I did my own search to confirm, with no limitation to a single instance, since I don’t exclusively digest lemmy.world. I sorted by hot on the voyager app. I’ve included links for posterity and to avoid this being a they-said-they-said situation.

The majority of comments about tankies appear to come from lemmy.blahaj.zone and sh.itjust.works. all of these are used in a traditional sense. In fact, a good portion of the comments are actually different summarizations of the traditional definition.

The first post comment I see from lemmy.world mentioning `tankie’ is from @OmegaLemmy 7 hours ago on lemmyshitpost, who is calling out another user who chose to partake in whataboutism rather than acknowledge the USSR’s homophobia. This accused user then doubles down and shoots back with “I don’t really care. I think the USSR had a lot of unique positive things”.

The post comment you mention equivocating being left of Biden as being a tankie; I think I found, pleas confirm for me. That one is from @Octagon9561 11 hours ago on a post in [email protected]. Octagon9561 seems to be claiming to be a victim of anticommunism, or a “red scare” in the comments. a different user essentially says “no, you are just disgusting”. Then we see Octogan9561 state the comment, pairing it with an /s. This reads like a standard tankie again muddying the waters and claiming that people are just throwing the term around willy nilly, which, again, the majority of comments that search has brought up are traditional use.

I also opened search on firefox lemmy.world. here are the first posts comments shown, yours and mine minimized, sorted by new:

screenshot of lemmy.world when searching for comments with 'tankie' in them

I’ll post this comment now but I’m gonna continue scrolling through search looking for any cases of misuse. I am still seeing that if misuse is happening, it’s rare enough to not hit my feed, and much more rare than individuals claiming people are misusing the term.

Edit 6: noticed I was saying ‘posts’ during initial comment when I was really searching comments initially. Corrected, and fixed a typo.

EDIT: Alright, now I’ve switched to sort by local new only an lemmy.world, and here are the first 10 links in order:

• @OmegaLemmy calling out USSR apologist
• a comment that got crossfired for containing “tankier” when describing an enemy
• a comment communicating that tankies today run interference on the USSR’s history (this appears to be traditional useage).
• a comment communicating that someone is banned not because they are leftist but because they are a tankie (currently not loading when clicked, might be a removed post so I can’t provide context but I can provide the quote.

They’re blocked because they’re tankies, not because they’re left (I’m not even sure tankies can be considered left wing, as much as they claim to be).

(And others because of trolling; and others yet haven’t been blocked, they defederated themselves.)

[email protected]

• a comment stating that lemmy is two far left and citing that three main instances are all tankies (hexbear.net, lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad.ml most likely). This reads as hyperbole to me, though still seems like traditional use of the term still.
• a comment asking why tankies love Musk and others similar to him so much. maybe he knows something about tankies I don’t know, but if he is misusing it, he is misusing it in such an off-base fashion that he’s not even hitting leftists at all. I would say this is the first misuse I’ve seen so far. a comment speculating that tankies go face off in political memes, and citing stethoscope theory (stating tankies have more in common with facists than they do with leftists). Again, traditional meaning is here.
• a comment claiming that lemmy users will just call anyone a tankie willy-nilly.
• a comment stating the ‘genocide joe’ crowd was made up of useful idiots and tankies trying to further destabilize the US government. This again seems to be traditional definition, where tankies are authoritarian apologists, working in against the US in the favor of authoritarian countries.
• a comment calling another user too conservative to fit in “this 'verse”. THey state that lemmy is mostly leftists, socialists, anarchists, and communists, while adding an addendum of “fuck tankies”
• a longer comment about tribalism in politics (I won’t be trying to summarize this one) that asserts in passing that tankies show that parts of the left are just as tribalistic as the right. this again reads as another traditional use of the term tankie.

I am really not seeing your claim holding water currently.

EDIT 2: I searched top of all time for all instances, via lemmy.world again, here’s the screenshot:

screenshot of all time top n lemmy.world

again, this claim is not showing up on lemmy.world. The most recent comment is 2 months ago, and the oldest is from 2 years ago, and having scrolled through all of it, none of these use the term ‘tankie’ nontraditionally. Only a couple could prove otherwise in context, which I am still determining whether they do or do not.

EDIT 3: both comments which were ambiguous about whether they were using tankie traditionally showed that they were in fact using tankie traditionally. not a single comment in the first page all time top on lemmy.world currently has a case of tankie being misused.

EDIT 4: I just did that same search directly on slrpnk.net to see whether the difference in instances was causing a difference in comments - the first page of results are nearly identical:

slrpnk.net search results

You are going to need to actually bring receipts at this point if you want me to believe that there was a widespread issue with people misusing the term ‘tankie’ at some point. EDIT 5: I’ve gone over to posts now and searched all time to find the second, 10th, 12th, and 16th post you mentioned. Here is a screenshot of those results

slrpnk.net post search results

Your reading of the second post seems disingenuous to me. No one actually wanted Biden, but it was an obvious fact that every front of leftist activism would be cracked down on by Trump, so having Biden in office would have at least meant little to no increased difficulty. That is why many leftists still insisted on voting for Biden. It was also a common conspiracy that tankies were pedalling the ‘genocide joe’ narrative explicitly to try and get Trump into office in order to weaken the US, hence the title.

This exact same sentiment is again presented in the 10th post.

The 12th post is not necessarily about the election at all, but instead is strictly an attack on LGBT+ tankies, since tankies were very active during the election cycle. The post is most likely referencing the fact that Stalin walked back rights for homosexuals in 1933. Tankies still often espouse Stalinist apologia, and seemingly want a revolution which would create a Stalinist/ML regime in the US. The post is pointing out the irony of LGBT+ tankies advocating for an authoritarian state that they would very likely be persecuted in.

the 16th post is a truncated quote of MLK, though not that truncated. here is the unabridged quote with context. Overall I agree here: the use of tankie is likely misused here, though again it’s not really attacking leftists, since the message is leftist itself. The only way I can see it making sense with traditional meaning is if the implication is that the authoritarianism in the USSR, Russia, China, and NK created an elite which immense wealth while the rest of the population lived in squalor - I think that is a stretch overall.