In 4 things white people can do to start making the fediverse less toxic for Black people (DRAFT!) and its cross-posts, quite a few people said things like “maybe racism is a problem on Mastodon, but I don’t see it on Lemmy.” Of course, plenty of comments in the various threads were in fact examples of racism on Lemmy, so one takeaway is that at lot of people don’t see racism even when they’re looking at it. And helpful commenters pointed out some of the other patterns of racism on Lemmy. … but that wasn’t really the thrust of that discussion.

So I wanted to ask more generally, what are some of the examples you’ve seen of racism on Lemmy? Quotes and links are great, but also feel free just to describe examples or call out more general patterns!

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    There used to be Wolfballs, a right-wing Lemmy instance. I didn’t browse much but there was definitely ample racism there.

    • The Nexus of Privacy@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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      3 months ago

      Good point, thanks. I seem to recall another one as well – although both were widely defederated so I suspect most people on those instances didn’t wind up seeing them.

    • comfy@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      If I remember correctly, the admin (a US Lolbertarian) finally closed it down, among other reasons, when they realized the resident nazis there were not just joking to troll da libs and actually believed the things they were saying about ‘jewish shapeshifters’. They wanted a free speech haven, and so they got the people we collectively told to shut up.