I noticed responding to posts in communities hosted at lemmy.ml gives the following warning:

This post is hosted on lemmy.ml which will ban you for saying anything negative about China, Russia or Putin. Tread carefully.

While I see where this is coming from and I agree with the general sentiment, I’m not sure it’s a great idea to include such a message. I basically read it as an invitation to be off-topic and to derail conversations in order to annoy the admins. While it comes from a point of good intentions, it can be disheartening for the people running communities on Lemmy.ml to receive comments about Russia from users basically trying to get banned, in communities that has nothing to do with this issue.

It’s unfortunate, but a lot of valuable older communities are still hosted on lemmy.ml, and I think PieFed users should be encouraged to be constructive and on-topic users there as they should be everywhere else.

An alternative suggestion: Maybe it could be useful to remind people which community they are posting in? Like, “This community is dedicated to renewable energy. Please keep this in mind when contributing to the discussion”. Then again, that would be a mess to implement in a good way.

  • mindbleach
    31·
    8 months ago

    Tankie admins are a missing stair and people deserve to be warned.

    It’s an issue even in communities you wouldn’t think of as political. Another reply mentions OpenStreetMap… which is illegal in China. The Chinese government mandates that people lie about the shape of the Earth. Many obvious responses to this absurdity would get you a boot in the ass for “orientalism.” Oblique criticism of that moderation, in turn, will get you a boot in the ass under their rule against bigotry… as if polite feedback against abuse of authority is intolerable hatred. Because they’re such fans of democracy, you see.

    And they’re big enough that many communities are hosted there by surprise. Linux stuff, piracy, webcomics, video games - whoops! Your opinion has been deemed wrongthink. The people’s workers’ family super happy fun time council is the bestest and most democratic one-party state everrr, so how dare you take issue with a foreign superpower dictating that men in video games cannot wear skirts.

    Highlighting the instance is a great idea. I might do that in-browser, as a CSS hack. I appreciate that this reader calls out that information when it’s especially relevant.

          • mindbleach
            1·
            6 months ago

            It sounded like so many demands for effort, whenever people talk about .ml’s censorship. They pretend there is no pattern of removing shit just for reminding people the CCP kinda blows.

            And in this case someone missed that it was a purely theoretical example of where people might mention that that CCP kinda blows.

        • AchtungDrempels@piefed.social
          11·
          8 months ago

          I just don’t think the warning should be displayed in all the .ml communities, and according to the modlog in f.e. the osm community, there is really no need for it at all. I also don’t want to have China, Russia and Putin in my mind when i want to reply in the [email protected] community.

          I think it’s much better that it will now only show the warning in specific communities, i like that much better Rimu!