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 [email protected] 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 [email protected].
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
[Screenshot of community rules for [email protected]](https://lemmy.pineapplemachine.com/pictrs/image/9a5a8a2d-cfac-4658-8ef5-77a885079756.png)
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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] 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.
Most people will say this at a surface level, which is where I expected folks to have engagement with the sentence in question. But the next one or two clarify this: obviously this is not a deeply-held or coherent position because I've seen an incredible number of sonnenrad tats and symbols on people actively getting glorified in Western media with zero popular pushback. This is particularly relevant to this discussion, as the apologetics involved there also center around orientalist tropes, a nationalistic, xenophobic, racist fervor, and the amplification of these tendencies through coordinated propaganda networks (the same ones, in fact).
Yeah of course. Most xenophobes and racists think their xenophobia and racism is actually very good. And like you've mentioned, they often rationalize it in such a shallow way that they don't actively label it as xenophobia or racism.
Or at least, in theory, at some surface level. It often takes very little for those same people to be outwardly bloodthirsty, nationalist, xenophobic, and racist. Most are just averse to the negative connotations of being labeled as such and don't self-criticize. This means they can be shamed and policed, not that they are just authentic smol beans that don't need hard line treatment.
I'd agree that the communication is important but I think it needs to be a blunt and forceful hard line response. And I think, "you were banned for orientalism" is sufficiently explanatory. If they don't care enough to read for 10 minutes and figure it out, they're very unlikely to respond well to an explanation accompanying the message. In fact they're more likely to try to debate it. Such folks need cognitive dissonance and time to ever have a positive response.
Also, these folks are not quite so innocent. There are very real and authentically believed aspects of white supremacy in what they're doing, they just aren't used to having it policed or using that label. It's the "acceptable" forms they get to have fun with on Reddit. The change in norms is going to be a surprise for them regardless of whether you add two more sentences to a sidebar or ban message.
I guess I can imagine one other benefit, though: when they inevitably screenshot their ban message and whine in a more white supremacist safe space, it will be easier to make fun of them.
IMO the filter is exactly as easy either way. They either comply or they don't. They'll either seek knowledge/shut up about it or they'll throw a pity party. Either way the correct first step has been taken by the mods.
100% on the value for mods avoiding burnout, though! That is super important for handling this flood of new users. The mods are incredibly patient and deserve some help.