I might get hate because of my instance here, but in an attempt to better understand Lemmy I’m wondering if some of you can shed a light on why you chose this instance, what’s great about it, what could be better, is the instance rivalries something that affects your use of the platform or is it just background noise?

I’m not trying to start a fight or mud slinging, it would be good if several people could say their piece and nobody shame or attack them for it no matter how much you disagree.

I just picked a big one and never thought about the user base

it's an instance that respects, upfronts, and promotes the anti imperialist, anti colonial, and anti capitalist voices of the global south. this i why most people (and by people i mean westerners or west aligned) get triggered by some of our administration policies, because it challenges the status quo of sillicon valley's morals.

One of the few places on the English language side of the internet where racial abuse against not sufficiently self hating Chinese people isn't normalised.

You're on feddit.uk

After witnessing the downfall of Reddit, both because of enshittification and in the overall discourse, it felt silly to jump to another neoliberal community. I feel the same way about Blue Sky.

I don't care about instance rivalries at all. Reddit refugees fleeing the dismal quagmire that is the inevitable result of capitalist social media and going to the place MLs created as a direct response to those conditions, then criticizing MLs, is kind of amusing but that's all. I created a .world account first because I didn't know the lay of the land then realized I didn''t really feel like reading those same jokes, quips, puns, and slogans ad nauseum. I'm glad the architecture of lemmy allows me to choose a refuge where I don't feel crazy. I regret it took me so long to find my people.

I appreciate you coming here and asking this question.

It shows fediverse content.

503

I chose .ml specifically because I wanted to be on a Marxist-Leninist instance, because .ml is maintained by Lemmy's developers, and because most instances aren't defederated from it so I have access to whatever content I wish to see. I actually just browse local 99% of the time since I find the content here plenty engaging on its own. It reminds me of the old forum days, before modern social media watered everything down. I particularly value being more exposed here to the perspectives of the global south, and non-USians generally. USians aren't a majority of the world, so we shouldn't expect our views to be normative.

It's a cool place where mods don't take bullshit, misinfo and bigotry are removed. They also remove slurs from comments which is good since I don't get that triggered like when I used to browse reddit. People generally treat users like they are people.

I have seen very little xenophobia here on ml, if any. Sometimes I wander off to All, and it comes kind of crashing down how racist and bigoted the other places are. Yeah, this place is really well moderated.

it's nice you don't need to sign up with an E-mail address

I appreciate you taking the time to respond

Certain kinds of racism and bigotry are unfortunately highly normalised across much of the English language internet. It was nice to find a safe haven from it even if some still get through the gaps every now and then.

Well, it does. you cannot see the communities your instance has blocked, for example.

When I joined, it was the only instance, but it was also useful that it was aggressively left-wing.

Before Lemmy, all the Reddit alternatives were Nazi bars, because everyone that got banned from Reddit congealed there. The Lemmy devs/admins banned anyone on sight who hinted at Nazi apologia and I don't think Lemmy would exist today, if they didn't.

But yeah, folks also assign way too much meaning to the instance. I don't have to hold hands with my admins when I log onto lemmy.ml. I don't have to agree with them. I barely interact with lemmy.ml users, because I just browse /all. And that generally looks the same as on other instances.
It's just a way to access the wider threadiverse. If the lemmy.ml server is down, I log into my alt account on another instance and the experience is virtually indistinguishable, I just don't have my block lists there...

.ml is mostly fine. I picked it, because it gives me a good view of both Hexbear and Lemmygrad, because I like seeing what the lefty-side of Lemmy is up to (turns out its a lot more posts about Beans than you might expect), while also letting me see most of the mainstream of Lemmy, which has more of a traditional old-Reddit style culture, which is nice.

I enjoy politics posting, and discussion. But it's nice seeing other kinds of stuff too, and .ml let's me do both.

What annoys me, and this is a Lemmy-wide problem, is people making assumptions about other's beliefs based soley on their instance of choice. It's not helpful, it's not generative, and it's a waste of everyone's time.

Like, I don't think you should be getting hate, just because you're a .world user. As long as you're asking a question in good faith, and not being a shithead, I see no reason why you posing this here should be an issue ¯_(ツ)_/¯

P cool

Lmao what

Most of the time I am not impacted by the instance rivalries because I largely browse by local instead of all. The only time I was affected by the instance rivalries is when a .world user started reposting all my photography over there, was messaging me about how he felt the admins were evil and he decided it was his purpose in life to bring down the admins and their instance and he was trying to rope me into it. I believe his name was cm0002

It's one of the few actually leftist instances, as in having a principled anti-capitalist ideology, and many users are communists, viewing events through the lens of historical materialism instead of just feeling the vibes.

The "instance rivalry" stuff is just libs getting mad that we don't have vibes based politics and prioritise historical facts over their knee jerk responses.

I heard tall tales of "the tankie triad" when I first flew from reddit to lemmy.world (because it's the largest, and back then as a baby leftist I just wanted reddit without reddit you know?). I kinda floated between dbzer0, .world and .ml for specific communities (and because I really didn't understand how this works) for a while, but the more my understanding of Marxism and communism (and especially anti-imperialism) grew, the more I gravitated towards just the tankie triad. Now I mainly browse and engage on those.

I feel the largest issue between .worlders (and others) and .mlrs (and, more widely, between communists and non-communists) stems from that anti-imperialism, especially when it comes to our critical suport of modern Russia. We see the US-led western imperial hegemony to be the root-cause of all suffering on earth, and lend our critical support to states on the receiving end of that machine of violence even when those states are capitalistic themselves. NATO and the EU are also parts of this machine, and evidence shows these being the cause for the war in Ukraine. This evidence isn't necessarily evident from the get-go, especially if one has grown up in said western states (the amount of deprogramming one must go through is massive, believe me). I've been trying to limit painting every .world user as a clueless lib whenever one comes in to the comments, but some .worlders like to uncharitably paint us as idiots who haven't realized the USSR fell already.

idk, just my two cents

Huh

So you're like one of those birds who calms down when they put the hood over their head?

some .worlders like to uncharitably paint us as idiots who haven’t realized the USSR fell already.

Which is ironic, considering how many of them I see saying "comrade Trump" and talking about the KGB in the present tense.

It is very annoying to end up in an argument about modern day Russia with someone who you quickly realize only knows what they saw from watching Archer.

Still a serial poster. I've always just assumed it was a bot account.

is people making assumptions about other's beliefs based soley on their instance of choice. It's not helpful, it's not generative, and it's a waste of everyone's time.

Spot on. Taking countries as an analogy for fediverse instances, we shouldn't make all the citizens of those countries into an ideological monolith: there's always a diversity of views, even if some views are more predominant than others because they're encouraged from the top.

And above all we should not be alienating and unecessarily divisive to those who, with a little education and prodding in the right direction, will side with the majority of the world's workers. Our job is to make allies, patiently educate, and create more caring people.

Yeah, I agree. And if any particular user comes into the conversation with, say, dehumanization and homophobia, that's absolutely not worth reasoning with in my opinion. But yes, listening to a few repeated arguments day in and day out gets real tired fast.

I didn’'t really feel like reading those same jokes, quips, puns, and slogans ad nauseum.

this begs the question of why the neoliberals are here at all.

reddit/facebook/instagram/etc. will always have better bread and circuses so expecting to get it on lemmy is a lost cause to begin with and that lacking quality -- combined with efforts to minimize leftist narratives like piefed and tesseract -- means that they won't stay here for long.

so what are they looking for when the come here when they continue to insist on implementing the same enshitification that made reddit so insufferable?

besides nazi content, the admins of lemmy.ml don't decide what i can and can't see via de-federation meanwhile the admins on lemmy.world and most other instances allow the same sort of brigading that reddit does to make content they don't like go away into obscurity.

Sorry to hear that.

Politically I fit into .ml but they do not tolerate dissent. I was temporarily banned for saying it's in poor taste to celebrate the deaths of US soliders. I get it, anti-imperialism. I'm anti-imperialist too, but it seems like the place is full of angsty edgy teenagers trying to outdo each other. It's not a good look when people are watching your instance specifically to flag shit like that to show how crazy .ml is.

I think the most annoying thing about being in .ml is all the .world people who have like kneejerk reactions to anything you say and get hostile just because of your instance. I have used account on Lemmygrad, and Hexbear too. Lemmygrad was the most laid back and I really liked it but I wanted to dip my toes into wider lemmy (grad isn't federated with a lot of the more reactionary instances, which i like and is valid but causes me to not see certain things). Lemmy.ml is more like a normal social media site. It has the reactionaries, the liberals, etc. A lot of the interactions are negative and confrontational. But its also got a lot more content in general.

I don't use other social media from lemmy. Haven't for years now. So this is like my 1 cig a week allegory. Where I let myself have a bit of the slop.

嗨嗨！！吃了吗？你说中文吗？

I love lemmy.ml

It's a Lemmy server where you can talk about any brand of cat food that interests you. I love the smell of freedom in the morning.

It's good there are less murderers of black/brown innocent people worldwide. Unless one sees those black/brown as lesser people. If you feel patriotic about the US then you don't belong here

吃了吃了谢啦我会中文

耶！我是没国人 :( 我学习中文。 我的中文不好哈哈哈。你是中国人吗？

Ffs here we go. I'm not patriotic but it's a really bad PR move to broadcast that opinion online. You're not going to win hearts and minds of the opposition with that.

Also, not wanting to celebrate deaths of soliders does not equal patriotism. Wtf?

I like the tech focus and how the politics are less impulse-based and seem more rooted in reality and people are more willing to deviate from the crowd. Also like that it doesn't block Hexbear/Lemmygrad, piracy communities, Tor users, etc.

对 我是中国人
你中文挺好的 别急 慢慢来 加油
小提醒 你应该是想说美国人 不是没国人
美是美丽的美 没是没有的没

it's one of the "official" ones being supported by lemmy developers, otherwise i don't really feel the difference. anything is better over the shithole that was reddit.

i guess there's more marxists on .ml, but i don't read the instance the comment is from on purpose; that's irrelevant to me.

The conscription of those murderers wasn't forced, they signed for killing poor innocent people. Liberals, ffs.

谢谢，对我美国人^_^ 我的汉字是拼音。哈哈哈

It's a nice place. I've never had any issues with it. I like that I have a space to be with like-minded people after spending most of my time around people who very much aren't. I like that I don't often encounter racism and while I do encounter misogyny it is less common here than other online spaces