Every single person that I’ve told about Lemmy has outright scolded me for having mentioned it to them. I may have lost a couple of acquaintance connections even as a result.

When people Google search for “Lemmy” or otherwise get taken to lemmy.ml (didn’t someone say that the so-called “random” instance picker chose either it or hexbear like 90% of the time?), see the content calling for murder of Westerners and the demise of Western civilization, is it any wonder that they choose not to come here, or if they create an account, to not remain?

Their preferences matter - to themselves at the very least, even if not to our instance admins that do not want to block it out so that potential new joiners won’t have to see it presented with zero warning or any distinction at all that it may differ from any of the other content in this place.

Regarding the Threadiverse in general, it seems that (1) many people find having to choose an instance first to be very confusing (not applicable to your situation I guess), (2) upon arrival these primarily Western people immediately see content proposing the murder of Westerners and demolition of the entire Western culture, whereupon they nope right back out (can you blame them?) and then complain bitterly about their toxic experiences here on other platforms, including Reddit and Bluesky and X.

Most of us forget how extensive our blocklists here have grown to be over time, and how much effort we put into Linux levels of tinkering to discover communities we like while blocking content we do not.

If I am wrong then please ignore me, but it’s a thought to consider.

Of course mostly it’s a network effect, so I am speaking about issues that we might actually be able to do something about.

Only if it portrays Lemmy in a positive light. You can criticize our toxicity and left-leaning political biases as much as you like in r/RedditAlternatives though:-P.

Do you want to give it to us here instead? :-P

True… but also, turning an enemy into an ally is a very powerful strategy (and it works in reverse too).

Damn, I suspected as much but thanks for confirming. I never created an account so I didn’t know if that would change anything in terms of what I could see was on it but it seems not. The default feed exposed to people without an account never really enticed me to check it routinely.

So where are the reporter types (& comic artists, etc.) then, mostly, other than just straight-up X, or shifting more towards private or public blogs like Substack (which is not federated though its open-source rival Ghost is)? I recognize that it is not a binary yes-no answer, and also that the answer is likely “pretty much just on X”, with a much more extremely minor theme adding “somewhat, inconsistently on Mastodon, despite the fact that their followers are mostly not”. And I cannot fault them too awfully much even for their short-sighted thinking, since they need followers or else they cannot exist, and when Mastodon instances go down I thought there is no way to move followers elsewhere, plus the issue of celebrity impersonation seems to remain still. Mastodon needs to work on those issues if they want people to use it.

Just like Lemmy needs to work on its ability to create at least SOME spaces more free of the toxicity that pervades the entirety of the Threadiverse and causes people to nope out immediately, then complain bitterly about us here over on e.g. r/RedditAlternatives and on Bluesky. I am 100% in agreement with “People could make as many fediverse platforms as they want, it doesn’t mean anything if nobody is using them.”, which is why I am placing my hopes on PieFed to work more quickly to address the main concerns. It has already pretty much entirely solved the content discovery problem, and after expending so much effort on its API to enable 3rd-party apps I hope it gets back to enabling easier moderation features, although it already offers so much - more than Lemmy - in that regard.

Worse, I find that Lemmy typically (vastly) under-delivers what was promised even. Like for many years people were promised the capability to do personal “instance blocking”, and for a long time after the Rexodus there were calls to avoid defederating places like lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml or even hexbear.net, because that feature was “coming soon^™”.

Then when that change did finally come, it only muted communities on that instance yet still left users to be able to reply in other communities, plus they could still vote on and thereby influence your content (hexbear is KNOWN for its brigading tactics). And then a subsequent bugfix opened it up still further to allow such “blocked” users the capability to send you a private DM, even pinging you with notifications - which on Lemmy (highly unlike PieFed) there is no way to stop that, even for WEEKs and WEEKs after you stop engaging… your consent to selectively stop such incoming pings does not matter, realistically (technically you could block every single person from an instance, one-by-one… but even there, you would have to bot that or do it the extremely tedious manual way, as the software provides no tools to aid with that). PieFed has offered the ability to block all users from an instance for over a year now.

The only counter-argument to the above is that software - especially FOSS (although Lemmy devs even get paid?!?) - takes time to develop. Which makes things like the bugs and inefficiencies that remain in Lemmy for years and years all the more disheartening. And then here comes PieFed, running around Lemmy in circles, it is almost no comparison at all.

And then I’m sure that I do not need to list out the rather LONG list of features that PieFed offers that aids community discovery - it’s quite amazing to see actually:-). PieFed is a game-changer for the Threadiverse, and might just keep it alive whereas it would otherwise have either died off or at least remained in obscurity forever known as a mere linux (& politics) forum. As things keep moving forward though, I think one day it could rival BlueSky, at least in terms of features offered, though whether a non-profit FOSS could ever overcome the strong network effect will remain to be seen… For that I think we would need a modmail, definitely notification upon content removal, perhaps better searching capability, maybe better modlog access, but not much else? (& 3rd party apps catching up to offer its features but that is not PieFed’s work anymore, now that so much has been exposed in the APIs)

Noice! 👍

I’m not sure some of them don’t have alternate accounts on our instances here that they troll the same people with.

Not only do they do this, they also admit it, they even brag about it, and they laugh about it and plan for ways to do it more effectively inside their echo chambers and safe spaces (e.g. lemmygrad.ml, another instance that is very friendly with Hexbear.net).

An excerpt from my aforementioned linked post:

I truly do want to hear from a wide diversity of opinions - so long as they are offered in good faith. The lack of the latter though… why should someone else’s right to speak infringe upon, even trounce (the better word might be “trump”?) my right to not have to listen?

It seems counterintuitive but sometimes in order to preserve freedom of speech, certain types of speech must be curtailed. Not everywhere, but in at least some spaces, to allow for quieter voices to speak who otherwise would not feel comfortable doing so when the background level of toxicity is too high.

It sounds like you already know: that’s simply how echo chambers work. Ultimately the admin (team) does have the literal power and authority to decide what goes into their machine, obviously, and then to a lesser degree the moderators, but beyond that, at the conceptual level those in charge can either serve at the will of the people or become enforcers. Those who choose to comply underneath such a system are allowed to remain, whereas those who prefer to think for themselves leave. It is thus an evolutionary filtration/selection system, ensuring that the system itself will continue forwards along those lines, likely indefinitely.

They have drunk the kool-aide on the whole Might Makes Right ideology. Except only choosing to use that whenever it suits them (e.g. they kick out those who they do not like), yet cry unfair when they believe that same exact mode of thinking is leveraged against them. All the while ignoring the consideration of any other possibilities - such as that it is not the “righteousness” of their ideology that turns people away, but the vehemence with which they push it, even when it violates the rules of other communities where they are speaking. It is toddler logic, crying “unfair” even when the aspect in question is the epitome of fairness. Most of us move beyond that stage quickly in our lives, but for some reason that internet space chooses to revel in it.

And making everything a lot more confusing, some communities there have fine discussions within them. But overall it is an instance with problematic users, and more germane, problematic admins who protect the bullies rather than curtail them in order to fit in more with the rest of the Threadiverse. If you want some more of the intricate details, although as with anything historical some things have changed in the meantime, I wrote this post https://discuss.online/post/13916278, which contains lots of links to as close to primary sources as I could find about each matter.

A bunch of them are just there for fun - whether their actual leadership has an agenda I would not know about, it sounds as if you’ve studied that aspect more deeply than I.

I know this may be difficult to believe but some people will lie on the internet, haha! 😆 In their defense, they primarily lie to themselves, although then they also still do continue to do so to others. It’s exactly 4chan behaviors, where much study has been done into the psychology behind the disassociation effect.

Echo chambers are dangerous - anyone who disagrees gets kicked out, leaving only those who either genuinely agree or at least do not go against the prevailing trends very much. Hence why those edgelord teenager types focus more on the appearance of logical argumentation practices without the reality of it - i.e. “the dunk” (aka slam) where someone says something with an attitude of utter confidence that only betrays a complete lack of deeper thought (bc real thinkers continually question everything), and that Lord of the Flies crowd just eats it up, never realizing that there are any other ways to be.

As for whether it’s a Russian psy-op I have no idea. I doubt it though - they seem quite willing to be that way entirely without either payment or help from outside. Although it is baked into many cultures of the word to be more cunning, so that if you are the dumb-fuck who fell for their false arguments then they look down on you for being so gullible, rather than on themselves for having mislead others. In any case the answer is always the same: just like an instance dedicated to CSAM, they are entirely free to do whatever they please, but then others MUST also be free to not have to consent as well.

Everyone learns what hexbear is about, eventually, and then it becomes a rite of passage. Or it seems more often, people simply leave the Threadiverse altogether, complaining on r/RedditAlternatives how toxic we are here, not being able to distinguish the nuances of “here” or “there”. By not merely allowing them the freedom to exist (trivially easy, in fact that takes zero effort) but actively platforming their content, helping them to spread it around, while having to ignore the lies told at the instance admin level and all the reports about bullying behaviors and accounts who violate the existing rules of other instances, yet passing on those reports to the hexbear instance admins to do something about it, but then nothing ever gets done…

It’s like an abusive relationship - what they chose to do is on them, but our response is on us.

Btw true leftist instances exist, like slrpnk.net, and LGBTQIA+ friendly spaces, like blahaj (Ada is an outright awesome human being), it’s just that hexbear happens to claim these properties without bothering to realize that they are doing active harm to them - although in their defense, to the degree that they are aware of that fact, and care, they probably find that funny as hell. They are edgelord teenagers (of whatever physical age), pure and simple.

And when you see that, then tankie philosophy also makes a great deal more sense. That one at least has some logic behind it - which I reject, but at least it’s there. It’s not “honest” to outsiders, but it is there. Maybe. I think the logic goes: other people are dumb as shit, so it’s okay for them to be exploited - those who see through the false statements will be okay and rise to the top regardless, while those who cannot deserve their fate (literal death, and worse, slavery). Hexbears are just funning around, but real tankies are deadly serious. They too borrow the leftist language, without meaning it in the same way, but rather in the way that “everyone else should be forced, at the point of a gun/tank, to be equal, so long as I am MORE equal than them” (which I would argue is the exact opposite of leftism, but remember: if you fall for their ruse, then that’s on you, according to that philosophy, while for themselves the only thing that circumscribes their actions are defined in the language of power).

Yeah I hate that cropping effect, though both Lemmy and PieFed do a similar thing in not quite “cropping” but only showing the first image, and then when you click through to the full post you can see a second or more images. So I just get used to clicking on the image and having it render in full in its own little pop-up-like state (where it takes over the screen, but that’s more intrusive than the pop-out that Lemmy does).

I suppose it depends which communities you browse regularly - like for the main meme and shitposting comms that pretty much only ever have just the one image I see what you mean, but for comics or certain communities like tenforward there’s often a second bonus image that makes it worthwhile to have gone into the post, which I usually do anyway in order to read the comments. Lemmy’s pop-out is primarily useful when you don’t care about reading the comments at all.

Also, it looks like the blorp alternative UI (see in action at https://blorp.piefed.world/home) doesn’t crop, maybe?

I thought one of the themes was supposed to be more similar, but that wouldn’t help from an app. Yeah if that is your criteria then I guess you are stuck. Ooof, until Lemmy itself stops working on mlmym - since you mentioned it is unmaintained. Btw Lemmy 1.0 is coming out sometime soon-ish iirc, so you might be prepared with an export JSON of your settings and blocklists, just in case.

Then again, hasn’t your instance barely received any updates for a long time now? You might be on one of the very few instances that won’t have to worry about being upgraded to 1.0… but on the other hand, your instance may not survive someday either.

Oh, there is a blop alternate UI, see in use at https://blorp.piefed.world/home

In the end, you gotta stay with what works for you, for as long as you can - I get it:-).

Right, because you have alternatives to have an account on instead:-). This is an example of where divisiveness can be a good thing - we don’t all have to be on the same instance, or even using the same software, whether Lemmy vs. PieFed vs. Mbin vs. nodeBB vs. flarum (eventually), or Mastodon or Friendica, all of it can be interconnected. I would argue that this makes the Threadiverse a more interesting place to be, actually. Because I definitely would have gotten kicked off of or voluntarily left lemmy.ml long ago, if that were the only option available…

FYI, hexbear is a troll instance, and its admins have literally been caught lying to the admins of other instances. It is not their beliefs that get them defederated by other instances, but their combative and trolling behaviors that their instance admins refuse to keep constrained within their spaces.

So since they refuse to, the other instances must do the job for them. Hexbear is not nearly as bad as CSAM, but it’s a similar argument: when something is fairly wholly offensive, shouldn’t someone have the right to not have to have that content shoved into their face, without their consent?

Fwiw, instances like PieFed.zip allow federation with hexbear (and lemmygrad), but make it opt-in by initially blocking it for all users but telling users how they can remove those blocks. Hexbear in particular has earned their censure by the wider community, but this approach nonetheless allows discussions with them from their home instance. And btw nothing blocks anyone from creating a hexbear account - nobody here is talking about making them cease to exist, though offering them a platform and a full seat at the same table as everyone else, despite their refusal to play nicely with others, would be another matter altogether.

Check out communities such as Meanwhileongrad and [email protected] to learn more such details if you like.

The worry about a hard-coded list stems from Lemmy itself doing exactly that several years ago. And then when pressed, the response was:

If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.

-Nutomic

To be fair, after a huge outcry the Lemmy devs did eventually relent and removed the block. Yet somehow on hexbear and lemmygrad (see links to those in the context to this sub-thread above), Lemmy has never done anything wrong, and PieFed can never do anything right.

That’s enough reason right there for me to leave Lemmy behind. Thankfully PieFed exists or else I’d have to leave the Threadiverse altogether, and yet there will always be some who bring their false arguments around the defederation filters.

Since that time btw Lemmy has added an additional hard-coded filter that highly ironically - and hilariously to me - went even further towards propagating community lists, even while PieFed has significantly walked back its own such efforts in that regard. Not that they would ever acknowledge either of such, of course:-).

I can find the conversation with an instance admin if you like but yes, it reportedly automatically blocks those for users and provides instructions for how to remove them, making seeing their content as opt-in rather than having to be opt-out, and thus the PieFed.zip instance is truly Newbie-friendly.

Then why bring it up, if you aren’t certain? Let others who know do that? Anyway here are some details about the situation:

If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it, we will never fully remove the slur filter.

It was actually Lemmy that had a hard-coded list of banned words, and those word above are from Nutomic, except that after a huge outcry the Lemmy devs did relent.

As Skavau said there was a recent issue where new communities would not automatically be brought in, but that’s not a “block” since they can always be added manually at any time. Even so, it was hard-coded (generally never a good thing to do in code), and it wasn’t highlighted in the code to make it easier for new instance admins to see and change unless they were reading through all of the code (which I think most instance admins have been doing so far?).

So it’s not “great”, but it’s not horrendous either, unlike the true hard-coded word block done by Lemmy.

Also, PieFed recently enabled allowing the showing of deleted posts. I think it’s a bug that the OP image is still showing (when OP deletes something they should have the right to make it disappear, but conversely those conversations started by their OP yet continued by others are not their property to dispense so readily), but anyway you can read through it here: https://piefed.social/post/1623152. Note that many things have already changed since then, e.g. Lemmy has walked back its own hard-coding of another matter, the centralization of using Lemmy.ml as the sole authoritarian control source to define the list of popular communities sent out to new instances (it is still hard-coded, despite all the outcry about hard-coding when done by the PieFed devs, but at least now it provides for some alternatives), plus deleted posts are a thing now, they’ve also been changed to be allowed automatically without needing to be triggered.

The difference in handling these matters between the PieFed vs. Lemmy devs is very notable. I’m tired of how people speak as if the Lemmy devs have never done any wrong and PieFed should not exist so as to make room for Lemmy. If people want to use Lemmy, they will, but the same for Piefed? The full details are there if you want to peruse them, unlike on Lemmy where a deleted post returns an empty page that acts as if the OP never used to exist in the first place.

Not so many people use Mastodon, yet they get all excited and flock to Bluesky. It is possible to entice people to join, if they are offered something that they want. They have expressed reasons for not joining, or leaving after joining even for months, perhaps we should try to improve things so that they feel more comfortable being here?