This was originally posted to lemmy.pineapplemachine.com: https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/post/5781
It has also been posted to lemmy.ca: https://lemmy.ca/post/591991
Lemmy is federated and decentralized and that means that we can all coexist regardless of our differing political opinions. I think it’s important to preface this by saying that I am not offended by or concerned with anyone’s politics, and I’m certainly not here to argue with anyone about them.
My concern is that users are being banned and content is being removed on lemmy.ml citing a rule that is not publicly stated anywhere that I have seen.
Moderators of lemmy.ml are removing posts and comments which are critical of the Chinese government and are banning their authors.
This came to my attention because of how lemmy user bans are federated just like everything else, and I was confused about why my instance had logged a lemmy.ml user ban citing “orientalism” as the reason for the ban.
Screenshot of my own instance’s modlog, as viewed by an admin
I noticed that the banned user had recently commented on a post in !worldnews@lemmy.ml that had been removed with the reason “Orientalist article”.
Screenshot of banned user’s history on lemmy.ml
Here’s the article that was removed, titled “China may face succession crisis”. It was published by axios.com, which mediabiasfactcheck describes as having “a slight to moderate liberal bias” and gives its second-highest ranking for factual reporting. The article writes unfavorably of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
https://www.axios.com/2023/06/06/china-may-face-succession-crisis
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/axios/
I had not remembered seeing anything in lemmy.ml’s rules that would suggest that “orientalism”—meaning, as I understand it, the depiction or discussion of Asian cultures by people in Western ones—was against the rules. So I checked, and I found that there was not. Not on the instance’s front page, and not in !worldnews@lemmy.ml.
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml
There is a stated rule against xenophobia, but I think that xenophobia is not widely understood to include Westerners writing critically of the actions of an Asian government.
This is where I went from confused to concerned.
Lemmy instances have public moderation logs, which I think is a very positive thing about the platform. So I looked more closely at lemmy.ml’s moderation log.
Please note that moderation logs are also federated. It’s hard to be 100% sure which instance a mod action is actually associated with, looking at these logs. The previously mentioned user ban and post removal were, I think, definitely actions taken by lemmy.ml moderators. My own instance’s mod log identifies the banning moderator as a lemmy.ml admin, and the removed post was submitted to a lemmy.ml community. I’ve done my best to verify that all of the following removals were really done by lemmy.ml moderators, but I can’t be absolutely certain. Please forgive me if any of them were actually made on other instances that do have an explicitly stated rule against orientalism.
Removed Comment Ah yes. Being against China’s racist genocide is racist. China, the imperialist ethno-state, is clearly innocent. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism
Removed Comment Lol. Thinking some countries have better governments than others is supremacist? Whatever, dude. By the way. If there are any countries with decent governments, I don’t know of them. But like. If there were decent countries, they wouldn’t behave like China. by @balerion@beehaw.org reason: Orientalism
These following moderator actions did not specifically cite orientalism, but did not seem to be breaking any of the instance’s or community’s explicitly stated rules.
Banned @0x815@feddit.de reason: Only makes anti russia and anti china, crosspostst from reddit. 2nd temp ban expires: 9d ago
Removed Comment Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet are all Colonies of China, which it treats as Colonial Territories, by - Forcibly destroying the local culture. Forcefully extracting to harm of the locals. Genocide, abuse, kidnapping, rape. But there is no point in engaging to you. You are a liar. You know you are. When you deny genocides, you put yourself on the same side as the fascists and reactionaries of the past. by @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org reason: Rule 1 and 2
I have no affection for the Chinese government and I do not call myself a communist. I would not enforce a rule against orientalism on my own instance. But I think that lemmy.ml’s moderators are entitled to enforce whatever rules they please. It’s only that, as the largest single lemmy instance so far, I believe that they have an obligation to disclose these rules, and an obligation to not ban users or remove content for failing to follow unobvious and unstated rules.
I’d like to raise some awareness about this, and I’d like to openly ask the moderators of lemmy.ml to state the rules that they intend to enforce clearly and explicitly.
I will be very clear and state it again: I am not asking for anyone to change their opinions or to not enforce a rule that they believe in. That is the great thing about lemmy, that we can coexist in this federated community even when we don’t share the same opinions. What I am asking is for lemmy.ml’s rules to be clearly stated, because I think it does not reflect well on the broader community if the predominant instance moderates its users and content according to rules that are not being explicitly disclosed.
Don’t want to be that guy but… Historically, lemmy.ml was a leftist place (like radical left). The first surge of user was when a pro-CPC subreddit was banned. They created an instance that was the biggest for some time if I recall correctly (for the curious).
Describing tankies as ‘leftists’ seems a bit disingenuous
Marxist-Lenninists are the most common form of communist, with the most successful Socialist states in history, I do not understabd yout hostilities.
Communists don’t constitue all leftists and there are plenty of communists that aren’t authoritarian apologists and genocide deniers.
Remember that the largest political party on the planet is the Communist Party of China. I regret to inform you that factoring in Georgists for the sake of argument does not change the math very much.
“Genocide denier” sure seems like a harsh thing to call someone without substantiation. Do you believe that Tibetans were genocided in the '90s like western media told us at the time?
Ah yes, China’s only political party. I wonder why they have so many members? I’m sure everyone is a staunch believer of the party and it’s values too.
Banning people under the guise of ‘orientalism’ for mentioning the genocide as the OP raised above doesn’t seem unsubstantiated. I’m taking about the genocide that’s currently happening. You ever met a Uyhgur whose family has been disappeared and are unable to return home?
China has multiple political parties, your statement needs more qualifiers. If someone wants to hold a municipal office, they can join other parties for that and many people do.
Also, you don’t need to be a member of it to participate in Chinese civil society, and in fact become a member is somewhat difficult in spite of the volume of membership.
This is a lame excuse because the same can be said of any organization, and yet even western sources acknowledge the high degree of support the CPC has.
I don’t think you have either, since people don’t get “disappeared”. The matter of their detention is public record and they typically can return home on weekends, and have generally already gone home because the detention is not indefinite and the program is winding down.
But I’ve seen this song and dance before: https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/3182072
Oh you’re talking about the eight subservient parties that must acknowledge the CCP’s primacy in order to be allowed to exist? Sub-parties maybe, but even that is generous.
It’s not an excuse, it was calling out the unfounded assumption you were asserting in your comment. I’m sure the survey data of people who’s communications are closely monitored are entirely accurate and not at all influenced by fear of retribution. Let me guess, China’s internet is open, uncensored, and unmonitored too?
Making more unfounded assumptions. I have been fortunate enough to befriend Uyghur’s who have had family members abducted by the Chinese government. It being a matter of public record is laughable. Do you honestly believe ANY government would create a paper trail let alone make it publicly available for people being held in indefinite detention? Since you’re so knowledgeable I’m sure you can produce some documents. I’m looking forward to looking them over.
Linking a cherry picked articles from two decades ago isn’t the slam dunk you seem to think it is. I’m sure I can jump on google scholar and find a contradicting source.