Discussion about lemmy.ml admins abusing Fediverse moderation tools (with proof)

One of the best features of lemmy. A bit of transparency is great.

Well worth doing once in a while. Though only when you are feeling extra "tough". I just did and saw a lot of hateful comments I'm glad are gone, but also 2 (both from lemmy.ml) that look perfectly on topic. At least we can find out what our moderators are doing.

I for one go there extremely rarely, and only to look up specific matters. It does not help that something (post or comment) could be removed by either a community moderator, on one instance, or an admin, on an entirely different instance. But I am glad that there are people that analyze it:-).

I used to be a mod of a small and then another medium-sized (for a niche) community on Reddit. Since coming to Kbin and then Lemmy, I have not volunteered to moderate anything. We need people to, but it's an extremely depressing job.

It's like politicians: we need them, but the role tends to attract the attentions of those least suited to get it done:-(. And the actual GOOD ones tend to not stay for long - perhaps a year or two, if they actually care about the community that they moderate:-|.

And not by random accident either - companies put in HUGE investments into designing blinking, flashing, candied-looking... everything, in order to foster "engagement". Dark Mirror has several episodes illustrating various aspects, trying to warn people.

In the olden days there was a phrase that "sex sells". Well it turns out, only up to a point - whereas kittens & puppies sell even moar, and getting people angry is an appetite that seems inexhaustible.

And that does not even begin to touch on how certain actors would very much like to exaggerate certain of those effects, to their own potential benefits. e.g., the likes of anti-vaxxers + never-Hillary-ers got Trump elected, and while both of those movements maybe (probably even) started organically, they definitely have also had their fans flamed both by outside groups and the poorly constructed echo chambers of social media.

This is just the way of the world, and fighting against it, like death & entropy, is an absolute necessity yet difficult.

So if that is how they want to be, then fine. But we still need to do our part to call it out like it is, and to warn others away, or else the Fediverse as a whole suffers. I almost quit the Fediverse myself a few months ago, though fortunately v.0.19.3 came out and I simply blocked lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net instead, and now I am as happy as a clam:-).

You are very welcome!:-)

I am never sure about how to do the links - here I went with the instance of the community that it was posted to rather than the poster's original instance where it originated. Lemmy.world is also more populated so fewer people will have to search for it on their home instance that way. One day I hope the tools catch up to allow federated linking to posts and comments:-).

Really surprised and pleased to see my original comment to you triggering your lengthy call to action and all the traction it received!

• lemm.ee is the second most active instance and avoids joining Lemmy.world which is already too big
• reddthat.com is cool if you don't want downvotes
• sh.itjust.works works, if you don't mind the name
• if you are based in Europe, discuss.tchncs.de is very well managed (they have other services at https://tchncs.de/)
• if you are based in North America, lemmy.ca is nice

That's pretty much it.

For the transfer of communities, there is a tab in the user settings to export your settings (including subscriptions) to a JSON file. You can then import it to your new account.

your home instance doesnt necessarily need to be a behemoth as you can subscribe to all the same stuff. ive got a dozen or so users at moist.catsweat.com who primarily consume lemmy content

I have hopped around a lot myself - @Blaze@reddthat.com is there a particular post to recommend reading in this regard?

My suggestion at this point might be to:

1. if you just want to read but not yet interact, log onto any one of them e.g. https://lemmy.world and poke around!:-)
2. consider if there are any particular communities that you are interested in the most - e.g. https://programming.dev/c/programmer_humor, or https://sh.itjust.works/c/patientgamers, etc.
3. for general-purpose ones - arguably the best approach - visit a site like https://lemmyverse.net/ to see those that have the most activity on them and might be closest to you.

Do NOT get mislead though by the community / instance descriptions, e.g. midwest.social says that it is for "leftists in the Midwest USA", but what it means by "leftists" is not the common usage (especially for people in the Midwestern USA, who would interpret it like "progressive liberal" or some such) and rather more extreme forms such as full-on communism. Similarly, hexbear.net never bothers to enforce their own Code of Conduct (the only time they remember the human is when you say something they agree with - any other time the human is fair game to be dunked on!). But it is like watching Fox News: regardless of what they say, pretty quickly you get a sense that something is a bit "off" when you visit these places:-).

lemmy.ml is much harder to get a read on though, hence the linked discussion. It does not say that it is leftist, or even has any instance description that I can see - they just call themselves "Lemmy" as if that is sufficient, with no disambiguation between it and the software that runs on it or any acknowledgement that the rest of the Fediverse exists. Ironically lemmygrad.ml is doing better these days at more accurately portraying what it is about, with a communist flag and manifesto - that honesty is appreciated, by me at least, as it shows an intellectual capacity to realize that other viewpoints exist and thus to distinguish self vs. nonself, unlike what lemmy.ml does (not).

I think there are some tools to transfer accounts but I have never used them so I don't know where to find them - sorry, but I hope knowing that at least helps you find them:-).

In your account settings there is an export function that will generate a file. Use that file in your new account to import your subscriptions.

Whether done by community mods or instance admins, it seems like similar thoughts should apply: starting new communities elsewhere (on different instances) increases freedom of choice, so that abuses in one area don't leave someone entirely out in the wasteland with no content.