and self-imploded, then (after first shifting over to another instance, rammy.site) emptied itself out when Donald Trump's Truth Social came out, leaving exploding-heads itself to eventually die (so there is little point to defederating from it anymore, since it no longer exists, although it is easy enough to leave in the defederation list, and one day that URL might become resurrected...).
"True" socialist instances include places like slrpnk.net and lemmy.dbzer0.com, which I highly recommend checking out. Hexbear.net however only claims to be leftist, while actually being trolls who believe in nothing except the power of being internet edgelords. Lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml (the latter also run by the developers of the Lemmy software) are extremely pro-authoritarian places that despite not saying anywhere in the rules about it will nonetheless ban you from every community on the instance (even those you've never so much as heard of) if you ever say anything critical (or not supportive enough?) about Russia, North Korea, or China. That banning btw is arguably fine - it's their instance so they can be free to run it however they wish - but the disingenuousness of never stating that fact up-front, instead calling itself a place for FOSS enthusiasts to discuss things, is one of the main reasons why they are blocked from new accounts, since they have shown themselves to not be governed by the traditional codes of conduct that a Westerner would expect regarding freedom and transparency. So very MANY people have, upon being exposed to that, noped back to Reddit and then complained about the entire Threadiverse, not realizing that those instances do not reflect the wider ideals held by the great majority of the instances here. There are whole entire communities - such as !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works - dedicated to ~~bashing on them~~ documenting their behaviors.
Afaik, "Attitude" does not actually do much of anything - the worst that can happen is that after reaching some ENORMOUS ratio of downvotes to upvotes (I don't know the value, and it could differ from instance to instance anyway, but think like: 10-to-1), an icon gets placed next to someone's username to indicate their fairly toxic overall behavior. It does not filter their submissions, only labels them, so that someone responding has a better idea going into a conversation that the outcome is generally likely to result in disappointment if the goal was to be liked or at least have content received positively. Your own attitude is currently reported as 97% so I don't think this will ever end up happening to you.
Another spam-blocking feature is that you will not be able to DM anyone for I think it is 2 weeks after account creation. Unfortunately, since some people abuse the privilege, crackdowns have become necessary...:-(
I whole-heartedly agree and very much await the day when this aspect can be improved in PieFed software. I frequently get situations with like a +1 score but it represents a +11/-10 split rather than zero engagement - and yes those are two totally different scenarios, which it can be helpful to be able to distinguish!!:-) New features are added to PieFed practically weekly, so one day I strongly hope to see this one.
I generally agree with you, but two minor points:
They are tankie adjacent and generally work on enabling tankie / red fash propaganda and polemics under the cover of "tankies are also fellow socialists".
Lemmygrad is also run by Dessalines, the lead developer of Lemmy.
"Muad'Dibber", the Lemmygrad admin is a Dessalines alt.
I disagree that authoritarianism is anywhere in the same ballpark as democratic socialism, and naively I would far sooner believe that dbzer0 was anti-censorship rather than pro-authoritarian. I have heard that accusation about dbzer0 previously but as far as I can tell it seems based exclusively on the post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/52313315, which is if not fully debunked then at least highly contested in the comments, so the furthest from a fully settled issue as it could possibly be.
But am I missing something, do you want to share a link to support your accusation of them? (You did not phrase that as "I heard somewhere that..." but rather stated it as a true fact, as if you believed it based on some kind of evidence?)
Otherwise, the only accusation that I've heard of that seems to hold any water is the Nazi bar argument... which would apply to the entire Threadiverse, and perhaps by extension to the entire internet also? i.e. while valid, I am not seeing how helpful that is. e.g. your instance and mine both federates with Lemmy.ml, which makes each of us "tankies" as well by that logic. Unless there is something more specific about dbzer0 specifically being pro-tankie rather than simply not anti-tankie enough?
That sounds like a conspiracy theory. If true then I have seen no evidence of it, though I don't particularly care one way or the other so will just leave it at that. Here too you did not phrase it like "might even be...", but as an established fact. It is already so exceedingly difficult to separate fact from fiction on the internet, please aim to be more precise so as not to muddy the waters further. I do thank you for your desire to help.
You're welcome to assume I am lying.
I don't believe in polemical rhetoric using "free speech" or "censorship" motifs. I don't find such rhetoric convincing and it is often used for ostentatious aims and fails the basis logic test.
Considering how tankies aggressively censor any critique of russia and china, it seems strange to bring up opposition to censorship as a defence of DB0's embrace of red fascism.
Tankies openly call for the interment, torture of Ukrainians and celebrate the russian invasion. DB0 openly condones such behaviour; this is their endorsement of lemmy.ml (literal endorsement, not my words):
Your claim about a conspiracy theory is incorrect. The URL I provided clearly outlines that muad_dibber, the grad admin, is Dessalines.
I did not downvote you btw, just asked for details.
Yes the term "free speech" is often misused, but at the end of the day it is either the real explanation or it is not, though for what exactly I am still not certain - failure to defederate from lemmy.ml? Failure to actively speak out against them (which they have I believe) hard enough or long or often enough? They are who they are, and rather than rely on either my or your opinion, someone interested in knowing who they are would best be served by listening to neither of us but instead to them.
Even not openly endorsing them would be a start. The DB0 admin was also caught downvoting criticism of tankies (in the link you brought up).
For example, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that a post like " Calling out Russian propaganda on .ml is a total site ban under "rule 1 bigotry" according to dessalines, head .ml admin, main Lemmy dev" would be downvoted by the DB0 admin
Even in the DB0 thread that you cited, there are multiple ML users who aggressively deny prosecution of Uighurs by the CCP and openly support the russian genocidal imperialism goals.
Why is it unreasonable to make conclusions about this? I am genuinely curious.
There are tons of reasons to downvote someone. I rarely do it myself, so I am not the best person to ask why, I just know that people do. Just off the top of my head though: process rather than content, or style over substance (e.g. if a cussword were used and someone did not like to see that, hence downvoting even something that they would otherwise agree with) are two examples.
Now THIS would be a strong argument. Can you send me a link to read more about this?
I agree with your general logic, but this was specific example. The "meanwhileongrad" is specifically aimed at documenting and ridiculing far left extremism (support for russian genocidal imperialism, knowingly lying that Cuba/NK is a democracy, claiming any opposition to the current regime in Venezuela is a CIA operation).
Shared this earlier:
https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.ml
There is no reason for DB0 to give this endorsement. They could have simply said nothing (ML has multiple other endorsements, albeit ones with easily provable lies).
Thank you. I wonder how long ago that endorsement was made though? Lemmy.ml was one of the oldest instances - I think Hexbear technically predates them but in the sense of using a different software than Lemmy, and similarly for dbzer0 (who iirc used a forum software that was not federated). If the sole options are Reddit vs. Lemmy, then you take what you can get.
Study the history a bit: those truly were different times. Like for one thing, Lemmy.world did not exist, so virtually all communities were on Lemmy.ml. Since then Lemmy.ml has been relegated to almost obscurity, but back then was a very different story... Comics, Memes, News, everything was on lemmy.ml, before it was as widely known about their moderation practices - in large part bc the admins kept that as an echo chamber, silencing any dissent with full instance-wide perma-bans, so it is entirely plausible that many people simply did not know what it was all about.
Also, there was the whole distraction issue where it was "claimed" that the most extremist leftist stuff was relegated over to lemmygrad.ml, which while true, should not be taken at face value when considering just how much extremism remains. But, at the time... I could see someone believing that misinformation, for being plausible in that context.
Fwiw I agree with you that they would have done better to have simply said nothing, but also I agree with dbzer0 in that narrowly within just the reasons they stipulated, Lemmy.ml in its earlier days truly was like that. No I wasn't here for that, I just found it interesting to poke around to read older posts about the history of things:-).
These are all true statements (and to this day there are communities of expert systems especially that refuse to migrate away from Lemmy.ml - oh well, their loss as the rest of us refuse to be held hostage by their poor choices):
You might ask dbzer0 if they still endorse Lemmy.ml tankies in today's environment, or are there any more recent statements that they've already put out? Anyway, I agree that this is not a high moment for them - I'm just not sure it's all that terribly low either, as it would be if they did such today.
Edit: also it's crucial to note there that an "endorsement" does not mean "you should totally go create an account over there", but rather "I would like my instance to federate with this instance, as its users serve up worthwhile content that I would like to participate with" - so not quite the same meaning as the word "endorse" would typically imply.
You asked for substantive receipts around my original statement, I provided:
You yourself provide the following:
These points speak for themselves and they are merely the tip of the iceberg. There are tons of post by Devel, a senior mod on ML, claiming that China's genocide of the Uighurs never happened, that access to food in the 80s USSR was comparable to that of the US and bunch of other things.
DB0 has no issues with such claims and they will protect users such as Devel and many other genocidal tankies. Either DB0 are comfortable Devel's claims or they are not, there is no half pregnant option.
I see. I once petitioned Discuss.Online to defederate from both hexbear.net (trolls) and Lemmy.ml (tankies) - and it had already done so from Lemmygrad.ml. Unfortunately, nearly every single instance across the entire Threadiverse federates with lemmy.ml. I think that it should be opt-in for new users, but since those admins are also the main devs for the Lemmy codebase, obviously that will never happen.
Lemmy itself is a Nazi (actually tankie) bar. PieFed is far less so, but still it federates with lemmy.ml so technically we are as well. By virtue of being here you and I are tainted by association with it. But, in this community, both of us on different PieFed instances, not so much?
Db0 more so than most then, since they offered that endorsement and did not subsequently retract it. Also, some instances have switched from Lemmy to PieFed, while they have not. So, they do seem more okay with federating with tankies than most other instances, on the spectrum, I will grant you that.
I understand what you meant about the half pregnant option, and on that I disagree. Someone could have 50% likelihood of being pregnant, or be 50% along the projected timeline (or looking back after birth, someone could more definitively call the 50% progress marker), or weirder effects like a fetus could be stillborn so necrotic tissue exists like a pregnancy, but also is not alive like a pregnancy, so matches in some respects while differing in others. Life is rarely so easily categorized into binary options.
Db0 is not perfect, nor am I or you, but they are a far cry from what lemmy.ml is, which itself is also a far cry from what Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net are.
No one is saying anything about being perfect or not.
We are discussing whether DB0 endorses tankies and enables tankies. You asked for something concrete and specific to prove this; I obliged.
With all due respect, the other points are not relevant as far as I am concerned.
DB0 endorses, enables and covers for tankies. This is a fact.
Someone downvoted you - I just wanted to say that it was not me.