Do you refrain from participating to a community if it's hosted on Lemmy.ml ?

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

No, because its nonsense tribalism. I haven't seen any actual consistency in nonsense takes between any particular instances, with only a couple of extreme examples (explodingheads, grad, yddrasil, etc) that are already blocked or dehosted. ML has more socialists, because lemmy was a little leftist community project at first and it's one of the oldest and biggest instances. Big instances also have a lot of idiots. World has a reputation for a lot of idiots, because it's by far the biggest instance. That doesn't mean everyone, or even most people, are idiots that are on the instance.

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).....

I've blocked the instance quite a while ago. In the beginning I was just blocking communities, but the users spill everywhere unless you go nuclear.

Previously no. Now yes. Apparently got banned for inciting 'peril' against my own race because tankies don't know the difference between ethnically Chinese and of Chinese nationality, and apparently you can't criticize china in the forums. Throw in a few abusive individuals from the same instance shooting off the mouth and I pretty much said fuck it, I'm out.

lemmy.ml tends to have an immature userbase with immature mods. It's a weird bubble of insane extremists that are all about ideological purity tests. They aren't really interested in discussion and will ban anyone that doesn't conform to their extremism. And their extremists are constantly edging towards stochastic terrorism.

So needless to say, I'm banned from lemmy.ml, and I feel like that's a badge of honour. But that does mean I won't be engaging with any community that's hosted on lemmy.ml.

So if you want to have discussion that's not about how super awesome the violent overthrow of the government of your country would be, I'd recommend not hosting your community on lemmy.ml.

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.

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.

Of course.

They banned me for calling Russia imperialist in one of their rant post, and claiming NATO was necessary because countries keep invading their neighbors.

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

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

Completely banned, I have zero interaction with them.

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).

100% yes.
.ml generates most of the propaganda about my country I was complaining about in other post.
Just the fact that their admins also own grad speaks volumes.
It gets tiring having to be on the tolerant side while they can freely astrosurf backed and protected by their admins and devs... Just like the bots on reddit.

If only blocking the instance at user level also blocked the users it would be great.

Yes. I've had personal experience, many times, of over the top censorship and bans based on opposing views expressed in a mature and rational way. Once or twice is fine, but I've seen it more there than my entire combined experience online, it's crazy and happens to often to ignore.

I've also seen a crazy amount of trolling there and it seems the trolls are protected through crazy censorship of anyone calling them out. It's just not worth the aggravation.

I have to say the responses in this thread are a bummer, but I'm not surprised. I signed up on lemmy.ml because when I read the descriptions of the various instances, ML's "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts" sounded pretty great and I saw a lot of technical communities that interested me. I didn't expect the politics. I tried to make a new user on .world a few months back, but I seemed to get stuck in some sort of user verification limbo. Maybe I'll try midwest.social since I moved to the midwest recently.

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

Yes!

That instance just has a stink on it.

I'm sure there's some normal users or communities bit there's a lot who are just plain unpleasant to interact with.

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.

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.

I've blocked the instance entirely. I never see posts from their communities, though I am surprised to still see users from it. I thought it would block everything.

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.

Yep. To a certain extent I don’t care what your political views are, but if you’re always trolling and putting them up in my face. And have no integrity rules wise, I’m blocking.

hell i went one step further and abandoned lemmy entirely for mbin

Blocked instance... They can figure their stuff out without me because I don't want anything to do with them.

If there's an overlapping or related community on another instance, I'll avoid using the .ml version of that community

yup, blocked that instance.

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

I have fomo so I don't block anything. I'll downvote and move on if I see something that I feel needs a downvote

Yes. I find their gaming-chair leftism and obnoxious preachiness annoying enough to just avoid. My blocklist is filled with .ml users, and none of those were because of any political positions. It's because they were annoying, whinging twats.

That instance got blocked from me a while ago together with Hexbear and Lemmygrad.

Blocked the instance along with hexbear. So I think it would be good to drain the good communities from them if you can.

Yes, I block lemmy.ml communities when I notice them, just because I don't want to accidentally contribute anything to that instance. Some of the users are okay, but the admins are not.

The path to inner peace.

no, I'm subbed to many communities on .ml

I have the instance blocked. Nice thing about Lemmy, you can vote with your attention. When toxic bubbles pop up, you can ignore them en masse. Any collateral blocking doesn’t bother me. [insert Nazi party meme]

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.

Yes, but not really deliberately. I catch the instance ban hammer from their fragile admins so often I never get established in any of their comms

I block politics subs and have never had an issue with lemmy.ml. All the issues I see are related to politics.

I definitely try to avoid it. Whenever there's an (active) alternative community available, I prefer that.

I try to share links to other instance’s communities if there’s similar ones that aren’t drastically smaller. This is because it’s very easy to be banned on many ml communities as has been documented and posted many times

Whichever instance you choose, someone will have complaints about it. Personally I don't have issues with .ml, but there are quite a few "tech"-oriented instances over which my trigger finger is itching on the site ban trigger.

It's all a question of which subset of human stupidity you're willing to deal with. Because all humans are stupid, we're just different in how and where we express it.

I refrain from participating in and even from looking at any community that generates anxiety and/or anger, or that encourage or don't oppose what I consider destructive or hostile behaviors. I consider time too precious to waste mine with the kind of persons who enjoy those things.

It is not related to any specific place, though. It's mostly a question of the persons participating and of the moderators.

If you move sim racing, would you mind replying to me to let me know? I follow the current one just cause I think sim racing is neat. If it gets moved I'd love to follow the new one

(Totally fine if that's too much work :)

I'm more of an anarchist and I've not had issues with hexbear or .ml, though I don't block lemmygrad I'm not subbed to most of their communities mostly because sectarianism bothers me.

I feel like I always have to check if I'm posting on something that's on .world because even relatively mild off-color humor can get removed as "incivility" if it rubs a mod the wrong way.

I generally don’t worry about communities. Either the community is well run or not.

Users, though. I’ll block trolls all day long. If I notice I’m blocking a whole bunch of users from the same instance, I’ll block the instance. So far that has only happened twice. Lemmygrad and feddit.ro.

Nah, IDGAF about it one way or another. You run into more jerks there than average, but that's about it, so as long as block lists function, it's all good

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.

Not exclusively, but I do think twice before posting to a community hosted there, and actively seek out alternatives if possible. The only two I haven't found alternatives for are c/crows and c/freecad.

No. I self-censor a bit there, and prefer other instances so I don't have to, though.

Lemmy.ml is the only instance block I have, after seeing too many illiberal shit takes, bad faith arguments and socialist astroturf posts.

My instance quickly defederated from HexBear and LemmyGrad which is just fine by me, it's helpful most of the bad eggs are concentrated in just a few places.

Certainly. I have the entire instance blocked as their moderation, admins, and plenty of the users I've interacted with are unpleasant. It's no Hexbear or Grad, but it's enough that my experience is better without their communities.

While I have not blocked the instance (yet), I purposely try not to post anything on any community hosted there and rather look for alternatives. Sometimes it's easier to comment and or post on an ml instance due to it being larger in user size such as the !privacy@lemmy.ml vs !privacy@lemmy.world - but in these cases I will crosspost too.

Depends on the community and what has been posted. If it's something simple like AskLemmy and people aren't being super weird or preachy about communism or whatever, I don't find harm. I personally don't think I've had any bad experiences with them outside of the time I said I didn't trust a certain news outlet, which I cannot remember the name of.

What’s wrong with lemmy.ml?

Yes, except a few selected communities I completely avoid interacting with lemmy.ml

I've declined the opportunity to Mod a community on lemmy.ml, which is really not like me.

100% I do not want anything to do with .ml

Nope. I participate everywhere in the lemmy fediverse I can and never really had any issues with mods yet, which is surprising as I don't hesitate to get into political arguments generally. Ive blocked users, but never an instance. I take everything on a community by community and user by user basis.

I don’t refrain from participating in Lemmy.ml community unless the mods of that community act like the admins do. The majority of users aren’t my issue with Lemmy.ml at least on the non political communities, it’s the admin’s suppression of opposition

I think it's generally best to host communities on politically neutral instances

Blocked the whole thing on my instance.

Absolutely.

I watch closely though.

Edit: Judging by my history, I missed it a couple times and participated

Also blocked it.

I block subs and users and that usually takes care of 99% of the bullshit

I wish that political ideology wasn't such a thing to worry about on Lemmy. It's sadly easy to find extremist content, even on the homepage, when you're not logged in.

Depends. I've reccomened this before too, but I keep both world and ml "World News" communities because even though they're defederated, having both seems to encompass a better range of sources and topics.

I block all .ml communities when I see them pop up. I'm somewhere between 200-300 blocked communities at the moment (not exclusively .ml though).

I prefer to support smaller instances, but don't have a problem with lemmy.ml specifically (whereas I do sometimes go out of my way to avoid lemmy.world)

I came to ani.social to avoid being federated with those brain rott morons.

No. I think .ml is becoming some kind of bogey man. At the end of the day I think any instance is gonna have its own slant and bias; which isn’t a problem for me, personally.

Sometimes. The only people more insufferable than .world libs are .ml "leftists".

Nope.

Yes. I'll read the content, but I try to avoid interacting.

Mind you, db0 himself is a tankie, although he doesn't seem to insist on imposing that on the users or communities on his instance.

EDIT: I stand corrected. Apologies to db0 for lumping him in with that crowd.

Ah, the daily whinge-fest on Lemmy.world. In my 3 decades using the internet, I have never found online communities that are so consistently in opposition to US propaganda as the .ml's and hexbear. .World is so militantly US-liberal it puts reddit to shame. You can find such opinions all over the internet, but real left wing politics are much rarer since you basically have to self-host them, unlike the corporate friendly liberal and fascist politics.

No. People complaining about ml are exaggerating.