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 !worldnews@lemmy.ml 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 !worldnews@lemmy.ml.
Screenshot of instance rules for lemmy.ml
[Screenshot of community rules for !worldnews@lemmy.ml](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 @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org 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 @balerion@beehaw.org 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 @0x815@feddit.de 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 @CrimsonOnoscopy@beehaw.org 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.
Yeah, I heard rumors* about it but I'm hoping their admins and moderators can be better people and... Allow criticism of government? Like, as a minimum bar?
*Rumors being in regards to denying genocide, which, ouch.
Imma shrug off the tankie part and maybe leave it at "don't take down posts critical of China like you work for them"...
The truth is unfortunately worse than genocide denial. One of the main lemmy.ml admins has spoken seemingly in support of the Xinjiang genocide (and presumably, implied, is also pro other genocides carried out by the Chinese State).
At no point did I support a genocide, I just agree with most of the world, including the Islamic world, that disagrees that a genocide is taking place.
White supremacists are convinced there's a white genocide going on. If you were to disagree, does that make you a genocide denier?
Also you should consider the source. The US dropped an average of 60 bombs a day, every day on the middle east, during the Obama era, and western media was 100% complicit. Are these trustworthy sources to tell you what their enemies are up to?
You are being absurd by pretending that "100%" of Western media was complicit. You know full well that isn't true.
Societies where in independent investigation and discourse is able to take place - Those societies are more able conduct independent and non-politicized research.
There are more of those societies in the West, not by some inherent positive quality of the West, but by historical intricacy.
Though honestly I think you know most of this, and that you are choosing intentionally to ignore the Chinese's state abuses of its ethnic minorities. If you were intellectually honest there would be no way to deny the surrounding facts.
I've been reading your comments and I see a worrying trend of false equivalency. As others have pointed out, two facts can be true without excluding each other.
One thing does not exclude the other. You can both be right.
Yeah, could do without the straw man arguments and deflective non-answers.
Yea, I'm not entirely sure the response here is full of straw man and deflective arguments. Don't get me wrong, they could be wrong as far as I know, but a big part of their position seems to be that western anglophonic news sources are not trust worthy (as messy as an argument that becomes) and that's the relevance of what western military efforts were or were not criticised by western sources.
Of course, I imagine that there are or could be news sources that were critical of both the US military and the CCP. I don't pay enough attention to know of them, but it'd be interesting to see for sure.
Only problem for me is that I have for sure known "progressive" white middle class people who were definitely a little too quick to shit on China in a way that was clearly mildly racist. So you know, I wouldn't put it past some progressive media outlet to kinda be a little bit that way too.
Not sure that holds logically. Part of the claim here is that there are untrustworthy sources of information involved. All of the "but the US bombed ..." argument, as I read it, isn't so much about two wrongs making a right, but about what biases our news sources have.
Of course, arguments over what is and isn't trustworthy information get messy real quickly, and basically don't work on the internet IME. But when it comes to the US/Anglosphere and China, without really knowing, personally I'm inclined to hear the argument out.