The threadiverse is made up of multiple servers (instances) run by individuals or small groups but are all distinct and have their own rules, themes, enforcement and sometimes ideologies and they are all interconnected. Think of email providers where youll have gmail, proton, yahoo and privately run email servers where they can all talk to each other but each is distinct.
This setup is great for censorship resistance and breaking "platform lockin" that mainstream social media loves. But in some ways not so great because anyone can setup an instance that means you can have toxic instances with toxic ideologies such as MAGAt/right-wing aligned instances or other authoritarian instances.
On the Threadiverse there are 3 instances known as "The Tankie Triad" they are lemmy․ml, Hexbear and Lemmygrad. Their ideology is aligned with authoritarianism and praise/defend authoritarian countries such as Russia, NK and China (and even denies the word authoritarian is legit, often saying it's just a CIA psyop or flops to "ALL governments are authoritarian!"). They also constantly spread Russian propaganda, such as that Russia was justified to invade Ukraine or denial of genocides those governments committed. They frequently conflate themselves as "the only true communists/leftists".
Hex and grad are widely defederated from (which means other instances block accepting communities, content, votes and user submissions from them. Akin to an email provider blocking another rouge/spammish one.) because of how excessive they are about their views, often giving death threats, harassment and general negativity to those they deem won't align with their views
Lemmy․ml is similar, but is way more subtle about it because the admins are also the devs of the Lemmy software (and are hardcore tankies themselves), often opting to just censor and ban people who don't align with their views or dares to call out their misinformation, authoritarianism or even just saying something like TASS or RT is Russian propaganda (which is frequently posted there). You can't even say Trump is a Russian agent over there without being censored (which is the top thread in the screenshot). They still frequently yell at people they deem to be "liberals" (anyone who doesn't align with their authoritarianism) to "go back to Reddit"
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works is a place to document what they say and do and therefore, like all authoritarians in regards to things that document them, hate it
Here's a big mega thread that documents lemmy․mls shenanigans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie
Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.
