Hello World,

Today, after careful consideration and evaluation of recent events, we have decided to defederate from Lemmygrad.

Regrettably, we have observed a significant increase in hate speech and calls to violence originating from the Lemmygrad instance. Due to the severity of the posts and comments, we are not waiting for the next Lemmy update that will allow users to block instances.

At Lemmy.world, we have always strived to foster an inclusive and welcoming user environment. However, recent posts and comments from Lemmygrad have clearly violated our server rules and, more importantly, our core values. We firmly believe that hate speech and incitement of violence have no place in our community, regardless of personal beliefs or affiliations.

As always, we encourage all users to report any content they deem inappropriate or harmful. No matter one’s stance in any conflict, Lemmy.world will always take immediate action to remove and ban any posts or comments that incite violence or propagate hatred.

We encourage everyone to continue engaging in discussions within the boundaries of respect and understanding. As we move forward with this decision, we remain committed to providing all community members with a safe and welcoming space. We appreciate your continued support and cooperation in upholding our shared principles.

Thank you,

The Lemmy.World Team

  • @[email protected]
    link
    fedilink
    4777 months ago

    Lemmmygrad supposedly is for people who support communism, but when talking to them, they really are supporting totalitarian countries which have nothing to do with communism.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        227 months ago

        They do it to so many smaller forums too. I saw an old board I used to frequent for game faqs and questions turned into one, under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.

        It’s crazy to watch one user create a wannabe cult, user shame everyone and constantly move goalposts with straw men bs. Meanwhile, they had moderators discussing in Discord chats who to drive insane next and pick on. Not to mention using a serious issue as means to divide people that frequent the site by having over 30+ accounts to pad the numbers that agree with their views in topics.

        It’s scary how far they go these days, especially considering the site was relatively respected around Y2K era, and now it’s full of republicans pretending to be trans and liberal for a psychotic gimmick.

        • @Cryophilia
          link
          07 months ago

          under the guise of being mostly transgender positive.

          The “trans rights to tankie” pipeline is just as weird as the “hippie to fascist” pipeline. I saw a lot of it on Blahaj.

    • @buzziebee
      link
      597 months ago

      Yeah glad to see those fucks go. There’s been an awful lot of bad takes filling up content sections on certain topics, every time I checked who had posted it it was almost always a lemmygrad user.

      • @Hackerman_uwu
        link
        20
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        I need to start checking the instance when someone posts something stinky.

        I’d honestly noticed it a lot over the last few weeks and thought oh well, eternal September.

        There was a nice little period there where’s there wasn’t much discussion around and those actually poking their heads out were really kind of wholesome. Now I see so many people still coming across in that friendly, inclusive way and I realise it’s just a vocal minority ruining it.

        Let’s hold each other to a higher standard.

        One love.

        • AFK BRB Chocolate
          link
          English
          57 months ago

          I hardly ever even look at the username - I’m not sure I’ll get to looking at instance names.

          • @seth
            link
            67 months ago

            What kind of chocolate are we talking about?

            • AFK BRB Chocolate
              link
              English
              77 months ago

              My preference is a good quality dark chocolate, but I don’t turn my nose up at pretty much any chocolate. Hell, I’ll dig into one of those waxy chocolate Easter bunnies if that’s what I’ve got.

              Most recent (a couple hours ago) was a very chocolate brownie from a pan I made last night.

        • @DarthBueller
          link
          57 months ago

          One knock-on effect for me is that encountering those folks on here made me want to triple check my tone and emotionality when I post or comment. I absolutely want this to be a better place than reddit, and I constantly find myself going back through my comments, editing to add corrections, or outright deleting them if I realize in hindsight I was being a cranky asshole. I’ve got to admit, I’ve even appreciated the notification-free moderation here - if I got into a fight with someone and our lack of civility broke the rules, I’m happy when a mod wipes out both of our offending comments. Nine times out of ten it takes out the comment that caused me to fight in the first place. And as heated as I can get, after going on an online tear, afterwards I usually feel terrible for being driven by anger. And angry posts almost never do anything except stroke my ego.

          • @Hackerman_uwu
            link
            37 months ago

            Yea, see you sound like a good egg.

            Thanks for posting. I’m going to start measuring how emotional I get too. The good of the community is more important than a momentary annoyance. Thanks for describing a higher standard let’s all encourage each other to aspire to it.

            One love.

      • @DarkWasp
        link
        19
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        deleted by creator

        • @LemmysMum
          link
          107 months ago

          We just blocked an instance full of them, go there for an example.

    • @zzx
      link
      507 months ago

      Agree

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -17 months ago

      I honestly don’t get the big deal about defederation.

      Free speech doesn’t really seem achievable on social media because bad actors will always manipulate votes to ensure that some opinions are promoted more than others.

      For example, the opinions of lemmygrad should probably consume ~1% of the total informed opinion “pie chart” if you will. They can be adequately represented by some idiot posting their opinion in a thread once in a while - yet here we are. Their bizarre takes are sucking all the oxygen out of the room.

      Surely there’s a better way to ensure that all opinions on a given matter can be considered rather than just saying we must allow our streets to be overrun with zombies lest we forget they exist.

    • @Kalpurush
      link
      -247 months ago

      The lemmygrad users think the same

  • @Moghul
    link
    2647 months ago

    Thank fucking god. It’s exhausting being around people for whom any meme, any post, any comment, has to spin into how good communism is, how bad the libs are, how good China is, and how bad The West TM is. It is exhausting.

  • Cornpop
    link
    English
    1907 months ago

    Nothing of value has been lost

  • @Genrawir
    link
    1567 months ago

    I just gotta say, the moderation here makes me so happy I joined this instance.

  • @kescusay
    link
    1477 months ago

    Thank goodness.

    I’m reminded of a story I read a while back - not sure where - about how if you let a Nazi into your bar, you eventually end up running a Nazi bar. I think the same applies to online forums. You let Nazis overrun a forum, everyone else leaves, and eventually you might as well just be running Stormfront.

  • @ultranaut
    link
    1467 months ago

    I think this is for the best, there are some seriously disturbed people posting on Lemmygrad. I saw comments cheering on and celebrating the Hamas attack and talking about how they hoped the people who were kidnapped get tortured. Whatever your politics, that is super fucked up and not “legitimate discourse”.

  • Grayox
    link
    fedilink
    1227 months ago

    Lost all respect for lemmygrad when they deleted a comment i made about voting for the lesser of 2 evils being the correct course of action to advance the interests of the Prolitariat in the United States. They care more about larping as revolutionaries than enacting change that actually helps the Working Class.

  • Roflmasterbigpimp
    link
    1157 months ago

    Good Job! You make my experience of Lemmy continuously better! You cleaned that CSAM up with the speed of light (I’ve never even noticed it), you managed the Piracy Community Troubles very well and now you made an well thought through decision about Lemmygrad. Well done Mods! And thank you all very much!

  • @gcheliotis
    link
    1127 months ago

    I understand that they are staunchly pro-communist and also take a pro-Palestine, including some of them (many of them?) a more clearly pro-Hamas stance. And that all of this could annoy many of the centrist liberals that seem to dominate here. But from perusing the lemmygrad link I do not see clear signs of hate speech, certainly not a clear hate speech agenda as you would see with some hate groups. And judging by the comments on here many seem to be happy to be “rid of them” because they are “annoying”, or “immature”, or “tankies”, or whatever. It really reads largely like “their opinions annoy me” so I’m glad they’re gone.

    There may be more to it, I don’t know, but personally I wouldn’t like lemmy.world, an otherwise fine instance by all means, to become a centrist liberal silo where no other opinion outside (mostly US-centric) liberal orthodoxy is heard. So yeah, not convinced that this was the right decision, basically because of a lack of evidence.

    • @lwadminOPMA
      link
      927 months ago

      Most of their communities were blocked since months, that’s why you didn’t see much of them.

      • smoothbrain coldtakes
        link
        fedilink
        407 months ago

        I’m just surprised overall because most other major instances defederated from them weeks or months ago, along with Hexbear and/or Exploding Heads. .ca has been defederated with those probably for at least two months now.

        • @Candelestine
          link
          English
          497 months ago

          The administration of this Instance has a moderate lean towards not defederating in general, they have to be pushed in general. I would describe LW as a free speech leaning Instance, within the Lemmy environment.

          Naturally the topic is very divisive overall and tends to draw heated arguments no matter what position is taken. Free speech absolutists find it downright draconian. I imagine being on Beehaw for longer than five minutes might reduce them to ash, I’m not sure.

          • @jarfil
            link
            07 months ago

            LW has some communities which are quite non-freespeech, with rules like “we can remove and ban anything against the rules or not” (see !world), and some which use their rules arbitrarily as excuses for removing content that doesn’t match their ideology (see !politicalmemes).

            • TheSpookiestUser
              link
              177 months ago

              You know, based on your username I think you might be just a little bit biased

              • Antik 👾
                link
                127 months ago

                We even know exactly who they are :) Well, were. This account got banned too!

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                17 months ago

                We can take the bias out at the source, theres a few websites who list each public instance and how many other instances they are blocking and blocked by.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              57 months ago

              Well the dbzer0 example already tells that just the amount of defeds says nothing. Db0 has gone quite far to proactively blocking CP and nazi instances across the fediverse not just lemmy.

              Considering we’re even federated with hexbear still, can’t call the block finger too trigger happy

    • @SheeEttin
      link
      English
      -1007 months ago

      The phrasing of “an increase in hate speech and calls to violence” suggests that there is a tolerable level of those.

      • @lwadminOPMA
        link
        1157 months ago

        A tolerable level we can handle by moderation. And when even the admins join in it becomes clear there is a big incompatibility and cultural difference.

        But you probably meant something else, right?

      • @gazby
        link
        987 months ago

        Not it doesn’t, it suggests there’s a finite amount of volunteer moderator time. Don’t be a troll.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        377 months ago

        I’m pro voilence against people who block grocery store entrances because they figured that was the best place to chat with someone they ran into… so yes.

        • @Cryophilia
          link
          197 months ago

          People going slow in the fast lane on the freeway

          • Noble Shift
            link
            177 months ago

            The left lane is for crime …

            • @LemmysMum
              link
              27 months ago

              It’s my way or the crime way.

          • Dran
            link
            57 months ago

            Can’t forget those whom text at the theater

            • morriscox
              link
              67 months ago

              My mother-in-law did a phone call and I chewed her out. I couldn’t believe it but then she complained about “kids these days” being on their phone at a restaurant and I pointed out that she was holding her phone and that we were at a restaurant. She shut up.

            • @SheeEttin
              link
              English
              47 months ago

              *who

              Use who when you would use he, use whom when you would use him. Who texts at the theater? He does.

                • @SheeEttin
                  link
                  English
                  37 months ago

                  Still who and whom, respectively. And for they and them.

      • @wreckedcarzz
        link
        English
        187 months ago

        Yeah, there is: using your critical thinking skills, what number comes before 1?

        long pause

        That’s right! Zero! Good job! And what do we call it when 0 becomes 1?

        long pause

        And increase, yes! applause

        Tune in next week with Dora the Internet Explorer! Bye for now!

      • SatansMaggotyCumFart
        link
        77 months ago

        Well there are going to be assholes everywhere but I guess if that instance’s admins/mods aren’t doing their jobs of moderating their users then it makes sense to defederate so the burden doesn’t fall on all other instance’s mods.

        The world isn’t black and white like your comment is suggesting.

        • @grue
          link
          English
          127 months ago

          if that instance’s admins/mods aren’t doing their jobs of moderating their users then it makes sense to defederate

          I’m pretty sure the problem with Lemmygrad wasn’t that the admins there “[weren’t] doing their jobs”, but rather that they were doing their jobs and their jobs were to promote and encourage the hateful rhetoric instead of stopping it.

      • @ttmrichter
        link
        English
        37 months ago

        I’m wondering if you’re trolling or just ignorant. I’ll do you the respect of assuming ignorance.

        There will always be hate speech in any forum. Period. This cannot be stopped short of closing the forum down entirely. If, however, the hate speech is low volume, it can be dealt with individually with post deletion, user bans, community deletions, etc. Standard “tactical” moderation techniques.

        But…

        Shitholes like lemmygrad.ml release a veritable flood of hate speech, as do their right-wing “Freeze Peach!” equivalents. Individual, tactical moderation does not scale to that level without a whole lot more money than a hobbyist-run instance can bring to bear. Thus if hate speech and calls for violence reach the point where tactical moderation can no longer keep up, you start with the strategic moderation. In older-style forums that might be an IP ban. In the Fediverse it’s defederation.

        See how that works?

        Now please, prove to me you’re not trolling and simply didn’t understand how things work.

  • @TheLurker
    link
    English
    77
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    deleted by creator

  • The Picard Maneuver
    link
    737 months ago

    This will be a much better experience for new Lemmy users browsing /All.