I came here a few weeks ago after many years of reddit. Altogether I find discussions I enjoy, however, the posts and comments noticeably lean, well, tankie (I didn’t know that term before I came here). It’s not that I am looking for an echo chamber, but I also don’t want to spend my time reading propaganda. I’m really curious about a lot of things outside politics, as well as the opinions and arguments of reasonable people across the political spectrum, but I don’t want to listen to the boring canned lies of fascists and tankies. I realized that people celebrating communist dictators trigger me, and this is something I didn’t have to deal with before I started reading lemmy, I didn’t even know this type existed.
I also notice that accounts created just a few hours in advance come from other instances to brigade political posts. Because of how lemmy works, I can block individual users or communities, but not individual instances. Is there an instance that could be a “safe space” from this kind of brigading and tankie spam? Or a way to use the internet to read interesting things now that blogs died and then Reddit became whatever it became?
Wow, thanks, such a helpful response! I’ll try the web interface for instance blocking. Another sus instance I saw today was blahaj.zone. To clarify, I also didn’t see fascist stuff, I just mentioned it because I felt it important to point out that I also don’t want to see that kind of content. I guess I saw one too many “so you are not a fan of Stalin, you must be fascist” comment today.
What’s sus about Blahaj Zone? I’ve always found them to be nice people.
Well he’s looking for conservative content, and we’re a queer instance, so…
There are gay conservatives though. And there are conservatives who support LGBTQIA+ causes.
OP sounds like he’s just tired of the extremism of everything, not just left or conservative. So maybe he’s just a centralist or something.
I tend to not block instances FWIW. I have blocked several communities and found that it works pretty well. For now, browsing /all in lemmy is my preferred view because we just don’t have that many people to keep content coming in the communities I have subscribed to. Plus, it’s more fun to see the variety. Lemmy is small enough still where it’s easier to “opt-out” than there is a need to “opt-in” to limit the noise.
Can do it through apps too.
ML is definitely everyone’s first and fav instance to block. A lot of the dumb shit will cut down very quickly just by getting rid of that one.
It’s so funny that the first instance Lemmy users ban is the one of the Lemmy developers lol
the lemmy devs are very clear about their political views.
anytime you are clear about your political views, you are going to invite others to ban/hate/dismiss you on princple, because most people do not believe in a plurality of viewpoints in 2026.
It’s not really “funny” but ironic perhaps.
Funny haha vs funny peculiar
Funny in a way, not the first thing I’d say about it though. Makes complete sense, the whole idea of Lemmy and the fediverse aligns way more with leftist ideology. It was the first instance I blocked too, it’s very nice to be able to have a nice space with varied opinions without the one big extreme that’s objectively (IMO) bad.
hey, just so you know blahaj.zone is not a tankie instance, it’s an instance aimed at protecting oppressed minorities (it hosts a women-only community, protects LGBT+ users from bigotry, etc.).
I think it’s technically considered an “apolitical” instance, but the top community on blahaj.zone is vehemently anti-tankie, so I would say they’re the opposite of the people you’re worried about
got it, thanks for the explanation. I know nothing about the content and the general crowd over there, but some accounts registered there were definitely brigading political posts over .world, and not in a tasteful way. I don’t have screenshots or names because I blocked them. I’m not saying this is the instance’s fault.
I agree that blocking these instances will dramatically improve your experience.