I think you’re absolutely right here. Those instances were designed to appeal to the broader umbrella of social equality and left-leaning audiences, while simultaneously pushing clearly tankie-style propaganda !
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Your life on the fediverse improves significantly if you just block the entire lemmy.ml and hexbear.net instances.
Getting closer and closer to that! The reason I made this post to begin with is to do a PSA, because it took me months of being subscribed to games on Hexbear to notice it's not a leftist community as it presents itself, but authoritarian communist. So I can't be certain all of their users are in the know, but is it worth keeping the instances unblocked if the bad outweighs the possibility of good?
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I hear a lot of negative talk about those instances, but rarely any specifics. What's the deal with them?
In my own experience, it's less that they spew out politics and more that they are just so defensive and argumentative. A lot of good lemmy communities are based on discussion and sharing cool stuff, while the denizens of those instances and the like are more online to debate, nitpick, and criticize. Like there could be a post of a dog picture and their comment would be critisizing the owner or introducing some political argument that is distantly related. Like bro, just enjoy the dog picture
I think the behavior surrounding my games@hexbear ban is also indicative not just of their politics but also of their behavior in general. Its moderator reacting to my report of Holodomor denial by publicly saying the comment has been reported by me is highly unethical. Then following my post about the situation (linked in the OP), one of their users reposted that to Hexbear and there were people tagging me as they threw insults at me, which amounts to harassment, considering I've never left a comment in that thread. There were admins in the thread as well, but they only piled on despite their rules prohibiting harassment and insults.
Edit: Here's a link to some specific examples.
Edit 2: They're now brigading this thread and tagging me again from here.
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This. I've seen a lot of obnoxious and/or argumentative comments from them, but one that stuck with me was when my first Lemmy instance had to close when Trump was inaugurated due to safety fears.
The first comment to the announcement post was a hexbear user saying something like "Yeah this is why capitalism doesn't work, America sucks and it needs to go down" -- which I do not disagree with, but the post was the admin sharing genuine fears and talking about the logistics of having to move to another state. The user didn't even say a "I'm sorry you have to close your instance because of this...", just straight up getting into politics when it wasn't the main point of the post.
(I will always miss you, possumpat.io; I hope the admin is safe and thriving!)
You touch on the problem with talking with them. You can agree on the problem, get into what can we do about it, they are no, you can't do anything except violently overthrow your government. Also fuck you and I hope you die, their attitude towards us. Some of them.
Yet if they talked that same talk in those worker paradises of China and Russia they would be committed to re-education camps and gulags.
Just a dog!? Despite making up only 13% of the dog population, pitbulls--
They are fake leftists working for fascists, and they will troll you if you argue with them, following you around on alt accounts with non tankie instances.
Hypocrisy largely. Heavy micro management and over moderation by admins broadly. Thankfully most are self aware enough outside hexbear to not leave their echo chamber. There are a few sub's documenting it.
Should discussion touch on certain trigger topics, and should your view deviate from dogma. You will often find yourself banned, either temporarily or permanently, without much discussion. Do you think imperialism and invasion of another country is wrong? Such as the United States current invasion of Iran or past invasions of Afghanistan? Well, if you happen to feel the same way about the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan or modern day Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You would be classified as a mush-brained, imperialist turbo-lib.
Do you think genocide and cultural erasure such as what the United States and Canada did to First Nations people is wrong? Don't make a mistake of applying that unbiased to the plight of cultural minorities in China. Tibet, Hong Kong, and the Uhygers, all of course are glad to sacrifice their cultural and ethnic heritage. Under the penalty of imprisonment or death for glorious left unity with the party and President Xi. Any discussion of these groups dissatisfaction with it is CIA propaganda. And not well tolerated.
If you skirt around in only the most niche of communities with hyper-focused specific topics. Who have almost no capability ever touching or involving current events. You might avoid it. Otherwise you will run afoul of it at some point as many have.
Let's not forget about the native siberians, the russians sabered everything on their way east.
Or the polish. When it comes to giant unwieldy nations, preserving power becomes more important than preserving large segments of population. Regardless of which economic system they larping as.
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Lmao, bro Dessalines is legitimately the most cringe person on the entire internet. He literally will not comment outside his own instance, because he cannot handle any form of internet where he doesn't have his magic "win argument" ban button.
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I’ve had hexbear blocked for so long, I actually forgot about it. Wow, that place is nuts!
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Unfortunately I am considering creating lengthy black lists of trolls and irreversibly corrupted/poisoned instances. Still better than using a corporate operated political brainwashing platform.
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I don't give their opinions on China, Russia, NK, Iran, Ukraine, any sort of credibility. I've been banned from some of their comms but they're on point for pointing out the crimes and hypocrisy of the west, and there's a lot of deliberate effort to minimize their reach.
Fuck em' for defending authoritarianism but without them it's all propaganda from mass mainstream media and whitewashing of the west.
tldr: Fuck tankies and wankies trying to whitewash their atrocities with concern trolling.
I really am not sure what you mean - at least on Lemmy. I don’t see pro-western propaganda. In fact everyone is highly critical and self aware of the vast majority of the West’s moves and motives. Even articles of the rare positive moves are met with skepticism and pessimism.
The problem is that the tankies automatically attack any post by someone being critical of any other non-western nations as being hypocritical. An argument by hypocrisy. Annoying as hell, a yapping ankle-biting tiny dog constantly interrupting the conversation with “But the West did/does (insert awful thing) too!” when 99.99% of the time we’re well aware of the West’s failings, and those failings don’t mean other’s can’t be pointed out.
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I've gotten into it with tankies time and time again over Signal. They point to all this hypothetical nonsense repeatedly and then refuse to provide evidence. Signal, on the other hand, has proven that they either don't have this info or don't provide it over and over again through publicly-disclosed subpoenas, but the tankies continue to push this propaganda, which one can only reasonably conclude that they're bad-faith actors and just "haters" of all things American.
Signal's creation and running costs were largely financed by the US intelligence community. So they're right to be cautious.
It may seem like it's technically impossible to track usage but nothing is 100% safe as long as there are humans involved that can be bagged up and dropped off in some offshore torture site.
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The actual reason they don't like signal is because China bans it and they need an excuse for why that isn't just transparently authoritarian bullshit so they have created this entire lore around it being a CIA honeypot.
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Meh, youre making this post itself from .world, which itself just last week had a massive struggle session as its most prolific mod was under fire for claiming the genocide in Palestine is unrelated to US politics. If that's not propaganda, I dont know what is. I dont know of any other instances that have the same censorship issues as .world.
Classic, .ml that chooses whataboutism rather than seeing two things can be wrong at the same time
For real. I can go "Hey does this piece of software/hardware have any connections to China and should I be concerned?" and someone will hop out and be like "BuT iT'S oKaY wHeN tHe uS gOvErNMeNt StAlKs YoU?!?!?!"
Like no dumbass, that's the reason I'm trying to move away from surveillance of any kind. Both countries can suck in major ways.
Worst part is that we are all on the fediverse for a reason and have too much common ground to then squander into a net lack of action.
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I did that years ago
Don't subscribe to anything Lemmyml if you want to keep your sanity
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Noooo "calling it "authoritarian" is meaningless"!!!
Stop "phrasemongering", it's "not fascism" when China pulls its shit! China also not guilty of Uyghur genocide, that's western propaganda you racist!
Smh. Tankie propaganda was making me mad, I'm actually glad I got banned off their subs for adamantly refusing to accept their lines of reasoning for their blatant, apologetic, wholly uncritical acceptance of china.
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Once had a ml slag try to reason to me that political censorship is good lol
It was high in "but but the those people over there are bad why can't I be?" energy.
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Nobody cares ffs. One post out of 5 is whining about tankies.
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