I know they’ve always been on Lemmy, but it seems like the past few weeks it’s slowly increasing, making me want to just stay on beehaw /local. Showing up on more communities, even on instances that ban that type of trolling explicitly.
Anyone else notice this?
Note: When I’m saying Tankie here, I’m not referring to far leftists, socialists, anti-capitalists, etc. I’m talking about trolls that act leftist but their actual intent is to cause infighting and support authoritarian regimes. Sealioning, all that stuff.
I chose this instance to explicitly avoid having to deal with Tankies or RWNJs. I don’t think your characterization of Tankies as trolls trying to divide the Left is accurate, though, they’re just auth-Lefties. There’s nothing inherently anti-authoritarian about the Left; most people on here aren’t anarchists, for instance, so they’re a hell of a lot more authoritarian than I’m okay with, but I don’t think that makes them fake Progressives or Leftists.
My biggest issue with Tankies, and what makes them so damn frustrating, is that most of them just straight deny reality in order to avoid admitting that they just don’t care what their authoritarian government(s) do. Makes it impossible to have an actual productive debate with someone when they know you’re right but don’t care, and won’t admit it.
It’s been very good on Beehaw for avoiding them so far, they seem to just be straying out more and more to other communities lately.
I don’t think your characterization of Tankies as trolls trying to divide the Left is accurate, though, they’re just auth-Lefties
That’s fair, most of the times I’ve seen them has been from hexbear and spamming that pig image and just dogpiling people so I was under the impression that it was almost entirely trolls, that combined with not understanding how someone can unironically support authoritarian governments behavior or act fully oblivious to it
spamming that pig image
Not knowing what “that pig image” is makes me think my choice to limit myself to Beehaw was the correct one. :)
not understanding how someone can unironically support authoritarian governments behavior or act fully oblivious to it
I thought this as well until in college when I became good friends with a Chinese guy, and started hanging with him and other students from China. It was wild sometimes how they would say shit that you just couldn’t believe, but was just normal to them, and not just in denial about stuff (I didn’t bring up “sensitive” topics like Xinjiang or censorship with them), but just like casually saying the numerous homeless people around (in San Francisco) should be disposed of, and you’re like screaming in your head while they laugh about it.
I talked with that friend years later, after he’d been working and living here for about a decade, and he was like, “man, some of the stuff I used to believe was crazy”, and I was basically like, “I didn’t want to say it, but yeeeeaaaaah.”
They’re just Auth-Lefties
I’m not sure they’re even that, to me it seems like it’s people with so much hatred of their life that they then blame on western culture, which means they much criticise anything the west do and praise anything the enemies or alternatives to the west do, including praising authoritarians and terrorists as they’re against the west and so are fighting for the same cause
I think there’s a lot of “letting your rhetoric eat itself” in Tankie circles, where they let their performative support of ML rhetoric become more and more extreme, and more and more exclusivist, until the only rhetoric that remains is “ML good, non-ML bad”. It’s almost like a self-imposed descent into Orwellian NewSpeak (or the affirmative language of the Ascians, if you prefer Wolfe).
I don’t like Capitalism or Imperialism or Settler-Colonialism, and would prefer we all collectively adopt a Mutualist (or other ansoc structure) system, but I can acknowledge that not everyone within this shitty system is attempting to reify and strengthen it, and I don’t make espousal of my specific brand of resistance a litmus test to tell whether other people are good or
capitalistbad.
A good portion of them are absolutely paid foreign agents/LLMs pushing political extremes in order to divide the US and some European countries.
They masquerade as communists, fascists, anarchists, and more.
A good portion of them
This could mean anything, it’s essentially a moving target. Do you mean “a majority”? Because that would be a hell of a claim, sans evidence.
There are a lot of different views out there, and if you just assume that people who (even massively) disagree with you, despite being on the same rough political “side”/“axis”, are trolls, you’re probably just building a little echo chamber of beliefs. The “Left” encompasses a LOT of different views, many of which don’t play nicely with each other.
Are there sophisticated agitprop accounts for state actors out there? Of course. Can you readily identify their accounts, or attribute individual posts to larger campaigns? If you’re being honest, no you can’t.
I’ve seen a few different replies on various posts that, while different, all repeat nearly identical sentiments about having to “purge” fascists with violence, for the good of humanity or whatever. I don’t think they’re bots, probably paid trolls. I believe the goal is to push a violent agenda, at least the appearance of one, in leftist communities.
I haven’t noticed much of an uptick per se, at least in the posts I’ve seen browsing all. There was a recent uptick in low-effort America bad posting out of certain communities, but I haven’t seen much in the way of red fascist bs.
I’ve slowly blocked extremist and other language communities.
This was weird to come across. Yes, actually, I did come across something just the other day. I was banned from world news @lemmy.ml for saying something along the lines of “It’s a bummer that the protests in Hong Kong didn’t work out and that the government crushed opposition.” The post in question was talking about how people from Hong Kong are traveling to mainland China for cheaper goods.
I noticed in the comments it seemed a lot of people were in support of this which seemed odd to me. But nobody had said anything that stood out to me as immediately tankie oriented.
To be fair, I don’t know if that’s why I was banned. But it’s the only thing I said, and I wasn’t given a reason. When I tried to reply to the person who replied to me, it just said I’m banned from commenting, lol.
Edit: I also have no idea what I’m doing with lemmy or how the different communities work. I came from reddit last year and my usage has dropped significantly. So it could be that I stepped into the lions den and had no idea lol
Not sure how to get to it on the apps but on the Lemmy sites there’s a modlog button at the bottom, I went to Lemmy.ml on the modlog and searched your name and it says ban reason was “Orientalism/British Colonialism” which is their usual cop-out ban reason to silence any anti-Chinese government messages over there on .ml
Edit: you definitely stepped into the lions den on .ml lol, their admins are very pro-authoritarian, anti-civil rights over there. Lemmy.ml, lemmygrad, and hexbear are the lions dens, beehaw has lemmygrad and hexbear blocked, .ml isn’t though. Unsure of the reasoning but .ml is a bit more “tame” than the other two.
Interesting lol thanks for the extra information, that’s good to know. I’ll be avoiding that section then.
I find it fascinating that people can have such varied ideas/morality. I would have never thought my take would have been considered controversial for others lol.
I think your experience is probably similar to a lot of people’s that join Lemmy. There’s certainly a lot of people on this platform with quite extreme views. Many instances got sick of them and blocked them, and in turn they think we’re liberal fascists.
I think most people by now have received bans from the world news community on lemmy.ml, including myself. I wouldn’t worry about it!
“Tankies” are most likely russian troll farm folk cosplaying as leftists in an attempt to re-elect donald. They desperately want to divide the left and calve off biden voters.
That might be worth a listen for you. There’s lots of reason for a lot of people to dislike biden. If your choice is between Trump and a guy that’s actively supporting genocide, I can’t blame you for not voting.
To be clear, I’d vote biden, but I can’t blame people for not voting.
There’s zero chance that that poll was conducted properly. It claims that Trump is getting more Black support than any Republican since Eisenhower this year. That even includes Trump himself from both 4 and 8 years ago!
It’s actually very possible. Black conservative voices look a lot like Trump. Tim Scott, for example; he’s got a nice face, and he seems like a kind person since he always talks up a positive message (“compassionate conservatism”), but his policies align very, very closely with Trump and the far-right elements that have taken over the Republican party. Anecdotally, I’ve known a number of black men in north Georgia that very strongly support Trump.
FiveThirtyEight recently covered this. And it’s looking bad. Bad enough that we–by which I mean people that support a genuine democracy in the US–can’t afford to sit this vote out, even if we believe that Biden’s support for Israel is awful. Because we know Trump is going to be even worse there, and worse in every possible way.
They didn’t vote for him the last time. Or the time before then. Occam’s razor overwhelmingly favors polling error.
I can, considering the chances of Trump intensifying support of the genocide is 100%
Imagine choosing between genocide and genocide and still thinking you have a choice.
Imagine thinking only one issue has ever existed.
@Zorque @Alto @Facebones @Gonkulator @Nia_The_Cat @JayTreeman y’all!
If that helps, think that you also have a choice between someone who supports freedom and democracy in Europe and someone who would tell Russia to do whatever the hell it wants.
My brother in Christ, when the “moral” wing of the single corpo party supports sidestepping congress to do genocide, there’s nothing to save.
Ah, so it’s not about choice, it’s about pretending you have no choice because it’s easier to give up than actually do something.
Tell me how voting for a pro genocide “party” that when its mid right corpo establishment was even remotely challenged went to court to have it ruled they’re a private organization that does what it wants and moves the goalposts every time a third 0arty approaches the requirements for inclusion does literally anything?
You live and die by this “save us from trump then fix it” narrative but YOUR party already explicitly cut off all routes to change. You’re blue MAGA screaming how only you can save the country. Hell your Mommy went on TV like a week ago and said anybody unhappy with Biden should stfu and eat a dick.
When the “moral” wing of our singular corporate party is all in on genocide, there’s nothing to save anyway - you’re just fighting for your comfortable status quo no matter who goes down for it. You’re throwing Palestinians under the bus to protect it and hide behind q pride flag but in a cycle or two when they gun for lgbtq you’ll be making excuses for them too.
I can. Because it’s shortsighted, especially when we already had four years of Trump as an example of what would happen. It’s not like they can say “It’s possible he’d be better!” because we have clear examples that he wouldn’t.
If your choice is between having your house burn down and your toilet overflowing… you don’t just leave the house and never return. You take the toilet overflowing and fix it. Because just leaving it means someone else who’s more responsible has to clean up your mess.
It’s kicking the can down the road on status quo US policies vs the complete destruction of democracy, but if y’all want to sit out and let Trump get elected, fuck y’all.
The issue is that not voting because you can’t stand either candidate looks exactly the same as not voting because you like both of them equally and don’t mind which of them rules you.
And to be clear, the choice is not Trump vs Genocide. They both support genocide. Trump even more so.
I’m not American here but this is the kind of situation that you aren’t voting for the candidate but against something much worse
I understand it, but I don’t forgive it.
In fact the only comments ive ever had removed on lemmy was me pointing out this very fact. They are quite sensitive to it being said.
Funnily enough, this happening to me this morning is exactly what inspired this post
Interesting. Seems a bit suspicious.
@Gonkulator one of them that is the most active really is a Russian living in the West, yet is rolling Kremlin propaganda like crazy. You can find him on Mastodon as well, with his real name displayed on his website.
How dare you insinuate that people aren’t coincidentally voicing how much they hate {Insert American President} during an election year!
Block all Tankies and move on. They’re not real people with real viewpoints. There is no point in conversing with them.
I don’t want to block them, I want to get them out of the fediverse. Lemmy will fail if it can’t get rid of the extremist political propaganda.
This is exactly right. It’s genuinely disappointing how few people realize it.
I haven’t, but I’m also not really subbed to many communities that they also participate in. And my home instance is pretty cool.
Not really since i’ve been focused on beehaw insteadof lemmy.ml, but I’m also happy to see someone articulating what these trolls are: shills for authoritarian regimes.
Wasn’t HexBear down for a bit and a lot of people were making accounts on Lemmy.ml or something.
.ml is really just a way for the hexbear clowns to circumvent their defederarion. If you filter that shithole out also, it’s a lot better experience here.
The accounts I’ve seen are in other locations. It also doesn’t feel like the Hexbear crowd as they have a specific way of arguing.
I’m not sure. It could have to do with certain instances connecting to new communities or maybe there was a popular post bringing more people to the fediverse.
Might be worth seeing if there was a surge in new members.
I think they were more on grad, at least there was an admin post there telling the refugees to behave.
Thank you for the correction. I think you are right.
You can block by instance yourself (hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml and lemmy.ml are the main offenders)
But this only seems to stop their threads appearing, not the users themselves. I don’t know if this is a bug in Lemmy or intentional.
How do I do that in Beehaw please, or do you just mean blocking them on mastodon itself? Thanks!
For what it’s worth Beehaw already has hexbear and lemmygrad completely defederated
That’ll be why I don’t see them! Excellent. Many thanks.
Not sure you can, Beehaw doesn’t appear to be upgraded to Lemmy 0.19 or higher.
When they do, it’s in your settings page with the other block lists.
Ah right. OK - many thanks 😊
I’m mainly seeing people who love using the word “enshittifation”.
It reminds me of the time the kids learned the word “snowflake”
Bonus points to those who have a hissy fit after someone responds to the claim and to those who say “trust me” after you claim it’s ridiculous
It is a meaningless term now since it is used to mean something is shitty instead of the specific transition from something useful into an ad infested hellscape.
Any term with a precise meaning becomes muddked and generic the more popular it becomes as people see it used without the context to let them kmow what it means. I would try to coin a new term for it, but why bother when it will lose all meaning in a few months?
I’m also really tired of this word honestly. Yes, we know it’s happening and see it all around us. It’s kind of been doing it for 20 years, so it’s just kind of funny since the word just popped up in these circles and now its run rampant and is beginning to lose its meaning, saying it about any business or service that is looking to make profit.
Not that I disagree, just like yeah guys we get it, everything everywhere sucks, pointing it out every 30 seconds doesn’t really do much if we aren’t actively taking actions against it, which gets into the whole “then we have to bring it up know about it” and the cycle repeats itself.
Yep. They come in waves whenever there’s a hot-button issue happening. Same thing as all the RWNJs. They away their programming and then hit the message boards/forums with their up-to-date-rhetoric.
Noticed and elected not to install a lemmy client on my new phone because of it. I think it’s a mix of astroturfing by the Russians as they push for another offensive in Ukraine, dumb dumbs who have fallen for Russian astroturfing in the past, and trolls who just think it’s funny. I think @Ignacio@beehaw.org is right on the money that the real problem isn’t the amount of input, it’s the amount of filtering. I’m mostly more active on the microblog section of the fediverse because the moderation out there is more mature than it is in here in the threadiverse.
Moderation on Lemmy is so miss or miss. I once got banned from an “inclusive” comm for sounding “pompous”. I have NPD, pompousness is a symptom. And it wasn’t a situation where I was causing any problems, a power tripping mod just didn’t like my tone of voice.
I got harassed by tankies even after pointing them out that I have ADHD and ASD. That was months ago, when I was commenting from time to time on a lemmy.ml community. And mod did nothing, obviously 🤷♂️
Honestly I might just go back to Reddit at this rate. Yeah, it’s giving content to a capitalist, but it also means not subjecting myself to as much transphobic and ableist abuse
Imagine if you could easily tell if someone was an unhinged asshole IRL if they had a tattoo on their forehead that said “Grad” or “Hexbear.”
Fortunately on Fedi it’s exactly like that and you can see which home instance people come from right next to their usernames.
Personally I have not but my instance is defederated from several of these.
Unfortunately, I think there’s no reason to believe these people are insincere in their beliefs.
