Okay, so for some context .ml is run by the Lemmy devs and the devs are openly tankies (authoritarian communists). .ml, along with Lemmygrad (also run by the devs) and Hexbear are known as the Tankie Triad. While not as bad as the other two, .ml still has a lot of tankies compared to instances that aren’t part of the triad. Additionally, .ml used to be the recommended instance (until .world came along), making it one of the more populated instances. Most other instances defederate with Lemmygrad and Hexbear, but not necessarily .ml.

Basically, there’s a lot of extremely opinionated and often combative people there and provoking them (intentionally or not) is very easy.

That’s my understanding of the situation anyway.

lemmy.ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad users verbally fellate contemporary and historical autocratic mass-murderers they deem to be “leftists”, or “great leaders and allies to the cause”, most recently being Vladimir Putin, Xi Jingping, and Kim Jong Un.

They are, in reality, bitch-made invertebrates who don’t even have the arm-strength to lift their Molotov-sippy-cups out of their premium-outdoor-brand backpacks, let alone form meaningful opinions on economics, political philosophy, or geopolitical reality.

Basically, .ml Tankies (I don’t consider all .ml users to be Tankies just because they’re a .ml users) are authoritarian bootlickers “communists” pretending not to be who routinely deny the human rights violations of the CCP/Russia and hold them up as the gold standard. They refuse to recognize China, Russia and even NK as being authortarian regimes or if they do, its OK/Neccessary because it takes down the west/capitalism. If you have a historical fact that puts any of those countries in a bad light, they’ll probably deny it happend or is just “western propganda.”

So they believe and spread things like the Russia narratives on Ukraine (When it happened they were parroting the whole “special military operation” thing, the current thing is that it was “just a diplomatic maneuver to bring Ukraine to the negotiating table”)

Hex and Grad are very in your face about it, but .ml tends to be more subtle, often opting instead to remove dissenting comments and ban users before letting threads get out of control. So, as a result many instances defed from those 2.

.ml is run by the head Lemmy devs who are, unfortunately, hardcore Tankies themselves and tend to enforce the Tankie mindset throughout with more subtlety through mod/admin action. Or allowing known propaganda outlets to fester

You can check out !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works if you want to see some documentation of their actions, words and censoring. What I’ve linked here is but a mere sampling of what’s been collected there

Many (not all) ml users are fairly rabid when it comes to their own flavor of propaganda. If you ever casually chat with them on Lemmy, just understand that they have a completely different world view so don’t mention things related to politics, country borders, history, government structure, major battles during WW2, sparrow populations or what color the sky is and you should be fine.

Because there’s not a lot of brain cells in .ml and they are confidently incorrect on a regular basis.

They’re fascist sympathizers. They like dictators.

Something else I’ve not seen mentioned here is:

It’s pretty easy to see how the admins rule all of the communities while the moderators of those communities seem to be nothing more than flaccid ineffective grunts that do nothing but let it happen.

For evidence, check the modlogs and see that the bans/removals from .ml are always done by the same two people. Then, note how those two people don’t even moderate the communities the comments/bans were issues from. This is not a bias. It’s verifiable by simply checking the logs.

Then, note how most of the bans/removals don’t even violate the rules, but seemingly only hurt the feelings of the aforementioned admins.

They are a walled garden of propaganda-riddled rhetoric.

Additionally, many of the kids that habituate that place come in to other instances and stir pots, debate-troll people, and generally shit all over everything, and then cry and accuse everyone of bias when they get moderated by ACTUAL moderators.

The evidence here, lies in the modlogs of all the people complaints about how shitty .world and other instances are. Check for yourself. See that I’m not lying.

Lastly, I’ve not once ever posted, or commented in a single community of .ml, so unlike them- my bias is driven by real-world evidence, and not anecdotal reactionary temper tantrums.

You can see it for yourself.

Write a comment/post critical of china in any community from the lemmy.ml instance.

For example about the Uyghurs or the mass surveillance or whatever is your topic of choice.

See how much time it takes for them to ban you/remove your comment under their rule of “no xenophobia”.

Went there first since I consider myself a leftist. Seen multiple thirstposts for Stalin and the likes: pretty picture with a popular quote. Comments all in the realm of “yes daddy”.

I hate capitalism as much as the next guy, just don’t see a point of swapping it for an equally bad form of repression.

Literal Russian propaganda

I’ve only blocked a few ml users but I made sure to block that instance.

Because even as the Earth burns and the Fascists march directly due to the capitalist’s class conquest, domination, and occupation, even many Americans who believe themselves to be politically leftwing think they can dunk on socialists and communists for their “silly” ideologies based in social cooperation and mutual social benefit where… Gasp… You can’t grind yourself to death under the toxic aspiration of attaining immoral levels of wealth to live larger than is reasonable within the finite shared habitat known as Earth.

They of course conveniently forget all the military actions the US has taken over the last century to destabilize nations that wanted to become such societies in order to keep their resource markets open to our capitalist’s exploitation.

Oh, and get ready for the hottest summer of your life… So far! 🔥🌎🔥

Because it’s not cool to be Malian /s

I didn’t knew about this, thanks

It’s capitalist and pro-war propaganda.