You will notice that users from those so-called “blocked” instances can still:

1. respond to your comments
2. vote on your content
3. send you DMs
4. which are allowed to trigger notifications
5. post in your communities
6. etc.

What it blocks:

1. you from seeing communities housed on those instances (even if posted from people on other instances)

In short it should have been named a “community mute” rather than an “instance block”. The best way to block an entire instance frankly is to switch from Lemmy to PieFed. Otherwise there is only a tiny minority of apps (Sync and Connect iirc) that will offer that - the rest merely connect you to the same misnamed instance block (but actually no and rather community muting) feature inbuilt into Lemmy, unless you start to get into things like hacking your feed with a browser plugin to filter users from instances that you want blocked.

I see. I once petitioned Discuss.Online to defederate from both hexbear.net (trolls) and Lemmy.ml (tankies) - and it had already done so from Lemmygrad.ml. Unfortunately, nearly every single instance across the entire Threadiverse federates with lemmy.ml. I think that it should be opt-in for new users, but since those admins are also the main devs for the Lemmy codebase, obviously that will never happen.

Lemmy itself is a Nazi (actually tankie) bar. PieFed is far less so, but still it federates with lemmy.ml so technically we are as well. By virtue of being here you and I are tainted by association with it. But, in this community, both of us on different PieFed instances, not so much?

Db0 more so than most then, since they offered that endorsement and did not subsequently retract it. Also, some instances have switched from Lemmy to PieFed, while they have not. So, they do seem more okay with federating with tankies than most other instances, on the spectrum, I will grant you that.

I understand what you meant about the half pregnant option, and on that I disagree. Someone could have 50% likelihood of being pregnant, or be 50% along the projected timeline (or looking back after birth, someone could more definitively call the 50% progress marker), or weirder effects like a fetus could be stillborn so necrotic tissue exists like a pregnancy, but also is not alive like a pregnancy, so matches in some respects while differing in others. Life is rarely so easily categorized into binary options.

Db0 is not perfect, nor am I or you, but they are a far cry from what lemmy.ml is, which itself is also a far cry from what Lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net are.

I’ll take it! (The excuse, the pets, the puppy, take your own pick there which it is and I’ll accept it!)

Mostly the context here is that it is something that people report as their reason for giving up on the Threadiverse. In that sense, it even being true or not is irrelevant in that it is a problem that substantially hinders growth either way.

That said, I do sadly think it is true. I often block communities where this happens but whenever I take a peek at them anyway I see daily calls for actual murder even in like meme communities. Separately from the utility of such actions, it becomes wearisome to always have to read or be forced to block the vast majority of the Threadiverse in order to avoid such. Case in point: 🌽 (an effort to fight against all the doom and gloom USA politics posting).

Edit: but here is a test that you can do. Imagine you are a mainstream normie user, scroll through All or better yet just go straight to !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net and reply to a comment there something to the effect that things were slightly better under Biden’s presidency than under Trump. When I said something the tiniest bit positive (something like at least he lowered gas prices and that was something), I got replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, long after I stopped responding. And then I did the same thing in a community on lemmygrad.ml. After which I nearly gave up on Lemmy entirely, because it simply wasn’t fun (or worthwhile to me).

Now arguably that is not so much my fault, nor theirs either as that is the purpose of that community and they should be free to do as they please? The issue there - setting aside for a moment the most major considerations of an echo chamber effect where edgelords are encouraged to spill their vitriol rather than speak in a more measured capacity - seems to me to be a mismatch between the usual expectations of someone new coming over from the likes of Reddit, Threads/Facebook, etc. Getting dunked on when you never had an opportunity to read the community sidebar text (Lemmy won’t show it, if you arrive at the post via All, plus many apps seem to go to some lengths to actively hide it behind like 5 clicks in various sub-menus) is not a pleasant experience, and when you see that >90% of posts on Lemmy, if they are not Linux or anime or furry, are related to politics especially USA politics, then I can well understand why someone new does not want to dig through all that trash just to find something worthwhile to read.

Face it: setting aside a superior protocol, what actual content do we have here, that would entice someone to come her from Reddit? We are toxic, and the tools are not easy to use. (… YET! Though PieFed is changing all of that, e.g. the introductory wizard for new users, yay!) Which is why defederating from places like Hexbear is something I strongly support, thereby making it opt-in rather than forcing people to try to find a way to make it opt-out (which on Lemmy is impossible - there is no true instance block, only a horribly misnamed community muting option, which blocks only the tiniest portion of the content from an instance, i.e. it does not in fact block it at all.)

Except lacking notification that your content was removed. And a mod mail to ask questions about why. Together that makes lemmy.ml even more authoritarian than Reddit! (For an instance owner Lemmy offers freedom, but for an end-user not so much.)

Also it’s missing polls. And user and post flairs. And multi-communities. And… well, need I go on? (PieFed has all of these already btw.)

No cap _{available, apparently}

What happened to jeans 👖? Do they lie forgotten in the dustbin of Lemmy history?

Still cute though 🐕🐶

Perhaps it’s because I am on PieFed.social and you are on PieFed.zip… somehow?

If you ever have the misfortune of having to communicate with the Sealion Cowbee, you will understand. Arguing with people who ignore 99.9% of what you said, just to hyper focus on just asking a question (which you already answered) just isn’t my idea of a good time. Also, why hold knowledge hostage by saying “DM me and I’ll hook you up with an answer bro, I swear!” I don’t need to walk into any dark alleyways to find my knowledge, thank you very much - I’d much rather stay in the daylight where everyone can criticize an obviously (even/especially not to me) incorrect statement.

Yeah, I think Meanwhile on Grad is a bit much, but other communities don’t want to repeat information so keep pointing people to post new instances of admin abuse there rather than repeat the same tired old stories over and over again everywhere else across the Threadiverse. Examples include !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com, which helpfully keeps communities accountable from mods who run amok, and !fediverselore@lemmy.ca that closed down after Trump won the USA election. But on the other hand, even though everyone on the Threadiverse already knows about the abuses and deceptive practices of the infamous Lemmy.ml devs, hence we don’t want to keep hearing about them, nonetheless new people still occasionally come along who need a reference, so Meanwhile on Grad is helpful for that reason.

If you have evidence of people using alts to manipulate votes, please post it in yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com. Using alts is common though - and prior to PieFed software there were extremely good reasons to do so, given the limitations of Lemmy - so long as you are careful to not ever vote on the same content multiple times.

spicy peppers are gross in a fruit cake.

This is 100% it exactly: you can do whatever you please, be maga okay sure, be pro-genocide even, whatever so long as you don’t push me to do it too - but don’t shit in my drink and call it chocolate. Transparency is key. I don’t mind lemmy.ml tankies doing their thing on the internet, so long as they clearly label what it is then that’s fine. It’s the lack of transparency that makes it disinformation.

I almost left the Threadiverse entirely, for being far too toxic.

Thankfully, PieFed exists, with the capability to block whole entire instances (Lemmy’s is not a true block - users can still comment, vote on your content, DM you, which triggers notifications, etc. - that “community morning (edit: muting, for those who enjoy proper spelling)” is horribly misnamed as an “instance block” that barely “blocks” anything).

That will never happen, and if you want to find out why, listen to the complaints that people make over on r/RedditAlternatives.

Chief among them are (1) tankie devs, (2) too political, and (3) too toxic. To see what they mean, try Google search (what a typical mainstream normie would use) for the word “Lemmy”, which nowadays takes you to Lemmy.world but for the longest time went to Lemmy ml. Which by default to a user without a login shows Local posts rather than Global.

Now imagine what that looks like just before an election in a Western nation… and you can entirely understand why members of Western capitalist, democratic nations, do not feel welcomed in a space that constantly jokes about murdering or at least cheering on the mass deaths of people that fit exactly that description. No I don’t (just) mean billionaires - I mean anyone who participates in usual society.

We who use blocklists forget what the experience looks like to an outside, traditional mainstream user.

Lemmy will continue to shrink, and the user base mostly seems either outright pleased or at least resigned to that fact. If you are not, then good luck being a part of the change that you want to see - which you already are, just by having chosen a PieFed (rather than Lemmy) instance!:-)

Edit: to add one more point, it is the Paradox of Intolerance, or another name for it is the Nazi bar effect. Imagine asking your Jewish friends to join you in the corner of a known Nazi bar where you hand out. Yes you can walk past all the actual, literal Nazis and enjoy your little corner apart from them… but do not be so surprised if your friends refuse to join you there?

Is cm0002 the avowed voat user? I tried to search for cases where that account used the word “voat”, but mainly it was in the context of a Nazi bar whereupon tankie instances seem akin to a leftist Voat 2.0.

It was exploding-heads.com that was defederated from, by almost every instance across the entire Threadiverse.

Lemmy.ml on the other hand is the opposite in that it is defederated from by almost no (major) instances.

It - we shouldn’t think of it as “she” - was basically liquid metal on top of a metal endoskeleton, controlled by a (fictional ofc) true AGI. So inside the movie, all of that liquid is there to do with as it pleased.

Then the film makers surely did whatever was most cost-effective to engender that illusory effect:-).

Omg I loled so hard at this! 🤣

Thank you. I wonder how long ago that endorsement was made though? Lemmy.ml was one of the oldest instances - I think Hexbear technically predates them but in the sense of using a different software than Lemmy, and similarly for dbzer0 (who iirc used a forum software that was not federated). If the sole options are Reddit vs. Lemmy, then you take what you can get.

Study the history a bit: those truly were different times. Like for one thing, Lemmy.world did not exist, so virtually all communities were on Lemmy.ml. Since then Lemmy.ml has been relegated to almost obscurity, but back then was a very different story… Comics, Memes, News, everything was on lemmy.ml, before it was as widely known about their moderation practices - in large part bc the admins kept that as an echo chamber, silencing any dissent with full instance-wide perma-bans, so it is entirely plausible that many people simply did not know what it was all about.

Also, there was the whole distraction issue where it was “claimed” that the most extremist leftist stuff was relegated over to lemmygrad.ml, which while true, should not be taken at face value when considering just how much extremism remains. But, at the time… I could see someone believing that misinformation, for being plausible in that context.

Fwiw I agree with you that they would have done better to have simply said nothing, but also I agree with dbzer0 in that narrowly within just the reasons they stipulated, Lemmy.ml in its earlier days truly was like that. No I wasn’t here for that, I just found it interesting to poke around to read older posts about the history of things:-).

These are all true statements (and to this day there are communities of expert systems especially that refuse to migrate away from Lemmy.ml - oh well, their loss as the rest of us refuse to be held hostage by their poor choices):

• pirate cove
• develops lemmy frontends
• lemmy development
• expert sysadmins

You might ask dbzer0 if they still endorse Lemmy.ml tankies in today’s environment, or are there any more recent statements that they’ve already put out? Anyway, I agree that this is not a high moment for them - I’m just not sure it’s all that terribly low either, as it would be if they did such today.

Edit: also it’s crucial to note there that an “endorsement” does not mean “you should totally go create an account over there”, but rather “I would like my instance to federate with this instance, as its users serve up worthwhile content that I would like to participate with” - so not quite the same meaning as the word “endorse” would typically imply.

You may be conflating several things. For one, no Lemmy.ml is not defederated from PieFed.social (see its presence in the allow list at https://lemmy.ml/instances). There are some issues with things like community discovery across the Lemmy vs. PieFed divide but the federation itself works just fine.

Two, you are actually banned from MANY communities there (I stopped counting at 6, though at least one has since expired). Unlike Reddit, there is no method for Lemmy to actually notify you that you are banned, you kinda just have to figure it out yourself somehow. And then there’s no mod mail to appeal or even ask questions about it - you exist at the mercy of the mods and admins, with no rights for anyone to notify or explain anything to you, yes somehow even more so here than on Reddit (at least our landlords here are nicer, plus you can spin up your own personal instance if you like, PieFed makes that a lot cheaper and easier). See your bans at https://lemmy.ml/modlog?page=1&actionType=ModBanFromCommunity&userId=17651002, and if you change the settings you can also see e.g. your removed content.

Three, your negative comments tend to only trigger issuance of a ban when they are made specifically in a community located on Lemmy.ml, as they do not check across the entire Threadiverse for content elsewhere. But if your comments were there, then I don’t know why you were not banned - this would be the first story I’ve heard of someone getting away with having done so. Maybe you made them in posts that got removed or mostly ignored by the community and therefore the admins missed you? There are so extremely many stories of people that were not missed in !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works if you want to read about it happening to others.