Skip Navigation
Fediverse @lemmy.world AwesomeLowlander @sh.itjust.works

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.

62

You're viewing a single thread.

62 comments

  • 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.

    1. 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?

    2. 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.

    3. 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?:-)

    4. 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.

    5. 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?

    6. Sublinks... well, that's not an option "soon" at any rate.

    7. 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.:-(

    More details

    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 Nazi fascist, 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.

      • I can just imagine an entire community dedicated to people posting - from each new Alt account that they make (particularly Blaze:-) - messages such as "please ban me from your instance".

        If half the Lemmings did this, it would have 20k posts in that community:-).

        • heh, sadly it doesn't prevent you seeing their opinions in comments. But still, it ensures that they won't ever appear in your own OPs.

          • I've noticed that discussions about matters are much more pleasant upon blanket blocking all the users from the ML instance. Sometimes I'll go read the "identical" post on another instance and wow, what a difference it makes!?!

            Still, fair that getting blocked is a step up from the almost non-existent (or at least non sequitur) "instance blocking" done by Lemmy.

    • Thanks for the really detailed response!

      1. Yeah, I noticed the missing thumbnails and I agree it is cause for concern.
      2. 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.
      3. 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...

        • Here you go: https://sh.itjust.works/post/29502571

          There are comments by others in there that they've been banned for downvoting him but otherwise never interacting with him or the instance.

          Thanks for the additional info and context!

          • Thank you - I just found that after writing all that out:-).

            I just commented over there too, saying:

            There's a huge difference between someone "doing precisely what they said they would do in advance" vs. a "Power-Tripping Bastard", imho.

            And my reasoning is that he outright says in advance that that is precisely what he will do?:

            As an instance, we’re pretty heavily moderated in order to maintain a welcoming atmosphere that fosters civil discussion. We don’t “tone police” everything, but we do expect users, local and remote, to behave themselves and act in a rational, civilized manner. Those who cannot, local or federated, are quickly shown the door.

            So it's not 100% a bad thing, nor is it a wonderful thing either for people's modlogs to be contaminated with a preemptive ban for a community that they have never heard of. He definitely seems to be trippin, but like, not maliciously, if that makes sense? Rather, like Beehaw, he seems to be attempting to make use of rather inadequate tools to do a job, and not caring so much how others interpret his actions.

            One thing that is HUGE for me: let's say that you don't want an abortion. Okay then, so don't get one? Something that affects purely oneself should be a decision made purely by themselves? To the extent that he is making a decision that affects solely his instance, he is entirely justified in doing so. Except that's not 100% what is happening: there is a modlog entry that gets made. It's tiny, it's trivial, but it does involve the other party. Hence he gets some flak for that, and that's fair.

            But tbf, let's examine the other side to that story: have you see the front page of Lemmy lately? Half the posts call for murder, if not outright in the title, then at least in the comment section?! I get it, the recipient was a bad guy, but let's not mince words: vigilante justice will not end well. Imagine a guy walking home after finally getting his first month's pay, except they delayed his first paycheck so he is walking home with $1000 dollars from his first two months paycheck in his pocket. If someone kills him and takes the money b/c "he's rich" - never mind his home, his family, the medicine that his sick kid needs - how is that justified? I'm saying: who gets to decide who "deserves" this style of "justice" or not? The Russian bot farms posting on Lemmy? The people who hear it and genuinely believe & spread it around further?

            I've said it before and I'll say it again: I am not against porn existing, but I am against it existing outside of bounds - it's not friendly, when it appears without consent. Similarly, calls for murder shouldn't be appearing in "memes" or "shitpost" communities that are made for fun. Like, I may be down for a serious discussion every now and then, but dammit can't I have 5 fucking minutes to look just at puppy and cat videos?!? The answer, ofc, is no, b/c I am not offered that choice: my only choice is to "use Lemmy", to "not use Lemmy", or "to spend hours and hours and hours and hours configuring Lemmy to suit my needs".

            Have you noticed how we have less content / posts than we used to? We have more "users" - I have had 4 alts in the last year, 3 of which I actively maintain so I am 3 of these "monthly active users" all on my lonesome. And Blaze is like upwards of 20 (with good reason, though that level is likely unusual). Conversely, look at communities such as [email protected] - it had ~4 posts per month routinely, but now has none in the last 2 months. Where did they go? Damn, I REALLY loved those comics too:-(. I don't have an Instagram account but I see much more content - including related to December - at https://www.instagram.com/nathanwpylestrangeplanet/?hl=en, just not on Lemmy anymore?

            When we become known for being the Alt-Left, "Nazi fascist bar" that we are (advocating for extreme violent solutions = the most extreme form of leftist), mainstream people aren't going to want to hang out here anymore. Admiral Patrick is one of the few that are fighting back. Now you are too, in even so much as asking for an instance that has defederated from the big 3 tankie instances (although imho it's already too late for that: yes the "tankieness" is contained on those 3, however the extremism that so often goes along with that has spread to beyond those 3 instances - it's fucking everywhere now), but he's putting in some EFFORT to clean up this space.

            I am halfway thinking of joining dubvee.org tbh, if he'll have me... sure his method contaminates the modlogs, but it's something to try to stem the tide of toxicity and extremism? And that's better than nothing, to at least be able to take a break from it all for a handful of minutes each day and just breathe? I am not against others being free to vent their thoughts, but my thoughts should matter too, at least to myself?

            I concede that there are no perfect solutions here.

            • I suppose it depends very much on what your definition of PTB is. Firstly, I'll say this is based on the info in that post, and it may be one-sided since he didn't defend himself.

              The fact that he declares his intentions does help, but IMO it's a large overstep. Banning anybody who so much as downvotes you is going to ensure you have an absolute echo chamber very soon. Which I'm guessing is probably the point, since otherwise he could have gone the Beehaw way of disabling downvotes for his instance.

              Huh, I just checked the modlogs and yep, I'm banned from his instance. I suppose if you're a user on his instance and unaware of what's happening, you'll just see the fediverse slowly shrink and shrink. I'm a reasonably prolific contributor, I'm fairly moderate, and if I'm getting banned for my views, so is a significant portion of the fediverse.

              calls for murder shouldn’t be appearing in “memes” or “shitpost” communities that are made for fun

              I agree with that. Comms should have full control over the type of content (including comments) they want appearing within them. But that's not what's happening with dubvee.

              I agree with you that we need more content. I've blocked most of the meme comms b/c they're not my thing, and most of the remaining content falls into a very few lonely groups. Building niche comms is a lot of work.

              • Banning anybody who so much as downvotes you

                But that's not what he did? This was mentioned in the post as well: he is banning on a pattern of voting, regardless of who it is to. The admin of midwest.social was banning people that downvoted HIM specifically, but dubvee.org seems to be doing this regardless of whether the votes are directed at him or someone else.

                So like if a girl will only date boys taller than herself, that's pretty shallow, but at least she's up-front about her criteria?

                So I think the avoidance of the PTB label is bc the walk matches the talk. So not quite a CLM as in button mashing, but closer to that one it would seem as in someone using the Lemmy tools to try to accomplish something that perhaps something other than Lemmy might have worked better at (not sure what) - so "an imperfect solution to the problem at hand" situation rather than PTB?

    • 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.

62 comments