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.
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
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.
A post on Lemmygrad will mainly show up on Lemmy.ml, Hexbear and a few others that allows it (like Lemmy.zip)
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.