Which reasonably sized instance to recommend newcomers?
Which reasonably sized instance to recommend newcomers?
Criteria: I'm looking for instances that are defed' with the Big 3 tankies (lemmygrad, lemmy.ml, and hexbear). I have no interest in trying to persuade my friends to create an acc and set up instance blocks before diving in, or dealing with the feedback when they run into the tankie brigade.
Edit: lemmy.cafe and infosec.pub seem to fit. I also find it really interesting just how many of the replies totally ignored my stated criteria.
Sadly, there are no "great" options here:-(.
Side-note: "instance blocking" is misnamed, don't be mislead - all that does is mute communities on that instance, but it still shows you all of their comments on posts to communities not on that instance (cough Cowbee cough cough), plus they can reply to you, generate constant notifications (for WEEKS and WEEKS on end if they choose to - it's happened to me, once for hexbear.net and again for lemmygrad.ml, back when my instances were still federated with those, and when I was naive and fresh and had no idea what I was walking into by replying to a post that I had found on All, not having read the community sidebar first), and also they can vote on and influence your content. Only true defederation will prevent the latter though.
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lemmy.cafe as you saw, but it has some technical problems - e.g. notice how none of the image previews load when you visit? I have no idea what further problems lie behind that one - all I know is that it has persisted for weeks, which does not fill me with confidence. Still, not a bad idea to at least test for yourself?
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dubvee.org, which has a friendly site admin though a nonstandard (& nonintuitive?) web UI "Tesseract"; he is super aggressive at blocking both the Alt-Right and also the Alt-Left and also trolls regardless of instance; the major down-side being that it is not a wide-spread general-use instance, and limited to W. Virginia USA atm. Anyone who likes to argue may get booted quickly though.
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quokk.au, although it has only a single admin rather than a team of such, and people say that their requests to join can get ignored for days as a result, also it's in Australia, so with that geographic distance I would worry about federation of content particularly from Lemmy.World that holds ~80% of the Lemmy users and most of the Fediverse content (at least, this is a major issue for Aussie.Zone also in AU). Here too you could make an account and test it out, prior to recommending to friends? If so, let us know your experiences with it?:-)
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PieFed allows you to block all the users from any instance of your choice without needing a site admin; this Lemmy alternative also has many fantastic upgrades over Lemmy (categories of communities, hashtags, YouTube video embedding, which Tesseract also offers, and more), however it lacks many of the more foundational aspects (user tagging, searching is primitive, many Notifications do not actually go to what they point at so that gets super frustrating), so while I am located there myself this is not something that I would recommend to everyone, only "early-adopters", particularly those who can fall back onto a Lemmy alt when necessary.
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I have heard that the Sync and Connect apps can block all users from any instance of your choice, without needing admin approval. They have a number of other nifty features as well. I have never used either of these, but these might be your best option?
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Sublinks... well, that's not an option "soon" at any rate.
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Otherwise someone would need to spin up a new instance, at which point they can do whatever they choose, but it's a lot of work, particularly a lot of network bandwidth. Or convince an existing admin team to defed from lemmy.ml? It's hard enough for most to decide to defed even from lemmygrad.ml and/or hexbear.net though.:-(
Face it: we are a Nazi bar, or rather the Alt-Left equivalent of one. It takes enormous efforts to carve out a corner of this open social web that fights back hard against a
Nazifascist, and most are unwilling to do what it takes. Though slowly but surely, I do see MAJOR improvements over time - e.g. Discuss.Online recently defederated from hexbear (though unfortunately not also Lemmy.ml), so I view that as a strong even if not entirely sufficient step forward.There's another option to "block" an instance: if you make them ban you, they won't be able to see your posts or interact with you anymore.
Thanks for the really detailed response!
- Yeah, I noticed the missing thumbnails and I agree it is cause for concern.
- The dubvee admin has been mentioned several times in [email protected] as a PTB, banning anybody who downvotes him. Not the best situation to expose newcomers to either.
- I can try that out. The single point of failure and long registration time looks like a concern.
Do you have any opinion about infosec.pub which somebody else recommended?
About Admiral Patrick: really? I had not heard that. That would be horrible if true I agree, but is it? What I did hear is that he preemptively bans people before they comment at all, based on their past history. There is one troll in particular that he mentioned banning despite how they kept making alts (I dunno exactly who, just the situation), and that seems fine to me (assuming the situation was as described). However, every single person that I ask for details refuses to provide any. I did hear indirectly one reason offered: "syncing instance bans to community bans", which I don't know what it means but also seems likely to not be nefarious?
Speaking of, I read through [email protected] fairly regularly but haven't seen anything at all for him like that - do you happen to recall any further details that you could search for and send me a link? Searching for like dubvee or admiral or ptz all returns zero hits.
I did see this post in another community: Admin log from DubVee, with text body:
This is from the same instance that randomly bans people from being too “extremist” who have never interacted with it’s communities.
So people seem to be complaining about him banning extremists / tankies, although in the context of this post seems to be presented as a positive "feature"? Seriously though, if somehow the community at yepowertrippingbastards has voted him as a PTB - which again, I can't find that by searching - please do let me know? A key point there is transparency: if he says one thing but then does another then that's a PTB, but the instance seems very clear about what's going on, with text "Offering a safe, chill environment for a better, nicer Lemmyverse." Essentially it's a mini-Beehaw, which he also cites as his model.
So if someone doesn't like it then they don't need to join, problem solved:-). Other than the Dubvee.Meta community, I am aware of no other communities located on that instance, so unlike Lemmy.ml, it's not like he's holding any users or content hostage there - it's entirely up to the locals there if they want that kind of experience or not, being taken care of by such an admin as would keep away what he deems as trolls.
I don't know much about infosec.pub, beyond what is said here: https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list. It is the 18th largest instance iirc, based in Germany, very high uptime, its sidebar has next to no information about it, and it's fairly small with only 2 admins and ~4k monthly active users. I can add though: I think they must have only recently defederated from Lemmy.ml bc Blaze and I checked all the top 20 at some point. I see no discussion about it in [email protected]. A local search also shows nothing. I wonder if most of the uses there even realize that, and notably I wonder if it could be temporary, due to the server sync issues with it a month ago (see here). If so, then joining this themed instance specifically for that temporary condition may lead to regrets...
I use Connect for android. I have blocked some instances within it, so I don't see posts from those communities in my /all, and while I do see their comments they are behind a "this user is blocked. click here to show anyway" type of message like a spoiler tag. It works well enough.
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.cafe is the only major one that I know is defederated with all 3.
Can confirm, moved there and things got better but I stick to what I always say:
Think about your account as disposable, you don't know when the server might go down for whatever reason or if something changes and you don't feel comfortable there anymore.
I have noticed a lot of accounts from that instance being quickly created and banned. I don't know if they're trolls or spambots, but it seems like they don't have very good control over who creates an account there.
Thanks!
It doesn’t block porn instances though. I’d argue that because of this sopuli.xyz might be better choice even if it doesn’t block lemmy.ml.
defed.xyz to check?
Oh that's handy
I think I found the best one:
infosec.pub
has 4186 total users and 335 active users
seems more active than the .cafe that the other user suggested
Good luck with converting more people to join Lemmy!
Feeling good on lemmy.sdf.org
Should be the default setting.
Lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works are both really good. IIRC .world is hosted in Germany and sh.ithust.works in Canada east coast
You do realise I'm on SJW? And neither of your recs is relevant to the criteria I stated.
Oooh. You'd fit right in at .ml
Btw you can block instances in your settings. Also I would argue lemmy.ml is not as “tankie” as the other two.
Blocking instances at user level is pointless, they just repost to instances/communities that tolerate them and boom, you get to see their propaganda.
Also their users are encouraged to be deranged so you still have to deal with those.
It's always better to just isolate them.I have no interest in trying to persuade my friends to create an acc and set up instance blocks before diving in
lemmy.ml is not as tankie, but that bar is the height of my little toe.