As you can see from the screenshot, we have been the top community on Lemmygrad for this month. This is likely due to the sudden influx of users following the Reddit ban. However, as time goes on, I would expect this to fluctuate again as the new Lemmy users find their way across this platform and gain more familiarity with different communities on the Lemmyverse.
With this likely upcoming change in mind, I created this post after I had this conversation right here, where some users pointed out the difference in reach between Reddit and Lemmygrad.
On the old sub, we had an automod (preprogrammed responses) that provided short answers to the same frequently asked questions that we have all seen many times. For example, typing !holodomor would trigger an automod reply with a short introduction and additional links and information for further reading on the topic.
Example of automod reply for !holodomor
The Holodomor
Marxists do not deny that a famine happened in the Soviet Union in 1932. In fact, even the Soviet archive confirms this. What we do contest is the idea that this famine was man-made or that there was a genocide against the Ukrainian people. This idea of the subjugation of the Soviet Union’s own people was developed by Nazi Germany, in order to show the world the terror of the “Jewish communists.”
- Socialist Musings. (2017). Stop Spreading Nazi Propaganda: on Holodomor
There have been efforts by anti-Communists and Ukrainian nationalists to frame the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 as “The Holodomor” (lit. “to kill by starvation” in Ukrainian). Framing it this way serves two purposes:
- It implies the famine targeted Ukraine.
- It implies the famine was intentional.
The argument goes that because it was intentional and because it mainly targeted Ukraine that it was, therefore, an act of genocide. This framing was originally used by Nazis to drive a wedge between the Ukrainian SSR (UkSSR) and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In the wake of the 2004 Orange Revolution, this narrative has regained popularity and serves the nationalistic goal of strengthening Ukrainian identity and asserting the country’s independence from Russia.
Additional Resourcs:
- Soviet Famine of 1932: An Overview | The Marxist Project (2020)
- Did Stalin Continue to Export Grain as Ukraine Starved? | Hakim (2017) Archive
- The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933 | Davies and Wheatcroft (2004)
- The “Holodomor” explained | TheFinnishBolshevik (2020)
While such automod responses were very useful on a platform like Reddit (where all sorts of users might get recommended the subreddit or a particularly popular post among their suggestions), those automod responses are less relevant on Lemmygrad itself because of its nature (an openly Marxist-Leninist forum with a registration procedure) and its defederation from other instances (defederation simply means other instances are no longer allowed to interact with/view content of Lemmygrad itself).
Lemmygrad has already defederated from more reactionary, liberal or “apolitical” instances. To my knowledge, these are all the instances that do not allow Lemmygrad to interact with their own instances:
- lemmy.dbzer0.com, lemmy.world, feddit.de, sh.itjust.works, lemmy.blahaj.zone, midwest.social, lemmings.world, szmer.info, astraea.pink, feddit.org, feddit.kyiv.ua.
I got the above list from here, where you can read some of the instances’ own “reasoning” for defederating from Lemmygrad…
TLDR from here ↓
So, while Lemmygrad is clearly a safe space for Marxist discussion where there is less harassment from anti communists, this comes with limited reach outside Marxist communities and posts/comments from Lemmygrad will not appear on those instances, limiting cross-instance visibility.
This is not necessarily a drawback, of course. For example, from my point of view, being on a platform like Lemmygrad involves fewer daily actions required as a mod than I had to perform on Reddit. But if you are one of the users that joined more recently, you might see it differently. So it really depends.
That is why I am opening this discussion, to hear more opinions from the very same users that interact with this community.
Do you see Lemmygrad primarily as a great space for studying theory among fellow communists and building solidarity in a protected space? Or maybe you think the Deprogram is more about outreach and engaging with a broader leftist audience (including those not yet Marxist)? Or maybe something else entirely?
Feel free to express your thoughts and opinions on this, so that we can have a better understanding of the type of user that interact with this community.
Time for some dbzer0 lore, back when they formed anarchism sub there was an actual fed informant on the sub, that same fed infiltrated antiwork, OWS, anonymous, lgbt and dozen of other “anarchist” subs. dbzer0 knew about that shit for years but keep it shut. They also know about Raddle aggressive takeover of anarchism sub. Prove me wrong that dbzer0 isn’t a fed by now. They used to even have a post complaining about the informant.
As I understand it, Lemmygrad does not de-federate from any instances. Those instances de-federated from Lemmygrad in order to censor their own communities from communist discourse. They are run by fascists. World made a big show about it. Acting like heros for blocking Lemmygrad. You want to make you own instance in order to do outreach? Lemmygrad was already spreading left wing discourse. The fascists blocked it. You think they won’t block your instance of you try doing the same thing?
Yes, we only de-federate from spam and porn instances. This means technically you can read comments from worlders on say lemmy.ml, but they won’t see your reply. Other users however might still see it. Defederation is one-way, and lemmy.world is able to refederate with us at any time, they just choose not to.
.world is also famous for de-federating from hexbear - preemptively, but only as a last resort! before hexbear even had federation turned on
if this seems like a nonsensical series of words, that’s because it is
That’s what I was thinking about yeah. They pissed and shit their pants when they heard hexbear was federating. They knew they wouldn’t be able to control that narrative.
The overwhelming power of
I enjoy that one of the reasons for defederating with lemmygrad is “hosted in Norway”.
I thought it was OVH? In France? I might’ve got confused with Hexbear or another instance
No clue, but the reason is there regardless lmao
Honestly? Valid
I think other comrades already gave pretty good answers here, and I absolutely agree with comrade Cowbee’s comment, even tho I personally don’t have another Lemmy account because that is a bit too much for me at the moment (being socially anxious, depressed and not nearly well read enough to interact in an effective way outside of a few topics sucks).
I didn’t interact in The Deprogram subreddit (I don’t interact on Reddit much at all), but I usually lurked there from time to time and always saw posts every now and then on the timeline, and I think it is great we have y’all here on the grad! It’s also cool that it serves as an alternative/complement to chapotraphouse in our sister instance Hexbear (love you all too my dope ass shaped queer comrades!! 🫶).
Honestly I think the automated comments are very useful, and even tho we are widely defederated since libs can’t handle anything outside of the US state department line, there are some sizable instances that still federate with us like lemmy.zip for example and the few libs at lemmy.ml that might roam here and so it could be beneficial to have such automated replies. There might also be people that join us but aren’t very knowledgeable on these topics and it could be a good way for informing them when they ask about it, because of that I think it would even be beneficial for these auto replies to be available instance wise for us, not only limited to the Deprogram comm.
I think it is great we have y’all here on the grad! It’s also cool that it serves as an alternative/complement to chapotraphouse in our sister instance Hexbear (love you all too my dope ass shaped queer comrades!! 🫶)
Honestly I think the automated comments are very useful…
Completely agreed! And from what I have seen so far, I think it would be possible to have an automated reply here on Lemmy too (that is my personal suspicion at least 😅). But I wanted to have such a post first to gauge the community’s opinions before investing time and resources into an automated reply. Especially because, considering one of the skills of the users of r/TheDeprogram was to dunk on the occasional libs who decided to be toxic, I would very much like to give them the same type of tools to be effective dunkers on Lemmy as well lol
I’m pretty sure lemmy.ml is ran by the developers of Lemmy itself and their political opinions… well I don’t think we have to be scared of them defederating from lemmygrad (https://dessalines.github.io/essays) also the two main developers both have profile pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro respectively
Oh I didn’t mean that they would defederate, just that there are a few libs in there, although most of users there are completely fine from my experience. It’s great that Lemmy is made by two Marxists (although Nutomic is a transphobe last I checked 😮💨). In fact, that’s part of the reason Piefed exists since they can’t cope with Marxists developing something.
(although Nutomic is a transphobe last I checked 😮💨).
Really? That’s a shame :(
Do you see Lemmygrad primarily as a great space for studying theory among fellow communists and building solidarity in a protected space?
That’s what I’d prefer. I like having a safe, moderated communist space. The level of discussion rises when you’re not debating Stalin’s big spoon, or some other western/imperialist/liberal propaganda.
That’s incredibly accurate. On a personal note, it also makes my own browsing experience more pleasant when I can interact with well intentioned users who are simply chatting about theory and sharing memes.
I like having a safe, moderated communist space
Thank you for the clear answer!
Not a consistent deprogram listener or subreddit user, just a commie that uses Hexbear.net, Lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.ml.
Personally, I think everyone that wants to do agitprop should have a Lemmy.ml account, while also using Lemmygrad.ml/hexbear.net as a space to study theory and hang out with fellow communists. Keep the agitprop on one side, and the fun hang out space and theory discussion here. By building up spaces we control, it’s better for learning, while also allowing us to engage on our own terms in spaces others can widely see. My ML reading list is hosted on Lemmy.ml for this reason, and my own discussions on Lemmy.ml have done a fair job and seen a good deal of success, while also depending on these spaces for theory, discussion, and coherent analysis of modern events.
Essentially, I see it as us needing to maintain our own spaces, while agitating elsewhere and bringing comrades over to our side. We should even still be on Reddit, X, etc and bring people to Lemmy, Mastodon, etc, focusing on building up these better spaces and bringing people over at the same time. It’s functionally the same stance as Lenin in “Left-Wing” Communism.
Not a consistent deprogram listener or subreddit user
just a commie
Funnies aside, my personal opinion is quite similar to yours, especially the “Keep the agitprop on one side, and the fun hang out space and theory discussion here” part.
On Reddit, the Deprogram sub operated in a very similar fashion I would say. We frequently had new users who were just checking out the sub (maybe after interacting with a leftist post on Reddit or after listening to the podcast) as well as a portion of our users who were more familiar with theory and were there to answer questions and share memes.
It could be argued that Lemmy.ml - being the largest openly leftist instance that hasn’t defederated from most liberal/reactionary instances - would be the closest thing available on the Lemmyverse to Reddit as a whole (no offence to Lemmy.ml of course. I’m not trying to insult this platform by comparing it to one openly defending Zionists and their genocide).
And I’ve often seen your excellent reading list here, just like I’ve seen it being used by users that were not from 1 of those 3 main leftist instances. That level of usefulness and reach is in part what inspired me to write this whole post
Yep, fully aligned! Lemmy.ml is IMO the best spot for agitprop on Lemmy. Lemmy.world is too hostile to leftists and removes our content, so it’s much harder to do, but also on Lemmy.ml everyone can see it! It’s still work, but not an uphill battle. And thanks for the kind words!
For what it’s worth, I’ve watched Second Thought and Hakim for years, as well as a bit of Yugopnik, just not a big podcast guy, haha. I do tune in from time to time though!
while also using Lemmygrad.ml/hexbear.net
It would be really funny if the Lemmygrad admins made this link go somewhere
It should redirect to hexbear.net/ppb
The commie super-server!
Ah, you’re right, linking to lemmy.ml wouldn’t be such a bad idea
im new to the whole lemmy thing and admittedly im still sort of confused on how it works but I have appreciated the space. not only is it a solid ML space but I’ve noticed the culture is a bit different from communist communities on reddit. it is very nice, but am curious what viewing apps you use? I’m using blorp but its sometimes buggy
I like Thunder so far
I use the web version, personally!
Jerboa, or mlem if on ios
I use Voyager and it’s pretty solid. Sometimes I can’t see or find my PM’s and it shows I have zero but otherwise it works well.
I’ve been also using Blorp on mobile, but on PC I use the web ui even tho I do prefer the more card like appearance like R*ddit.
What you could do is spin up companion communities on Lemmy.ml for The Deprogram as a way to reach a broader audience, and then implement a bot that does what Automod did on Reddit, but for the Lemmy.ml deprogram community.
That being said, I think one of the most valuable resources provided by r/the_deprogram was the wiki. Lemmy currently lacks a built-in wiki for communities, and who can say if it’ll ever get one. However, there are a lot of self-hosted options for Wiki sites, and it could be a cool project to start up again. Though you could also take that information and use it to improve Prolewiki.
What you could do is spin up companion communities on Lemmy.ml for The Deprogram as a way to reach a broader audience, and then implement a bot that does what Automod did on Reddit, but for the Lemmy.ml deprogram community
Yes, I was contemplating this too.
I actually already created a community for the Deprogram on Lemmy.ml but haven’t done anything with it yet because I wanted to make this post first to have feedback from the users now that we’ve had some time to settle in Lemmygrad after the ban
Though you could also take that information and use it to improve Prolewiki
Shortly after the Reddit ban, I was reorganizing the resources I had still available and I asked the Lemmygrad admins for their opinions on how best to proceed for incorporating those resources into Prolewiki.
However, the fantastic editors already incorporated everything, so the old r/TheDeprogram wiki has already been added to Prolewiki!!
There’s still a bit of jankiness in the incorporation btw but it’s getting there, hopefully
Seeing the impressive work of the editors, I’m sure it will get there for sure :) but what type of jankiness? Maybe the old wiki style doesn’t fully match the tone that was already present in the page itself?
Aah it’s mostly internal stuff in how to incorporate, I only followed tangentially so even I don’t know too much. But from what I heard it’s getting there slowly.
Ooh fair enough! Seeing the quality of the work over at Prolewiki, I completely understand then
so the old r/TheDeprogram wiki has already been added to Prolewiki
Oh hell yeah! Are they part of existing articles, or do they exist as their own separate articles?
They have been incorporated to the existing entries to avoid having multiple articles covering the same topic :)
If you need to use a video hosting website lemmy federates with peertube, they one hexbear uses its called tankietube in case you want to back up the deprograms videos in case of youtube censorship
Federation with a peertube instance looks like this https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9194474
Unofficially Lemmygrad’s wiki is https://prolewiki.org/ See for example https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Lemmygrad and https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Reddit
I’m going to paste a comment I made on a previous post for the sake of feedback, as I was suggested to do so:
I tend to use grad as a hub for information, which I then use in more pilubluc forums and settings. However if we’re interested in facilitating people to move away from corporate social media to federated alternatives, we want them to come here ideally, and for that we must build the infrastructure to accommodate that.
Part of that is accessible information, (I get extremely annoyed by the search function on the jerboa app), along with welcoming communities. Sometimes people can be a bit quick to go on the attack I’ve noticed, though it’s not exactly unwarranted.
Lemmygrad is good in the way that you can talk to other communists very easily like if the only subreddit you used was the Deprogram.
For new users that want to interact with libs and more general communities i recomend making an alternative account in a widely federated instance like lemmy.ml, thelemmy.club or mander.xyz
From those you can subscribe to lemmygrad communities and interact with them
There is also the hexbear comms which are normally more active than lemmygrad and also full of leftists https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3068510
Maybe you can provide some clarification for me as a new user. When I found out about the Deprogram subreddit ban I found out about Lemmy and signed up on the 3 leftist instances because I didnt understand how it worked. I also signed up on Lemmy.world and Lemmy.zip but I deleted them after I figured out the federation part of this and decided I wanted my account to be based on one of the leftist instances.
I ended up choosing Lemmygrad mostly because the Deprogram subreddit was a big one I used all the time and it’s exhausting having libs constantly attacking you for making innocuous comments about leftist thought. Kinda got over having to have my metaphorical guard up all the time.
BUT I am now subbed to a bunch of instances on lemmy.world, lemmy.ml, and hexbear. Also a few others not on those ones. I’ve found myself able to interact and all that but from your message it sounds like there are downsides that I don’t quite get.
Like from what you have said, if I make a post on Lemmygrad it doesn’t show up on other instances or something like that? I’ve been making posts and comments in other instances and it seems to all work? Ultimately I don’t really know if I care all that much but I’m seeking to understand further.
Apologies if this is the wrong place for this type of questions I know there is a place do these and what I’m asking has probably been answered a ton already.
I’ll attempt an explanation of how lemmy works based on my experience with it:
The home page / feed
When you are on the home page of your instance, above the feed you will see this:
posts/comments: chose if you want the feed to show you posts or comments of posts.
eye/barred eye: chose if you want the feed to include hidden posts or not.
subscribed/local/all: choses from where the feed should pull what it shows you, subscribed to have it show you only content from communities you are subscribed to, local if you want it to show you content from only your home instance including comunities you aren’t subscribed to, all if you want it to show you content from every instances your home instance hasn’t defederated from.
And finally the sorting menu: It allow you to chose the order in which the feed should display content and include the following options
- hot
- active
- scaled
- controvertial
- new
- old
- most comments
- new comments
- top [period of time]
Federation
Federation is a part of the fediverse that tend to confuse peoples, because it is confusing.
Federation is made possible by a communication protocol called activitypub, and is basically a way for different sites to “talk” to each other kind of like e-mail or RSS. I absolutely wouldn’t be able to explain how it works from a technical standpoint, all I know is that it allow sites to exchange information like “such post has been made on instance such-and-such” “such user from instance whatever has liked random post from instance what-s-it-called” in a decentralized spider web kind of way.
It allows not only every lemmy instance but every instance of every fediverse software, from mastodon to peertube to exchange content and data (unless they don’t want to). This means that in theory a mastodon user can like and comment a lemmy post and watch a peertube video (in practice it’s a little bit finicky and you have to try multiple times to understand how to do it).
Now let’s talk about de-federation. De-federation has this strange and confusing one-way of functioning. It doesn’t prevent the instance you de-federated from from requesting information from your instance, but it does forbid your instance from requesting information from theirs, in other words, when you de-federate from another instance your users won’t be able to see the other instance’s posts, comments and likes but the other instance’s users will still be able to see your posts, comments and likes unless they de-federate from you as well. For example, from lemmygrad, we can still see lemmy.world comments on lemmy.ml posts and we can upvote/downvote and comment on them, but the lemmy.world user won’t see any of it.
The wider fediverse
Since you’re already on it, I suggest also taking a look at other fediverse apps. You can easily find them by googling fediverse. There is mastodon/miskey/akkoma/etc which are twitter-like micro-blogging softwares, peertube a video sharing platform like youtube, and many more.
The Marxist-leninist community on the fediverse is most well established on lemmy but we also have instances of other fediverse software. We have a mastodon instance established by an Hexbear user and a peertube instance established by lemmygrad user tankietanuki, I recommend both.
Thank you for the write up! Also thanks for the links to the other fediverse stuff I joined Matrix the other day and was looking to continue exploring this whole thing!
I forgot to write it in the home page part but you can change what these option’s default selection are when you go to the home page in the settings menu.
I recommend setting them to subscribed sorted by new, that’s what I set them as.
You can post in any community of any instance your home instance is federated with. With few exceptions anyone federated with your instance can see any comments and posts you make. One such exception is that with one particular iteration of lemmy (piefed) incoming data from instances including lemmygrad and hexbear are blocked. Essentially a baked in shadowban that is technically possible to disable but it seems they market their built in blocking (which includes a bunch of other actually horrible instances) as a key feature.
if I make a post on Lemmygrad it doesn’t show up on other instances or something like that?
A post on Lemmygrad will mainly show up on Lemmy.ml, Hexbear and a few others that allows it (like Lemmy.zip)
I’ve been making posts and comments in other instances and it seems to all work?
This depends on your idea of “working” in this case. If you mean that your posts and comments will be visible to other leftist users, it will show up without problems to people from Lemmy.ml, Hexbear etc. If you mean that your posts and comments will be visible to ALL users across the fediverse, then no.
Let me know if you have more doubts! You might also find this megathread where we answered some of the most common questions to be helpful
OH I think I get it now. You can kinda subscribe to whatever but some instances have “shadowbanned” the leftist instances and their users. I think this also explains why my subscriptions to the lemmy.world communities are still pending.
This megathread has been very useful I am wrapping my head around the whole fediverse concept more now. Thank you!
In your experience do people typically have multiple accounts for stuff like this? I ended up keeping my lemmy.ml and hexbear accounts bc I am lazy and didn’t want to do the vetting again but it seems that maybe there is more utility to them to be able to communicate with instances they are federated with but we are not.
Yep! Lemmygrad.ml is widely federated on its own side, but widely defederated on the other side. We can talk to others, but they often can’t see us unless they are from Lemmy.ml or Hexbear.net.
Hexbear is largely a “you see it, you can interact with it” instance. Most others will see your posts if you can interact, but you won’t even see Lemmy.world posts or comments.
Lemmy.ml is widely federated and minimally defederated. You can talk to nearly anyone and everyone.
I use all 3 for different purposes, and scroll each locally for the most part. Lemmy.ml is for agitprop (which is where I’m most active), Hexbear is for chilling out with other leftists and discussing hobbies, and Grad is where I go if I want something more ML and theory-focused.
Interesting! Thanks for this insight I’m currently spinning up my lemmy.ml account to access some of the communities I otherwise cannot interact with but I want to. All of this is making more sense as to why all the lemmy.world communities are listed there but not here under the “all” tab when you are searching.
This shit is so cool. I really like the whole lemmy concept even if there are some idiosyncrasies to learn at the start.
Yep, it takes a bit to get used to, but is actually much better than Reddit for agitprop. If we both build up our spaces on grad and bear while engaging in agitprop on .ml, we have both a place to send people and a means to get more. Lemmy.ml is constantly struggle sessions because of it, but we do get new users here and on bear because of it. I host my ML intro reading list on Lemmy.ml for outreach, and it actually gets more positive attention than it would have if I only hosted it here or on bear.
That all being said, I do enjoy my time far more here and on bear, so I need a place to come back and relax alongside fellow comrades.
Just like email.
I found YouTube links in your post. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
