Hey everyone ! About a year or so ago I’ve left Reddit and found my home here in Lemmy at ML, mainly because it was at the top of the instance list i saw at that time. So far it’s been great, but I’m running into some issues. A lot of communities and instances are not federated with ML anymore and I’m interested in the content of those communities. I’ve kind of ignored it the first few times i couldn’t find a community of my interests and later finding out it was because they were blocking ML (or perhaps vice-versa), but it has happened enough times that i wish to move on and find a new instance.
That being said and i hope I’m in the right community to ask this, i would like to request some suggestions for a new instance that is light on the power tripping mod rules and light on creating drama that gets the instance defederated around lemmy, from the personal experience of the fine folks around here. The mod thing didn’t affect me much, i try to follow the rules and be respectful, but every other month i interact with users that hate ML mods so much that they tell me the moment they see my instance. Hopefully in the future I’d ideally get to interact with ML from an instance that’s not defederated across Lemmy, where i can access more communities than from ML or Lemmygrad.
I’m hoping to not ruffle any feathers here, all i want is to participate in lemmy communities and i have nothing against anyone on ML. Like I said, other than being blocked from participating in other instances, it’s been a pretty fair experience around here.
I wasn’t aware of much defederation from .ml. I came here from .world because .world was defederating from too many other instances. I think what we really need is a new client that connects to multiple instances and does its own tracking of read articles and stuff like that. The Lemmy federation model was well intended, but I would say it has failed. Even at the popular instances, the fediverse is fragmented, which wasn’t supposed to happen.
There’s too much instance tribalism around here, which isn’t great. I totally get defederating from stuff that’s harmful, but sometimes it’s down to political stances. People hate China, Russia and communism so they hate ML. Engaging in other communities as an ML user you will invariable just see people say “oh here comes the tankie” even though you said nothing tankie-ish.
I’m not as extreme left as a lot of users in ML but i like to listen and i find common ground with people here in many issues. I feel that disagreeing politically is just not a good enough reason to block or defederate. At this point we’ll end up with echo chambers that lack any semblance of political plurality of opinions. Ignoring people who lean differently doesn’t make them disappear at the voting tables, it just hides one’s head under the sand.
I’m going to try to be respectful and reasonable here. If I fail at that, I’m truly sorry, I’m really trying.
I think you and I want different things from the fediverse. I like that my instance (Hexbear) is widely defederated. It’s a lovely little refuge from the reactionary political opinions I can’t help but hear in my day to day life living in America.
I also can’t agree with you that political disagreements aren’t reason for defederation. To go for an extreme example first, being an avowed neo-nazi is a political choice, and I’d kick an avowed neo-nazi out of any space I had the power to kick them out of.
For other examples, we can look at things that have already happened in the fediverse, such as feddit .uk deciding that posting transphobia is actually fine and dandy, because the laws in the UK are such that transphobic speech is very much allowed, or we can look at the recent kerfuffle surrounding feddit .org, wherein feddit .org decided that due to laws in Germany, criticism of Israel can’t be as full-throated as it really should be. These examples are both cases where local politics affect how things are moderated, or, at least, local politics are being used as an excuse for moderation decisions. And I think these moderation decisions (allowing transphobia in the first case, censoring criticism of Israel in the second) are worth defederating over. If transphobia doesn’t get banned and removed on sight, then how can trans people feel safe and included in a space? And similarly, if Israel’s horrific genocide is downplayed in a space, that space becomes less friendly for Palestinians and other Arab and Muslim people.
I don’t need or want political plurality in this online space, I want a brief refuge from the terrible politics surrounding me. This isn’t me sticking my head in the sand to ignore the awful shit happening around me, I see all that, I talk to people who believe in the American status quo because believe it or not, most Americans aren’t communists. I love that here on this corner of Lemmy I can be openly communist and talk to other open communists about all kinds of things. It’s really nice, actually, and that would be lost if we were federated with the anti-communist shitholes like .world. Not to mention the transphobia. Holy shit, every time I accidentally end up outside my lovely little Lemmy bubble it’s just transphobia as far as the eye can see. So I’m glad we at Hexbear are widely defederated, I really don’t need to see the liberal nonsense and transphobia that are so inescapable in my real life.
Very well written! I personally want a very similar experience to what you described from my instance, so thank you for being so articulate with your reply
I did defederate from hexbear for a while a year or so ago. Just because at the time their users were generally just actively trolling for reactions in pretty much every community, and it just got too the point I defederated. I’ve since removed them from the defed list.
Generally I agree. But ML seems to have become a bit more clearly biased in their moderation. To me it’s not a reason to defed, but a reason to view the content they do allow in their hosted communities with that bias in mind.
By selfhosting my instance I avoid the issue and manage my own data. I guess the federation model works pretty well IMHO
lemm.ee federates with nearly everyone!
Summit does that, I think