In case you're not aware, lemmy.world has (pre-emptively) defederated from the two instances that have the vast majority of socialists and communists on Lemmy, hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml.

If you want a lot more socialists to read your question and provide more informative answers, you may want to post in a community on lemmy.ml or lemmy.zip, which don't defederate those instances.

People will downvote my message and complain that hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml are "tankie" instances, which I interpret to mean that they hate people who want to make socialism happen in real life some day.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 8 points 3 days ago

No, we hate people who want to execute others. We hate people who think that authoritarianism is in any way connected to anything resembling communism.

We hate people who worship mass murderers. So no, socialism sounds nice, what the wannabe communists on tankie instances are doing on the other hand sounds just idiotic.

[–] Artisian@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Down voting because, indeed, I don't want socialism to happen with fascism. Those instances are places that I do not want to visit.

[–] oatscoop@midwest.social 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Instances defederated from hexbear and lemmygrad because a few dozen users from those instances were terminally online trolls. They'd relentlessly harass users they didn't like (i.e. most people), spam threads with gross images, and were generally obnoxious shitheads.

Also, "Tankie" is an insult against the hardcore authoritarian left: people that cheer on repressive dictators and violent supression of dissent. The term was invented by communists out of disgust for some of their "fellows".

Of course, if you ask a tankie they'll try to argue the word is an insult to all communists/socialists/leftists ... it's not.

[–] Cricket@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Going by your figure, a few dozen users out of nearly 2,500 combined monthly active users behaved badly. It seems to me that defederating was/is an overreaction when user-level blocks and community-level bans exist.

[–] oatscoop@midwest.social 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You weren't around for it, but it was bad -- you couldn't avoid them. A few dozen trolls doesn't sound like much, but they were coordinated and relentless. Blocking users didn't work because they were constantly making alts, including on other instances.

Calls were made for instances hosting them to ban those users: most did, some refused to or couldn't. Blocking instances in user settings wasn't a thing yet, so those instances were mass defederated from. Lemmygrad and hexbear were the big two and home of the dirtbags that were upset their "fun" was over.