This seems to be the closest to a reasoned argument in this thread. Realistically, what should they be doing differently?

I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist

He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).

On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: “The USSR: A People’s Tragedy”.

Amusing. And what detective work! Your time is valuable, careful not to waste too much of it.

Personally I’m not especially bothered by sockpuppetry in itself (talking of people wasting their time…). But it’s obviously important to have a plurality of viewpoints. If only they would sockpuppet more creatively!

This seems right. Personally I’m not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves “communists” - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism… And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I’ll stop there.

Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to… dutifully.

Out of interest, how do you know it’s sockpuppets?

To be honest I’m genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I’m imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I’m being slightly optimistic, but I can’t see how they’ve convinced anyone here that “China bad” who didn’t already think that.

Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, [email protected], is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.

This person, @[email protected] posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando’s “I hate China” blog. Hardly surprising that it’s not a very successful community.

I’ve asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn’t care. Oh well.

This is great but perhaps there’s some other more appropriate community to put it.

For a successful community, this one (which I also lurk in) is oddly topic-specific. They must be doing something right. Copy them!

And we were told cancel culture had peaked.

The five microstates (Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, San Marino, Vatican) are wreaking havoc in south-central Europe.

What a mess! I love defending other people’s heterodox opinions so I was rubbing my hands at the sight of yours. But… This is such a bunch of unfalsifiable generalities and tautologies that I hardly know where to start.

To be fair, English is obviously not your native language, and you do an okay job of expressing yourself nonetheless. 6/10 for that, let’s say.

I’m mortified :( It’s never been my goal to make others feel bad online. I had a quibble with the wording on a meme and clumsily worded my idea of “Our differences shouldn’t be minimized because they make us special” was seen as transphobia/TERF rhetoric.

Try not to take it personally. You waded into a subject which has become a sort of rationality-free zone. Perhaps more so even than Israel-Palestine, or immigration in Europe. On these topics there is almost nobody left who is interested in nuanced debate, it’s now only a question of identifying which “side” one’s interlocutor is on, and then unloading on them (or downvoting, or deleting, or blocking, or banning) as appropriate. You stumbled into sterile trench warfare, basically.

Soon after I joined Lemmy I was banned from a (somewhat serious) community for making the same mistake you made. I learned my lesson. With certain topics, genuine debate - open-minded, good faith discussion - is just not possible. I see it as a failure of Lemmy, yes, but mainly of the whole medium of text-based social media. It’s certainly not your fault.

Good, we’ve nipped that misunderstanding in the butt.

Since when did I claim to be “passionate” about anything? My proposal concerns new users, it’s in the title. I’m not a new user any more and I have a bunch of post and comments to my virtual name (not that it’s important, sure). But I now see that it would have been better if I had been pushed to another server when I signed up. Hence the proposal.

You’re an argumentative fellow! I’m still not sure exactly what it is you’re disagreeing with. My proposal is pretty boring and inoffensive. Everything’s in the post. But if you disagree, that’s fine.

Servers are communities.

No they’re not. Communities have “c/” in front of their name. I’m sure you know that already.

You’re just saying I should practice what I preach and get off LW, is that it? Can’t be bothered, but fair enough. My proposal here concerns new users.

Everyone can do what they like. I just believe we have a small opportunity to strengthen our offline communities, and we should take that opportunity.

Seems to be a misunderstanding. My proposal concerns servers, not communities. It would do no more than responsibilize users (“your virtual home here has people who may be your neighbors”) and encourage them to join local communities where they might discuss local issues (rather than, say, US politics).

What youre asking for, IMO, is for the fediverse to work more like facebook and twitter, which HEAVILY bias their feeds towards local matters. The US would not have been so easy to turn into a xenophobic ball of angry people if their social media were MORE international.

Corporate social media is only biased towards local if you count the whole USA as “local”. Again, seems to be a misunderstanding. In the US case “local” would mean state or town.

Since when am I proposing a utopia? I’m proposing that people talk to people in their physical communities. Nothing more ambitious than that.

People not wanting to see hate speech or propaganda does not mean they are in echo chambers.

You know that bad guys are now calling your ideas “hate speech” and “propaganda”, right? And they believe it as much as you do. How do you propose to get out of this mess if not by talking?