What instances do you block and/or contain the most trolls?
I found that things became much more pleasant on here when I blocked hexbear.
I recently blocked lemmy.ml as well, but I may reverse that if I find that I'm missing too much good content.
I'm open to other ideas on how to mostly avoid people who love conflict or argue in bad faith.
I blocked hexbear and lemmygrad to stop the firehose of kremlin/beijing propaganda cluttering up my feed and that made my lemmy experience worlds better. There's only so many times you can read "special military operation" used unironically..
Lemmy.ml and hexbear were the first two I blocked and have zero regrets.
I blocked a few others because the content didn't interest me and my preference is to browse on All instead of Subscribed so I can find content in communities I did not know existed. For example I blocked lemmynsfw because I didn't want the content to come up while browing in public.
I wish there was an additional option to block all users of an instance separate from the instance block that applies to communities.
Not to kinkshame/judge (while judging) but lemmynsfw is super weird. There's like 50 celebrity or more communities all ran by one guy who uploads like one picture or 50 in a row. I just browse by all but the NSFW filter protects me from seeing a celebrity every 10th post.
I wish there was an additional option to block all users of an instance separate from the instance block that applies to communities.
I have thought about that and wondered: how would child comments under a blocked user be handled? If I was on Instance_A and able to block Instance_B to no longer see comments from those users, what about the other Instance_A users (who have not blocked Instance_B) who reply to Instance_B comments on an Instance_A thread? Would I still see those Instance_A comments, and the Instance_B comments in the comment chain just appear blank or something? Or would the entire comment chain, starting at the Instance_B comment, just not get displayed to you at all?
I just blocked individual hexbear and lemmygrad users that were annoying (posting pig anuses or dogpiling/gish galloping/whatabouting). Took a lot of blocking, but a few hundred blocks later later, most of the hexbears and tankies left are pretty chill. I don't want to end up in a bubble and only hear opinions I already agree with. I think I did block one far right instance entirely, cause I don't value the ideas of bigots and fascists. Can't remember who it was though.
I don’t want to end up in a bubble and only hear opinions I already agree with. I think I did block one far right instance entirely, cause I don’t value the ideas of bigots and fascists.
I've blocked both of those (or rather, my instance doesn't federate with them at all). At first I missed some of the FOSS communities on .ml but quickly found alternatives elsewhere. There were a few threads in either [email protected] or maybe [email protected] that discussed alternatives to some of those.
I also block HilariousChaos since it's a direct successor to Exploding Heads.
Beyond that, I tend to only block the problematic ones that cater to hate speech/bigotry/etc. I think your home instance (LW) already blocks most of those as well.
You should block Hexbear because its just a broad daylight CCP advocate forum trying to incite political extremism and violence in English speaking countries.
Lemmy ml isn't all bad but they federate and align themselves closely with Hexbear.
I don't know how to block a whole instance, but in reality I've only seen the communities that I've subscribed to and some other lame stuff.. I've blocked all the shitty specific meme communities and web comics though. Call me a cynic.
I have a huge number of content filters, basically stopping just short of blocking the words "left" and "right" but trying to block everything else political.
What I wish I could find a way to do is pick by post language - I have nothing against a user/community, I just don't speak (usually) German.
I don't block hexbear or ml because I like seeing their takes. Even if I disagree with them most of the time, it makes me think about my opinion more critically.
I do block certain communities and anyone who posts PPB.
Thanks for not putting blinders on. I was actually banned by hexbear for not being leftist enough but I still make it a point to seek out perspectives that differ from the censorship-happy tribalist hivemind on world. Communist leopards have yet to eat my face contrary to what the libs on world might have me believe. :)
I definitely agree with this. I signed up with ml just because it was a big instance and generally found it confusing when first setting up an account. So far I think it's worked out because they have good up time and haven't insulated themselves too much compared to a lot of instances that will defederate at the drop of a hat. Hexbear can be hard to read at times because many users can turn so hateful so quickly, but I do think their perspective can be at the very least interesting even when it is clearly misguided.
I do strongly dislike that every large instance has formed its own stereotype and opinions are immediately dismissed if they are coming from an instance that is stereotyped as having 'bad options'.
Politics and News on .world. They seem to think that everyone that doesn't agree wholeheartedly with whatever their politicians say is a fascist. They're unable to discern left from right.
It's also neato how whenever I take issue with FlyingSquid or Roki, both mods, my posts are soon voted to exactly -10. Lazy coders.
Sounds like it, squid acts an 80's movie mall cop. So him having alt accounts to downvoted people wouldn't surprise me. I banned him a few weeks ago. My feed immediately improved.
I think it might be because I rarely get to the point where im on new all. I think my instance does not block much of anything or at least its statement implied such.
I used a three-strike rule when I first landed here.
As in; deny a genocide or uplift an authoritarian despot 3x and your community can go fuck it's own face.
Took 2 weeks before I stopped seeing hexbear and .ml.
I don't block any instances, though I am rather happy that .world decided to defederate with hexbear and .grad. I'm not so bothered by .ml, while they can be a little annoying sometimes, they're at least usually able to carry on a semi-intelligent conversation. Usually anyway.
That might explain it then. Everybody's talking about blocking hexbear, and I've never had any idea what they were talking about, but I'm on .world, so I guess it's already blocked for me.
I use world now instead of blahaj just cause I'm a weirdo. But hexbear was federated with blahaj and their users/admins are super irresponsible and rude and called a blahaj admin transphobic
I only block users when they directly harrass me. I don't really care if we disagree but if you're following me around to different threads. You're getting blocked.
I was drawn into a discussion with a group of people from hexbear, who decided that since I didn't agree with them a full 100%, that I then had to be treated as a troll just because I registered my account with lemmy.zip.
I took a long time to finally get them convinced that I may be one of the good ones, I decided that I didn't want to have to do that again and blocked the instance.
I have a huge blocklist of instances and communities, I generally only browse All, so I see it all, unless I block it.
I mostly block non English or Swedish instances/communities, but I have plenty of blocks of instances/communities that I either find annoying or disagree with.
I don't block instances, just communities and users. This way I can still get the good content. Overall, ml, grad, and hexbear were the main ones where I'd block the most, but it's definitely world now, especially blocking users and mods. A lot of trolls and reddit-style mods cropping up from there.
Yeah, world was the primary landing spot for most last July (myself included) from Reddit. It's also hosts many of the most popular communities. So it's not surprising.
I tend to block folks who spampost the same content three to four (up to 50) times, as this messes up my All experience, then those weird nearly CSAM manga style posts, and the clearly Russian/CN spam farm users.
Not because I've had any kind of bad experience with users on this instance, but I don't care for the posts on lemmy.blahaj.zone. I honestly just got tired of seeing the "Rule" posts; it's like 90% of their posts!
Can someone please explain all the .ml hate? From what I've seen, it's mostly a tech (i.e., not tank!) instance and I haven't experienced any drama at all aside from other instances hating on us. It seems WAY too overblown and generalized from my experience. If the OP blocked .ml are they even able to see my response here?
Makes sense - appreciate the response! Regarding your last point, one look at my comment history shows I'm clearly not a troll, but totally get it...I just keep seeing all these posts/comments hating on .ml and having not seen anything myself, it makes me wonder if I'm missing something or if I should think about even switching instances...
If you never browse all, you probably miss it, but anything which is politics or news adjacent is filled with campist brain rot from people who think "socialism" is relitigating the cold war. Then you will get banned for saying things like "remember that time Russia shot down a civilian airliner?" or "I don't think sexual violence is a right of the oppressed."
That's probably it - I've only browsed All once or twice when I've run out of new Subscribed posts...I must be missing the drama from other random communities.
I can see your comment, and I don't think that everybody on .ml is a troll. They just seem to have an awful lot of them, and I have no idea what the reason is. People arguing in bad faith, etc.
I enjoy reading the comments, but the top comments from most of the .ml-origin posts always seem to degenerate into name calling, and very quickly at that. The criticisms other people have called out further down in this thread sound accurate to me.
And clearly it isn't just me seeing this, since somebody is downvotimg your perfectly polite posts in this thread. (It isn't me.)
the tech side of .ml is why I haven't blocked that instance. They genuinely care about privacy and FOSS, as is the instance description. When I joined lemmy, I considered .ml for my home instance.
As soon as politics comes up though, the tankies come out in force, and oh boy the temptation to get banned is real.
.world is neoliberal lumpen who violently reject anything that threatens their politician's current narrative. They're not thinking for themselves. They can't discern left from right, thus reject both with equal hostility.
I believe they.are so far left, they are now right politically. I just blocked the group when I was down voted to berated because I linked an AP article, which they think is a heavily biased source.
For now, I blocked three communities, one about gossiping and two about adult material. I also blocked a bot that keeps cross posting things from Reddit. That's all that I blocked so far.
I've just kind of been learning how to just... not be tempted to respond to people like that. I think using Redlib - the privacy frontend for Reddit - has conditioned me to stop because it has no direct way to comment on issues or anything like that, so I've been less tempted to get into online slapfights with people that aren't worth the time.
I never block anyone or any instance. I simply ignore them. I also use the subscribed feed, so what most of the people say about hexbear, lemmygrad, etc. content filling their feed also does not affect me.