Good news! The linux_gaming comm has officially overtaken the .ml tankie version in Subscriber count! Sitting at 17.4k vs 17.3k and has long since been the one with way more MAUs! 🥳🎆

First off, going to apologize because I'm trying to explain things with the most minimal bias I can muster.

To explain as easily as I can, there's a wide variety of attitudes on Lemmy. .ml is notorious for being pro-Russia and China, banning anyone who speaks out against them. They've also been held as the largest, most active instance, so they've heavily gotten away with how users are treated for voicing differing opinions. You can also find mass downvotes against people who speak out against .ml, even outside of the instance, with members flooding in to defend them.

They're part of what people on here call the "Tankie Triad", using communist rhetoric as their defense for what many outside of the group think is absolutely abhorrent behavior.

There's a lot more complexity going on, especially with the main Lemmy devs openly holding the same viewpoints, but that's a very surface level overlook.

Welcome! So Tankies are what are known as authoritarian "communists". They often praise authoritarian regimes so long as they're against the West and claim to be communistic or similar. Such as China and Russia and also deny any wrong doings of them. Like, they'll deny the events of tiananmen square, that people in China are heavily censored, that Russia was wholly justified in invading Ukraine or even that NK isn't run by a Dictatorship.

They also often claim that they're "the only true leftists", even among actual communists/socialists that don't praise authoritarian regimes that only vaugly claim to be communistic lol

.ml is one of the original Lemmy instances by the Lemmy devs who are hardcore tankies and they'll enforce (though they'll never admit it) their ideology throughout the instance by removing content that is against Russia/China/NK and claim it's "bigotry" or something. They're part of the Tankie Triad, the other 2 instances are Hexbear and Lemmygrad.

But those 2 are so in your face about it that most instances, including yours, defederate from them (When an instances admin decides to refuse to accept another instances content/posts/voting/users) But .ml opts to do it subtlety through moderator action and because they have a number of official support comms, other Instances are hesitant to defederate from them

You're on !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works a comm mostly for the collection and documentation of their words and actions