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?
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. :-)
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.
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.
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 😅
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