Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.

For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.

Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.

The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…

  • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
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    24 hours ago

    I got banned from memes in Lemmy.ml over whether genocide in China is real. All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.

    Not saying US propaganda is trustworthy either blindly believing propaganda from any government is wild.

    I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.

    • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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      14 hours ago

      All the supporting evidence provided to me was from the Chinese government.

      Well now you’re just factually, unambiguously lying. Which kind of goes you show how bad your position is; that you have to knowingly lie to defend it.

      I was also told that no one died at Tienanmen Square in that same thread.

      A claim that even Wikipedia agrees with.

      • Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 hour ago

        The massacre wasn’t at Tienanmen Square, it was just all around it so it doesn’t count!!!1!

        is a very typical .ml take.

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          8 hours ago

          Do they make for swear to post some variation of this post every time you see .ml when you sign up for .world? It’s pavlovian for you people

          • Crashumbc@lemmy.world
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            8 hours ago

            Says the guy responding with “ROFL” to every comment that goes against their propaganda in this thread… You’ve posted in this thread like 30 times and only like 2 posts weren’t a variation of “ROFL” . Real productive posting buddy.

    • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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      23 hours ago

      I checked the thread you were talking about, that’s not what happened. The supporting evidence came from a huge number of different sources, including many western sources. You also equated Chinese diaspora with the Chinese government itself, which reeks of chauvanism.

      As for the bit on Tian’anmen Square, it’s correct, even Wikipedia says so:

      Deaths in and around Tian’anmen Square itself

      Government officials have long asserted that no one died in the square in the early morning hours of 4 June, during the “hold-out” of students’ last batch in the south part of the square. Initially, foreign media reports of a “massacre” on the square were prevalent, though subsequently, journalists have acknowledged that most of the deaths occurred outside of the square in western Beijing. Several people who were situated around the square that night, including former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post Jay Mathews[i] and CBS correspondent Richard Roth[j] reported that while they had heard sporadic gunfire, they could not find enough evidence to suggest that a massacre took place on the square.

      Student leader Chai Ling claimed in a speech broadcast on Hong Kong television that she witnessed tanks arrive at the square and crush students who were sleeping in their tents, and added that between 200 and 400 students died at the square.[268] Ling was joined by fellow student leader Wu’er Kaixi who said he had witnessed 200 students being cut down by gunfire; however, according to Mathews, it was later proven that he had already left the square several hours before the events he claimed to have happened.[211] Taiwan-born Hou Dejian was present in the square to show solidarity with the students and said that he did not see any massacre occurring in the square. He was quoted by Xiaoping Li, a former China dissident to have stated: “Some people said 200 died in the square, and others claimed that as many as 2,000 died. There were also stories of tanks running over students who were trying to leave. I have to say I did not see any of that. I was in the square until 6:30 in the morning.”[269]

      In 2009, human rights activist Robin Munro, stated that he was present during the clearance of Tiananmen Square and that, according to his account, there were ten Western reporters near the Monument to the People’s Heroes at the time. He also reported a Spanish television crew that recorded footage of the event. Munro disputed Wu’er Kaixi’s claims of mass killings inside the square, stating that he did not witness fighting there and instead observed students peacefully complying with the soldiers’ demands to leave the square in an orderly manner. He further noted that the Spanish TV crew reported not seeing killings within the square during the final clearance.[270][271]

      In 2011, three secret cables from the United States embassy in Beijing from the time of the events were leaked and published by WikiLeaks, all of which stated that there was no bloodshed inside Tiananmen Square itself.[194] Instead, they said Chinese soldiers opened fire on protesters in Beijing outside the square, around Muxidi station, as they fought their way from the west towards the centre.[194] A Chilean diplomat who had been positioned next to a Red Cross station inside the square told his US counterparts that he did not observe any mass firing of weapons into the crowds in the square itself, although sporadic gunfire was heard. He said that most of the troops who entered the square were armed only with anti-riot gear.[194][216]

      The square was evacuated bloodlessly, all of the deaths that day occurred in areas scattered around Beijing during riot suppression. A few hundred people died, which is a tragedy, but not 10,000 people being executed on the square like the west initially reported. Substantial evidence to the contrary since then has come out, and Wikipedia has accordingly responded and added this context.

      I don’t think Wikipedia is a CPC front group.

      • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        Peak party truth is arguing akshully against a massacre occurring because it ‘really happened a few meters outside of the square’.

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          6 hours ago

          The killings weren’t “a few meters outside the square.” Riots happened in disparate places all over Beijing, with PLA members lynched. The PLA responded with force, and in the end a few hundred rioters and a few dozen PLA members were killed. The west reported on an entirely fabricated story of the PLA running their tanks over 10,000 students on Tian’anmen Square itself, which has remained in pop culture as the understanding of the events. It isn’t about trying to play semantics, but to highlight that the west quite literally invented an entirely different history and reported on it as fact against a geopolitical enemy, one of many such examples.

        • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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          15 hours ago

          That’s not remotely what was said.

          Why would you lie about something anyone can see just above the lie?

        • BrainInABox@lemmy.ml
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          14 hours ago

          As opposed to the peak truth of just outright saying false things and getting mad that people point out they aren’t true?

          • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            “I didn’t murder him.”
            Pushed harder
            “Akshully I only pushed him down the stairs and sent him to the hospital. He died of an MRSA infection he picked up in the ICU”

            America exaggerated because that’s what they, and China do, but the constant BS of “nothing happened in the square” outside China and strong arming people inside China, when you know what we’re talking about and you know shit happened, is abuser shit.

              • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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                11 hours ago

                I’m just going to start calling it “The Tiananman square adjacent massacre” to diffuse this toddler-ass behavior from y’all before it starts. Though, it does make you all look ridiculous when you do this. So, maybe not.

                • DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip
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                  10 hours ago

                  I’m shocked you got them to admit any deaths at all. Used to they wouldn’t do that.

                  I guess the mask is slowly falling off they have to admit some of the shit here and there now or else they’d lose credibility completely.

                  That’s a good example of the entire instance and users on it though. “Well it wasn’t in the square” lol ok, but they still murdered a bunch of people for protesting.

                  Its like they have a fundamental need to be “right” no matter what. “There is no Tianamen Square massacre because it didn’t happen in the square. So HA. All those murders inches away from the square were because they deserved it for illegally protesting!”

                  Also I think its wild that on their instance they all have their pronouns listed when China is pretty notoriously anti LGBTQ.

                  From Wikipedia (which I’m surprised they used as a source earlier, you try doing that on their own instance with anything that goes against their narrative and you will be perma banned for “imperialism”)

                  "LGBTQ venues and events have been forced to shut and LGBTQ rights activists have become subject to greater scrutiny by the country’s system of mass surveillance. The CCP increasingly considers LGBTQ advocacy the work of “foreign forces”. LGBTQ content is censored. "

                  They should all move to that utopia that is China but I’ll bet you all of them live in capitalist countries. (Which is fucking hilarious) Meanwhile here (which is also not a great place at all but I’m allowed to be honest about that) you can adopt kids and marry if you’re gay. Two things that are illegal in China.

                  Vehemently defending a country that hates you for existing has to be some form of self hate or something. Its hard to understand the logic of it.

                  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                    6 hours ago

                    I have never seen anyone argue that no deaths happened whatsoever in Beijing on June 4th. Every time the Tian’anman Square Massacre narrative gets brought up, people come out of the woodworks to correct the narrative, that there were disparate riots all over Beijing but that the square was peacefully evacuated. This is factually contrary to western “common sense” narratives.

                    As for using Wikipedia, it’s frequently biased against socialist states, so when it’s forced even by its own biases to admit that there isn’t hard evidence of something, it’s noteworthy. This makes it an especially useful tool for introducing leftist analysis of socialist states and their histories whenever they are forced to concede the narrative to the socialists.

                    As for gay rights in China, they are getting better. The Supreme People’s Court of China issued a response declaring anti-LGBTQ discrimination to be bad and harmful. This is not a legal change, but a sign of changes already undergoing in China, where the younger generations are more accepting of queer identities and thus laws are locally changing gradually.

                    As for moving to China, my spouse and I have that as a backup plan, though it’s incredibly difficult to do and enormously expensive, which is a hurdle for any working class family to do. I don’t know why you think we wouldn’t be willing to live in China, besides the fact that we have families, friends, and lives where we live currently that we would have to abandon.

                  • Nouvellalia@lemmy.world
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                    10 hours ago

                    Yeah, they’re fucking bonkers over there. I absolutely do not toe the line for America, but .ml people repeatedly accused me of being a chauvinist even as I was actively bad mouthing the country, because I called them out on this exact topic of “the tanmen square adjacent massacre”. It was

                    • my first back and forth interaction on .ml
                    • where I learned about this weird “ackshully there was no massacre IN tianmen square” tactic
                    • my permaban from .ml for calling it out
                    • why I never have to worry about their bonkers instance in my feed

                    All in all, they gave me a great gift. I wasted a total of 20 minutes or so with them, and then they gave me a boon that lasts forever. I’m pretty sure it’s like mirror universe /pol/, a limited hangout for billionaire social control reasons.