Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, discussion and agitprop/stuff that's better fit for a poster than a meme go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms
When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart
- ofc => OFC
- af = AF
- ok => OK
- lol => LOL
- bc => BC
- bs => BS
- iirc => IIRC
- cia => CIA
- nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
- usa => USA
- prc => PRC
- etc.
Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" (read: Dengists) (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Sexual assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
view the rest of the comments
Wait so if the Lemmy devs are transphobic... Should there not be a fork at this rate? Also, I've heard a lot of shit talked about .ml and seemingly for good reason but what's the story with all this? How did it get this bad?
Forks for ideological reasons will almost always fail if the issue isn't with the code.
The lemmy devs bad opinions have not made it into lemmy itself.
https://piefed.social/
Piefed has a list of words they deem naughty built into the system. Fuck that bullshit. I'm an adult, I don't need some random nanny deciding what is and is not acceptable language for me.
It can be and is disabled by other instances.
I'm aware. But if people are going to criticize the Lemmy devs for their ideology which they don't inject into the architecture of their software it seems fair to point out the ideology of the Piefed devs that they do inject into theirs, even if said ideology is less egregious. I don't agree with the Lemmy devs on a lot of things, but I respect their ability to develop without such injections.
Also, the context here is automatic federation of communities - right? It's not a keyword filter in the sense that you're referring to.
Still an overreach, imo. Who are they to deem which communities are worthy, especially based on the "appropriateness" of the community name? It's entirely unnecessary, and Piefed would be better off without it.
Having looked at the words and code specifically in reference here, I think it's a copy and paste job from another local function (the local piefed.social retention rules)
If it's some kind of carryover oversight, that does definitely change the perspective. That said, as it exists today my criticism of nannying remains valid, so now that it's known if it is simple oversight then the devs should absolutely now remove it to the fix the issue.
Basically piefed.social scrubs all posts and comments from those exact communities (that fall under those keywords specifically) after 6 months to save on space. Rimu (correctly or incorrectly) regards memeposting as mostly frivolous and not worth saving long-term.
Which word in particular are you inconvenienced by not being able to use?
Any and all. When I limit my language it is because I have chosen the words to restrict, not because somebody else has.
I don't know what your goose image is supposed to suggest, but as an adult I don't need somebody telling me "fuck" is a naughty word.
"Fuck" isn't censored.
Which word is limiting your language?
Look, I don't know what this is, but I have no interest in whatever weird hostile form of communication you think you're having.
I'm not an expert in this, but the list I read included any communities with "fuck" in the name. But regardless, as stated, nobody else has the right or authority to deem what is acceptable language, that's a social convention we all get to weigh in on together.
But I have no interest in your weird goose-based hostility, so I'm just going to block you now, goodbye.
So wait, is this another hub for Lemmy's servers? How is this different then just accessing Lemmy through a third party app? Is this a totally different platform despite accessing the same servers? I'm a bit confused.
Not really - while it is part of the Fediverse, it is not Lemmy. In that sense it's closer to mastodon or pixelfed than a different client, with the key difference being that since the structure/interface are so similar, they're much more easily integrated with each other, so most likely have already interacted with a lost or comment from a Piefed user on a Lemmy community without even noticing :) Different Lemmy clients still connect you to the same servers and accounts, while Piefed's are completely separate - although several Lemmy servers are running their own instance of Piefed too, on a different domain. So, you "access the same servers" in the sense of posts, comments, votes, and potentially server hardware, but not for your account and server software
Gotcha, I think that makes sense. I don't know much about Piefed, but hey, if it works it works. I prefer Lemmy anyway because it is integrated like that.
I see, thank you!!
The good thing is, this is a federated service, and many instances are defederated from them if you want that. Also, they haven't added anything to the code that's bad, and it can be forked if they do.
Meanwhile, piefed, while it seems nice, has issues too. The language they're using, while it is easy, so allows for easier contribution, isn't as fast/powerful. They also hardcoded a block list for things like meme communities, and IIRC "NoMoreMuskSpam", and things like that. This can be removed by admins, but by default they're blocked. It's pretty stupid.
What the fuck?? Why??
No clue. It's a pretty crazy thing to do. An minimum, it should have been in a separate file that's made to be modified, but that's not what it is for some reason.
I see... Yikes. I know nothing about those other projects and I'll look them up, but are they forks of Lemmy handled by different people, or just front ends TO Lemmy? Apologies if I'm missing something obvious.
I think what you got mixed up is the software side and moderation. You can use the same software as .ml and have nothing to do with it. It's called instance and there are many. This isn't just front end. There are different front ends (apps, web, ...) as well but that's a different story.
You are on pawb.social as you most certainly already know. That's hosted and handled by different people than .ml. It's just the same software and the software isn't the problem And since the software is free, no one profits from it. As an instance, it can choose to federate with .ml and even if (as my instance does, don't know about yours), there is no guilt by association in my opinion. Being federated means you can see their content and they see yours but yours is moderated by your mods alone.
So they technically aren't forks since the software is the same but they are still handled by different people because they are exact copies software side. I hope that makes it clearer.
Sorry I'm only getting back to this now, but thank you! I do understand instances and whatnot, but I guess my question boils down to this: if the whole of Lemmy somehow gets influenced by the shitty views of some or all of the devs (I'm not sure how many there are), and a fork is needed, does that bring down all of the instances and existing infrastructure of Lemmy with it? Like, the existing instances won't be able to upgrade to the latest version, and then if they use the fork instead, will that screw with other things? I guess this is a question for a programmer, but it's on my mind lol
Oh, it's been a week on my side, sorry.
Do you see u/Ofiuco@piefed.ca's comment? Because they made quite a good argument. Software isn't as neutral as I made it look. There are features like blocking entire instances that can benefit different instances differently and I don't think it's coincedence that they promise and don't deliver on it. Also they do claim donations for software and hosting but how much they need and how much they get is anyone's guess. This is all basically a TLDR of this comment.
Ahh I see. So while there are multiple instances of Lemmy, all of which are under the shitty devs' thumbs at the end of the day, the mentioned Piefed and kbin are totally different things by different people with similar functionality but no bigotry? Or are they just different instances OF Lemmy like I'm posting from right now, in which case, what makes those two special?
Piefed and mbin (I think kbin is dead and mbin the successor) are on the level of lemmy in the sense that they are the software and there are different instances of them. So you don't just join piefed but you join one instance of piefed.
From my understanding, neither is even a lemmy branch but both are their own software using the more general fediverse protocol (that also includes mastodon and others) so they are compatible, look similar but have different developers.
And protocol refers to the data exchange format in a way. Think of it as a chess computer that outputs moves in the standard notation. Two computers can play chess together no matter how differently they are built and programmed inside as long as they agree on the communication. Same here. You have posts, comments, up and downvotes, ... but that's just the protocol. The program can work very differently. It's even possible to post from mastodon on lemmy (not the other way around tho because mastodon doesn't allow it, not for technical reasons) that's how different software can be and still communicate.
I hope that makes sense.
Yeah, I think that makes sense, thanks so much for the explanation. I should ask though, in that case, should I move myself over to one of those services? If so, which do you recommend? My account here is only new so now would be the best time for me to switch.
The whole idea is to spread to different instances. Some have a geographic focus (US, Canada, Europe, ...), some a political leaning or other topics like queerness, literature, traveling, ...
I recently joined anarchist.nexus but don't really use it yet. On the join page of every instance, you see a list of I think all instances with a description so you can choose which one fits best for you:
https://anarchist.nexus/auth/instance_chooser
Also, from my experience on lemmy, it doesn't hurt to have more than one account until you decided which works best for you. It's not that you lose any followers like on mastodon.