9mo ago

Concerning behaviour on r/lemmy, by reddit "supermoderator" u/LeninMeowMeow

u/LeninMeowMeow moderates a large amount of big subreddits, r/therightcantmeme, r/gamingcirclejerk, r/animememes, r/greenandpleasent (a known russian propaganda subreddit source: Center for European Policy Analysis (think Lemmygrad)) and much more.

Anyways on r/lemmy, he says that lemmy.world is right-wing and thatcherite. I reply that it is more social democratic.

I instantly get banned from the subreddits he moderates and blocked by him. I have not commented or participated in any of their subreddits before, and this is my first ever encounter with them.

Weird and concerning behaviour. I fear that tankies are taking over most left wing spaces on reddit (not that I really use reddit for politics anymore, that’s why I’m on lemmy, but for the implications to our democracies, as a non-negligible chunk of voters are politically influenced by reddit).

67 comments

This sounds almost like he's been paid to denigrate Lemmy in hopes of keeping some of the rapidly declining Reddit population from leaving... It's clear he's never actually used Lemmy which is way more left leaning than Reddit honestly
I'm so glad I left the corporate cesspool that Reddit has become
- Reddit? Pay their mods?!
  No but I agree. It's very sus to say the right has taken over Lemmy, and then laude lemmy.ml and hexbear for their left wing positions.
  Like yeah they're... Left wing... All the way oof the cliff, denying Tiananmen Square and trying to get actual social democrats to join sketchy Chinese communist parties.
  This mods take on Lemmy is either paid for or he's a tankie.
  
  There was also a controversy over on r/redditalternatives with recommendations for Lemmy being taken down
  I'll see if I can find the thread sometime

neoliberal thatcherites and reaganites that carry out digital mccarthyism
Buzzword mad-libs.
- The words themselves make sense but... not for lemmy.world lmao
  
  Eh. It has its moments. More like Clintonites though.
- The more big words you know, the smarter you are, duh.
- KremlinGPT cranking that propaganda hog.

Any Reddit super moderator who survived the Rexodus bent the knee to Spez and did not maintain closures. They valued their stance as a moderator over others more than the shit getting pulled. He absolutely would have been present for those meetings and message rooms during that time. Anyone like that is not a friend of the average user of any platform.
- Edit: my client is acting up, putting my comment under the wrong parent comment

I didn't know the power mod situation is that bad. I already started avoiding r/gamingcirclejerk when I saw them banning users for correcting easily disproven misinformation about the "bad people" they meme about.
The internet is getting weird. It used to be that I only had to worry about alt-right trolls. Now I have to look out for authoritarian fake leftists infiltrating and taking over my spaces. I don't even care about leftism. I just don't want to participate in spaces where I could get banned for arguing that communism doesn't work.

It's reddit, you get what you get. That's why the majority of us stopped using it.

That therightcantmeme subreddit is absolutely full of tankies and has been for quite some time.
- I still remember when they took it over. That was a weird week. Out of the blue a ton of “Stalin did nothing wrong” posts sprung up. Made it clear it was time to leave that sub after vocally calling out their bullshit.
  
  Yeah, same. The subreddit just suddenly kicked a lot of normal mods and installed tankie mods. Used to be a fun place to dunk on regressives. Now it is run by regressive authoritarianism lovers.

A reddit mod being a piece of shit? Say it isn't so! How could this happen?

I was permabanned from !politicalmemes@lemmy.world for pointing out (quite rudely, tbf) that some of the accounts had been recycling transparently laughable propaganda. E.g. they had said elsewhere that they were upset that Biden had undone Trump's insulin price cap, and now they were showing up trotting out some somewhat more subtle talking points (you know the ones...)
- would be interested to hear you elaborate on this.
  
  Dude I would fuckin LOVE to. Spending extensive time whining about moderation decisions is rarely productive, but I was definitely a little salty about it and I'm happy to discuss. Disclaimer; I'm aware that I was being a cockhead at certain points during the thread, which certainly factored into the decision, but also some of my perfectly reasonable comments were being deleted and a lot of people who were way more (and are way more consistently) cockheads didn't earn a permaban for it. It remains sort of a curious moderation decision to me.
  Here's the thread. There was quite a lot of discussion in it about the presence of shills clearly distorting the discussion. I'll reproduce some of the threads including restored versions of comments that were deleted by mods (you can verify all of this on the modlog.)
  I'll indicate deleted comments with a strikethrough.
  OP: These framings we see in the media have absolutely nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country
  Me: Actually I would add to that that these framings are specifically inserted into the discourse by corporate media to elevate some candidates and depress some candidates, with the depressingly effective aim of making people dislike the corporate unfriendly candidates
  Posters ITT: Hey like 20 or 30 of us have the exact same new framing we’d like to present that has nothing to do with which candidate is more qualified to run the country. It might be a much much better framing than, which candidate is better to vote for, or factual things about the candidate’s record. We all feel that exact same way about it being important to look at it this way.
  You can have the best product in the universe, but if you can’t sell it, then it doesn’t matter. When trying to argue a douche is better than a turd, you really need your presentation going. None of the American politicians (except maybe Bernie) are remotely qualified to run a country of any size, so stop trying to make it about who is the most qualified.
  ~~Aw man~~
  I tried to set you up to say something like, yeah but what has Biden even done other than “not Trump” (as if that “doesn’t count” somehow as a reason to pick him instead of Trump), but you didn’t take the bait. You just came out with conflating “which product is best marketed” with “which is the product we actually want”, and somehow came down on the side of best-marketed. Idk what that’s about. And then you simply said that no one is qualified.
  ~~Idk, that’s a little bit close to teeing up what I wanted to say (talking about Biden’s qualification), so I’ll go ahead and put it up anyway.~~
  ~~40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030~~
  ~~15% minimum corporate tax~~
  ~~Actual labor people in charge of the NLRB for the first time in God knows how long leading to all these union wins~~
  ~~Hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan forgiveness~~
  ~~Big wage gains at the bottom end of the scale even when adjusted for massive historic inflation~~
  ~~That’s a partial sampling. And that was with a pretty hostile congress and Supreme Court; most of it was watered down versions after he tried to do more aggressive stuff.~~
  That's a weird removal, no? Reason given was "stalking."
  I'll have to reply to myself to talk more about the stalking; I'm meeting the character limit. Ask me if I'm still salty about these events. 🙂

Tankies gonna tank.

"I'm a communist, I can't be a far right conservative!" - Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

It’s weird because I also commented in that thread and my comments were arguably more confrontational. But I didn’t get banned for whatever reason.
They did say I would be banned in any socialist space for truthfully talking about the history of Leninism but they didn’t actually do it.
The tankie takeover of online left spaces is a problem but I’m not sure what to do about it. I guess try to politely point out that it’s not just a harmless difference of opinion whenever it comes up in more neutral spaces. Their preferred system means the murder of dissidents. That’s not what left politics should be about. And maybe try to create more open and non-violent left spaces where the truth can be discussed.
- not sure what to do about it
  Defederation from Hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml would be a decent start, but since they have support from the Kremlin/CCP it'll probably turn into ongoing whack-a-mole.
  
  What do you mean by support? Like ideological support or more direct support?

maybe hexbears and lemmy.grad are trolling on reddit or smth and i have never seen far right stuff on lemmy.world communities
- Those creeps think anyone who disagrees with them are on the far right.
  
  Its an intentional move by whatever authoritarian piece of shit propagandist runs the instance and its bots/shills.
  People have started calling them out and those instances have lost most credibility, so they're trying to bring legit instances down to their level and spread confusion.
  
  bruh

!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com

I've seen those comments too, thank you for posting here

That's because only yes bots are allowed on reddit now! No seriously, insane amount of generated and copied content.

Careful if you have any Reddit alts. This particular moderator has the ban evasion filter set to the highest sensitivity on all of his subreddits (it's a Reddit feature that flags suspected alts of banned users based on account details and device fingerprinting) and will report every case of suspected ban evasion to the admins. They normally don't care but will look into it if a mod reports it. If you accidentally post on any of his subreddits with an alt the admins will permanently ban all of your accounts.
- Thanks for the warning but he doesn’t mod the subreddit this discussion was in. I replied with an alt because he blocked me so I couldn’t see his messages anymore.

So he’s just against signing up for .world or …? Because my instance is federated with Hexbear (though even we can’t stand grad).

What do you fear are the tangible consequences for US elections of tankie takeover of leftwing spaces on reddit?
- There are one or two million eligible US voters on reddit by estimate. A decent chunk of those are progressive left. People like u/leninmeowmeow have been increasingly taking over left wing subreddits, and pushing pro-russia and “don’t vote both sides bad” propaganda, which does impact US voters.
  I had a health emergency in June 2023 and was pretty much unable to use reddit until April 2024. Going back, the same subreddits felt like a different world. A bunch of subreddits I frequented, that had been social democrat and pro-ukraine, became subtly pro-russia. This is the reason I left reddit for lemmy. I felt like my political ideology (idealistically I’m an anarcho-marxist, but I still vote for the better candidate to shift the overton window, and I’m critical of Chinese and Russian imperialism, and really all the authoritarian “communist” regimes) had no place on reddit anymore.
- None whatsoever. It will ultimately result in these subreddits becoming an echo chamber for a bunch of pro Russia bots to troll each other after everyone else leaves
  It's more just annoying than anything else since it means these spaces are now unusable for their intended purpose
  
  These are the same bots that have inflamed for real real-world riots in the UK right now, and in my opinion probably had quite a bit to do with getting Trump elected the first time around. I know people IRL who have their whole worldview formed by what these bots want them to believe. I'm not sure how big a real world problem it actually is on any given platform, but in the aggregate, it's a fuckin HUGE problem IMO.

- I commented:
  Fuck right off.
  Which was removed for violating rule 3. What is rule 3? "Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here."
  I fail to see the connection.

67 comments