Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it's one of the best things I've ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.

For the past few months I'd been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I'd blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.

Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I'd had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.

The breaking point was seeing some dude post a "meme" implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you're saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell...

People were complaining about .ml long before I thought it was justified, but I looked again recently and yeah, maybe. This instance doesn't federate with it so I don't see it often. Based on my quick impressions the other day it's gotten worse. Not that it's an "echo chamber" and I don't mind hanging out with communists, but there's too much low-quality noise.

Personally I wouldn't block the whole server if it were up to me. There are still good people there. Just be quick to block the people and posts you really object to.

I tried this with .piefed and it genuinely improved my entire experience.

Amazing how much dumb bullshit a handful of terminally online losers can create.

Don't be surprised if you find hexbear giving you similar twitches.

I think you will still see users from lemmy.ml despite the instance block. I have blocked it about 2 years ago and its the only reason why I am still here. I hesitated at first because of the open source communities, but then I thought, fuck it

Is .piefed an instance or is it just a piece of software that people use to interact with lemmy/piefed?

Good call on blocking them.

Just remember if you donate to lemmy you also contribute to keeping .ml running and for the two lead 'developers' to thought police people on it.

Lol

What exactly is lemmy.ml? And how would I block it? Thanks!

How do you block an instance

Is .piefed an instance

There's a constellation of instances with the piefed prefix operating in the Fediverse ecosystem.

https://fedidb.com/servers

So your filter doesn't block piefed.world?

I have an account on an instance that still federates with hex and grad. They make ML seem almost tame. But when your lead developer and admin names their account for a genocidal revolutionary. Who had to be assassinated by his own people to be free. You can be sure there are going to be some very warped takes, and bad community cultivation.

That said I have ml visitors to communities I mod and generally have no issue with. There are a few I see posting regularly on the greater fediverse that have a high net positive vote totals on my voyager client. So we should definitely try not to paint with a broad brush. Even if we're all familiar with the toxicity of some.

Yes, it only blocks the communities and servers showing up in your feed.

This post made me curious so I took a look at my block list, and almost all of my blocked accounts are from .world.
I've only blocked two .ml users. I wonder how much that varies by instance.

Blocking communities and instances is separate from users.

So I can block .ml's communities and still downvote the users spreading election misinformation?

That's wonderful.

I didn't know we were considered toxic. I just like support for feeds lol.

Nah, seeing folks from there is fine, but i would rather not see their posts

Lmao, even

Go to your profile settings, it should be there next to your blocked users, at least that's how lemmy.world's interface is

but then I thought, fuck it

I feel like this one half sentence explains all of human history.

No no no. Twitch is owned by amazon. It's not part of the fediverse.

Having mindless tankies parrot ccp and russian propaganda is getting tiring.

No! It isn't propaganda! You're the one who is parroting propaganda!

Saying russia and china are dictatorships and stuff, i saw a post on VK that said exactly the contrary! And it must be true!

Xi Jinping said he cares about free speech, he can't lie, only western politicians lie!

An adjacent question, what does it mean when BANNED in red letters is next to a user you blocked?

I am pretty sure that a sizeable amount of accounts there have connections to the FSB.

Hexbear users are the funniest people on the platform

You could be on to something... Lmfao... perhaps?

Community mods banned them

Judging by the comments here, you just need to block .ml, .world and piefed to block all the assholes? 🤔🤔🤔

I agree. I only mentioned it because your motivation was the list of blocked users from ml you already had.

Every time I see people from a handful of the same instance always try to pivot any discussion of one of the other handful of instances back to a criticize of .world, I go look at their post history.

I always see the same thing; almost all .world postings, a few of the others, and none on their home instance, or any of the ones they're defending

I keep asking, never getting an answer:

Why do you hang around .world so much if you don't like it?

Why not just block .world?

I find it very irritating when you want to change the world and insist on using only one particular instance. That's not agitating the masses. I'm fine with blocking. I couldn't stand any more Japanese comics and started blocking those users one after another. Constant dopamine.

I believe Throbbing_banjo is from db0 actually.

Extremism etc has broad appeal to disenfranchised people of a certain maturity level with an absence of critical thinking skills.

IMO one of the things that's ruining the internet currently is all the young people who don't know shit about fuck and are completely unaware of it. Blind leading the blind shit.

Oh, oh yeah, you're right... my lemmy client is being dumb lol

I would still warn to be cautious, I feel that sites like Reddit fell a bit because it became compromised both at the admin and the moderator level by bad actors that slowly got promoted to positions of power.

Anyone with authoritarian sympathies should not be given the keys to moderate instances, imo. Users should condemn all forms of authoritarianism if they want to be more trusted.

That makes sense dbzer0's made a hard .ml turn lately so I could see why the users like each other.

I don't see where you're from, only your username, which I thought meant we were on the same instance. I'm on Lemmy.world, and i thought mine (our) instance defederated from .ml. So why do you, would have to block them? What am I misunderstanding?

Indeed. This year being a midterm election in the United States I don't expect to see too much generally. But we've only got a couple years before the heavy influx again. Whether it's bad faith propaganda, or ignorant blue staters treating national elections like their insulated local ones. They're both tiring and not helpful.

Democrats especially don't need help losing. They're very capable all by themselves. And sadly don't care about protest votes or undecideds. Nationally all that does is suppress votes, in favor of the worst options. But thankfully DSA has been pushing local candidates across the country showing they are viable and can win. Hopefully Sanders showed enough people that there are other options, and they might be ready to support a DSA adjacent/endorsed presidential candidate. If they can be brave enough to poll their own members on the subject. SMH

When I joined Lemmy, Lemmy.ml didn't really feel different than Lemmy.world to me.

Maybe I'm taking crazy pills but it's like they got more propagandist on purpose. As if they decided to up the anthem because .grad got defederated by all sane instances.. And what's propaganda good for if it doesn't reach the right people?

Same with tankies having lemmy.world accounts. It's not ironic, it makes sense.

Now Lemmy.ml became their "outreach" instance, where they ban everyone who criticizes them (even on another instance) or even for downvoting (Dessalines did that because his favorite poster 'cowbee' got downvoted by "bots" too much. Then they opted out on lemvotes, so no more checking yourself).

For an outsider it looks like everyone agrees with them because they upvote each other and every critic got either banned or they blocked them themselves and I'm starting to think this might be by design. I wonder how many users are banned from .ml, while still retaining general visibility through federation.

Isn't it basically how Russia and China operate? Keep your own people isolated in a bubble where only your narrative is accepted and at the same time invade other spaces to manipulate their opinions?

I'll pay attention to DSA candidate once they start winning purple races and not just solid blue ones.

Just block Lemmy entirely

I agree. And was vocal as well with some of rimu's actions as well as the recent admiral patric meltdown. The dot world crew aren't perfect. There was a post earlier today regarding a mastodon ban. That I'm not sure of knowledgeable enough to take sides on. Though generally they are pretty hands-off unless you cross one of the more or less reasonable hard and fast rules repeatedly.

Well lemmy.world is statistically one of the larger instances. So that's not strictly unusual. And thankfully some of the worst from ml tend to stay in their Echo Chambers being self-aware enough.

.world is not defederated from .ml

See https://lemmy.world/instances

You might be thinking of lemmygrad.ml?

Rotflmfao, even

i'm new to my instance that isn't defederated from anything and I see an awful lot of whining about .ml hexbear and lemmygrad but i haven't seen the users do anything. i'm more annoyed by the whiners so far.