I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
I’m finally making the switch from Reddit. The Voyager app seems like a pretty seamless transition, but I’d love to hear any tips about using this platform, or what quirks distinguish it from Reddit as a whole.
Time to make accounts in lemmy.ml
I don’t think they are that dogmatic too.
Like, they seem to support China lead by a Socialist/Communist/Marxist political leadership, that declares its aim as transitioning into socialism by 2050 or so.
This is absolutely nitpicking, but China is already Socialist, and considers itself as such. They have a “stages” theory of Socialism itself, 2050 is for the next stage in Socialism. They are Socialist becuse Public Ownership is principle in their economy, ie large firns and key industries are state owned and controlled, while smaller and less critical industries are privately owned. A rubber factory has power over the rubber ball factory, to give a quick example.
They often leave a dogmatic impression when someone says something which is completely normal to hear and say in (for example) the USA, but is unknowingly bigoted or ignorant misinformation. The .ml admins have no time for that and I think its unfortunate that there’s little attempt at linking them to resourced that explain why their post was prejudiced, because it’s usually not intentional or heartless.
One can absolutely critisise China there and you’ll probably end up banned if you aren’t critical of the Russian Federation. I’ve made posts on Lemmygrad challenging their notion of China’s form of worker democracy. But certain popular critiques are just bigoted or unfounded propaganda which the admins will ban people for, so it comes off as just shutting down opposing viewpoints. And that’s really unfortunate.
Aah.
Is there something like the automod feature in reddit?
That would be solution to common misconceptions, right?
Good idea. I have seen some instances using mod-privileged bots for automating some tasks, like making weekly posts in communities, but I don’t think I’ve seen an auto-moderation bot yet.
I personally think having pre-filled ban reasons is a great moderation tool which would be useful for Lemmy.
Said China doesn’t respect human rights because they’re doing a Uyghurs genocide, got banned from [email protected]
Yea, China #1, we love that they spy on their citizens, and don’t have freedom of speech
In the comment that got removed and got you temporarily banned, you just said “China is a place where human rights aren’t respected,” nothing about the Uyghur people or how the PRC treats them.
Either way, I recommend you read the UN investigation report and China’s response, both linked here.
As for spying on citizens, Western countries are just as, if not more guilty, of doing as such. Freedom of Speech doesn’t truly exist in the West either, when corporations dominate the media and the US State Department funds propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia in order to drum up hostility towards its geopolitical rivals. “Freedom of Speech” is more often a way to allow corporations unlimited control of speech through flooding the information space with information they want you to see. True Freedom of Speech would require placing restrictions on the power of lobbyists and corporations to dominate.
There’s a lot that can be legitimately criticized about the PRC, of course, but a lot of the common “criticism” tends to be either distorted or exaggerated, or from holding China to a higher standard than other countries, which makes genuine debate more difficult to find.
I got temporarily banned for a month indeed, but what does that change? Not a lot in my opinion. I won’t be going back anyways.
Why do I need to explain my reasoning when it’s pretty well known that China isn’t the best place to live for human rights? On the other hand, I get banned with no explanation, apart from a “Don’t be rude” rule, like what??
Companies censoring speech isn’t the same as a country censoring speech. As far as I’m concerned we still have some sort of freedom of press. Btw, where did I say the USA was perfect? I would put it in the bad countries for human rights due to how they treat non-US people (you probably know the many wars/conflicts they’ve been into and how they feel like they have every rights on other territories like how Isreal was created, or that they can kill civilians in military operations).
Surely the political opponents in Hong Kong are fine and not persecuted as well.
From the little I’ve read about the report you sent, which I don’t have the time to read rn, but might later, I saw multiple things like acts of “disruption of social order” can be considered as terrorist activity. We know that in countries with strong control of the government like China, “terrorism” is often used to justify repression against political opponents. It’s even stated in the report (didn’t saw that it was as I was writing this)
What I’m reading is a lot of bad things. The report is rather incriminating.
It changes the nature of the ban, being given a slap on the wrist vs being permanently shut out, like I have been for calling out the Democrat’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinians on .world comms, or giving a nuanced take on what Socialism should be considered on a comm moderated by PugJesus.
Either way, you need to explain because anti-China views are only really common in Europe and the US/Canada, Australia, and their allies like Japan. Pro-Chinese views, and views of a good nature on their Human Rights, are more common among people globally. Why does this discrepancy exist? Because western countries are not given free reign to plunder China economically like they do elsewhere, and thus manufacture outrage paid for by the US State Department.
It isn’t about calling the US perfect, it’s about weighing problems in China specifically more than problems elsewhere. China is not perfect, but at the same time it is better than contemporary powers.
As for speech censoring, the speech gets censored, why does it matter more to you that companies be able to do so?
As for HK, about 3/4s of the population want integration with the PRC, with some wishing more autonomy but very few wanting a hard break.
To return to the issue of Uyghur sepparatism, there is a well-documented history of violence in the region, such as the 2009 Urumqi Riots. There was factually a problem. We can critique the Chinese response, but this was a real problem China addressed with reeducation camps. Claims that these camps are for genocidal reasons aren’t backed up by UN investigation, though, such claims come exclusively from Christian Nationalist and US and UK government-funded propagandist Adrian Zenz, who believes China is the antichrist and it is his mission from God to condemn them.
Again, we can absolutely have real critique of China, but blindly repeating claims with dubious origins and generally maintaining a distrust of the Chinese on the basis of having a strong Public Sector is not real critique, hence why I wanted you to look at the UN report. This is a similar situation to the Iraqi UN Weapons Inspectors, who never found WMD but the US lied and invaded anyways. Real events are distorted so the US can pressure into economic capitulation, and even justify invasion, and then apologize if ever called out later for it.
So you spouted the standard route “China bad” takes.
Sure. China bad, USA bad, Russia bad. So? Doesn’t make my criticism invalid, nor misinformation.
There’s just a biased moderation that censors people that have strong takes against some countries.
It’s the same tedious thought terminating cliches that western chauvinists are pre-progammed to repeat. Many of them are misinformation, (like the “Uyghur genocide” narrative), but most of them don’t even have enough substance to even get to that level.
Uyghur genocide is misinformation? 🤦
Good old genocide denying.
ofc they’re here on their own will, and definitely not being brainwashed and forced to work. all good
We do indeed deny long-debunked “Uyghur genocide” bullshit.
.
If you’re into political censorship and echo chambers, good for you. I value free speech, debates with diverse opinions
Going against the standard western viewpoint with respect to China is not an opinion that can be formed in a vacuum, so it isn’t going to be a real echo chamber. If you want to actually debate, I think Lemmy.ml is one of the better places on Lemmy to do so, assuming you aren’t just saying “China bad.” Do you have an example of an instance that is better for genuine, high-effort debate surrounding China?
any opinion or viewpoint can be an echo chamber
Saying terrorism is bad is a standard viewpoint, but people that are into it are often in a complete echo chamber
An echo chamber is a deliberate shutting out of opposing viewpoints. This is possible in areas where an ideology represents the status quo of an area, like a pro-US website in the US, but antagonistic views towards the status quo cannot divorce their context from that status quo.
I can be a Marxist-Leninist, but cannot avoid seeing mainstream pro-US media, it’s something I have to engage with to live my life in the US. On the contrary, it is very easy for a USian to completely shut out all interactions with Marxist-Leninists.
How do you feel about Stalin?
Overall positive.
I’ve heard that he supported the development of India. As an Indian, positive view here.
After joining lemmy, seeing arguments about him, got to know that he faced personal losses too, with his son, a soldier in the WW2, dying in a Nazi concentration camp as a PoW.
Have read that there were purges of officials and repression in fear of Nazi and other spies and that excesses did happen under his govt.
But considering how they were able to reduce poverty and were able to industrialise their nation, making them able to fight the Nazis, I see them overall positively.
Have heard about the famine too. But not sure if it was purposeful like how Churchill took away foodgrains from Bengal. So negative view on it, but not sure how to see it. Whether it is intentional or natural cause or inefficiency.
How do you feel about Hitler?
Thurston and J Arch Getty have good books on Stalin. They’re both pretty well respected historians, so you can read stuff about the famine from their books. It’s not a pretty picture. Also, which part of India, if you don’t mind?
Famines are never going to be pretty, right?
I have seen pictures online of the Bengal and Mangalore famines that India suffered under British rule.
My doubt on it is how much of it is natural and how much is intentional.
What do those historians say about that?
I have seen people arguing and discussing about it online, with everything ranging from intentional punishment to bureaucratic inefficiency to feudal farmlords burning their produce and animals during the famine to how famines were common in the region until the 1950’s and also mentions of grain export
Southern India
Are you Indian too? Which part?
Dude, I know. I am an Indian too, and a socialist. Getty and Thurston definitely aren’t cold war propagandists. It is Robert Conquest, Anne Applebaum and more recently, Timothy Snyder who portray the famine as an intentional genocide done by evil Soviets. Getty and Thurston, especially Thurston was actually notorious for taking a more pro-Soviet stance. Wheatcroft and Davies did important work showing that the famine was caused by a combination of bad harvest and poor planning. As far as I am aware, the popular genocide/deliberate starvation line is not the historical consensus and has not been for some time after the opening of Soviet archives. Even liberal historians like Fitzpatrick and Krotkin debunk the many capitalist lies about the famine. People discussing it online generally have a very strange assortment of sources - from Snyder’s terrible book ‘Bloodlands’ to obsolete books like Tottle’s ‘Fraud, Famine and Fascism’ which was written before the opening of Soviet archives. r/AskHistorians is a good source for finding both Marxist and liberal sources, and it generally avoids neoconservatives like Conquest.
I am from the South too but am Marathi.
Aah. Sorry.
I was a bit wary since I got banned in a .world community when I shared similar pov’s. I think there are some who equate Stalin to Hitler, so was trying to avoid needless fights on that.
I’m in the KL state.
Understandable. .world is generally Eurocentric or US-centric. I stay away from most political comms there for my own sanity.
Lucky you. I live in southern Sanghiland, Karnataka.