For all your boycotting needs. I’m sure there’s some mods caught in lemmy.ml’s top 10 that are perfectly upstanding and reasonable people, my condolences for the cross-fire.
- !memes@lemmy.world and !memes@sopuli.xyz. Or of course communities that rule.
 - !asklemmy@lemmy.world
 - !linux@programming.dev. Quite small, plenty of more specific ones available. Also linux is inescapable on lemmy anyway :)
 - !programmer_humor@programming.dev
 - !world@lemmy.world
 - !privacy@lemmy.world and maybe !privacyguides@lemmy.one, lemmy.one itself seems to be up in the air. !fedigrow@lemm.ee says !privacy@lemmy.ca. They really seem to be hiding even from another, those tinfoil hats :)
 - !technology@lemmy.world
 - Seems like !comicstrips@lemmy.world and !comicbooks@lemmy.world, various smaller comic-specifc communities as well as !eurographicnovels@lemm.ee
 - !opensource@programming.dev
 - !fuckcars@lemmy.world
 
(Out of the loop? Here’s a thread on lemmy.ml mods and their questionable behaviour)
The way that I see it, the issue with lemmy ml’s administration and moderation is not quite political in origin. It’s about transparency; and I think that this wall of text that I wrote about how lemmy dot ml handled ani.social shows it well, as the dispute in question was not political in nature. (I can abridge it at request.)
With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”. I don’t have anything against LW’s administration, but I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation. That instance is already 40% of the MAUs, and hosts the largest comms using Lemmy.
With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”.
It’s where big replacement communities happen to be, that’s all there is to it. Avoiding centralisation is a good thing in general but “tired of .ml mods? Here’s alternatives” isn’t the right time to go for it I think. Maybe the admins can come up with a scheme to round-robin disable community creation or something, to spread things out. Also, community migration is in the pipeline software-wise that would help a lot.
FYI, an update on the !fedigrow@lemm.ee post on the !privacy community: https://lemm.ee/post/34088759?scrollToComments=true
Long story short, !privacy@lemmy.ca is a nice option, it even has more active users per week than the LW equivalent (376 vs 346)
Added
Thanks!
I’m thinking that perhaps the community could/should go a step further, and create another instance to talk about open source and privacy. That would be IMO the best scenario - it would be a great counterpoint to .ml, and it would avoid centralising Lemmy around .world even further.
(I also feel like this might be better even for the devs. Administrative work isn’t exactly pleasing, and if I had to take a guess they mostly maintain that instance because they need it for the software. But that’s just a guess, don’t trust me on that.)
inb4: yes, I know - easier said than done. But I feel like it could be a good option.
FYI, a post on !fedigrow@lemm.ee about a !privacy community: https://mander.xyz/post/13928027
Lots of good suggestions there. It would be great if @barsoap@lemm.ee mentioned at least !privacy@lemmy.ca and !privacy@links.hackliberty.org in the OP.
The way that I see it, the issue with lemmy ml’s administration and moderation is not quite political in origin. It’s about transparency
Well it’s really both. The issue is the combination of a number of factors which on their own would be fairly easy to deal with, but put together they are very problematic:
- The admins are political extremists
 - lemmy.ml has a very prominent position in the lemmyverse, because they were first and got a headstart
 - The admins are actively using their position to heavily police discussion according to their extremist political views. The fact that they’re not being transparent about it is aggravating, but not the root problem.
 
This prominent position of lemmy.ml is the fundamental difference with the hexbear or lemmygrad situation. Those instances can easily be contained at the user level: most people can just block and ignore them entirely because nothing interesting happens on those instances for non-extremists. Not so with lemmy.ml, which hosts a number of large bona-fide communities.
So I think it’s necessary to make a concerted effort to reduce lemmy.ml’s prominence in the fediverse, so that political extremists can’t put their thumb on the scale to nudge discussion in a certain direction. Part of that effort is raising awareness about lemmy.ml’s nature, which is what this PSA does, but that likely won’t be enough due to network effect. It will take more to get people to move their communities to other instances. If other large instances, like lemmy.world, would block lemmy.ml that would provide a real stimulus for a large amount of people to move away from lemmy.ml.
With that out of the way, most of your suggestions boil down to “use lemmy.world instead”. I don’t have anything against LW’s administration, but I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further
I agree that spreading out more would be desirable, but on the other hand “just use lemmy.world instead of lemmy.ml” is a very simple and practical suggestion to move away from ml.
I think that it’s foolish to concentrate people and activity there even further, it defeats the point of a federation.
It defeats some of the points of federation, but there are still a lot of reasons why federation is still worth doing even if there’s essentially one dominant provider. Not least of which is that sometimes the dominant provider does get displaced over time. We’ve seen it happen with email a few times, where the dominant provider loses market share to upstarts, one of whom becomes the new dominant provider in some specific use case (enterprise vs consumer, mobile vs desktop vs automation/scripting, differences by nation or language), and where the federation between those still allows the systems to communicate with each other.
Applied to Lemmy/kbin/mbin and other forum-like social link aggregators, I could see LW being dominant in the English-speaking, American side of things, but with robust options outside of English language or communities physically located outside of North America. And we’ll all still be able to interact.
Please dont use lemmy.world alternatives. World is a much bigger problem in terms of centralization.
Are you on !fedigrow@lemm.ee? That’s a topic we discuss quite often there
I didnt know about it. Thanks for mentioning. Subscribed.
Nice, unfortunately you don’t have the comments on your instance but here’s an example thread about LW centralization:
I will probably get the comments at some point. Its a matter of federation I guess. Thanks for the resource. Will check.
I don’t care how big .world gets because it’s the same thing with mastodon.social or pixelfed.social. Coming from primarily centralized services, people will always be looking for a “main” instance because that’s what their brains are used to and that’s what will help adoption. The ones who care will use another instance. As long as fedi has the users and not the proprietary alternatives, it’s fine. We can manage.
You’re partially right, but it would be better if users were evenly spread on many instances.
Imagine if one instance becomes so big and then they de-federate. For normal users, nothing would change, but then we would have created the new R*ddit
Tankie tears from this is hilarious.
How brave…
So, I’ve been on lemmy.world since I joined last year and everyone’s saying it’s too big. Lemmy.ml is the next-largest so I’m conflicted. What do?
Join a server that fits your geographic location. That would lead to a better balance than what we have today.
Join a smaller instance. You can still see posts on lemmy.world, and you might find a niche you’re interested in in the process
Smaller instances are also less likely to get defederated by other instances, so unless your admins or mods are quick on the defederation, you get to see everything the fediverse has to offer. Not everyone likes that, of course, but it can be a good perk depending on the user and their admins and mods.
I also really like the idea of interest based instances. I hope we see those grow bigger rather than everything being put on .World and .ml. I need to post and comment on instances like programming.dev or ttrpg.network more.
People say lots of stuff, i am happy on world. As long as we don’t only take part in local communities i don’t think there’s much of a problem really.
Lemm.ee is the second by monthly active users
Quite happy on lemm.ee
Best instance
2nd best reporting in.
lemm.ee has been great, very level-headed administration.
Praise the sunaurus!
Join literally any other server.
That’s the point of distributed networks they’re supposed to be distributed if 80% of the content is on two servers that’s not distributed. People should move off ml and world regardless of their politics simply because it’s not a good idea to have everything all in one place.
It feels like .world is going to defederate soon, which will likely result in a multipolar Lemmy. Leftists and Leftist-aligned communities, and Liberals and Liberal-aligned communities, with hands-off communities like Lemm.ee being visible on either.
At this point, without any active Marxist communities, and defederating from almost all overtly Marxist instances, it is pretty obvious .world is anti-Marxist, so I doubt Marxists will stay with .world accounts.
Considering .world has a far less leniant defed policy it might just collapse on itself and the user base go back to Reddit, but that won’t be a rapid process.
Nobody is talking about marxists or leftists here, tankies are a breed of their own
What Marxists get the “not a tankie” pass? Marx and Engels both called themselves authoritarian.
Council communists, definitely, functionally that’s the same as Syndicalism. Some Trotski and Tito fans. A lot of Cubans, over there authoritarianism seems to be more and more a habit than principle.
So nobody that has actually succeeded in putting theory to practice in hundreds of years, got it.
Don’t you think it might be that you’re predisposed to not liking any AES countries at all because it’s easier to denounce real attempts for not being “authentic enough” than it is to truthfully acknowledge what went right and what went wrong in them?
I’m actually quite positive when it comes to Cuba, and Vietnam might follow suit. The rest range from falling to capitalism to falling to fascism.
Anyhow this wasn’t about the success or failure of “AES” countries but making clear that not all Marxists are tankies.
The Marxists you called not Tankies were the ones that haven’t done much, except Cuba. Cuba would probably count as Tankie to you though because Che was a Stalinist and Castro has stated that China post-Deng is Socialist.
That’s the thing, judging countries not by their purity to Socialism but by how they stand against Imperialism and for their own people is how they should be judged. China absolutely isn’t a shining beacon, but it’s less Capitalist and far less Imperialist than the US, for example, yet people love to say we should support Biden over Trump while denouncing China more than the US.
That’s what I am referring to.
Che was highly critical of Stalin’s authoritarianism and cult of personality. The, you know, defining factors of Stalinism in modern parlance.
And I have no idea why you’re bringing up the US or how it’s relevant to anything, are you American or something they love to do that, all self-important.
With regards to imperialism: Do you know how I earned my permaban from lemmygrad? As a, quote, “NATO propagandist”? By telling them that Russian imperialism evil. I don’t even like NATO, short of it being a vehicle to keep the US somewhat on a leash. The month ban from !worldnews@lemmy.ml was for pointing out that Ukraine does not in fact lay claims to Russian territory Ukraine describes as “Historically Ukrainian-speaking”. Because they don’t. As the article that OP there linked said itself.
Nobody in the replies mentioned it, but you could easily sign up to an instance that federates with both .ml and .world.
Will automated account migration be the next big feature?
Could be.
Either way if .world defeds, I will probably stick with .ml, I’d rather not deal with what will become of .world if they succeed in becoming both the largest instance and one of the least federated with other large instances among the major instances.
It feels like .world is going to defederate soon,
Are they? The only post I found is https://lemmy.world/post/16233963, and there is clearly no consensus nor communication from the LW admins.
I said “feels like,” the communication from Dessalines is that .ml will not defed, so it’s either .world does or it doesn’t happen yet. Given that .world has already defeded from Hexbear and Grad, the sliding target is now on .ml, and will probably continue on to dbzer0, etc.
For people curious, I found Dessalines comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/16523224/11490454
Given that .world has already defeded from Hexbear and Grad, the sliding target is now on .ml
.ml still have a lot of niche communities, hexbear and lemmygrad didn’t. Ironically, if they were to defederate, that might push people to move to other instances, especially now that migration is built-in. Last time, when LW blocked !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, it was not the case.
Surely the problem is that people are bringing politics into forums which clearly don’t require it. Like, why would the political stance of someone matter in a technology forum?
It’s a tech forum run by Marxists, there are other Tech forums run by Anarchists or Liberals or even conservatives.
implying all leftism is marxist
Also this isn’t even about Marxism or Leninism as-such. This is about the good ole attempt to expand democratic centralism to a population which is actually revisionist in itself because it either ignores that Lenin conceptualised democratic centralism as a discipline for a party, or because it wants to forego with the vanguard position of the party and expand it to the populace, take your pick.
Plenty of anarchists on those instances you call “liberal”, tankies won’t be missed.
I didn’t imply all Leftism is Marxist, .world doesn’t much care for Anarchists either. Hexbear is largely Anarchist and was blocked before they even had a chance to federate, and dbzer0 is largely on strained terms over “piracy concerns.”
Not really sure what you mean by spreading “Democratic Centralism” by saber rattling about Lemmy.ml, but that’s your right.
It is nice that you admit that all Marxism is tankie, that’s refreshing. Most pretend to draw a distinction, but ultimately decide only Marx himself is somehow not a tankie and everyone got his words wrong.
Most pretend to draw a distinction, but ultimately decide only Marx himself is somehow not a tankie and everyone got his words wrong.
Oh he definitely leaned that way for most of the time, all that vanguard stuff I mean and not to mention Engel’s infamous (and absolutely gaslighting) “On Authority” (I’ll lump the two together), but in his final works he was way more amenable to Anarchist modes of organisation, as a reflection on the Paris Commune.
The “expanding democratic centralism to the whole populace” is basically Stalin’s invention. Lenin wanted the party unified and not bogged down in constantly questioning already-made decisions, fair enough, it’s quite a different ballpark to expand that kind of unity to a whole population. And that’s where I draw the parallel to lemmy.ml’s moderation policies: While you only see the whole deal on lemmygrad, lemmy.ml is still very much up there when it comes to “We said there were no deaths during the Tienanmen incident, we decided it, it’s not to be questioned, no we don’t even care for you quoting the CCP itself to contradict us enjoy your ban”.
His reflections on the Paris Commune weren’t that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can’t simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.
Lemmygrad’s very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths. I am not sure where you are getting the idea that they believe there were no deaths, 300 may be low but is certainly higher than 0. Maybe you’re referencing the bit where they say the killings didn’t happen on the Square itself, and you took that to mean no deaths at all? An understandable confusion on your part, but not accurate to what even hard-line Lemmygradders say.
His reflections on the Paris Commune weren’t that Anarchism is better, but that the entire state needed to be replaced, and the old can’t simply be siezed. Marx was never an Anarchist and never would be, even if he felt they had good intentions.
Well he pretty much stopped railing against anarchists being good for nothing idealists who are inherently incapable of getting things done or organised. The Paris Commune made mistakes, also readily acknowledged by Anarchists, but it was also very much run to a significant degree on anarchist principles.
Mao was the one going on a “What was wrong is that they didn’t have a vanguard party” rant. I guess Yugoslavia would be a good example of Marx’ late positions actually put into practice, without all that Bolshevik revisionism.
Lemmygrad’s very own Prolewiki says there were 300 deaths.
Honestly I was just pulling the details out of my ass to circumscribe the pattern.
Yep, he softened his bite, but ultimately there are still an extremely small number of successful Anarchist movements compared to Marxist ones. Anarchists can get things done, but usually a lack of organization leads to struggles.
Yugoslavia was supposedly nicer to live in, compared to the rest of the USSR, but I wouldn’t say the Bolsheviks were revisionist. They saw their conditions and acted accordingly.
Fair enough to admitting that Lemmygrad bit, but it’s an extremely common talking point here that Lemmy.ml “can’t admit it happened.” Not even Lemmygrad believes it didn’t happen, it’s deliberately bad actors putting words in people’s mouths at this point.
If by “successful” you mean “took over a whole state, sustainably” then there’s zero (both Rojava and Chiapas are mere territories), but then the only ML states left are basically Cuba and Vietnam, the USSR collapsed, China has richer billionaires than plenty of liberal democracies, etc.
If with “successful” we also mean “feed the poor, organise the disenfranchised, and punch Nazis” then there’s uncountably many. It’s all predominantly prefiguration and avoiding liberal democracies to regress, in line with more recent theory.
revisionist
See I’m an anarchist, revisionist is not actually an insult to me. But it surely does rile up MLs if you point out that they’re ever so slightly disagreeing with previous canon so I might be using it more liberally than them :)
Love seeing this happen. That shithole needs to be defederated. The mod logs are FULL of butthurt mods banning people over and o Ver again for violating the Don’t Post Shit We Don’t Like rule, or… “Rule 1” to everyone else.
I chose it because I liked the name. Not everyone means something.
That’s fair.
- JOIN US! Comicbooks is slow, I’d like it to grow so I can discuss less popular creator owned comics, at the moment it’s mostly some news posts, my list posts, some super hero discussion, and some dude who thinks internet comic strips are “comic books” (but nobody has corrected them because they seem nice enough lol).
 
some dude who thinks internet comic strips are “comic books
Is that me? Ha ha
Naw lol the one you posted is at least a nightwing/starfire thing, it’s related. But you’re cool too!
I meant whoever posted the one about the comet passing earth a little while back haha.
You’ve never seen superfans print out and bind a webnovel, huh 😛
Lol technically correct, the best kind of correct!
Naw for real though I just think personally that stuff belongs in comicstrips or one of the more apt communities for it, and comicbooks is specifically for Comic Books proper (not just Marvel/DC but also Image, IDW, DSTLRY, Massive, etc, the more creator owned and independent side.) I think this because quite frankly “Comic Books proper” doesn’t really fit in those communities dedicated to strips, and I’d like a space for it specifically when I’m looking for that stuff specifically. My opinions on the matter are far from “the rules” though, it is certainly allowed to post them.
This is also not to say I don’t like strips, I do very much and am in most of those communities as well! It really just boils down to organization for me lol, may be slightly OCD.
Also, did you check !fedigrow@lemm.ee ? As a regular poster, that might interest you
Just subscribed!
Nice! There is this post about being the only one posting to a community that might interest you: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19187513 (and if you want the full version with 90 comments: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11491827)
Thanks I’ll check it out! But also I’m not the only poster there, there’s you, Jordan, and a few others too! It’s a small community but it is a community haha. I’d like to see it grow but I’m also thankful for you guys who are already there!
Indeed!
I just block the users who need blocking.
Enjoy segregating all the communities…I guess
Happy Lemmyversary!
I’ve had more people talk about this account changing age, then my actual birthday.
At least it’s something I guess
Enjoy segregating all the communities…I guess
I do not know what you think is going on here, but that’s literally the fucking point of all the Lemmys.
I disagree. The decentralization is thought through at an instance level, not community level. If it was thought through at a community level we’d have tools to aggregate different communities. The current solution is the equivalent of having multiple steering wheels on a car, nobody thought how you’d actually steer the car so you were given the option to steer each wheel separately. It might make sense on a superficial level but if you thought about how users actually use the thing you’d know it’s not the best way to do things.
People have the ability to block communities as they see fit individually and also follow whatever communities they want and only browse their subscribed list. (steering wheel)
But when popular communities are on an instance that is very much “get on board or get out” to the point they ban users from every community on their instance for having differing political views, it is very much reasonable to try to start or promote communities run on different instances controlled by better admins. (where the roads go (ok, so building roads is a bad analogy, it is more like when a place has terrible sidewalks so people walk through the grass and they wear in those little dirt-path short cuts and eventually no one uses the sidewalks))
You missed to point. Compare instances to communities.
Instances are not isolated. It doesn’t matter much which instance you join because as long as your instance is federated with other instances you can still participate in the communities you want to participate in. If you don’t like your instances, you can join a different instance and as long as that other instance is federated the same way you can get get the exact same experience on a different instance. That means instances are decentralized.
Communities are isolated. It matters which community you join because each post and comment is contained within that community. If you join a small community and there’s a bigger community elsewhere you won’t be able to participate in the bigger community. If you dislike a community and join a different community you can’t get the exact same experience because you can’t interact with the same posts. All of that means communities are centralized.
The reason we have popular communities in the first place is because communities are centralized. Centralized communities also work against the decentralization as your example also pointed out, because instances can leverage their communities.
This is also what I alluded to my steering wheels analogy. We don’t have tools to decentralize communities. We have a steering wheel for each community instead of one wheel for all communities that are essentially the same.
I’m with you, although I’m coming close to booting .ml, and I did block hexbear because that shit is insane.
I keep seeing posts about ml recently. Is it time to migrate off? I joined it because it was like the only instance available during the start of the reddit migration and it says “FOSS and privacy enthusiasts” which I am. I didn’t even care to know what a tankie was until my all feed started to fill up with so. much. politics. including from lemmygrad and hexbear for the last few months. Fellow ml users seemed normal too.
Idk friends I just want to wear linux knee socks and engage with my niches. I didn’t expect all the hail china or seeing “removed” all the time or to end up being grouped in with lemmygrad and hexbear by users from other instances.
Sounds like programming.dev might be a good fit, or perhaps dbzer0?
Last I checked, dbzer0 is unfortunately still federated with the instance where if you name it everyone from it will start calling you a Nazi b/c you don’t want to lick Stalin’s feet. It’s not as much of a problem here, but it’s still something to consider.
So just block them.
To be specific, we are defed from grad, but not hexbutt or lemmy.marxist-leninist unfortunately.
There’s few enough that I can get by blocking everyone with an account from hexbutt. Haven’t gotten a personal message telling me to kms or a shock link since I moved my main account.
Same here. I will say though, I wish we damn would defed hexbutt lol few or not it’s too damn many.
Those seem indeed good choices
More like CCP and propaganda enthusiasts
.world liberals are on a propaganda crusade to close off their Zionist echo chambers.
“Yo ho ho evEryBody I don’t agree with is a Zionist yo ho ho”
Kony 2012, amirite Linkerbaan?
We getting one of these a day now?
If you don’t like it, petition your admins (via posts on your own instance) to defed.
If they don’t want to, find a new instance that does, or stay and block their instance so you don’t see their subs.
If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they’re more active.
I just don’t see the point of these posts when most Lemmy users have been around for a while and know what lemmy.ml is like by now.
Be the change you want to see, post in those communities yourself instead of these daily announcements threads on an instance that’s already defederating apparently
You should read the sidebar’s at least, they’re heavily biased, but upfront about it.
It’s been their safe space longer than most other instances have been around. It’s also a good idea to look at modlogs when coming across a new sub/instance.
Not everything shows up there though. Like if someone is banned and has all their content removed, it won’t all show up in the log. But when individual comments are removed, it’ll show you what was said.
Don’t just assume everyone online will be upfront about their biases
You should read the sidebar’s at least
Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Lemm.ee will not defederate over tankie mods, there’s a specific policy. As to the change I want to see: Guess what I did just before I posted the list, go through all my subscription and clean it of lemmy.ml.
I very much doubt there’s going to be one a day, these kinds of things tend to ebb and flow. Also it would’ve been much faster to ignore this thread than to reply.
Ok?
So if you disagree with their policy enough, you can change instances.
Or you can stay, and build up those alternative communities instead of asking people to do it for you.
Like, the logic behind this isn’t difficult, and I thought you’d be able to grasp it.
That’s why I bothered to reply, instead of just blocking you. Same chance I gave some of the lemmy.ml subs before blocking their instance.
You’re handling it about as well
I don’t disagree with lemm.ee’s policy.
So if you disagree with their policy enough, you can change instances.
You can move your home instance where you log in? Explain how. That was going to be one of things I suggest you could do in future updates.
Not that I would move right now. I’m happy on Lemmy.World but I’d like the option.
You can move your home instance where you log in? Explain how.
I mean. Since you asked so politely…
You can export your settings in a .json file, then create a new account on a new instance an import your settings.
But like, you need to try and be better when you’re asking people for help.
But…why? Whats the advantage of reddthat over lemmy.world?
Also, when I saw Homer I thought it was going to be him saying “Oooooooooo!!! Explain how!”
Which nobody seems to have gotten my reference…the other guy even got offended.
Not everyone wants to block the clowns. I enjoy the show.
Oh it’s givesomefucks, the other clown!
these daily announcements threads on an instance that’s already defederating apparently
Where has LW announced that they would be defederating?
If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they’re more active.
Which is what they are trying to achieve by promoting those communities in this post?
Where has LW announced that they would be defederating?
People kept saying it one of the recent daily threads people have been making.
Which is what they are trying to achieve by promoting those communities in this post?
You think posting repetitively here is the same as:
If you want to build up alternatives, post and comment so they’re more active.
How does that make sense?
But if you want to move discussion off their communities make posts in those alternatives. That would actually do something.
These posts are Susan G Kommen levels of difference making…
I see the same article posted about 15 times for three days, maybe that’s the same thing going on here.
Feel free to be the change you want to see. You are telling OP to stfu about their issues and simply move on rather than complain, yet you seem to be doing the opposite of that yourself, hrm…
If you meant something otherwise, it was not explained well imho.
The world news community in .ml is just Russian and Chinese propoganda.
And .world is liberal amerikkkan bs then?
(not saying that either one is right btw)
Clearly the American point of view is neutral, the default, and the truth, so it doesn’t count as propaganda.
mbmb forgot the USA is the universal truth in nation-state form at the centre of the known universe/“international community” lmao
Why are you being downvoted? Is it not obvious enough that your comment was sarcastic?
I had to do a double take because this sentiment is prevalent throughout lemmy.world and other instances.
It’s not even about which view is right or neutral. On .world posts and comments critical of the US aren’t mass censored like .ml does with posts critical of China, Russia or the former USSR.
That’s true to some extent. I don’t agree with hard censorship like that, but there is also the risk of getting astroturfed and brigaded like reddit, which had a clear example as far back as 2013 where Eglin Air Force Base, FL showed up as “most addicted city”. The goal of censorship is to give your own opinions more space, so I’m not exactly upset if other instances are moderated in a different way when there are plenty of other instances moderated in a different way. The fediverse offers plenty of space.
Haha, soviet union at its finest I suppose.
Is it possible to migrate my account to another Lemmy instance? Or would I have to start over?
You can migrate your subscriptions in the settings (import / export as a JSON file, easier to do on a computer).
You would lose your comments and posts history, but you can refer to the old account on your new account so that people curious would know it’s you. Also, if you keep the same name and avatar, most of the people wouldn’t notice.
The views of .ml mods have not affected me. I don’t really check my subscription feed, only /all or /top->day, therefor im still exposed to all those other communities.
The only instances that I’ve noticed are missing are porn related, and as an asexual, I don’t have an interest in them. If I did, I could just visit a different site, like pornhub or w/e
Not all .ml users are tankies, or communist, or foss enthusiasts. I’m just a guy who likes memes and tech
It affects people who think that Lemmy.ml is the default instance, as it says itself and people say that any instance is fine to join.
It also affects people in the batshit insane comments that come from people on that instance, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, that occur with noticeably higher frequency than from other places.
It also affects people on that instance who talk as if into a void with many people blocking their instance but they don’t even know that. And that effect will increase over time.
It lowers traffic on the Fediverse, decreasing overall engagement, and drives people away from it altogether. It also lowers the likelihood that you can recommend to people irl to check out the Fediverse - when THAT stuff (e.g. defense of genocide) is seen it tends to turn people off who aren’t used to it or who are tech or culture savvy enough to know how to handle it.
So it does affect you, I promise, even if not directly, and over the next few months will do so increasingly as your instance turns into more of an echo chamber than it has been in the past, as more people block it either individually or at an instance level.
Agreed that many of the users are regular people who are just innocently getting swept up in all of this due to the actions of the admins. Just like users of Reddit were when spez did his power flex moves.
You might want to at least make an alt somewhere else so that you get some experiences that your .ml account increasingly will start to lack.
I hear you. When I first joined .ml, they were pressing for people NOT to join it. To create their own instances so that .ml didn’t become a central entity, and get overwhelmed with users. The latter did occur during the reddit exodus.
I also agree that they can curate and manipulate the instance to their ideals, which will limit casual users and their reach.
I don’t feel like I’m being secluded, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I have seen hate for .ml users and hexbear users, and I really don’t get it. The fediverse shouldn’t be segregating users based on what instance they’re in. That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.
I don’t feel like I’m being secluded, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I have seen hate for .ml users and hexbear users, and I really don’t get it. The fediverse shouldn’t be segregating users based on what instance they’re in. That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.
I agree with you for Lemmy.ml
I’m not so sure about hexbear, people don’t randomly end up there
I did. I stumbled upon a post to chapotraphouse while browsing the All feed from startrek.website that had not defederated it at the instance level. And similarly I found a politics (or maybe it was a memes) community on lemmygrad.ml that same way too! It seems neither of those are defederated from that server still. And on discuss.online while lemmygrad.ml is defederated, hexbear.net is not.
Probably you meant people don’t sign up with a login on those instances randomly, but I thought I would add the above perspective at least - that anyone across the Fediverse can get there randomly, if the defederation is not at the instance level.
I don’t feel like I’m being secluded
You probably aren’t… yet, but you will become thus, increasingly over time.
For the past half a year I have defended lemmy.ml, saying that its users are nowhere near as bad as hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml (just… visit them, you’ll see fairly quickly what they are all about). And that much is still true - the users are quite often innocent.
Though not 100% so, and now this with the admins, I will block lemmy.ml soon. I have already started blocking some of its communities, like all the politically-themed memes were simply not fun to keep appearing in my feed, unlike the many other meme communities scattered throughout the fediverse. I am missing out on basically nothing but contention, which has noticeably improved my experience of the Fediverse.
Yes, I am throwing out some babies along with the bathwater, but I am okay with that. The point is to foster a sense of enjoyment and peace, rather than constantly argue with people who are not engaging in good faith to begin with. I left Reddit for good reason, and believe it or not I would have left it regardless of all of spez’s bullshit.
Imagine my dismay when coming to the Fediverse, I make the mistake of ONE comment in chapotraphouse, and I got like a hundred replies of the most batshit insane, derogatory, bad-mannered and bad-faithed “arguments”, which lasted for WEEKS long after I stopped responding. I was being “dunked on”, which they LOVE, and which - apparently, much to my dismay upon finding out - is the literal purpose of that community. I almost left the entire Fediverse after that.
Well, it did not help that I made the same mistake upon replying to a comment in some political community on lemmygrad.ml. It was those two events together that almost made me leave. However, fortunately for me Lemmy v0.19.3 came out just as I was mulling that issue over, so I blocked those two instances, and now I am as happy as a clam. Honestly this issue with Lemmy.ml is nowhere near as bad as those two instances. But it’s still not great, it still impacts people - e.g. it will impact you far more than me - and it will hurt all of us if we cannot recommend to irl people to come to the Fediverse, b/c they are likely to see that stuff and be put off by it. And therefore all the content that they may have offered for our consumption is gone along with it.
An analogy might be: how much fecal matter is okay to appear in your food? We can spend a large amount of time curating our own experiences here to avoid that, but how likely is a non-Linux-using average person who might want to leave Reddit and come here to be even willing to do that, before they can start enjoying their interactions here? That “shit” demeans us all.
That’s like saying all US citizens are awful because they live there.
I suggest a different analogy instead. Crime in the USA in general has gone down substantially in recent decades, but let’s say that you wanted to walk the streets of NYC in the 80s-early 90s. It’s not “just b/c they are there”, but rather “crime is MUCH more likely to occur there, than other places”. If you choose to go there, you are making a probabilistic bet that you will survive the encounter. Maybe you will… or maybe your child will become Batman after you get brutally murdered in front of him, but either way, past some threshold it becomes a foolish bet to have chanced it, in return for what gain even?
You and I do not get to decide upon the preferences of others. Many will leave Lemmy altogether, rather than put up with this stuff. I at least will block Lemmy.ml, but that leaves the newest and least aware and therefore most vulnerable people to still have to deal with it. In the meantime, we are conversing about it, letting people know about the problems that we all face, together.
I have noticed the high level of political memes and threads and don’t care for it. I didn’t understand why they were so common, I thought we were all trying to get away from politics.
I will try a different instance and report back.
Possibly a good comparison could be memes@lemmy.ml vs. the two alternatives mentioned in the OP - I really wanted to keep the former, but politics kept creeping in and just made the experience un-fun so eventually I blocked it all. I thought perhaps the mods were simply lazy, I had little idea of the systemic issues across lemmy.ml altogether.
I thought we were all trying to get away from politics.
First of all, why would you think that? Second of all, everything is political so that is literally impossible. And third of all, only centrists who want things to stay exactly as they are, because they feel they are are benefiting from the status quo, ever say such things.
The fediverse shouldn’t be segregating users based on what instance they’re in.
If an instance is full of authoritarian propaganda and extreme censorship then actual users should leave.
Right, so we should unblock the nazi instances like exploding heads because they have one cool guy there maybe?
Wait, you need a passport to leave .ml and make a new acct, and have to endure a long process and spend thousands of dollars to become a citizen there? Oh so it’s a lot less like people trapped in the US than you thought I guess.
Man I’m gonna level with you, I’d prefer if most people on those instances weren’t assholes causing problems everywhere on lemmy since all they are is brigadiers, but since they are, you will be associated with them by being one even just in name. Unfortunate, but human nature.






















