So in light of finding out that I can’t block an instance as a user, I am trying to find an instance that actually suits me better. Specifically I do not want to see anything relating to lemmygrad.ml and from what I can see, the main instances that block lemmygrad are lemmy.one which isn’t accepting new applications and beehaw which, while I don’t mind interacting with their instance at all, I don’t wish to join it for a couple reasons. There are others like midwest.social but I don’t live near there and while I know it is open to people that don’t live there it doesn’t exactly seem like where I would want to make an account that I plan on actually using.
So if I’m not mistaken, my options are basically to stay on lemmy.ml and deal with having to see posts and comments from lemmygrad.ml users, go to beehaw which I also don’t want to do, make a new instance for myself which I’m not going to do, or just leave and come back later when there are actually options that suit me better. Does that sound about right?
Or sopuli.xyz which has lemmygrad blocked.
Slrpnk.net is blocking lemmygrad, but I closed registrations until I moved the server to my own hardware. Maybe later next week I can reopen it.
I appreciate the information. I’ll keep an eye out for when registrations are available again.
Migration is complete and registrations are open again (with admin approval).
May I ask what happened to your plan regarding moving to Kbin? It probably does not make sense to accept new accounts when they are wiped again soon.
It is/was an idea, not a precise plan, mainly born out of some frustrations with Lemmy. It is still a consideration, but for now I think kbin is undergoing too many changes for it to make sense to switch right now. But since I want/need to switch servers right now and not in half a year or so I think I’ll stay with Lemmy and to be honest once I have everything setup and working with Lemmy on my own server I’ll probably be too lazy to switch again 😅
Relatable
You could fire up your own instance and curate it how you see fit.
How does one do this? I think it’s time for a YouTube session. I’m hunting art related communities
just join midwest.social or feddit.de, it doesn’t matter that much which server you’re on. Both have lemmygrad blocked.
May i ask what your reasons for not signing up at beehaw were? I’m still making up my mind. The main reason i went for it (besides one of the owners being very verbal about their philosophy), was that it has some size, which gave me trust that it would not suddenly disappear together with all their user accounts and content. Account migration sadly is missing which is a curious omittance. PM welcome if you so wish.
On Mastodon, there’s general agreement that better account migration is vital but it hasn’t been prioritized over the last seeral years (although at least you can take followers with you). One of the factor is that the Mastodon dev team also runs the flagship instance, from which a lot of people would migrate it if were probably easier … so at some level it’s not that surprising they haven’t prioritized it. We’ll see what happens here.
Out of curiosity, what’s the beehaw philosophy that they’re so open about?
My bad, took the wrong English word. It should be verbose not verbal. I found the approach attractive, to address the issue of people camouflaging hostility as rational discussion, when they are actually following antagonistic believe systems. As from the first “philosophy” post linked from their sidebar:
What is Beehaw?
Beehaw is a Community
A few thoughts on Beehaw’s design
At the time of this writing, though, i have already changed to a different server, because i got it that the place is going to attract a US-of-A style ryrannic PC mob which will exert its own hostility, in their need for a safe space, believing a demand for “niceness” masking – whatever that means will not be up to discussion – will do. An echochamber that i will not be part of. The most fun moments on Reddit are often not so very “nice” but rather dirty and snarky. :-)Thanks very much!
Beehaw is blocking lemmygrad, they’re federated with lemmy.ml which is federated with lemmygrad, though.
I’m a member of the lemmygrad instance and I don’t think I’ve see any content from beehaw, so you should be good over there.
Edit: Okay, I can confirm you cannot see any content from users in a blocked instance. I just looked at this thread from slrpnk.net and you cannot see my comment. And I also just read that you didn’t want to join beehaw. What’s wrong with beehaw?
What’s worse, or maybe not worse but more detrimental, is that you can’t see chains of comments on replies to a lemmygrad user. I have this account on lemmy.ml and there was a thread about the UI that I commented in from my lemmy.ml account where I replied to another lemmy.ml user, who had replied to a lemmygrad user. Looking at that post on sopuli.xyz and beehaw.org both my comment and the other lemmy.ml user’s comment were not visible on sopuli or beehaw because they were nested comments to the lemmygrad user.
It’s really bad for lemmy that individual users don’t have the ability to block instances so that these instances could federate with lemmygrad again.
It is a shame. I was trying to help OP out, but I think they might have blocked me individually, maybe through a mass ban of individuals in a thread they found on lemmygrad. As for the instances that have already blocked us, it’s unlikely they will ever federate with us again.
Perhaps the devs could implement a “soft” ban as an alternative to outright removal from federation. Censoring a comment or thread created by a user from the targeted instance with a confirmation click to view. I’m sure a lot of these QoL features will be added when the devs get through the enormous backlog, which has only been growing larger due to the influx of new users.
As for the instances that have already blocked us, it’s unlikely they will ever federate with us again.
I could see that being the case only because they would likely get a huge influx of people complaining even if a feature was introduced to allow individual users to block, the mods/admins of that instance would have to keep replying to people telling them how to block the instance. But I do think many instances reluctantly did it because there was not really any other option and I think if such an option were ever added those admins would rather not de-federate for content purposes because it sets a bad precedent. I bet most instance admins don’t want to have to keep blocking other instances because of differences of opinion type things.
An option to exclude an instance’s posts from the front page but leave comments untouched would be ideal
I didn’t block you. I just didn’t feel the need to respond. My original purpose for the post was about finding an instance that better suited me and you offered suggestions that showed you didn’t read the post and then when you realized afterwards, the only question that I could have possibly wanted to respond to was why I didn’t want to join beehaw which isn’t relevant to why I made the post and I don’t feel the need to justify. The answer could be “I don’t like the little bee mascot guy” (it isn’t) and I would be perfectly justified in my reasoning. I don’t particularly feel like arguing about why I do or do not wish to join beehaw, hence I didn’t respond.
I guess you could just go through all the communities on their and block them manually. There’s only like a dozen
There are currently 500 communities on lemmygrad. And that would also require me to keep up with any new communities that are created to block them as well. And does nothing for blocking comments.
you don’t have to block all of them at once, just keep blocking everytime you find a new one and eventually they’ll be all gone :)
I don’t think comments from lemmygrad’s users should be a problem since they must follow the community rules. If you find an annoying user just block them, annoying users will exist in any instance, unfortunately
I believe that there is a desire that individuals and groups of individuals have to not have to interact with or even view comments of another community. Currently, only communities are able to actually make that desire a reality. If it was good enough to simply ignore all of the comments and pretend like they aren’t there and block every community that I see pop up then why even allow instances to block other instances? They could do the same thing. But of course it makes sense to be able to block other instances because from a UX point of view the user has some desire for a functionality and so the functionality is added. And just like groups of individuals can have a desire to not interact with another community, a single individual can also not want to interact with that other community. Why should I have to deal with constantly blocking new communities and trying to just ignore comments in order to use the site? I would rather just not use the site at all.
In the short time that I have been here I have seen multiple arguments in the comment sections that have arisen as a result of (in my opinion) lemmygrad users instigating those arguments. I don’t want to be even tempted to join into these arguments by seeing that they exist. And even if I do ignore them all and don’t get rage baited, knowing that they are there has the potential to negatively affect my mood. I will not do that and it would be silly to think that I am alone in feeling like this. Assuming there are waves of people coming from reddit many others will feel this way also and it absolutely will be one of many obstacles that make large scale adoption a challenge.
In the short time that I have been here I have seen multiple arguments in the comment sections that have arisen as a result of (in my opinion) lemmygrad users instigating those arguments. I don’t want to be even tempted to join into these arguments by seeing that they exist. And even if I do ignore them all and don’t get rage baited, knowing that they are there has the potential to negatively affect my mood. I will not do that and it would be silly to think that I am alone in feeling like this. Assuming there are waves of people coming from reddit many others will feel this way also and it absolutely will be one of many obstacles that make large scale adoption a challenge.
To counter that, I’ve seen plenty of lemmygrad users that were friendly and helpful.
I think the thing you have pointed out about users not having more control over instances has created some tension that probably bleeds over into how users interact with each other. You have users who are trying to avoid lemmygrad in their content feeds, which is fine, but have to be very vocal about it in order to get instances to block or remove federation linking with lemmygrad to better match the content these users want to see, even if lemmygrad users aren’t breaking any rules. For lemmygrad users, that seems kinda unfair that they’re getting excluded from federation simply because people don’t see eye to eye with their world view and don’t want to see much of the content they post regarding their worldviews. The lack of control given to users to block an instance quietly causes tension that shouldn’t need to be there.
I’m saying this as someone who actually went through the effort of blocking most of the active communities on lemmygrad, so I also don’t particularly want to see the content but I so far haven’t felt like I had a problem with seeing comments from users on lemmygrad. I would much rather have had the option to just block the instance with a single click than spend more time having to find and block numerous communities.
I really don’t even have a problem with seeing that particular ideology or perspective in content feeds, I don’t like echo chambers so I’d rather get some exposure to different ideas and content even if I don’t particularly agree with it rather than having some algorithm drive me into an echo chamber that causes problems in society and on a personal level mental health problems for people. But at the same time, I think that makes me not very fond of an instance that is centered around that identity, I think it encourages poor thought formation and poor personal growth for people to focus too much on what their identity is rather than just address individual ideas as they come on their own merit.
Edit to add: I’m no coder but I at least looked this up on github and here’s the issue. https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2397 In that particular open issue it didn’t show support from nutomic or dessalines, but you can see there was a closed issue mentioned in there where dessalines did voice support for the idea. Only problem is there is 163 open issues with varying degrees of priority, and that one has already been open for a long time so it seems like it is considered lower priority than some other issues. Maybe if more contributors hop in it might get addressed.
I understand not wanting to be in an echo chamber and exposing myself to things outside of my bubble. That’s precisely why I want to be able to sort by all. I didn’t want to discuss specifics for the sake of not starting an argument (I’d much rather just block the instance altogether than even have this conversation) however, I do not want to interact with people who actively and openly support North Korea taking over South Korea and think Stalin was a swell guy. My beliefs are fundamentally incompatible with people like that even though my interactions with them may not always be inherently bad. If I go out in public and a Nazi holds the door for me, he is clearly trying to do something good in that moment. But quite frankly I’d MUCH rather not have to exist anywhere near that Nazi whether or not he is being nice to me in that moment. I feel the same way about people that think North Korea has a right to the entire Korean peninsula.
ETA: and to be clear, my issues with lemmygrad don’t end at their support of North Korea and Stalin. Those are just two examples I gave (with North Korea making me feel especially strongly). So please don’t try to argue the actual points of those two things. I have a fundamental disagreement with their philosophy that extends into many areas of discussion. I did go to lemmygrad and spent some some time reading through a bunch of communities and threads so I’m not just basing it off of one guy or something.
I don’t disagree with your points or perspective, personally I didn’t bother investigating much of the viewpoints in the communities on lemmygrad to the degree that you did. Mostly I knew it was more based around communism and beyond that I wasn’t necessarily interested in specifically what the communities were about.
My mention of echo chamber was not to criticize you for wanting to exclude, which is why I mentioned I had already blocked their communities. It was more of a general statement about how I blocked them, but overall my intention isn’t to just block everything I disagree with and put myself in an echo chamber. But what you described is why I was comfortable blocking it without doing the investigation you did. Because I saw on join lemmy that the instance was specifically labeled as “a collection of Marxist communities” and I disagree with the notion that people should collect together or identify collectively in that way because it often leads to the type of activity or thinking you described you encountered. People often begin to allow their identity to tell them what to think about something or view about something and in an echo chamber of other people doing that in my opinion it often ends up becoming like the flanderized characters on shows that run too long. It usually is something like ‘I’m an artist, so obviously I take the side of whatever I think most aligns with what I think being an artist is because it reinforces to me that I’m an artist’ and people don’t even consciously realize that they’re doing it. That’s a lot how flanderization of characters works. So without diving into lemmygrad, I could reasonably guess that the type of content or viewpoints you described would exist there because I understand how humans who gather together around identities end up behaving.
As far as Nazi’s holding the door or whatever the case is, if someone who identifies as a Nazi is capable of respectful and responsible behavior in public and follows all the rules of being out in public, then why should I restrict them from going out in public? Mind you I know you didn’t say you wanted to restrict them, I’m not claiming that was your argument, but if we try to compare it to IRL then generally speaking either you have to inconvenience yourself to avoid a Nazi in public, or you have to restrict a Nazi from going out in public to avoid them, there’s no realistic way to do it otherwise for IRL. Now on the internet, there’s an expectation that there is a middle ground because it’s not bound by the same limitations of real life and I think that’s what you’re saying that you’re wanting. Again, I also blocked their communities so I don’t think it’s crazy to want that, but the development of the platform is starting from scratch and as I mentioned in my other comment, there is an open issue for it on github but it could take time before it gets implemented.
I don’t know that there’s really much more to say on it other than dessalines seemed to OK the idea, and there’s sort of a “plan” for it to be implemented in that there’s an open issue on github, and all anyone can do is either be a developer and code the solution themselves, or wait patiently for someone else to do it. Beyond that, in the meantime the only other thing you can do is sign up on an instance that is not federated with lemmygrad. Sopuli.xyz and feddit.de were some others mentioned that aren’t federated with lemmygrad.
Yeah, we’re essentially in complete agreement. As far the irl Nazi example, I know it isn’t a perfect analogy because as you mention it isn’t possible to avoid that physical interaction unless I either avoid meeting them by restricting myself or by restricting them. To be clear, if I knew that there was a Nazi where I wanted to go then I would happily restrict myself by not going there to avoid them. Do I think that Nazis and their ideals should be openly shunned and even restricted in our society? Absolutely. But in the moment when I have to choose whether or not to approach them I am still happy to go out of my way to avoid them despite I not thinking that should have to in an ideal world. But I digress, irl and online are two different environments with very different rules that limit how they can work as well as different social norms. Fortunately, an online environment does allow me to choose who I want to interact with more easily without restricting myself or the other party as much typically.
I understand that up until now it’s been a pretty small community with a small team of devs devoting their time to it and that things take time to implement. I’m not in any way trying to say that the devs should have already done this or that I expect it to be done in a week or anything like that. I just want my frustrations and feedback to be known so that priorities can be adjusted if necessary depending on how many people agree with me. And if it was an active decision to not allow users to block instances to have that decision reconsidered hopefully.
If I can’t find a solution to my problem and there is no interest in creating a solution for an extended period of time then maybe the community just isn’t for me and that’s perfectly okay. I don’t have any illusions that things should always work the way that I want. But if widespread adoption is something that this community is interested in then feedback like this is extremely important I think. Other people will feel the same way as me. I don’t know how many but certainly a percentage of the people that come from reddit will feel this way. And if there is no solution in sight then they will consider leaving just like I am.
I don’t want to be even tempted to join into these arguments by seeing that they exist. And even if I do ignore them all and don’t get rage baited, knowing that they are there has the potential to negatively affect my mood.
that’s fair!
joining a instance that fits you is surely always the right thing to do. But remember that it’s also possible to find rude discussions in others instances, so don’t hesitate to use the block bottom.
I also recommend to disable the upvotes score visibility at the settings, it can help a lot on reducing social media anxiety
well anyway, welcome to lemmy :)
I understand that people can be rude in any instance. I just believe that there is such a large fundamental difference in philosophy between myself and lemmygrad that it will lead to a much larger percentage of things that I don’t want to see. I’m not afraid to use the block button when I feel like it. I just don’t want to have to do it all the time when I could easily take care of most of my problem by blocking the instance.
I appreciate your friendly demeanor and advice of disabling upvote visibility but I don’t really mind that at all. It’s not so much social media anxiety in the same way that me not wanting to see a Nazi when I go out in public isn’t social anxiety, it’s just me not liking Nazis.
I can make no promises about longevity or anything else, since I’m really just dipping my toes into federated social media personally, but the instance I host currently blocks lemmygrad.ml and is open to signups.
I appreciate the heads up. I just applied to slrpnk.net which also blocks lemmygrad.ml so I should be good for now hopefully.
It won’t help with comments from users, but you can just filter by posts from communities you subscribe to can’t you?
Sure, but I’d like to be able to filter by all as well on occasion to see what the rest of the community is talking about in much the same way that on reddit I sometimes only look at my subscribed subreddits but sometimes use r/popular.
And as you say it won’t help with comments and from what I can tell after even a short time here, it isn’t uncommon to see lemmygrad users in comments on lemmy.ml so even if I were to only use local/subscribed I would still see content that I don’t want to see by staying here. That could potentially be a temporary solution but clearly means that lemmy.ml is not the right instance for me. I think I might rather just leave Lemmy altogether until there is more adoption and therefore somewhere that suits me better.
