100% of the people that I’ve recommended Lemmy to have admonished me for even so much as having mentioned it, citing the extremist rhetoric that calls for violent upheaval of all capitalist systems in the Western world.
If I do a Google search (yuck I know), Lemmy.ml is the 4th hit, and the top hit for an actual instance. On it, the default view shows only Local posts so… yup, that’s what a day-1 noob would see, is that instance making fun of capitalism especially the USA.
From the actual top instance, Lemmy.World, those posts make up a significantly smaller percentage of the feed, but how would people know that? And they aren’t nothing either.
Also, blocking an instance from Lemmy does very little to curb the onslaught of toxicity from it: that merely mutes the communities hosted there, whereas the users are still free to harass you, triggering notifications, vote to influence the visibility of your content, etc. I was browsing All and made the mistake of replying to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net one day, and then did that again in lemmygrad.ml, and each time received replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. I almost quit the fediverse entirely:-(. Browsing from All, how was I supposed to know what those communities, or instances, were all about - was that truly “my” fault for being ignorant? Either way, I almost left, so I understand why none of the irl people I mention Lemmy to will stay either.
The people arguing against defederation are ignoring how users can be harassed here against their consent, and since no other alternatives are being made available on Lemmy to deal with the situation, defederation remains as the only option left.
(Side-note: PieFed does offer several intriguing alternatives, including showing the sidebar text below every post so that someone knows what the community standards are, even arriving at the post from All rather than going through the community page first, and labelling certain instances with special text, e.g. for Beehaw it says:
with that link to the exact text offered by the instance admins describing their alternative and unusual moderation practices in their own words; and another is in labelling users to allow democratization of moderation rather than a binary remove/retain decision - although while all of these experimental features are awesome, PieFed’s UI is quite a bit behind Lemmy’s so not quite ready for the masses.)
A hexbear user “called me out” in chapotraphouse for “transphobia” for a comment I made pointing out how insane it is that the hexbear team was calling the admin/mods of blahaj.zone “transphobic” – the admin and most of the mod team are actual trans people.
So I replied to the callout by saying I’m a landlord (I’m not) and asking how much I should charge for rent as a “card carrying leftist.” Replied to a few responses about how I’m a one of the good landlords and providing an essential service at a reasonable price.
My idea was to bait the worst offenders, and it worked. I waited for the replies to roll in, then blocked every single user that commented on that post. Anyone that DMed me about it got blocked too. A couple weeks later I blocked the hexbear and lemmygrad instances in my user settings.
It worked great and I haven’t had many issues since.
Haha, but I do note some problems with that approach. For one, it helps only you, leaving new users to have to repeat your success one by one. New users mostly in my experience won’t stick around long enough to even want to do so, and rather 100% of the people I’ve told have turned away from Lemmy in disgust.
For another, they’ll simply swap accounts and be back at it again. They proudly mention such inside the safety of their home instances - one person on lemmygrad.ml even mentioned that they will be building an app specifically for the purpose of using alts to avoid such blocks and defederations. No really means yes to them.
If anyone is curious, see e.g. the people from the Lemmy.ml instance talking in https://sh.itjust.works/post/26892196. I for one found it hilarious when they kept saying to hit up their DMs (bc their arguments could not stand the light of public inquiry and they knew it?:-P), then when I pointed that out, claimed that they had never done so and asked for proof - like I couldn’t read it happening within the very same post. But I get it, many people won’t bother to read or investigate anything at all, so those tricks really would work on a lazy reader i.e. an average Redditor. Case in point, the recent USA election thinking that Trump’s tariffs will somehow boost the economy, rather than tank it as happened during COVID where supply lines were so dramatically affected (which tbf would have happened anyway, but still the response was pretty lackluster and could have mitigated much of that if even minimal efforts had been expended).
100% of the people that I’ve recommended Lemmy to have admonished me for even so much as having mentioned it, citing the extremist rhetoric that calls for violent upheaval of all capitalist systems in the Western world.
If I do a Google search (yuck I know), Lemmy.ml is the 4th hit, and the top hit for an actual instance. On it, the default view shows only Local posts so… yup, that’s what a day-1 noob would see, is that instance making fun of capitalism especially the USA.
From the actual top instance, Lemmy.World, those posts make up a significantly smaller percentage of the feed, but how would people know that? And they aren’t nothing either.
Also, blocking an instance from Lemmy does very little to curb the onslaught of toxicity from it: that merely mutes the communities hosted there, whereas the users are still free to harass you, triggering notifications, vote to influence the visibility of your content, etc. I was browsing All and made the mistake of replying to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net one day, and then did that again in lemmygrad.ml, and each time received replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. I almost quit the fediverse entirely:-(. Browsing from All, how was I supposed to know what those communities, or instances, were all about - was that truly “my” fault for being ignorant? Either way, I almost left, so I understand why none of the irl people I mention Lemmy to will stay either.
The people arguing against defederation are ignoring how users can be harassed here against their consent, and since no other alternatives are being made available on Lemmy to deal with the situation, defederation remains as the only option left.
(Side-note: PieFed does offer several intriguing alternatives, including showing the sidebar text below every post so that someone knows what the community standards are, even arriving at the post from All rather than going through the community page first, and labelling certain instances with special text, e.g. for Beehaw it says:
with that link to the exact text offered by the instance admins describing their alternative and unusual moderation practices in their own words; and another is in labelling users to allow democratization of moderation rather than a binary remove/retain decision - although while all of these experimental features are awesome, PieFed’s UI is quite a bit behind Lemmy’s so not quite ready for the masses.)
How do I block users from an instance of my choice?
A hexbear user “called me out” in chapotraphouse for “transphobia” for a comment I made pointing out how insane it is that the hexbear team was calling the admin/mods of blahaj.zone “transphobic” – the admin and most of the mod team are actual trans people.
So I replied to the callout by saying I’m a landlord (I’m not) and asking how much I should charge for rent as a “card carrying leftist.” Replied to a few responses about how I’m a one of the good landlords and providing an essential service at a reasonable price.
My idea was to bait the worst offenders, and it worked. I waited for the replies to roll in, then blocked every single user that commented on that post. Anyone that DMed me about it got blocked too. A couple weeks later I blocked the hexbear and lemmygrad instances in my user settings.
It worked great and I haven’t had many issues since.
Haha, but I do note some problems with that approach. For one, it helps only you, leaving new users to have to repeat your success one by one. New users mostly in my experience won’t stick around long enough to even want to do so, and rather 100% of the people I’ve told have turned away from Lemmy in disgust.
For another, they’ll simply swap accounts and be back at it again. They proudly mention such inside the safety of their home instances - one person on lemmygrad.ml even mentioned that they will be building an app specifically for the purpose of using alts to avoid such blocks and defederations. No really means yes to them.
If anyone is curious, see e.g. the people from the Lemmy.ml instance talking in https://sh.itjust.works/post/26892196. I for one found it hilarious when they kept saying to hit up their DMs (bc their arguments could not stand the light of public inquiry and they knew it?:-P), then when I pointed that out, claimed that they had never done so and asked for proof - like I couldn’t read it happening within the very same post. But I get it, many people won’t bother to read or investigate anything at all, so those tricks really would work on a lazy reader i.e. an average Redditor. Case in point, the recent USA election thinking that Trump’s tariffs will somehow boost the economy, rather than tank it as happened during COVID where supply lines were so dramatically affected (which tbf would have happened anyway, but still the response was pretty lackluster and could have mitigated much of that if even minimal efforts had been expended).