The problem is that these are very active communities which are some of my primary interests. I’m just browsing all and not even any particular instances. I’m commenting on things I see which look interesting and engaging with the content in an area I have interest and knowledge, but I seem to be doing so in a way which defies some unspoken orthodoxy.

It’s just been very frustrating. I’ve been a pretty prolific forum poster going back to Usenet and have several decade-old reddit accounts and I’ve never felt targeted or marginalized like this for what are honestly pretty mainstream ideas.

I’ve had a similar experience. I have actually engaged with the tankies in good faith on several occasions, and it has just gotten those account banned for I guess being a leftist heretic? For arguing that there is more to socialism than Marxist orthodoxy? For opposing campists? Idk, they really seem to dislike that, and these days It’s pretty obvious that the worst sin on ml is making tankies look dumb by actually knowing even basic political science.

Lemmy.ml keeps banning my accounts for basic participation, which has been extremely frustrating since they have a lot of the most active communities.

The major ml communities have a pretty established track record of arbitrary rule enforcement. Eg, letting hexbears post thier pig shit memes, but then ml mods having a hair trigger on the ban hammer for everyone else.

I consider myself a leftist. A democratic socialist. I have studied political science and am genuinely comfortable discussing the academic principles thereof. Even so, I’ve caught bans for “genocide denial” for discussing the mass abduction of children, and more recently for pointing out that the US revolution generally avoided mass murder. At this point I basically have a soft ban, and anything even slightly against the grain get me another 30 days. The admins seem quite comfortable with some pretty rigid ideological protectionism, at best.

You can check my history and the modlog. I can be sarcastic and confrontational, but I am generally participating in good faith. It sure as hell feels like my ml accounts, and a few on other instances have been flagged for stepping out of line.

I really thought this was going to be about gamergate and I was ready to just burn down the entire Internet

I’m sorry but if you are an lgbt republican then you are among the stupidest people to have ever lived.

This has been exactly my experience as well, and why I am increasingly comfortable with skepticism of unqualified conservative voices as a default.

I have been having good faith debates over real policy with conservatives for three decades. Since Carter more or less. I know what that debate looks like. But since 2016, I know two types of former conservative - the reformed, who were awakened to the monstrosity that Trump created. And those who openly embraced fascism like a parasite embraces dog shit.

Every person. Every single one so far, who has been equivocal on this topic has turned out to be quietly the latter. The ones belonging to the former group are very open about feeling dumb and misled, even victimized. They express loudly and often the nature of their reform to anyone who will listen.

That’s fine, but then there is a burden to both understand why your adjacency to this evil force makes people uncomfortable, and to rhetorically separate yourself from it as needed. This is just the unfortunate reality of how deranged mainstream conservatism has become.

I consider myself pretty libertarian in the grand scheme of things, but I am fine with an echo chamber where basic human rights are respected. I believe that my vision of society has no place for bigots or theocrats and that such people should be treated legally the same as fraudsters or thieves. And I think it’s absolutely insane that this would be considered controversial in a good faith conservative circle. The real conservatives I know would understand that an inclusive, well represented society is a productive and ideologically secure society.

Conservatives I can deal with, but modern right wingers have lost their goddamn minds.

And the entire issue is that a lot of people who view themselves as moderate conservatives are enabling this ideological brain rot by not vocally disassociating it with more reasonable conservative positions. Because of that, I am way more comfortable saying that conservative voices should be viewed with suspicion than I used to be.

XMPP is very underappreciated.