Is there a way to shop around for a Lemmy instance based on how many instances are blocking it and how many instances it’s blocking? For example, I noticed that the lemmygrad.ml instance is relatively popular, but it seems like a lot of other instances block it. It also blocks a bunch of other instances. So, if there are any communities on there that might be relevant to me then I would be missing out. I guess I could just create an account on a walled instance, but I would prefer not to keep creating accounts. I’d like to just find one instance that maximizes my access. Is the answer to just run my own instance?
Edit: apparently lemmygrad is much worse than I realized
The only caveat I have to this is that being communist shouldn’t be an automatic block. Lemmy.ml doesn’t block lemmygrad and I see no reason why it should, the posts I see are like “wow capitalism is fucking us up” not like “Tiananmen did nothing wrong and let’s repeat it x1000” so it really doesn’t seem comparable to proactively blocking Nazis. If you block “both sides” of a violent conflict like, say, the war in Ukraine, you’ve suddenly blocked everyone with a useful opinion.
I saw a lot of tianamen didn’t happen, CCP worship, etc on there for the first few days after I registered, which is a bit problematic.
I wound up blocking them after a couple days, more because I don’t care about a tiny fringe movement (in my country), and don’t have any interest in their content.
lemmy.ml is also run by communists, as are quite a few other instances, I imagine. No one’s really saying that communists should be blocked.
But lemmygrad is specifically a vanguard edgelord site. Even those of us who are communists don’t necessarily want to deal witih /c/GenZedong.
Plus, I left the instance I host for me and my friends open to lemmygrad, and I had people from the server create accounts and just bulk subscribe to communities there.
It’s not the communism people are blocking it for.
Lemmygrad isn’t blocked because of their views, it’s blocked because it’s a massive troll farm. the posts that you see don’t include the replies they make to posts which they deem not communist enough, where they sealion and argue in bad faith until the op is driven out
And that doesn’t apply to liberals and every other ideology on this site? Every person has a political view which affects their opinions
if a liberal/anarchist/not-ML instance popped up and started behaving like Lemmygrad does, they’d get mass-defederated too. like i said, it’s not their views they got defederated for, it’s their behavior
Behaviour like what though? Disagreeing? I don’t even know what ‘sealioning’ means, it basically seems like just saying ‘this person has different fundamental assumptions to me therefore they’re acting in bad faith’.
Lemmygrad has a history of brigading communities, targeted harassment towards admins and prolific political posters, and as i mentioned before, sealioning (defined by Wikipedia as “a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (‘I’m just trying to have a debate’), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter”)
But how do you differentiate ‘brigading’ from just being outside the ideological orthodox of a given community? Shouldn’t bad actors just be banned personally?
they mass-report and/or mass-downvote people they don’t see as communist enough and drown out any good-faith discussion in the comments
How is that any different from what I’ve been saying? Liberals from beehaw also have ‘mass downvoted’ people for being communist or pro China etc, but does that mean everyone from that community should be blocked? As for good faith discussion you’re just defining comments you don’t agree with as being inherently bad faith. I mean I’m sure there’s some comments just like ‘kill yourself lol’ that are completely without merit but like I said it just seems like an instinctual anti communist reaction.
Well I haven’t been on this site for very long so maybe I’ll see what you mean eventually. I still think it’s best in general to not fracture this already-tiny community though.
To be fair it’s not like I know what lemmygrad does, I only joined yesterday, but it just seems like typical ‘tankiephobia’, I don’t exactly agree with MLs on everything either but some of what they get accused of is just beyond the pale. I mean generally if someone is a western liberal they don’t get endlessly accused of being a mass war crime apologist even though that’s basically what the ‘war on terror’ was.
Have you read Lemmygrad’s sidebar at all? They describe themselves as Tienanmen Square truthers, are openly pro-DPRK, and fully support genocide in the name of Communism. They exemplify everything bad people say about tankies and they take great pride in it.
Wanting to cut out tankies and Nazis is NOT being a radical centrist who wants to “both sides” every issue, it’s just being a normal human being who doesn’t have bees in their head.
Ahh no I access Lemmy via the mobile app. Thanks for the information, I’ll be blocking them.