Asking as there has been a few comments mentioning this with the new !stardewvalley@lemm.ee taking over !stardewvalley@lemmy.ml

!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com for additional context on those recent events if you are interested

Also, an older post for more context on how lemmy.ml is managed: https://lemmy.world/post/16211417

Curious to hear other thoughts about this, as I’m trying to keep !simracing@lemmy.ml active, but might suggest to move it elsewhere if a lot of people prefer not to interact with lemmy.ml communities

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    No, there are no instances whose communities I refuse to participate on. I have never blocked a community, user, or instance here.

  • quinacridone@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    This is something that that bothers me… I joined lemmy.ml around 3 years ago as one of the pirate subs on reddit made a backup community there in case they were banned.

    Fast forward to the api debacle, I started to use lemmy as a permanent alternative, and made 3 of my favourite art communities- abstract photography, collage and printmaking

    It’s always been in the back (and sometimes the front of my mind) whether to move them elsewhere, partly because people commenting on their ‘blanket ban’ of lemmy.ml, and the fact that I sometimes feel that I’m on one of the ‘pariah’ instances.

    It’s interesting reading the comments here, especially considering the art communities are laid back, without politics, and haven’t had any issues (so far)…

      • quinacridone@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Yep, it’s something that has occurred to me, I’ve got an idea of which instance and all that, but I’d probably need to speak with the admins. I don’t know whether communities can migrate over posts/comments etc and part of me is reluctant to leave all that behind… BUT, I’ve done it once from scratch, so it’s not impossible

    • LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net
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      2 months ago

      For me it was a blanket ban that finally caused me to unsubscribe from every ml community. If it wasn’t for that then it might be OK to keep hosting a non-political sub but the censorship over there is so aggressive and widespread that it’s very difficult to avoid.

      I would say think about migration because if anything the problem is getting worse over time.

  • squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    Curious to hear other thoughts about this, as I’m trying to keep !simracing@lemmy.ml active, but might suggest to move it elsewhere if a lot of people prefer not to interact with lemmy.ml communities

    I would vote for moving it elsewhere. Maybe lemmy.zip would be a good instance that’s focused around tech and gaming. Or discuss.tchncs.de because !trucksim@discuss.tchncs.de and !diysimulators@discuss.tchncs.de are already hosted there.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      You are a very active poster here, so moving it to that instance would also be convenient in case you need to mod

      Also, that instance is very well managed, always impressed with the other services they offer.

      Based on the comments, it seems like we should definitely suggest this. Would you like to make a meta post or do I do it?

  • N-E-N@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    I never pay attention to, or care about where a community is hosted

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    I see more content complaining about .ml than I see content on .ml worth complaining about.

    I generally don’t block instances, communities, or users, either. I just know I am capable of recognizing a shit take on politics anywhere and can move on without existential or social crisis.

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      I only block communities. I don’t want to see half of conversations, and haven’t encountered a whole server where they refuse to admin properly.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      2 months ago

      That’s bc you are an established user who knows their way around how to use Lemmy. Perhaps you even use Arch btw? (/s, but only partway, bc those of who enjoy the customizability of Linux really are a breed apart from the mainstream, in terms of our value judgements in particular)

      However new users to Lemmy find it very off-putting. Also, people in the USA are touchy, watching our democracy crumble before our very eyes - there is something like a 50% chance that it won’t survive even though the next year, regardless of who wins, but if it does, then we’ll simply repeat all of this again in the next one, and so on. So for those of us who watched e.g. Innuendo Studios’ The Alt Right Playbook, to now see those identical patterns of behaviors on display (by “tankies” or whoever), is more than a little disconcerting.

      And tbf, the likes of lemmy.ml is nothing at all on the scale of Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net. So if you want to remain federated with some or all of those, then power to you and I am very glad that you can enjoy your time on the Fediverse.

      However, not all of us are in the same boat and some of us would rather only see the half of the conversation that we don’t have to mentally parse and decode what it means before we throw it away. Without having to block hundreds of individual trolls I mean. Ofc we are prevented from doing so since user level defederation does not exist, and the only instance I’ve ever even so much as heard of that blocks all of the big 3 is Lemmy.cafe. So rather than wait for Sublinks/PieFed/Mbin to improve, perhaps I should move there?

      Maybe this is all intellectual laziness? I dunno, I truly don’t, but also I don’t see the harm in allowing people to have their preferences met?

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      I just know I am capable of recognizing a shit take on politics anywhere

      Not when the “shit take” in question is the arbitrary, capricious, unjustified removal of thoughtful, insightful, accurate, reasonable posts and comments. You (generally) can’t recognize the “shit take” of removing good content unless you spend all day reading the mod logs.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        No, but I can almost always check the modlog when a user complains about how their thoughtful, insightful, accurate, and reasonable post or comment was arbitrarily, capriciously, and unjustly removed.

        And that comparison rarely disappoints.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          2 months ago

          No, but I can almost always check the modlog when if a user complains

          FTFY.

          The authors of thoughtful, insightful, accurate, and reasonable posts and comments tend to be the kind of people who choose their battles, and quietly walk away from communities led by power-tripping dipshits.

  • Microw@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    No. I have blocked a few specific lemmy.ml communities but I don’t generally avoid interacting with lemmy.ml.

    There are other instances I have blocked completely (a certain grad).

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    2 months ago

    i tend to not even notice, usually picking a community by volume of subs and posting. its hard to keep up with the terrible modding in places as ive subbed to over 800 active communities in various instances. i dont block instances. at minimum, i want to see whats going on.

    i dont recall specific issues with .ml but .world seems specifically egregious with its power trip modding, based on how ive been ‘reprimanded’… its amazing how they want to kill activity/enthusiasm in some subs that are desperate for content.

    it feels like once an instance gets a solid level of user account churn, they feel they can do whatever to end users as there will just be more. its reddit all over again in places.

    the power modding is somewhat shocking to me as the threadiverse really isnt all that large. i guess it doesnt take much for those people.

    some of the only users ive silenced are mods

  • GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Yep. Even if it’s larger, I’ll post in a smaller, non-ml. I don’t mind reading their stuff and them existing but with the seemingly random moderation shenanigans, I avoid it.

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    If the conversation is civil I’ll comment occasionally, but i don’t think I’d care if my instance defederated from them. They’re where a lot of tech related conversations are, sadly.

    • AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca
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      2 months ago

      Tbh the bigger instances need to bite the bullet and defederate from .ml. There are alternatives to all the good comms on .ml, they just aren’t as active. Defederating would move a lot of users onto the alternatives and get some control back from the terrible .ml mods and admins.

      Banning people from multiple completely unrelated comms for something that happened in one comm is bullshit and they abuse the hell out of that. I generally try not to participate in any .ml comm because of that.

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        2 months ago

        But a lot of users on a lot of instances do not want to defederate, and thereby lose their communities that they want to receive content from, e.g. Firefox@lemmy.ml. First such communities need to be migrated, or at least new alternatives made, and then the barrier to walking away will be lower. Progress is being made though, even if only slowly:-).

  • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    yup, blocked that instance.

    it’s controlled by one or a very small group of people, and none of the rules are followed.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      2 months ago

      They definitely dance to their own tune. And also require that you do as well. Oh and they do not tell you what that is.

  • loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    Personally, I don’t. I get from your story that you seem to have been abusively banned, and from the comments that it doesn’t seem like an isolate case. But while that might deter me from making an account there, or at most from having a community hosted there, it’s not like anything bad comes to me from merely interacting with .ml content. The only servers worth blocking in my opinion are those full of spammers, or of content I’d personally hate to see in any situation.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      Interestingly enough, I don’t really have issues with lemmy.ml myself

      I never brought up political topics on any of their communities, so I am fine until now

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    2 months ago

    Yes.

    Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net definitely.

    Lemmy.ml has some less-bonkers communities, but !worldnews@lemmy.ml generates some of the most complaints, and I’m willing to paint with a broad brush on this one. There’s only one community that I can think of that I regret not using and doesn’t presently have a non-lemmy.ml alternative, and that’s !mechanicalkeyboards@lemmy.ml, and !ergomechkeyboards@lemmy.world has overlap. Also, aside from issues with instance policy, I think that lemmy.ml in particular is not a great instance for major communities, because it’s the “dev” instance and Lemmy has had some serious periods of problems where stuff slipped through testing and led to major problems in new releases. Lemmy.world did not hit this, because the admins there are more-conservative about updating, held off until they were sure that new releases were solid. My own home instance at lemmy.today crashed into repeated serious problems with new releases, and the admin decided that in the future, he would also be more conservative about updates.

    I also think that it’s broader than disagreeing with someone. I’m not a furry or trans, for example, but I’ve no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances. However, there’s an entire community, !MeanwhileOnGrad@sh.itjust.works, that highlights a lot of moderation and infighting stuff that often I’d call pretty unreasonable off in .ml land. Beehaw.org is pretty left-wing, but they’re pretty mellow and don’t have the same issues (though they themselves have defederated with a number of major lemmy instances, including, most notably, lemmy.world).

    That being said, a number of major lemmy instances have defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net, and I chose my home instance of lemmy.today specifically because it did not defederate with instances. I want to personally make the call on instance content and on users on an instance. I’ve only ever blocked one user, and they were just relentlessly spamming images in communities, and I’ve never blocked an instance. I normally just view communities by subscribed, look at a “whitelist” of communities, not “all” plus a blacklist, though.

    EDIT: Oh, and !kagi@lemmy.ml doesn’t presently have an alternative, and I’d definitely participate in a non-.ml alternative.

    • Blaze (he/him)@feddit.orgOP
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      2 months ago

      I also think that it’s broader than disagreeing with someone. I’m not a furry or trans, for example, but I’ve no problem with pawb.social or lemmy.blahaj.zone and have never seen any complaints about moderation on those special-interest instances.

      Thank you for pointing this out, that’s a good point

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        2 months ago

        I have seen complaints about them, but they seem relatively minor and resulting from an overzealous attempt to protect their users, which I find understandable. I have never had anything but pleasant conversations with Ada the instance admin of lemmy.blahaj.zone and have thoroughly enjoyed everything I’ve ever read from them.

  • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    Instance blocked it. The mods are corrupt and actively shape conversation to align with their world view, without transparency.

    It’s fine to disagree, and want respectful discourse, but it isn’t ok to use very vague sidebar rules to scour dissent

  • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Well, I’m here and I don’t know what you all are talking about. And this is sincere, truly don’t understand what’s the issue, could you point me to some of these controversial situations/discussions/measures?

    I have a feeling that, if you ask for any specific instance, you’ll get people complaining and blocking that instance for their own reasons. So, I’d let my users decide whether they block or not a user or a whole instance. For example, I don’t like some of the communities in lemmy.world and I complain about it because it just feels the same as being in reddit, but having access to a different point of view is very valuable to me, so I don’t block them.

    I also have to add that I use lemmy with the voting system completely disabled. I hate the voting system because it shapes people’s opinions to fit in some specific communities. This is why I think blocking instances should only be used as a last resort against things like blatant spam, boycotting, CP, hate speech and the likes.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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      2 months ago

      .ml is kind of Hexbear or Lemmygrad-lite. On occasion when they notice, they’ll ban you for criticising places like North Korea. I got it once for saying Dengism isn’t socialist.

      I still use it, because it’s mostly normal, and “we’re secretly the bad guys” isn’t a very dangerous conspiracy theory.

      • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Ah, I see. Well, I had a discussion in that thread too and it felt off at some point. I replied about a similar crime backed by the CIA and some people accused me of whataboutism, while the other guy assumed I was denying the Tiananmen Square massacre. That was not the case.

        I used to participate in a subreddit where a permanent set of people, including moderators, would downvote you to oblivion as soon as they read a divergent opinion, though, the subreddit wasn’t about a specific ideology. It wasn’t about arguments, it was systemic. They would eventually ban you if you insisted on your points of view. Both things are shitty, in my opinion, and while one is more permanent than the other, the banning felt at least more straightforward to me.

        What I find excessive is the instance ban.

        • OpenStars@discuss.online
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          2 months ago

          Not all instances should defederate from lemmy.ml. However, it is an issue that everyone commenting on every post across every community on that whole entire instance must essentially conform to all of their ideals - or else be banned from all of those communities, not merely the one with the “offensive” statement. You cannot say anything truthful about Russia, China, Ukraine, Uyghurs, Taiwan, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, etc.

          Imagine if we were on Reddit and could not say “fuck spez”, or we were on Linux but for some reason were still forbidden to say “I prefer not to use Windows today, so thank you but no thanks”. Those communities on Lemmy.ml are held hostage to people if not agreeing then at least going along with whatever party line BS that the admins want to uphold. Moreover, at any time they could add whatever their wanted to that list.

          Perhaps there will come out a fantastic Linux distro that would revolutionize Linux accessibility - but if they say no, then nobody can access any of the communities there unless they (at the very least tacitly) agree to not so much as mention its name, or that it exists, or anything else about it. This is a hypothetical but I hope you also see the connection to irl: it doesn’t matter what those admins are banning people for, it matters that they have set themselves up as the arbiters of “truth(iness)”, and decide what can or cannot be discussed in their platform. Regardless of which community it is in.

          Most of us came here to get away from such, only to find that it is here as well.

          Do as you please, but I hope this helps explain just some (and this probably isn’t even fully half of it yet!?!?) of why people are judging the instance. Over time, more and more communities will move off of the instance - the main reason it hasn’t happened yet I think is that version 0.19.3 (iirc?) promised to allow user blocking, which people see now how weak it is plus with 0.19.4-5 it actively got even weaker. Only defederation is left to even consider. Which won’t happen quickly, but e.g. dubvee.org and lemmy.cafe both have already done so, and I imagine others will follow suit before too awfully long, with the amount of vehemence people feel about the situation.

          • selokichtli@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            This was pretty informative, thank you. As I said, these instance-bans are just too much, so I mostly agree with your point of view. Would like to read what these admins have to say about the situation.

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              2 months ago

              They have said things like they ban “agitators” and “misinformation”. They do not provide a listing of what those things are. I recall one story from someone who has actual Uyghur family members living with them and they were describing the genocidal practices that they escaped from - BAM, banned.

              Facts are political these days, I suppose. Most people don’t get to choose which set of facts they have to live out, day by day.

              But obviously the admins are not insane - from their POV, they are doing the rational thing, of protecting their userbase from “misinformation”. Well, keep your ears open I suppose, and you’ll learn more. Hopefully you don’t get banned yourself as a result, but you may want to have a backup plan just in case.