"The developers of an alternative webservice for disgruntled reddit users got attacked with CSAM. What happens next will not surprise you"
What really gets me about all of this is just thinking about what the primary driver for the outflow of redditors to stuff like lemmy is the lack of transparent, low-friction moderation tools. Somehow they have managed to craft a worse response to this issue than fucking reddit.
Ah yes mastodon but by/for redditors what could possibly go wrong? Yep you guessed it
Good news! We've combined Reddit Dude and FOSShole into whatever this developer is!
Yeah, anarchists have warned about the Lemmy devs' poor security protocols for awhile.
I believe even other Marxist-Leninists banned Lemmy devs from their own subreddits for posting neo-Nazi and LaRouche propaganda since the LaRouche movement has a history of being hostile towards MLs under "Operation Mop Up":
LaRouche began to become more strident in his attacks on perceived foes, said ex-associates and experts on the group. At his urging, many members learned karate and street-fighting techniques, they said.
In April 1973, LaRouche ordered members to attack members of the Communist Party (CPUSA) and others in a plan called "Operation Mop-up," according to ex-members and published reports.
The group's newspaper, New Solidarity, reported then that "the NCLC has launched 'Operation Mop-up,' which will bury the Nixon-allied Communist Party in six to eight weeks." The article said the group would enter Communist meetings to accomplish this. "We destroy the CP," it went on, "because it is an absolutely necessary step to ensure that the working class in the USA and Western Europe is prepared with competent leadership . . . ."
In the following months, there were about 40 fights at gatherings of Communists and others, according to former associates of LaRouche and published reports. Many people were injured, and some LaRouche supporters were arrested, but there apparently were no convictions.
"Mobile squads of helmeted, club-wielding goons invaded bookstores and offices of the CPUSA, Socialist Workers Party and Peking-line groups, attacking their members there and on the street," said the study by journalist Rees.
Former members said some attacks were in retaliation for assaults by Communists, and others were unprovoked. LaRouche said in an interview that his supporters fought only when attacked.
So, it' s not even "tankies being tankies". More of "we need to keep LaRouchies out to keep our organizations safe from being infiltrated by known snitches, fed/fascist collaborators and informants." Many MLs in organizing spaces are very pro-active in keeping LaRouchies out. Huge security concerns for everyone.
Apologies for the long comment trying to explain it's not really ideological "tankies versus anarkiddies" but rather a genuine safety concern.
Who knows! All I know is the ML mutuals in my circle refuse to use Lemmy until Dessalines admits he shouldn't had linked to LaRouche websites, even if the articles are ostensibly pro-China.
(Not unheard of. Stephen Harper, one of the most right-wing prime ministers we have had in Canada was pro-China [links to articles about how the trade details undermine Indigenous sovereignty] before Trump's Sinophobia made Canadian conservatives anti-China as well.)
So, yeah, MLs being skeptical of Lemmy is or was a matter of security culture at play here.
I mean being pro-China doesn't make you magically have good politics. Nasbol ghouls like Caleb Maupin are very pro-China and yet won't shut the fuck up about focusing on the "normal" (white) working class.
If someone sees no problem in linking LaRouche websites that's not someone your can meaningfully build class solidarity with, someone can be super knowledgeable about Marxism and still come to extremely vile conclusions that put marginalized people in danger.
No worries. Was only spelling out the security culture concerns because Dessalines believes critiques of him must be because of his Marxism-Leninism; even though there are examples of anarchists willing to work with ML groups for instance, Türkiye Komünist Partisi/Marksist-Leninist (TKP/ML) in Syria.
And it's like... no... it's not because you're an ML nor being pro-China, Dessalines— your antifascism isn't principled.
Yeahhhh I was just kinda ranting, it wasn't aimed at you specifically. I appreciate you giving the context!
Which reminds me, I recognized Nutomic back when they were demanding Chocobozzz to add more moderation tools back when PeerTube had a Nazi problem. Then Chocobozzz clapped back with receipts.
It was kind of funny seeing the same thing played out in the screenshots here. Not sure if Nutomic remembers the exchange with Chocobozzz, because the Beehaw admins can easily just say "PeerTube implemented your requests, and you didn't do the same thing to your own projects."
Chocobozzz made the right decision to kick the Lemmy devs off the PeerTube GitHub issue tracker, lol. Just funny Nutomic gave the same response as Chocobozzz, but without the receipts during the rebuttals.
Not really surprised Lemmy had to experience CSAM spam before addressing their privacy problems distributing materials over 2 000 servers which was brought up a year ago. Even Mastodon has federation deletions, and only way to save copies is to defederate before the updates are pushed.
You would think because these folks' political organizations are targeted and infiltrated by federal agents, they would prioritize more tools for maintaining privacy, protection and moderation. Oh well.
