If there’s another place to find answers, do let me know. I went over the piefed feature page and did a couple searches already.
I came here from Lemmy to try out Piefed and make another community, but I get an error that my account is too new and/or I don’t have a reputation.
Questions:
What does reputation or attitude mean? What do I need to have to make a community?
How old does my account have to be to make a community?
Why do I need to have an X account age to make a community?
Is there a way to separate upvotes and downvotes? If not, I don’t like it. Just seeing a number doesn’t tell me very much, especially about engagement. A -1 score could have 200 upvotes.
Why are the communist/socialist instances blocked by default and not like, maga? I see it’s blocked by my instance anyway, but thought it was weird to block those three considering there are much worse instances. I already unblocked them, so I don’t need help, I’m just wondering why.
Oh, and why can’t I see the modlog?
Thank you all for your time.
I generally agree with you, but two minor points:
They are tankie adjacent and generally work on enabling tankie / red fash propaganda and polemics under the cover of “tankies are also fellow socialists”.
Lemmygrad is also run by Dessalines, the lead developer of Lemmy.
“Muad’Dibber”, the Lemmygrad admin is a Dessalines alt.
I disagree that authoritarianism is anywhere in the same ballpark as democratic socialism, and naively I would far sooner believe that dbzer0 was anti-censorship rather than pro-authoritarian. I have heard that accusation about dbzer0 previously but as far as I can tell it seems based exclusively on the post https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/52313315, which is if not fully debunked then at least highly contested in the comments, so the furthest from a fully settled issue as it could possibly be.
But am I missing something, do you want to share a link to support your accusation of them? (You did not phrase that as “I heard somewhere that…” but rather stated it as a true fact, as if you believed it based on some kind of evidence?)
Otherwise, the only accusation that I’ve heard of that seems to hold any water is the Nazi bar argument… which would apply to the entire Threadiverse, and perhaps by extension to the entire internet also? i.e. while valid, I am not seeing how helpful that is. e.g. your instance and mine both federates with Lemmy.ml, which makes each of us “tankies” as well by that logic. Unless there is something more specific about dbzer0 specifically being pro-tankie rather than simply not anti-tankie enough?
That sounds like a conspiracy theory. If true then I have seen no evidence of it, though I don’t particularly care one way or the other so will just leave it at that. Here too you did not phrase it like “might even be…”, but as an established fact. It is already so exceedingly difficult to separate fact from fiction on the internet, please aim to be more precise so as not to muddy the waters further. I do thank you for your desire to help.
You’re welcome to assume I am lying.
I don’t believe in polemical rhetoric using “free speech” or “censorship” motifs. I don’t find such rhetoric convincing and it is often used for ostentatious aims and fails the basis logic test.
Considering how tankies aggressively censor any critique of russia and china, it seems strange to bring up opposition to censorship as a defence of DB0’s embrace of red fascism.
Tankies openly call for the interment, torture of Ukrainians and celebrate the russian invasion. DB0 openly condones such behaviour; this is their endorsement of lemmy.ml (literal endorsement, not my words):
Your claim about a conspiracy theory is incorrect. The URL I provided clearly outlines that muad_dibber, the grad admin, is Dessalines.
I did not downvote you btw, just asked for details.
Yes the term “free speech” is often misused, but at the end of the day it is either the real explanation or it is not, though for what exactly I am still not certain - failure to defederate from lemmy.ml? Failure to actively speak out against them (which they have I believe) hard enough or long or often enough? They are who they are, and rather than rely on either my or your opinion, someone interested in knowing who they are would best be served by listening to neither of us but instead to them.
Even not openly endorsing them would be a start. The DB0 admin was also caught downvoting criticism of tankies (in the link you brought up).
For example, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that a post like " Calling out Russian propaganda on .ml is a total site ban under “rule 1 bigotry” according to dessalines, head .ml admin, main Lemmy dev" would be downvoted by the DB0 admin
Even in the DB0 thread that you cited, there are multiple ML users who aggressively deny prosecution of Uighurs by the CCP and openly support the russian genocidal imperialism goals.
Why is it unreasonable to make conclusions about this? I am genuinely curious.
There are tons of reasons to downvote someone. I rarely do it myself, so I am not the best person to ask why, I just know that people do. Just off the top of my head though: process rather than content, or style over substance (e.g. if a cussword were used and someone did not like to see that, hence downvoting even something that they would otherwise agree with) are two examples.
Now THIS would be a strong argument. Can you send me a link to read more about this?
I agree with your general logic, but this was specific example. The “meanwhileongrad” is specifically aimed at documenting and ridiculing far left extremism (support for russian genocidal imperialism, knowingly lying that Cuba/NK is a democracy, claiming any opposition to the current regime in Venezuela is a CIA operation).
Shared this earlier:
https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.ml
There is no reason for DB0 to give this endorsement. They could have simply said nothing (ML has multiple other endorsements, albeit ones with easily provable lies).
Thank you. I wonder how long ago that endorsement was made though? Lemmy.ml was one of the oldest instances - I think Hexbear technically predates them but in the sense of using a different software than Lemmy, and similarly for dbzer0 (who iirc used a forum software that was not federated). If the sole options are Reddit vs. Lemmy, then you take what you can get.
Study the history a bit: those truly were different times. Like for one thing, Lemmy.world did not exist, so virtually all communities were on Lemmy.ml. Since then Lemmy.ml has been relegated to almost obscurity, but back then was a very different story… Comics, Memes, News, everything was on lemmy.ml, before it was as widely known about their moderation practices - in large part bc the admins kept that as an echo chamber, silencing any dissent with full instance-wide perma-bans, so it is entirely plausible that many people simply did not know what it was all about.
Also, there was the whole distraction issue where it was “claimed” that the most extremist leftist stuff was relegated over to lemmygrad.ml, which while true, should not be taken at face value when considering just how much extremism remains. But, at the time… I could see someone believing that misinformation, for being plausible in that context.
Fwiw I agree with you that they would have done better to have simply said nothing, but also I agree with dbzer0 in that narrowly within just the reasons they stipulated, Lemmy.ml in its earlier days truly was like that. No I wasn’t here for that, I just found it interesting to poke around to read older posts about the history of things:-).
These are all true statements (and to this day there are communities of expert systems especially that refuse to migrate away from Lemmy.ml - oh well, their loss as the rest of us refuse to be held hostage by their poor choices):
You might ask dbzer0 if they still endorse Lemmy.ml tankies in today’s environment, or are there any more recent statements that they’ve already put out? Anyway, I agree that this is not a high moment for them - I’m just not sure it’s all that terribly low either, as it would be if they did such today.
Edit: also it’s crucial to note there that an “endorsement” does not mean “you should totally go create an account over there”, but rather “I would like my instance to federate with this instance, as its users serve up worthwhile content that I would like to participate with” - so not quite the same meaning as the word “endorse” would typically imply.