this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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In advance, this is NOT a complain, but just myself looking for some opinions, views and experiences around this topic. Also, the screenshot is marked as NSFW because it contains language that might be sensible for some people (and that's also present one time in the post itself).

I'll start it short: I've just been banned for 14 days from the memes community on the official Lemmy instance (!memes@lemmy.ml).

Why?

Apparently, just critizicing chinese state and authoritarism in front of some China's authoritarism deniers (and, maybe, some CCP infiltrators [I have to I must clarify that the latter is just my speculation, but the possibility is not zero and does not seem low, and as a hypothesis I think it is sufficiently solid]), it seems like pointing up chinese's government authoritarian character is sinophobia and "not being sufficiently polite" (as it shows in their modlog).

Censorship and FLOSS

This raises me a concern. I can't say that happens in all of Lemmy.ml communities or that's anything that they are condoning that; I understand that they give autonomy to the moderators of each community and everything else, and I also do not want to attack the moderators of that community with this, or anything similar. But, seeing that I have already seen several similar cases being reported throughout the Threadiverse, and that the majority of the Fediverse tends to the left (which is not necessarily bad either, I myself am center-left), I have noticed a growing radicalization and a growing polarization within the Fediverse, and that worries me because that was exactly one of the things that attracted me to it, outside of the obvious fact that it is Free, not proprietary like shit in Silicon Valley.

And with that, I increasingly notice a greater spiral of silence here. I've been lurking on Lemmy for quite some time, but I only recently created my account on Disroot when I felt ready to start socializing and I felt like I understood the fediquette well enough, but being banned for not thinking the same as the rest of the pro-Chinese people there doesn't give me a good taste in my mouth; It doesn't bother me so much that they insult me ​​(in fact, they can do it all they want, I'll just laugh in their faces and move on xD) and that they don't let me express myself freely, especially when I live in a country where freedom of expression is a luxury and there is a humanitarian crisis of hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of political prisoners and tens of thousands of deaths for precisely that reason.

I really can't say that they want to censor me since it is one of my first interventions there and it is the first time they have banned me, it would be drawing conclusions too hastily, but I am still worried about this ideological homogenization. Mainly due to the asymmetrical application of that rule, since I never insulted or denigrated anyone and they constantly did. Probably the only failure that would justify a ban is the fact that I wished the death of all the politicians and governments in the world, but it is difficult not to do so when my country is hell on Earth and I can barely trust in any of them. What raises my concern more than anything is the fact that they do it without even having notified me beforehand (really, I never received a notification where they warned me, or any warning, or anything like that, and I have moderator notifications activated by all means in my client, not a message, nothing like that), which makes me feel very arbitrary, especially when they only vaguely mention "Rule 1" in the moderation logs.

I would like to know what you think; Is it just my paranoia and trauma, or is there really a culture of conformism that tends to silence ideas that are foreign to their ideological views, creating a spiral of silence?

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[–] vagrancyand@sh.itjust.works -5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Repeating CIA propaganda kinda does get you banned from a lot of places in the world given the massive damage CIA propaganda has done. Once you step outside the Western bubble that you're used to english-speaking websites having, you'll find this attitude pretty much everywhere.

As to how it relates to FOSS, you cannot realistically both believe CIA propaganda, and also support communist ideals like Free and Open Source Software. Those two things are ideologically incompatible.

[–] msokiovt@lemmy.today 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The issue is that OP was dissing both sides, not just the MSS (Chinese intelligence) and CCP shenanigans. This was something I caught almost immediately when viewing the image provided.

[–] Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org 2 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Of course. I always say this: I'm polliticaly pessimist, and although I tend more to center-left, I have many points in common with left, right, center and center-right equally. My basic axiom is that all politicians, parties and governments are bad, not one is good; at much, you can find less bad governments, but that's far from being good.

[–] Canconda@lemmy.ca 3 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

IMO governments are just baskets. It's politicians that have a short shelf life.

[–] msokiovt@lemmy.today -2 points 18 hours ago

The biggest issue, I think, has to do with not realizing that we can be free by seeing our potential as fractals of infinite consciousness.