Fled Reddit to join lemm.ee a few months ago. It was a glorious few months, and I hope the admins know how appreciated their work was.
I’m very sad but grateful that there was a place to go where I felt like I could speak freely, read, and share information that is being suppressed on other platforms.
I was wondering what recommendations people might have for any instances that are allowing new users, and seem to have found a good balance between avoiding disinformation/astroturfing/bad actors, without swinging too far in the opposite direction and potentially suppressing information?
If you can’t find an instance that matches your preferences, you can always go with the most permissive, then block other instances/communities/users that are causing problems. It’s a little more work at first, but it’s possible to tailor your own experience here wherever you’re registered.
I suppose it’s worth noting that being more permissive with federation and a lower signup barrier was part of lemm.ee’s philosophy. The shutdown is related to burnout from the moderation side. More permissive federation means more stress to mods/admins, since they have to deal with more questionable user behaviour. Often times defederation just comes out of not being able to handle the constant stream of reports of anti-social activity from particular servers.
Masnick’s Impossibility Theorem in action.
The bigger the platform, the wider the spread of opinions on how moderation should look, and that means wherever the admins land, there will inevitably be some who think it’s too little, and some who think it’s too much. You can’t please everyone.
Yeah. To be honest the experience I’ve had between the three instances I have used is pretty much the same other than server uptime.
The bigger the instance the more external communities show up in All which is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to stumbling across fun communities.
good
The problem with using “good” as a criteria is that nobody decides “what we need is a bad balance”. People are going to have different takes on where they want that slider to be.
Exactly. People will have different definitions of “good”.
I feel like a “good balance” inherently means accepting that you will probably see some things you don’t agree with or support, but you can also present your own case for why you don’t agree without attacking the person who posted it, or just keep scrolling past that to something else.
A bad balance would be just imbalance where everyone in a community is trying to push one single opinion/agenda, and if anything contradicts that opinion, even if it’s well supported by evidence, it results in removal of content or a ban.
That seems to be the real root of suppression of information. Like if someone is told from the time they join an instance or a community that bigotry/abusive speech isn’t allowed, and then they use a bunch of slurs or abusive language, they’ve violated a rule, and it seems like that really shouldn’t surprise anyone that would need to be addressed.
If someone can’t present evidence contradicting a popular narrative, or critique an argument, idea, or a public individual without getting banned, that is an issue.
People can disagree with what is said/downvote it/present their own evidence why they disagree/or ignore it and block the person, but if it’s not intentionally violating a rule, you shouldn’t have a bunch of people reporting it as being a violation just because they don’t like it.
Mine, lemmings.world, I don’t tolerate misinformation and bigotry, but I’m not ban happy and very tolerant of opinions I don’t hold.
Huge if true.
Well that’s cool to know
I’ll plug my home instance, discuss.online. We’re generally low-key and don’t heavily moderate stuff, but will also respond to bad actors.
Lisa! You’re tearing me apart!
I said bad actors, not amazing-and-underappreciated-in-their-time actors
The main instance I found to replace lemm.ee was lemmy.zip. They seem to be well-regarded, well-admined, and appear to have a similar (de)federation philosophy as lemm.ee. In other words, they are widely federated in both directions, which is an increasing rarity on the “threadiverse” (Lemmy and other similar federated discussion software). One interesting thing they do is that in place of completely defederating some of the more controversial instances like hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, they pre-emptively block those instances for new users instead. I feel that this is absolutely the correct middle-ground approach as it leaves the choice with the user (edit: while still hiding the controversial instances from new users).
Edit: I have learned that reddthat.com only defederates from threads.net, and it seems that lemmy.ml is not defederated from any major instances as far as I can tell, so I’ve removed it from the list below.
The other instances that still federate widely including those two controversial instances have some other issues:
- lemmy.today is apparently new and I read yesterday that they’ve been having a bit of an issue with spam
- lemmy.sdf.org, where I started with my first lemmy account, doesn’t defederate from anyone and seems to not be very actively maintained with lemmy upgrades, etc.
I’m on today and I can recommend it. The whole point of it is not to have its own communities but just to be a neutral place to have an account. That was very appealing me as someone who really doesn’t care about the “pick a community” part of Lemmy.
I chose .zip as well. Other pluses aside from similar federation principles:
- Isn’t involved with the big instance infighting
- Uses the latest version of lemmy
- Defederated from Threads
- The admin is transparent with the instance maintenance
Did you notice how .ee was noticeably faster? Really shows the exceptional job the .ee admins did.
All good points.
Faster than .zip? Perhaps. But when I moved from lemmy.sdf.org to lemm.ee I went back to using SDF several times because .ee would have major slowdowns. Which is weird because of how hands off the SDF admins seem to be. Perhaps the performance has more to do with network location and resources allocated to the server?
Probably yeah. To be fair, I came from .world when I moved to .ee 2 years ago because of the almost daily downtime, so it’s a pretty low bar. I feel .ee has been performing exceptionally well since then though, and I immediately felt the difference when I moved to .zip. Not a knock on .zip though, I do like it here.
Ah, yes, I can understand that. I remember reading about all the issues that .world was having in the early days. Good to hear you like .zip though.
yup, don’t go .rar, go .zip
I’ve not once had an issue with our dbzero admins in terms of disinformation or censorship. We’re big on “free as in pirate freedom”. They’re proactive and very engaged with the community too. Come give us a look.
Mander is great
If you’re serious with lemmy I’d suggest hosting your own instance. Either by renting a server or getting someone to do it for you and paying them for the server. I guess if you give someone 10 $ a month they should be able to spin something up for you. 20 $ would be max I’d invest.
Otherwise, its important what you want to see. Tchncs is pretty nice from a “centrist” perspective. Slrpnk is rather interesting but i cant really judge their content. You could jump in the deep end and check out ml, grad or hex. Or you go full horseshoe on truth social. You get it all. I think there even are lets say liberal places in terms of age. Disgusting imo but who am I to judge.
I’m not really looking for any one specific perspective, I just don’t want to help strengthen an echo chamber whether it’s spreading disinformation, edge lords saying shitty things to make some kind of Fred Phelps like point about free speech, or just set on ignoring valid information in order to keep pushing an agenda regardless of facts
Not sure I understand. You’ll never see all of it except if you host your own. In that case you’ll see things that might change your perspective on things.
Again, you can jave centrist with more or less blocking of radical views, radical with blocking of centrist views or you can diy. I dont know of amy places that really show an accurate picture because i think it is naive to think that this exists.
I’m definitely not looking for a centrist view, in fact kind of the opposite. Other than bans on bigotry/hate speech, I really don’t want to be boxed into a singular way of thinking.
I don’t mind if I end up interacting with or hearing views from people who are more centrist or radical, as long as there isn’t an all or nothing/hive mind kind of way of thinking about those POVs.
I am definitely more left, I wouldn’t call myself a radical, but if I talked to someone who identified as a moderate, they might consider my opinions far left compared to their own POV, whereas somebody who is extreme left might consider me left of center.
I understand there are some people who truly have all or nothing beliefs, but I am also suspicious that movements on the left are often hijacked by bad actors in order to keep people as divided as possible.
Even the idea of a “tankie” as it’s used online, seems like it’s often just meant to further divide the left during a time when extremists on the far right are trying to keep people divided and distracted in order to maintain the power and control they have achieved.
It’s almost like union busting tactics being used against political beliefs instead of labor. As long as people have a core set of values they agree on regarding human rights and liberty, I feel like it’s in our best interest to unite against extremists on the far right, even if we don’t always agree 100% on everything else.
I may be overthinking the specific instance thing, and I think somebody already answered this, but I guess originally I was thinking, if I joined an instance with say a focus on technology, would I still be able to create a community with a political focus, or would I need to join an instance with a focus on politics in order to do that?
If I did need to join an instance focused on politics, would I then be 100% constrained by political beliefs of that instance to fit a narrative? Like if I felt there was evidence that justified a criticism of someone that’s normally placed on a pedestal, would I be free to say that.
It seems like most instances would allow political communities even if the focus of the instance isn’t political, so probably a moot point anyway.
I can see where you’re going with this. And yes you might be overthinking but i wont blame you.
The issue currently is that the world is kinda spinning freely and kind of disintegrates. Democracy is in chaotic flight mode in many places.
You can of course make any community you like on any instance you like, generally. You should read the rules beforehand and then decide if you and your community fit on there. Some instances are tech only but most should be quite open to new ideas.
By “centrist” i meant “mainstream” which in the real world means right wing atm. At least in my opinion. On lemmy, you do have a general tilt towards the left which I view as very good but things like discussing new ideas away from capitalism or discussing history off the mainstream thoughts is more a niche thing that would probably get you dogpiled on on world for example.
In any case, good luck.
The only instances I’ve seen that don’t allow criticism of a government is .ml and hexbear.
