Skip Navigation

Discussion about lemmy.ml admins abusing Fediverse moderation tools (with proof)

lemmy.world Lemmy.ml tankie censorship problem - Lemmy.World

I feel like we need to talk about Lemmy’s massive tankie censorship problem. A lot of popular lemmy communities are hosted on lemmy.ml [http://lemmy.ml]. It’s been well known for a while that the admins/mods of that instance have, let’s say, rather extremist and onesided political views. In short, t...

https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

Lemmy.ml, like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, has consistently been accused of improper Federation practices and many instances have decided to ban one or both of the latter by default, with many individual users having already gone further to block the former as well. However, many individual users on lemmy.ml seem unaware of the accusations of the practices of their admins, and some people go so far as to see lemmy.ml as a sort of default instance on the Fediverse.

This discussion promotes wider knowledge of the situation and what might be done about it in the future, in order to e.g. not turn away new potential Federation members (Fedizens?:-) that could otherwise associate what happens on that instance as something relating to the Fediverse as a whole.

You're viewing a single thread.

39 comments
    • well can someone suggest a instance? And is there a way to transfer my communities to another account
      • lemm.ee is the second most active instance and avoids joining Lemmy.world which is already too big
      • reddthat.com is cool if you don't want downvotes
      • sh.itjust.works works, if you don't mind the name
      • if you are based in Europe, discuss.tchncs.de is very well managed (they have other services at https://tchncs.de/)
      • if you are based in North America, lemmy.ca is nice

      That's pretty much it.

      For the transfer of communities, there is a tab in the user settings to export your settings (including subscriptions) to a JSON file. You can then import it to your new account.

      • That's pretty much it.

        Rude.

        Dbzer0, for pirates, mushrooms, etc.

        • Dbzer0 is great, but I always assume people interesting in it will find it out. The list above is about "general instances"

      • For people that want an instance-level block for the Big 3 Axis powers - hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and Lemmy.ml - are you aware of anything that could be recommended?

        I also went through all the top ones at https://lemmyverse.net/ and very few to nothing is defederated from lemmy.ml (though yffit is defederated by Lemmy.ml...:-P).

        Kbin.social might have been, but I'm not certain and it's been down for several days. Possibly an Mbin one could be but that also has enormous implications for apps chosen and the interface in general.

        So what I'm trying to think of is a Lemmy instance to recommend to people, even irl to consider joining the Fediverse, bc otherwise I'm hesitant to recommend us at this point, given all the absolute shit that I would be exposing them too by default, until they learn how to block stuff. It's similar to Linux then in that unless I walk them through setting up an account and curating their experience, it's too overwhelming and they will just give up. For whatever reason, we collectively have decided that we are okay with this really terrible situation that heavy curation is mandatory... even as we also claim that we want the Fediverse to grow.

    • your home instance doesnt necessarily need to be a behemoth as you can subscribe to all the same stuff. ive got a dozen or so users at moist.catsweat.com who primarily consume lemmy content

    • I have hopped around a lot myself - @Blaze@reddthat.com is there a particular post to recommend reading in this regard?

      My suggestion at this point might be to:

      1. if you just want to read but not yet interact, log onto any one of them e.g. https://lemmy.world and poke around!:-)
      2. consider if there are any particular communities that you are interested in the most - e.g. https://programming.dev/c/programmer_humor, or https://sh.itjust.works/c/patientgamers, etc.
      3. for general-purpose ones - arguably the best approach - visit a site like https://lemmyverse.net/ to see those that have the most activity on them and might be closest to you.

      Do NOT get mislead though by the community / instance descriptions, e.g. midwest.social says that it is for "leftists in the Midwest USA", but what it means by "leftists" is not the common usage (especially for people in the Midwestern USA, who would interpret it like "progressive liberal" or some such) and rather more extreme forms such as full-on communism. Similarly, hexbear.net never bothers to enforce their own Code of Conduct (the only time they remember the human is when you say something they agree with - any other time the human is fair game to be dunked on!). But it is like watching Fox News: regardless of what they say, pretty quickly you get a sense that something is a bit "off" when you visit these places:-).

      lemmy.ml is much harder to get a read on though, hence the linked discussion. It does not say that it is leftist, or even has any instance description that I can see - they just call themselves "Lemmy" as if that is sufficient, with no disambiguation between it and the software that runs on it or any acknowledgement that the rest of the Fediverse exists. Ironically lemmygrad.ml is doing better these days at more accurately portraying what it is about, with a communist flag and manifesto - that honesty is appreciated, by me at least, as it shows an intellectual capacity to realize that other viewpoints exist and thus to distinguish self vs. nonself, unlike what lemmy.ml does (not).

      I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don't know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).

      • My comment above is pretty much my recommendation.

        I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don’t know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).

        For the transfer of communities, there is a tab in the user settings to export your settings (including subscriptions) to a JSON file. You can then import it to your new account.

      • Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

    • In your account settings there is an export function that will generate a file. Use that file in your new account to import your subscriptions.

39 comments