cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/6888554
Inspired by: "UK and France abandon plans to recognise Palestinian state at conference"
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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Lefty Memes
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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
0.5 [Provisional Rule] Use alt text or image descriptions to allow greater accessibility
We require alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.
We are committed to social equity and to reducing barriers of entry, including (digital) communication and culture. It takes each of us only a few moments to make a whole world of content (more) accessible to a bunch of folks.
When alt text is absent, a reminder will be issued. If you don't add the missing alt text within 48 hours, the post will be removed. No hard feelings.
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
founded 2 years ago
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Is it against the rules to deride the use of image generation models in this community? Clarifying because your rules section says nothing about it.
It's against the rules to attack and brigade users and communities which allow GenAI, that's a dbzer0 instance rule which was voted on in !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com, @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com I don't think that ever got added to the sidebar, but it probably should be soon.
someone reported this comment with the report reason "Anti-AI Trolling in an AI friendly community"
What makes this an AI-friendly community? I just read the sidebar and don't see anything about AI.
I do see however that this community's list of rules includes this peculiar pair:
🤔
If the community rules don't ban GenAI images then you can assume a) they are allowed, and b) complaining about them is not allowed.
Is there any way to get a list of .dbzero communities that do/don't ban AI so that I don't have to block your entire instance?
Lol must keep your eyeballs pure eh?
Blocked.
@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com Is this guy trying for an instance ban from dbzer0? He said he wanted to block it, maybe we should help him lol
Feel free! I don't give a shit.
Looks like you got your wish in this community at least lol
lol, ok, i see. TIL
I like how people are treating any criticism of AI as "trolling." Like, it's one thing to tolerate AI images, but apparently there's a bunch more devout techbros around here than I realized.
Edit: Lmao, it got removed! Trolling now officially means, "Disagreeing with me, about anything, in any way, for any reason."
A surprisingly common set of beliefs.
The problem is the anti-genAI crowd show up in numbers on almost every post containing AI images to pontificate about why they think "AI slop" should be tagged (although even when it is, they shift the goalposts and we still get complaints - this post is a good example). In effect this completely derails the post comments to be all about genAI instead of the community/post theme. Some of our community mods have experienced significant bullying and harassment over this topic, which is why we put the rule in place. I'm not going to re-litigate it here, but if you check out our !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com community there is an extensive discussion about it there.
Sorry that your position is massively unpopular?
How is this post an example of that when it isn't tagged?
Does "saying AI is bad" count as "significant bullying and harassment?" What about, "saying comments shouldn't be removed for criticizing AI?" Because apparently those things count as, "trolling" so I'm not sure what standards you're using here.
What data are you basing this ridiculous claim off? It's already been thoroughly debunked. In reality most folks simply don't care about it, or are ok with using genAI. That's certainly true of our instance users, in any case. And looking at genAI posts in this community, they have way more upvotes than downvotes. Nobody has been able to explain to me how that equates to GenAI as being "massively unpopular". It's unpopular with a bunch of liberals on LW, and a handful of mostly western leftists who are so entrenched in the neo-liberal economic mindset that they can't conceive of fighting against copyrights. Of course artists should be properly paid, but not via this ridiculous system of copyright law which mainly acts to protect corporate interests over individuals.
It is mentioned in the original post that it is an AI generated image, which is why this discussion started in the first place because it wasn't otherwise obvious. I'm saying even though this post was tagged, it didn't stop off-topic hate comments about genAI from derailing the comments.
This is a disingenuous comment. The removal reason for those off topic comments wasn't "bullying and harassment" it was "comment trolling" which is why there were only removals and no bans. If the post isn't about AI then yes, that's just comment trolling as far as I'm concerned. Online bullying and harassment over this topic is absolutely occurring, whether or not you are aware of it. One case is documented in the !div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com community post I previously mentioned. We moderate this instance accordingly to the overwhelming majority preference of our instance users on this topic, and I don't apologize for it.
I'm basing it off your claim that tons of people "troll" every time an AI generated image is posted.
No it isn't. Where?
Any post that contains AI generated art is about AI.
Imagine if I killed a cat, drained its blood, and used that blood to paint a picture criticizing, I don't know, drunk driving. Is that picture not "about" animal cruelty? Is is not valid to criticize the harm I caused in producing the art? Should any such criticism be banned and excluded from the conversation?
Anyway you're free to die on whatever stupid reactionary hill you feel like, I guess I have no choice but to block the instance.
And I'm the one who's dying on a stupid reactionary hill?? Lmao.
not to speak for everyone here but the standard is that our community is very clearly marked as generally pro-AI and we get tired of seeing the same four half baked rhetorical points from people like you over and over again. frankly, if you’re upset by AI then you probably should block all of db0. we don’t want that here anyway, hence the rule. healthy discourse is fine but you’re sitting here making multiple comments about genAI in a post that has nothing to do with it. it’s a nuisance at best and inflammatory at worst. i feel for you when it comes to dealing with poorly marked or conveyed rules/enforcement. i agree the administration could make this more clear, especially for users using alternative frontends for lemmy.
most of us could actually not give less of a fuck, to be entirely honest with you. we’re more focused on actually contributing to things. some of us, namely, would like to focus on building and using machine learning toolchains without hearing about olympic size swimming pools or people’s unrequited opinions on “AI” every five fucking seconds. that’s because in this case, the popular opinion is the reactionary opinion. being anti-AI is a reactionary position and the popularity of it’s a reflection of the zeitgeist.
i think genAI is art, i think machine learning itself is art. the idea that the massive amounts of cognitive work accumulating over decades, that very talented engineers and researchers have poured their hearts and souls into just to be able to bring these systems into reality… the idea that is anything but a pure expression of the human condition - and hence art - is patently fucking absurd and i’m sick of seeing the anti-AI diatribe in any way, shape, or form. our admins are great. just because a position is popular doesn’t mean it isn’t fucking brain-dead stupid.
Then it should be open to criticism. The fact that criticism of it is being removed makes me not see it as art at all, frankly.
Your comment wasn't removed for being criticism, it was removed for being reactionary. You've had it explained to you that this sentiment is considered reactionary here and thus isn't allowed. We don't allow other forms of liberal apologia either, even if they're framed as "criticism" or "just asking questions".
"Reactionary liberal apologia" is when you care about artists and the environment, apparently.
Nice strawman argument. Really showing which side of the fence you sit on.
are you fucking dense? like i seriously cannot tell if you're serious or shitposting, and like, i'm being fr here i'm genuinely not sure and i'm not trying to be any more of a dick than some friendly ribbing might entail. like i don't have any ill feelings for you but this just gets super frustrating after having this conversation so many times with so many people who seem utterly set on unfounded debate over rational dialectic.
it is open to criticism. lmfao. all you people fucking do is criticize it, endlessly, on social media.
can you not just let us have our own tiny fucking corner of the internet and leave us alone or is it really that much of a vendetta for you?
That’s your prerogative, but I don’t think this hill is worth dying on. A Marxist Perspective On AI
Great post, thanks for sharing.
db0 is a leftist instance. we're all anarchists for fucks sake, very clearly. don't be dense, seriously.
just because you are ignorant does not mean we all must be. it doesn't make one a fascist techbro to merely enjoy computer science and fucking math. sorry. i was unaware this was an anti-intellectual, anti-rationalist society.
either way i wish you well, i'm not trying to sling shit or anything. i just genuinely think your reactionary stance on AI, as well as the general societal sentiment, is grossly ignorant to the point of abandoning reason. it is upsetting. any number of db0 members could sit here slinging rote facts at you showing they're not just "techbros," there is a real and objective basis for their interest in machine learning; but you probably wouldn't even bother considering or glancing at any of it because you've already decided your opinion on a topic you clearly are quite uninformed on the technical details of.
it seems like everyone who is anti-AI is just deadset on MAGA-esc fucking mental gymnastics. i'm honestly not convinced a large amount of anti-AI sentiment isn't pushed by Chinese/Russian bots trying to compensate for their absolutely massive disadvantage to the United States in the arms race currently going on over machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. the US accounts for like, anywhere from 50-70% of all global compute resources depending on who you ask. we have sources demonstrating the MAGA people and their stupidity/echo-chambering was definitively spurred by similar psychological cyber-warfare. if you can't beat 'em, make their people immune to truth & reason.
Yeah, I originally joined dbzero because its an anarchist instance and I am an anarchist, but grew to dislike it cause of how pro-AI it is. So I swapped to slrpnk. But slrpnk is down and so I am stuck using dbzero till its back up.
I find it kinda wild that they are so pro-AI too cause all of the friends I have that are anarchists are varying degrees of anti-AI. Personally, I would be fine with AI if we lived in an anarchist society because no one would be negatively affected by it. However we don't, so there is only a very very small niche use case where you can use AI ethically. Otherwise I see it as scabbing. Being anti-copyright shouldn't mean walking all over artists and other creators.
Ahhh, yes i see the post in the div0 governance community. Thanks for clarifying.