Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.

For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.

Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.

The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…

  • narp@feddit.orgEnglish
    259·
    9 hours ago

    When I joined Lemmy, Lemmy.ml didn’t really feel different than Lemmy.world to me.

    Maybe I’m taking crazy pills but it’s like they got more propagandist on purpose. As if they decided to up the anthem because .grad got defederated by all sane instances… And what’s propaganda good for if it doesn’t reach the right people?

    Same with tankies having lemmy.world accounts. It’s not ironic, it makes sense.

    Now Lemmy.ml became their “outreach” instance, where they ban everyone who criticizes them (even on another instance) or even for downvoting (Dessalines did that because his favorite poster ‘cowbee’ got downvoted by “bots” too much. Then they opted out on lemvotes, so no more checking yourself).

    For an outsider it looks like everyone agrees with them because they upvote each other and every critic got either banned or they blocked them themselves and I’m starting to think this might be by design. I wonder how many users are banned from .ml, while still retaining general visibility through federation.

    Isn’t it basically how Russia and China operate? Keep your own people isolated in a bubble where only your narrative is accepted and at the same time invade other spaces to manipulate their opinions?

    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      9·
      8 hours ago

      Dunno if that’s “on purpose”. I think it’s more, back in the day .ml was the defacto standard instance, so lots of average people went there and you’d find a wider bandwidth of people. That might have changed with some people leaving and the new visitors not signing up on .ml anymore. That makes the rest of the group condense to people who pick .ml on purpose. But that’s not a deliberate plan, more how maths works. 😅