I think that’s more the nature of social media than anything else.
it’s the nature of people.
they love to dog pile on the ‘outsider’. and they also love to circle up the wagons over a perceived threat.
so what happens is outsiders form their own little tightly knit and hostile tribes. social media greatly expanded the specificity by which people identify themselves. so you have raw milk nutjobs jerking each other off over their ‘pasturization is an evil conspiracy to ruin our immune systems’ inside their little bubbles and feeling like big smart geniuses because everyone else is an dumb sheep who has been duped by Louis Pasteur’s evil invention.
The anarchist code of conduct

It’s all about powerplay and finding the best rhetoric that plays best with your level of charisma to try to whitewash it with. Sometimes it’s also used as a filter because it inherently attract a certain type of person in those communities sort of like r/conservative in reddit attracts a certain type of person. The modern social network is a lot about being able to create and grow your own cults on demand.
Anybody who sees Authority as a responsability is naturally averse to having it because they would feel the weight of it and would feel bad if, whilst holding Authority, they made a mistake and others got in some way hurt because of that.
Those who see Authority as power to advance something (be it their own personal upsides or some idea they believe in) with little or no feeling of responsability towards others (be it not all directly or they’ve suppressed it by convincing themselves their actions are somehow “for the greater good” hence any bad they do with the authority has that grand excuse to salve their conscience), have no such aversion to holding authority.
That posture towards authority of people of the second kind applies more broadly to all manner of things which serve to pressure, convince or manipulate others (Authority is generally power force something on others) so of course they also have no aversion to using other such tools, including using ideology to manipulate others, and sometimes that means passing themselves as somebody who holds a certain ideology, and that includes Anarchism.
So yeah, you’re going to find that certain people who parrot Anarchist talk aren’t in fact people whose Principles mean they’re naturally Anarchist but rather people being Performative Anarchists in order to fit-in and manipulate others, drive by entirelly different Principles, and such people are absolutelly pro-Authority as long as they’re in control of it.
In summary, there are two types of people who seem Anarchist:
- Those whose personal principles means they are averse to people controlling other people. There are naturally against any form of Authority.
- Those who want to control other people and are in a specific situation where Theatre Of Anarchism can advance their objectives. These are against forms of Authority which hinder their objectives but are in favor of forms of Authority which advance their objectives.
IMHO, the best way to spot the second kind from the first is to look for the often repetition of common slogans and having a superficial level of ideology with no actual tracing back to personal principles since they learned the ideology at an intellectual level rather than being drived by their Principles - i.e. what feels Right and what feels Wrong - to that formal ideology.
By thew way, this method to identify the real ones from the performers also works for all other ideologies and even things like Faith.
Just wanted to say this is a fantastic take. 100% agree.
Too many people want to argue in the sense they are a ‘greater’ authority than you, to try to force you into agreement with them. And generally lack any ability to genuinely reflect on themselves, their actions, or the flaws/contradictions often inherent in their ideology. So ultimately they just fall back on slogans as self-evident truths that must be preached and obeyed.
That’s very different than actually reading the source material of an ideology. How many Anarchists have read Bakunin? Anytime someone claims to be anarchist I love asking them that and looking at the total look of confusion on their face…
in misanthropy we call this being human
All communities have moderation, depending on the desired results.
-Anarchist instances nuke Nazi and Tankie viewpoints because they consider them authoritarian (see db0 and quokk)
-Tankie instances nuke Nazi and Lib viewpoints because we consider them authoritarian (see hexbear and lemmygrad)
-Lib instances nuke Tankie viewpoints because they consider them authoritarian (see .world)
-Nazi instances nuke Tankie viewpoints because they’re nazis (see feddit and piefed)
As a tankie, I take pride that Nazis and Libs nuke my content, and consider it sad that anarchists don’t reflect on why anarchist content doesn’t get nearly as nuked from mainstream capitalism.
Nazi instances nuke Tankie viewpoints because they’re nazis (see feddit and piefed)
Can you tell me what nazi viewpoints are promoted on Piefed please? Be specific.
Rimu considers the viewpoint that the 1930s famine in the soviet union being a combination of mismanagement and adverse weather conditions, rather than a deliberate targeting of ethnic groups, to be “genocide denial” and thus worthy of total censorship. This is despite the fact that the mainstream contemporary opinion on the 1930s famine even among reputable liberal historians is that it was as I said.
For instance, Mark Tauger wrote:
[data] indicate that the famine was real, the result of a failure of economic policy, of the ‘revolution from above,’ rather than of a ‘successful’ nationality policy against Ukrainians or other ethnic groups.
Tauger believes it was a failure of economic policy, not an intentional attack on ethnic Ukrainians. The 1930s famine was a combination of drought, flooding, and mismanagement. Further, the Kulaks, wealthy bourgeois farmers, magnified matters by killing their own crops in the midst of a famine rather than letting the Red Army collectivize them.
This, to Rimu, is considered to be genocide denial. This is despite Wikipedia’s own acknowledgement that “scholars continue to debate whether the human-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide,[169] or a tragic byproduct of rapid Soviet industrialization and the collectivization of agriculture.[170]:”
Other historians such as Michael Ellman consider the Holodomor a crime against humanity, but do not classify it as a genocide.[181] Economist Steven Rosefielde and historian Robert Conquest consider the death toll to be primarily due to state policy, and poor harvests.[182] Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Conquest was granted access to the Soviet state archives alongside other western academics.[183] In 2004, Wheatcroft published a private correspondence that he had with Conquest. In the exchange, Conquest wrote that he is now of the opinion that the Holodomor was not purposefully inflicted by Stalin but “what I argue is that with resulting famine imminent, he could have prevented it, but put ‘Soviet interest’ other than feeding the starving first – thus consciously abetting it”.[184] In an interview recorded in 2006 Conquest stated the Holodomor should be recognized as an attack on the Ukrainian people and discussed problems with the use of the term genocide.[185]
Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, Stephen Wheatcroft and J. Arch Getty reject the notion that Stalin intentionally wanted to kill Ukrainians, but conclude that Stalinist policies and widespread incompetence among government officials set the stage for famine in Ukraine and other Soviet republics.[186][187][108] Anne Applebaum believes that the famine was planned to undermine Ukrainian identity but discusses how shifts in understanding of the term genocide mean that it is more difficult to apply now that it was when the term was initially conceived. Another argument she puts forward is that the question of genocide is not as important as it once was because it was a proxy debate about Ukraine and Ukrainians’ right to exist, a right which no longer needs historic justification.[188]
Further, Rimu repeats the far-right McCain Institute talking points about supposed “organ harvesting” in China towards the far-right Falun Gong cult:

And this is despite the fact [that no supporting evidence for this conspiracy theory has been found](Here’s an example of investigating claims made by the Falun Gong about organ harvesting, with no evidence found, even from western investigation.)
Overall, Rimu in particular promotes an unquestioning, dogmatic view of history that goes well beyond what’s considered definitive even in the west. Rimu also therefore uses the admin position of PieFed.social to silence any reasonable, developed dissent, no matter how well-sourced.
Was that specific enough?
These are not Nazi viewpoints. Moreover, he doesn’t “promote” them other than anyone else promoting what they say as specific users. You think anyone who believes the Holodomor was genocide is a nazi? That’s your definition?
So if I held a similar position on the Holodomor, that would make me a nazi according to you?
The propogation of far-right views by PieFed users and the head dev is what @Riverside@reddthat.com is referring to.
You think believing the Holodomor is a genocide is inherently far-right? I don’t think either of them are inherently far-right (especially not the former). Also, by “users” you specifically mean Rimu here. Would others hold the same opinion? Sure. But they also do so across the Threadiverse - not specifically on piefed, or piefed.social in specific. If you’re going to accuse Piefed of being specifically far-right on this basis, then you have to also throw that at most other instance - which they didn’t do.
Can you answer why you’re insistent on analyzing processes outside of the context they exist in? If you’re not going to respond to my criticisms of your metaphysical outlook from last time, then defend it, otherwise all I can do is continue to point out that you keep trying to slice away context and view processes in a vacuum that doesn’t exist and doesn’t represent reality accurately as a consequence.
It seems to me to be self-evident that it just isn’t nazi to claim the holodomor was a genocide. You may think it’s wrong, incorrect, perhaps suggestive of unjustified prejudice against communism - but it just isn’t nazi. It’s a nasty vile smear to throw at people. No context makes it so (not even remotely sure what you’re referring to in this case). Rimu is not anti-semitic, Rimu is not a white supremacist, Rimu does not support a one-party authoritarian dictatorship.
And even if it was: If you’re going to accuse Piefed of being specifically far-right or nazi on this basis, then you have to also throw that at most other instances - which the other user didn’t do here.
Sure. I can point you to it: I was threatened with physical violence by a nationalist and I got banned for it.
Banned from that specific community, or banned from the instance entirely? Because being banned from the instance, which did happen, was not for that reason.
What do you call someone who allows threats of physical violence to communists. Clue: their kind murdered millions of communists in WW2!
Sorry, do you hold the same accusations to lemmy.zip too, as the user is from that instance? Are they also not nazis by your logic?
Also, are you saying anyone who looks past any threat, or inciendary language or violent rhetoric of any kind to someone who is a communist, no matter the specific context is automatically a nazi?
If the threat of violence from another user directed at me had happened in a .zip instance and I had gotten banned instead of them, I’d be making the same accusation. It happened on piefed, though, no need for hypotheticals.
If the threat of violence from another user directed at me had happened in a .zip instance and I had gotten banned instead of them, I’d be making the same accusation.
So you don’t apparently expect lemmy.zip to respond to users like that, but you do in piefed.social? What? Because the lemmy.zip user did it on a remote community? Also, how do you know the instance ban and community ban are directly connected?
Also, whether or not you characterise it as a threat (I think it’s unsavoury and emotive and violent rhetoric, but not really a threat as such unless you specifically plan to go to Poland or something) - it doesn’t automatically make them or someone a nazi.
Isn’t a tankie an authoritarian communist or am I getting wires crossed here? I thought the term was coined from the 56 stamping out of the Hungarian revolution with tanks by authoritarians… Not sure that’s something I’d be proud of but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Tankie is a left-punching slur against Marxist-Leninists, which I choose to appropriate. We call liberals “libs”, not dronies despite them supporting Obama even when he was murdering civilians in the middle east using drones. As for the stomping of the antisemitic pogroms in the post-fascist 1956 Hungary, I refer you to comrade Cowbee since they are a lot more well-versed in the topic than I am.
I’m proud of Marxism-Leninism, the ideology that uplifted a billion people from destitute poverty and colonialism towards industrialization, grantez universal healthcare and free education to the highest level, guarantees jobs and housing to every person, tripled life expectancy where it was allowed to exist, and saved Europe from Nazism.
Are you really comparing a completely optional forum to a society where people can and will put guns at you?
“They don’t let me spread transphobic rhetoric in this optional community online, literally 1984!”
Okay, I’ll bite. I need to add to my block list anyway.
Y’all have heard of the Nazi Bar problem, right? Paradox of intolerance? Which turns out not to be a paradox after all? You should def look that one up rather than waiting for me to type it all out.
Y’all have heard of the Nazi Bar problem, right?
Bullshit genetic or reductio ad hitlerum fallacy. Carried to its logical conclusion, anything tainted by Nazis (eg, the universe) is a Nazi bar. Have you considered finding yourself another universe to inhabit, since this one is irredeemably tainted? While we may argue the universe is far too vast to be a “Nazi bar”, so is the internet or any “platform”.
Worse, censoring ideas gives them covert power. It doesn’t discredit them or strip them of power like challenging them in a public forum could. It’s also a disservice to better ideas
- it withholds opportunities for people to become competent enough advocates to discredit bad ideas
- instead of deradicalize opponents, it drives their discussion elsewhere: they continue to radicalize & grow opposition unchallenged.
Censorship is incompetent advocacy: it mistakes suppressing the expression of bad ideas for effective advocacy that directly discredits bad ideas, develops intellectual growth, and steers toward better ideas.
Paradox of intolerance?
The bogus social media version subverting the original message or the real one?

text alternative
The True Paradox of Tolerance
By philosopher Karl Popper[1]
You think you know the Popper Paradox thanks to this? (👉 comic from pictoline.com)
Karl Popper: I never said that!
Popper argued that society via its institutions should have a right to prohibit those who are intolerant.
Karl Popper: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.
For Popper, on what grounds may society suppress the intolerant? When they “are not prepared to meet on the level of rational argument” “they forbid their followers to listen to rational argument … & teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols”. The argument of the intolerably intolerant is force & violence.
We misconstrue this paradox at our peril … to the extent that one group could declare another group ‘intolerant’ just to prohibit their ideas, speech & other freedoms.
Grave sign: “The Intolerant” RIP
Underneath it lies a pile of symbols for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Black power. A leg labeled tolerance kicks the Gay Pride symbol into the pile.Muchas gracias a @lokijustice y asivaespana.com
Karl Popper opposed censorship/argued for free inquiry & open discourse.
I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
Censorship (or willfully blinding ourselves to information) plays no part in suppressing authoritarianism.
Only cowards fear words. Words are not the danger. It’s the dangerous people whose words we fail to discredit.
Source: The Open Society and Its Enemies, Karl R. Popper ↩︎
People like to refer to the paradox of tolerance but always skip out on the inconvenient bit:
""Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.
— In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.“”
Just to let you know before I block you, I didn’t read your “reasonable disagreement” of a wall of text
so I guess you have an intolerance to intolerance?
You mean the direct quote of Popper that you yourself referred to? You didn’t read the very piece of text you told me to read?
>“look up paradox of tolerance UwU”
>“ok, let’s look at what it actually says”
>“i didn’t read it UwU”
that tracks
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i mean, seems you’re also conveniently skipping over the part that says:
as long as we can counter them by rational argument
it’s right there in the text:
popper states outright, that there are some ideologies and by extension people, that straight-up cannot be argued with. these, therefore, must be excluded from the community, and thereby form the limit to tolerance that must be enforced.
people really love to misinterpret popper…
what goes along nicely with the tolerance of paradox is the quote about anti-semites being entirely aware of how absurd their position truly are:
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
take both popper and sartre together into consideration of a larger context and it becomes abundantly obvious that a certain minimum of intolerance is strictly necessary for a functional society.
what happens when all checks on speech are removed can be clearly seen in the rotting corpses of facebook and twitter… it’s disastrous.
One problem with bigots is they dont care about truth or logic. Its a waste of time to continually argue the same points over and over again with people who refuse to learn or think.
You personally don’t have to. Always plenty of people out there willing to do it for you.
But remember, be sure that your point is logical and truthful, and not parroting talking points in spite of them being repeated all around you.
Being truthful and logical is not always a popular position. Some would say it’s not even often the popular position.
We are all bigoted.
The idea is we have institutions that minimize our bigotry by not being subject to the judgements of any one particular person and their biases.
People who claim some absolute stance of non-bigotry… are basically the most likely to engage in bigotry because they deny it is even possible they could be.
People who whinge on about the the paradox of intolerance are always cunts who want to have a reason to beat people up because it makes them feel big. It’s a stupid argument either way, because there is no such thing as unlimited tolerance, and no society is ever ‘free’.
If you are not able to rationally argue why we shouldn’t be bigoted, I don’t know what to tell you.
it’s not that people can’t, but spaces which have unlimited tolerance for sealions suggesting that it’s necessary to argue that are likely to have less interesting discussions than spaces which do not 🙄
Then be clear about the rules. I have 0 problems with people creating communities with very clear rules on what is allowed and what isn’t. I wholeheartedly welcome that. What I take issue with is when people claim to have open discussion, or the space is for “rational discourse”, or “anarchist” discourse etc. but then ban everything that doesn’t very exactly align with the mod ideology.
If most people waving the anarchist flag would admit they’re just doing it because it’s cool but actually, they just want to be the authoritarians in place of the authoritarians, that would be fine. I’d happily avoid them. Problem is that when they don’t admit it, they drag down the whole anarchist ideology because they are misrepresenting it.
key words there are discourse and discussion.
As is explained in a few responses to your paradox of tolerance reply (that you seem to have conveniently not replied to so far), the kind discussion or conversation they are referencing requires both parties to be working in good faith.
from your own reference
as long as we can counter them by rational argument
If one party can’t or won’t provide logic or reasoning to their side of an exchange, that’s not a discussion because there is nothing to discuss with someone not willing to engage in good faith.
There are absolutely places that are ideological echo chambers, despite claiming otherwise, but banning someone for the inability (or unwillingness) to engage in good faith isn’t a removal based on ideology it’s a removal based on not adhering to the basic tenets of how discussions are supposed to work.
If it just so happens that most of that kind of banning happens to people with ideologies you subscribe to, perhaps it’s worth considering how you can help these people understand how to have an actual conversation.
That all being said, from what i’ve seen here I’d guess you’re on the purposeful bad faith side of things so I’m not expecting any reasonable consideration, but feel free to surprise me (or block me, i suppose).
You’re making quite a lot of frankly weird assumptions.
Find a single line from me where I’m saying that people who don’t engage in rational discourse shouldn’t be kicked out.
In fact, have a honest think. How much of your response is based on a knee jerk reaction instead of actually looking at what I’ve been saying in this thread?
You’re making quite a lot of frankly weird assumptions.
I’ve clearly stated what i’m referring to and how i got there, if you think there is an unsupported statement then reference it directly and i will respond.
That being said, fuck, i think i’ve seen two posts next to each other and missed where it changed from them to you.
That’s entirely my bad and i apologise, my response was supposed to be for the other person.
No hard feelings :)
Not sure what theme you’re using but at least for me the default one makes it a bit hard to separate replies. I still like it most of all for just lurking.
i think people not knowing how to actually win an argument against a bigot is exactly the reason there are so many these days
shit’s easy. not that they’ll admit defeat but getting them babbling irrational nonsense takes very little debating skills. and when they inevitably start throwing ad hominems, then the mods have legitimate grounds to kick them out.
“You can’t reason someone out of a position they didn’t reason themselves in to.”
Though it is occasionally possible to point out how their arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny and get them to engage on it.
Only works with the ones not doing it on purpose, however.
Lemmy is a Tankie Bar.
Okay, that’s just funny. Hi friend
I have a pretty low opinion of moderators generally.
In the vast majority of cases, the people who actually want to be moderators are precisely the worst kinds of people to do the job.
Of course there are exceptions but all too often they’re doing it because they like the power and attention.
Sounds like you’d make an excellent moderator!
Because who do you think moderators and admins are? Literally just people trying to look after computer systems for the benefit of everyone who wants to use and support that system.
It is very thankless and unrelenting work. I’ve done it for decades and right now I’m not doing it at all because it’s too exhausting to have as a background thread with the rest of my family life.
If you have a low opinion of mods then seriously, try being one for a few years. It’s a hard sell without much good about it. Mods are just people taking turns at a job very few actually want to do.
Volunteer admins and moderators are really why we have any public internet at all.
Yeah that’s fair.
Being an administrator is different, you don’t volunteer for that task because you like the attention.
I’ve done it for decades and right now I’m not doing it at all because it’s too exhausting to have as a background thread with the rest of my family life.
I feel this. I used to volunteer for some local groups but don’t presently as I have a young family and it’s all consuming.
I think many people feel this way, and I think in many cases another thing that plays into it is not realising the amount of good moderators, because good moderation usually doesn’t make as much noise as when it’s bad.
If I think of all the communities in lemmy/piefed I like, the perfect/near perfect moderation from my browsing heavily outweighs anything problematic.
I remember I was an administrator, and the moderator threatened to ban me. That was fun, I was like “Oh no, please don’t”. And I just played along.
As an administrator, I had only 2 modes: Not sure, can’t ban this person without more evidence, and “that is a liability, shut down the server!”. So I didn’t react to most things that were done, even if they were technically against the rules. Then when I became the owner, I set a pol for people to decide if I should just delete the server, because I knew I didn’t have the time to make sure some truly heinous stuff does not happen.
How do you see overly heavy opinion based moderation if you’re never the target of it? You don’t. You just see communities that are weirdly same-think. Though I bet you’d just dismiss it as a consequence of the fediverse already self-selecting for a certain type, but that is wrong.
There is bad moderation all over the place, but you don’t see it, because many mods/admins prefer to ban and delete than to let the vote system do its job.
That’s why I rigorously review the modlog. Unlike Reddit or other social media, there is a public record of everything every mod does.
and what happens when a mod or admin abuses their power? If the answer is only people whine about it, all you have is a minor step in the right direction and not an actual solution.
Make an alternate community on another instance without abusive admins.
By noticing people complaining about it :) Also being aware of certain biases and such, and looking for the existence of posts that would be deleted if the bias was heavy, etc.
Sure, some stuff might fall under the radar or stay for a long time, definitely a thing.
Nah, the complaints get deleted faster than the wrong-think. The point is you aren’t given enough to ‘notice’ when the hammer comes down as it does in many communities here.
So then why is this still here?
Because this is hardly a contentious discussion or topic, and something doesn’t have to be a guarantee to never the less be a trend…?
That’s also why there are mod abuse report comms. There’s more than one, too, since some of the originals are on an instance with an abusive admin.
Not true for everyone. But sure, I understand the idea. Its just that i know people who hate authority and because of that, they know how to act with compassion instead. They dont speak bad of others and they dont have a lot of ego to defend.
The best leaders are reluctant to even have power. And they see it more as a responsibility to do right by the people.
I dont see that type of leader in America at all, but they exist in real life in Europe.
They exist in the US you don’t hear about them because those leaders don’t make good headlines.
Toddler thoughts
I don’t love moderating my communities at all. I barely even read the reports. 🤷♂️
I mean this may be decentralized but its still social media. Its gonna be a cesspool by nature of social media.
This
The same people who rage against authority and advocate prison abolition seem to love becoming “dungeon masters.”
right-wingers aren’t allowed on leftist spaces. nothing positive comes from that.














