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…
People were complaining about .ml long before I thought it was justified, but I looked again recently and yeah, maybe. This instance doesn’t federate with it so I don’t see it often. Based on my quick impressions the other day it’s gotten worse. Not that it’s an “echo chamber” and I don’t mind hanging out with communists, but there’s too much low-quality noise.
Personally I wouldn’t block the whole server if it were up to me. There are still good people there. Just be quick to block the people and posts you really object to.
I have an account on an instance that still federates with hex and grad. They make ML seem almost tame. But when your lead developer and admin names their account for a genocidal revolutionary. Who had to be assassinated by his own people to be free. You can be sure there are going to be some very warped takes, and bad community cultivation.
That said I have ml visitors to communities I mod and generally have no issue with. There are a few I see posting regularly on the greater fediverse that have a high net positive vote totals on my voyager client. So we should definitely try not to paint with a broad brush. Even if we’re all familiar with the toxicity of some.
Because it’s the same users, just in mask off mode.
There’s absolutely a lot of that to be sure.
I would still warn to be cautious, I feel that sites like Reddit fell a bit because it became compromised both at the admin and the moderator level by bad actors that slowly got promoted to positions of power.
Anyone with authoritarian sympathies should not be given the keys to moderate instances, imo. Users should condemn all forms of authoritarianism if they want to be more trusted.
I agree. And was vocal as well with some of rimu’s actions as well as the recent admiral patric meltdown. The dot world crew aren’t perfect. There was a post earlier today regarding a mastodon ban. That I’m not sure of knowledgeable enough to take sides on. Though generally they are pretty hands-off unless you cross one of the more or less reasonable hard and fast rules repeatedly.
They’re not communists. Communism is the economy Australia had before colonisation. They’re state capitalists.
Lol. This from the anti-realist