Is there a way to shop around for a Lemmy instance based on how many instances are blocking it and how many instances it’s blocking? For example, I noticed that the lemmygrad.ml instance is relatively popular, but it seems like a lot of other instances block it. It also blocks a bunch of other instances. So, if there are any communities on there that might be relevant to me then I would be missing out. I guess I could just create an account on a walled instance, but I would prefer not to keep creating accounts. I’d like to just find one instance that maximizes my access. Is the answer to just run my own instance?
tbh, there is no such instance. Not blocking any other instances is often a reason to be blocked by other instances.
An instance that blocks no one is in effect a “free” speech instance that prioritises the right to be bigoted over the need to provide safe spaces for folk. And that means that instances that value the need for safe spaces over “free” speech are going to block the instances that don’t block anyone else as a means of creating and maintaining that safe space.
Hmm? Do instances automatically block other instances if they don’t block certain other ones?
I self host an instance. I haven’t blocked anyone yet as I just sub to communities that aren’t bigoted.
Nah, if you’re using your instance as an essentially private one, you’re not about to be blocked. If you’re running communities on it that run counter to the basic ideals of other communities, you’ll probably find yourself losing some federation however.
I run my own, and I’m not blocking anything yet because, honestly, I just won’t be vising ones I’m not interested in. I’ll probably block a few if I see things coming out of them that I really don’t want to see, but at this point it doesn’t affect anyone else.
Some decently sized Mastodon instances introduced a policy like this. “Unless you use my blacklist, you are defederated by default”. In practice, it means that those few instances are an isolated clique that only talk to each other. In my experience, those cliques are toxic, so it’s no big loss if you’re not able to contact them. But of course I hope this behavior doesn’t come to Lemmy.
I can see the issue but at the same time is scary. In the future this thing could be bad. Like who is drawing the line and where?
No one draws the line unfortunately, because no one controls the entire federated network. This is why it’s important to have many medium-sized instances on the Fediverse and not one massive instance and a bunch of other tiny ones, so one instance won’t get too much control and impose their rules on the entire network. But it’s difficult to convince non-tech users of this concept since they are used to centralized social media and will just sign up on the biggest instance.
Some folks think that defederation is a bad thing. OK.
Here’s a little experiment you can try at home.
- Stop using GMail, Hey, or whatever email service you’re currently using.
- Set up your own mail server (there’s instructions on the internet).
- When the instructions say to use a Remote Black List just ignore them.
- When the instructions say to validate domains, ignore those too.
- When the instructions say to set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC just let those slide.
- Try to send / receive email
- Also try to read your inbox. For added benefit turn on all notifications for received mail.
Voila. Now you have an unfettered email experience.
And this, class, is why defederation is useful.
Please send your comments to the overworked TA in the back of the room.
What a ridiculous false dichotomy, obviously subs which are just creating outright machine spam should be blocked but the current policy is just creating complete echo chambers where the orthodoxy of the admins isn’t challenged.
Is running your own Lemmy instance as difficult as an email server?
probably not, but you’d get the same amount of horrible stuff as you’d get if you turned off all the security precautions on an email server. the point i’m making here by quoting Maloney is that blocking is a security precaution. less is more, and by joining an instance that doesn’t block anyone, you’re exposing yourself to a lot of terrible stuff. besides, instances that don’t block get blocked themselves, so horrible stuff would be all you’d see
If instance ‘A’ has already blocked instance ‘B’, what does it matter to ‘A’ whether or not any other instances have also blocked ‘B’? Would the admin have to go far out of their way to block the instances that don’t block ‘B’ or is there a way to do it automatically?
they would have to go out of their way, but it’s bad practice to block because of guilt by association. most instances have internal federation guidelines that are somewhat looser than their own rules, but still include a baseline level of decency. so an instance that doesn’t allow nsfw content would federate with an instance that does (even if they wouldn’t allow images to federate) as long as they don’t go all freezepeach or harass everyone
Edit: apparently lemmygrad is much worse than I realized
The only caveat I have to this is that being communist shouldn’t be an automatic block. Lemmy.ml doesn’t block lemmygrad and I see no reason why it should, the posts I see are like “wow capitalism is fucking us up” not like “Tiananmen did nothing wrong and let’s repeat it x1000” so it really doesn’t seem comparable to proactively blocking Nazis. If you block “both sides” of a violent conflict like, say, the war in Ukraine, you’ve suddenly blocked everyone with a useful opinion.
I saw a lot of tianamen didn’t happen, CCP worship, etc on there for the first few days after I registered, which is a bit problematic.
I wound up blocking them after a couple days, more because I don’t care about a tiny fringe movement (in my country), and don’t have any interest in their content.
Have you read Lemmygrad’s sidebar at all? They describe themselves as Tienanmen Square truthers, are openly pro-DPRK, and fully support genocide in the name of Communism. They exemplify everything bad people say about tankies and they take great pride in it.
Wanting to cut out tankies and Nazis is NOT being a radical centrist who wants to “both sides” every issue, it’s just being a normal human being who doesn’t have bees in their head.
Ahh no I access Lemmy via the mobile app. Thanks for the information, I’ll be blocking them.
lemmy.ml is also run by communists, as are quite a few other instances, I imagine. No one’s really saying that communists should be blocked.
But lemmygrad is specifically a vanguard edgelord site. Even those of us who are communists don’t necessarily want to deal witih /c/GenZedong.
Plus, I left the instance I host for me and my friends open to lemmygrad, and I had people from the server create accounts and just bulk subscribe to communities there.
It’s not the communism people are blocking it for.
Lemmygrad isn’t blocked because of their views, it’s blocked because it’s a massive troll farm. the posts that you see don’t include the replies they make to posts which they deem not communist enough, where they sealion and argue in bad faith until the op is driven out
And that doesn’t apply to liberals and every other ideology on this site? Every person has a political view which affects their opinions
if a liberal/anarchist/not-ML instance popped up and started behaving like Lemmygrad does, they’d get mass-defederated too. like i said, it’s not their views they got defederated for, it’s their behavior
Behaviour like what though? Disagreeing? I don’t even know what ‘sealioning’ means, it basically seems like just saying ‘this person has different fundamental assumptions to me therefore they’re acting in bad faith’.
To be fair it’s not like I know what lemmygrad does, I only joined yesterday, but it just seems like typical ‘tankiephobia’, I don’t exactly agree with MLs on everything either but some of what they get accused of is just beyond the pale. I mean generally if someone is a western liberal they don’t get endlessly accused of being a mass war crime apologist even though that’s basically what the ‘war on terror’ was.
U might want to take a look at the federation map. It might be a bit overwhelming but in the settings on the bottom left you may chose blocked and allowed in order to get some insights on who federates with whom.
Oh wow what did lemmygrad.ml do?
I hate linking you to reddit but this post came to mind Choosing an instance; and my issues with lemmygrad
Why can’t a user choose to block an instance? That sounds like it should be a feature request, at least for the app.
They’re just generally annoying. They’re tankies, constantly praising Putin and the CCP.
Basically sums it up really, although it’s great fun to drop in and stir up shit every so often.
They’re completely off the deep end though.
wow what did lemmygrad.ml do?
Be communist.
Be mindlessly propagandistic “communist.” The countries they fawn over aren’t even particularly communist, they’re just authoritarian. Russia in particular is run by capitalist oligarchs.
It’s just tiresome and pointless engaging with them.
Hi facedeer, you understand that one of the Lemmy.ml instance rules is not being insulting, right?
I don’t appreciate being called mindlessly propagandized out of the blue, especially by someone who’s certainly heavily propagandized.
The countries they fawn over aren’t even particularly communist, they’re just authoritarian.
Can you help me understand your level of knowledge about Marxism-leninism that you feel comfortable correcting me?
It’s just tiresome and pointless engaging with them.
You engaging me makes this a lie. You started barking first.
It’s fine to be offended that they called you propagandised, but that doesn’t make it less offensive to immediately say the same thing back to them. You are both insulting each other, it’s not helping the Lemmygrad situation.
Hey comfy, I understand what you’re getting at but I think I’m ok with it. I’m only returning an insult after it’s been thrown at me, and I think it’s clear that I’m working hard to be nice here. I’m no yogthos, and I have a hard time with stuff like this.
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There is no “lemmygrad situation”, it’s gaslighting lemmy by liberals getting wind in the sails with reddit refugees and attacking us all the time. note this basically didn’t happen at all before, they just blocked us and maybe badmouthed in their dens, i don’t care, i;m not going there. The arguments we had on lemmy were heated but not resembling current offensive.
I’m not speaking about you specifically, I have no idea who you are. I’m talking about lemmygrad in general. Just like the person you were responding to was talking about. He asked “what did lemmygrad.ml do?” And I’m clarifying that.
It’s not that lemmygrad.ml is simply “communist.”
I’m not speaking about you specifically, I have no idea who you are. I’m talking about lemmygrad in general.
Generally, when you describe a group it’s understood that you’re describing members of that group. As a Lemmygrad user, you’ve called me “mindless” and “propagandized” (with no provocation or context). This is rude. You’ve also chosen to engage with me while taking part in a strange farce about how you wouldn’t choose to engage with me.
It’s not that lemmygrad.ml is simply “communist.”.
I thought I was pretty clear when I first asked: what is your experience with Marxism-leninism that you feel comfortable making this statement?
I’m not basing my statement off of any experience with Marxism-leninism. I’m basing it off of my experience with lemmygrad posters here on Lemmy. For example, this thread about the Tienanmen Square anniversary. I don’t particularly care about the specific political ideologies on display.
This dude is sealioning you, block and move one.
They’re not sealioning, they’re responding to a bunch of strong, reasonably insulting allegations. Maybe not responding gracefully, but they’re not sealioning.
In fact, I don’t even think it’s possible for one reply to be sealioning, the whole point is that it’s repetitive harassment (as stated in the wiki link you posted). That’s why the original comic strip that defined it has so many panels.
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@[email protected] linked one reddit post while I was searching for this one, so here it is anyway:
And here’s the OG mastodon post from fedi.tips:
https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379
Make sure to “Show More” on each post in the thread, including the replies. I thought it was all spamming the same post for a minute, lol.
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I don’t have the answer but I share your sentiment.
One thing I hated about reddit is the mods would ban you for participating on certain subs. For instance, I got banned from r/WhitePeopleTwitter for commenting in a r/Conservative thread. (I was actually disagreeing with someone, but that’s neither here nor there.)
The Fediverse feels like a worse version of that phenomenon. Entire communities are blocked off from each other by the admins of the instance. I fear that Lemmy might become a disjointed group of echo-chambers. Some might argue that reddit already is.
I don’t think that your concerns will happen. As the fediverse could be easy replicated and it is no problem to run an own instance federating with whatever you want AND be part of the rest.
My guess is that we will see more instances with different tastes if I may call it this.
By using tools like kbin you are also free to assamble the fediverse you want without the need to follow a single instance only.
can an instance have only 1 community for support and then have no content of its own? I believe that many already do (or near to it). This would likely be the recipe for blocking the least and being blocked the least.
What about an instance with only one user?
self instance? sure, but that’s not one you can join persay
Ah, but I can if it’s mine, right? I’m going to give it a shot.
loads of people are making their own and doing pretty much this. I’m planning on giving it a try sometime over the summer. should be a fun project that I can actually keep using for a while. maybe even make my own notes or something.
I might explore options to make private content just for myself
