Am I getting this right? The vibe of different lemmy instances

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨NulAndVoid@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

This isn’t my main account but after poking around Lemmy for about half a year, this seems to be what people are saying (and my general impression)

Lemmygard, Hexbear - Ultra Tankies Lemmy.ml - Commies and Tankies, the gateway to the above. Users can and will use every opportunity to drown others in Marxist rhetoric Beehaw - Highly sensitive lefties who are blocking both lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works on Instance level because of open registration policy (as if registering to any instance takes effort). slrpnk.net - Hippies who like cyberpunk lemmy.dbzer0.com - Anarchists who hate tankies and any rules except their own, which are different and therefore better lemmy.blahaj.zone - LGBTQ+ folk who hate tankies and lefties various regional instances - left leaning but according to above, not enough and therefor fascists and nazis lemmy.world - open instance, therefor if you ask anyone above regional instances, basically fascists and nazis sh.itjust.works - anything goes, therefor if you ask anyone above lemmy.world, basically fascists and nazis programming.dev - nerds and therefor suspicious to everyone piefed - no idea but judging by how people talk about it, Lemmy is clearly becoming too mainstream so some people feel they need to move into further obscurity.

anything else: either nazis or tankies depending on who you ask.

I really like Lemmy on paper but good god this instance drama is off-putting. Also it’s hard to find out which instances are blocking which instances - which I find silly altogether because people are specifically hyping fediverse because “iTs AlL coNnEcTeD” and “you are in charge of your feed”. I’m contemplating running one or two communities (and I’m totally fine with them being small and slow) but I don’t know where I dare to make them because apparently I’d have to be paying far closer attention to the nitty gritty of every bit of instance drama to make sure I’m not on “the wrong side”. Or if I make the communities on some instance with banhappy admins who decide that I’m a tankie/nazi because I allowed someone to post content from someone who said something vaguely wrong on Twitter 10 years ago.

Is there like a guide document somewhere that lists the features, vibes and general content policy, and banned instances and all that of at least the major instances? Because this is like walking on eggshells.

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Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

slrpnk.net - Hippies who like cyberpunk

Completely wrong. Anarchists who hate cyberpunk and want the opposite. Ecologically-minded communitarians. Idealists and hard-nosed pragmatists both.

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- shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Is that “solarpunk?”
  
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  - anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They have a couple of good pages where they define solarpunk, I’ll share a few quotes below too.
    wiki.slrpnk.net/articles:whatissolarpunk
    wiki.slrpnk.net/articles:manifesto
    
    Solarpunk is a rebellion against the structural pessimism in our late visions of how the future will be.
    Not to say it replaces pessimism with Pollyanna-ish optimism, but with a cautious hopefulness and a daring to tease out the positive potentials in bad situations.
    Hope that perhaps the grounds of an apocalypse (revelation) might also contain the seeds of something better; something more ecological, liberatory, egalitarian, and vibrant than what came before, if we work hard at cultivating those seeds.
    
    Solarpunk is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism that seeks to answer and embody the question “what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there?” […]
    
    We are solarpunks because optimism has been taken away from us and we are trying to take it back.
    2. We are solarpunks because the only other options are denial or despair.
    3. At its core, Solarpunk is a vision of a future that embodies the best of what humanity can achieve: a post-scarcity, post-hierarchy, post-capitalistic world where humanity sees itself as part of nature and clean energy replaces fossil fuels.
    4. The “punk” in Solarpunk is about rebellion, counterculture, post-capitalism, decolonialism and enthusiasm. It is about going in a different direction than the mainstream, which is increasingly going in a scary direction.
    
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- Wildmimic@anarchist.nexus ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, the cyberpunks are more prevalent on dbzer0, along with Pirates of all sorts.
  
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Skavau@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

piefed - no idea but judging by how people talk about it, Lemmy is clearly becoming too mainstream so some people feel they need to move into further obscurity.

No. Piefed is simply another piece of software with different tools that reads lemmy instances. It’s not an instance in itself. piefed.social, which I am posting from - is the largest piefed (and original) instance.

I really like Lemmy on paper but good god this instance drama is off-putting.

You barely notice if you don’t follow certain communities.

which I find silly altogether because people are specifically hyping fediverse because “iTs AlL coNnEcTeD” and “you are in charge of your feed”. I’m contemplating running one or two communities (and I’m totally fine with them being small and slow) but I don’t know where I dare to make them because apparently I’d have to be paying far closer attention to the nitty gritty of every bit of instance drama to make sure I’m not on “the wrong side”.

What are the communities you’re wanting to make?

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Philosophy related stuff. Which is exactly the kind of thing that’s risky to talk about in the wrong instance.
  
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  - artifex@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I don’t think it matters as much as you think it does. However, for actual humanities subjects probably mander.xyz may be the best fit, as they’re the instance dedicated to nature and science and AFAIK nobody defederates them.
    
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  - Skavau@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Lemmy.world, piefed.social, lemmy.zip are all perfectly fine fits here. Hexbear and lemmygrad are blacklisted by most of the fediverse, beehaw does not allow new community creation by randoms anyway iirc
    
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lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Honestly half of the list sounds like trolling.

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- LadyButterfly@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I had to bite my tongue about the LGBT stuff, so yep I’m calling trolling
  
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  - NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Pray tell what great offense did I give to LGBTQ folk? By mentioning that the blahaj instance (which highlights their LGBTQ inclusivity) hates tankies (which I base on the fact that one of their more active communities has “fuck tankies” on the top of the page and rightoids (based on their server rules that promise that “bigotry of any variety will be squashed with great prejudice”). I didn’t say one even half-way negative thing about LGBTQ people.
    
    But thanks for providing an example of why this place is like walking on egg shells I guess.
    
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- goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Generous to say half, seems like all of it is a troll
  
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nullpotential@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
If you’re going to reduce everything to caricatures then it’s only fair that you also describe lemmy.world as shitlibs who simply prefer the wild blue raspberry flavor of capitalism.

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I did caricaturize lemmy.world as well, with as much info as I had. Yours is probably also as accurate as it gets from your perspective.
  
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  - queermunist@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    No, you basically just accused other instances of being hysterical.
    
    A more accurate way to describe them is reddit.world
    
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- AmidFuror@fedia.io ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Capitalism is the worst economic model except for all the others.
  
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  - technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Defending capitalism by quoting a genocidal racist is more fitting than you might realize.
    
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thebardingreen@lemmy.starlightkel.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I run my own instance that has just two users. I Federate with who I want (including most instances you named). I subscribe to low drama instances like startrek.website and mander.xyz. I subscribe to communities from MOST of the instances you mentioned, but not a single one has drama (for example, no one on the lemmy.ml cybersecurity or selfhosting communities argues about politics… they just post and talk about those things).

I experience almost no drama. Two years ago, it was different, but I left those communities (but not even those instances) and just avoid engaging with those users (and it was honestly only a few very vocal users).

In my daily life, I’m involved with a number of protest and mutual aid organizations and I can tell you, the whole left is full of very vocal “my leftism is better than your leftism” people. But MOST people aren’t actually like that… just the loud ones. If you challenge them in their spaces, not only will you end up on the receiving end, they’ll turn you into one of them (I have been down that road a couple times). Not that they’ll convert your politics, necessarily, but they’ll convert your behavior. They create and feed off drama triangles and “I escalate, you double down, you escalate I double down” feedback loops. This isn’t unique to Lemmy. You can experience the same thing in your local hacker space co-op (ask me how I know).

Historically, leftist political and social discourse has always been like this, for all of history. It’s not something special about Lemmy, it’s in the nature of collective groups of humans interested in free expression, positive social change and social justice. We’re angry, we’re trapped in an abusive relationship with the Right and we all think we have the answers. The Left’s greatest strengths and values (diversity, creativity, expression)are it’s greatest weaknesses. Same is true of the Right (conformity, hierarchy, rigidity).

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- shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  I run my own instance that has [a few] users
  
  Same.
  
  I subscribe to low drama instances like startrek.website
  
  Maybe not the best example! There was a ton of beef following the Reddit APIcalypse. There was a mod schism. I’m pretty sure if you’re too critical of a certain series, you’ll get banned by a certain user with an extremely delicate ego.
  
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empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

lemmy.dbzer0.com - Anarchists who hate tankies and any rules except their own, which are different and therefore better

I mean. The only real rules we have mostly surround don’t be a dick and the bare minimum to manage a public forum. If you can’t really pass that test then you weren’t welcome in the first place.

Lemmy is what you make of it. You have to put effort into tuning your subscribed communities, blocklists, etc. There is no algorithm to filter the chaff for you.

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  No I’m all for users managing their own experience. And to that end what I’d like to see is the ability for users to ban whole instances. What I don’t like is instances blocking other instances because of some vague online drama or ideological differences. Like Beehaw blocking lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works as if creating an account on most of the Beehaw-approved instances was very hard. This kind of admin overreach is what is putting me off from investing in Lemmy in general.
  
  (I get blocking instances that distribute very illegal stuff though)
  
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  - Skavau@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    You can blacklist instances on piefed as a user
    
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Pipster@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Blahaj.zone doesn’t hate ‘lefties’? It doesn’t tolerate tankies but is very much on the lib-left side of things for the most part.

.ml has a bit of nuance not mentions. Before the reddit exodus it was pretty much the only active instance and during the exodus it was still one of, if not the largest, before .world appeared. So a lot of communities and people registered to .ml, many have migrated away but plenty are still there that are ‘general’ users with no ideological alignment. It is also the instance made and run by the main lemmy devs.

And piefed really shouldn’t be considered a new walled area, it interacts with the established lemmy instances its just different software from different devs. Same to be said of kbin/mbin which seems to be far less prevalent than it was.

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  You’re right, I meant to write blahaj hates rightoids.
  
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Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
the distinction I’d make for hexbear is that by user base it’s also one of the major LGBT instances

not sure what “ultra-tankie” means in this context, because ultras tend to be less into lenin

gotta agree that the instance feuding is pretty toxic though

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I actually didn’t know “ultra” on this context already had a meaning. Which illustrates my point: I don’t follow all this closely enough to be aware of every nuance and may easily say something that turns out to give great offense to those that do. Like I said, I don’t want this egg shell walking. In fact I make a point of avoiding politics in social media now because it’s exhausting and I rather put my energy somewhere where I can see and feel the impact of my actions.
  
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  - Diva@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I didn’t take offense! in fact I was making a joke of sorts, I understood your initial meaning.
    
    I view my time spent talking politics on social media with people I don’t like as self-harm, I try to minimize it generally.
    
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rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

lemmy.blahaj.zone - LGBTQ+ folk who hate tankies and lefties

Blahaj hates lefties? How did you get that idea?

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Brainfart
  
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anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
You can always check lemmyverse, you can see the size of an instance blocklist and how many instances block it here:
lemmyverse.net/?order=active_month

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Oh that’s a bit helpful, thank you! Though it still would be nice to see which instance are being blocked.
  
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  - anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I don’t know of any good way to view that for all instances at the same time but /instances have a Blocked instances tab you can look through for each and every instance, f.e.
    lemmy.world/instances
    
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technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

anything goes

In this case “anything” means racism, homophobia, misogyny… That’s why those instances are fascist.

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  yes, fascism is well known for it’s tolerance for diversity.
  
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  - c10l@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Surely you’ve heard of Karl Popper’s paradox of tolerance.
    
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MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I’ve never thought about instance drama or worried about any of that stuff, I just hang out and interact with the communities I like.

Maybe you’re overthinking things too much.

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pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
theres also intances where tankes create alts to bypass instance bans. not fault of the instance tho

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I mean i expect that behavior seeing as creating alts takes 0 effort. It’s honestly why I use a lot of alts myself - in case i piss someone off, I don’t have to worry about getting harassed if I can just burn the account.
  
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Blaze@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
2 hours account, based on the other comments this seems to be borderline trolling

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It’s almost as if I wrote right on the top that this isn’t my main account.
  
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  - Blaze@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    But why not use your main account?
    
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Lembot_0004@discuss.online ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
*therefore

Yeah, militarists-nazi-LGBT-crazy"left" drama is strong here. But moderation is mild, so this shit isn’t important. Plus we don’t have shady things here like shadow-bans, so overall it is a rather good place: most people are completely disgustingly crazy but most of them hold banners with a full listing of their crazy beliefs. Read those listings and avoid speaking with local people on these themes.

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SorteKanin@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
As much as “instance drama” can be a bit tiring, I think it might be an inevitable outcome and shouldn’t necessarily be seen as completely bad. My thinking is that instance drama would not occur if all the instances were similar, and that would be bad. As it is, there are actually differences among the instances and that’s good - some disagreements due to those differences is inevitable.

Now, it would be good if we could agree to disagree and still be friends… but that also moves into the paradox of tolerance. But I would say most instances have nothing strongly against each other, despite any differences in moderation or rules or approach. The Pareto principle applies too… probably 20% of the instances are responsible for 80% of the drama. If you don’t like the drama, try avoiding those 20% of instances 😅.

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baconmonsta@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
After “This isn’t my main account” I was expecting piping hot takes from the noblest edge-lord and was only slightly let down.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Its kinda the point to me. I would like to see specific instances. Like there is one that was sorta an old school internet club that existed before federation but they made an instance for the members. Then like I totally think the world science fiction society should have one. It would make sense for them to not allow general comunities but instead put up a few for their things. Around science fiction literature. Then they also provide accounts to members. Maker spaces would be another. I would prefer a lot more smaller and niche instances than larger general ones.

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- Skavau@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  There used to be more topical themed instances but some shut down
  
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  - HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I mean I can see maker spaces shutting down but something like the science fiction society does the hugo awards and runs cons and their clientel are big nerds. It amazes me they would not run an instance. I mean instances like that would not have open sign up as an account would be part of membership but given their missions they are slam dunk for running certain communities.
    
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AlexisFR@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Heh, it’s not that bad.

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Jayjader@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

anything else: either nazis or tankies depending on who you ask.

I’m curious what you’ve heard of jlai.lu, feddit.org, and/or sopuli.xyz. I suspect that, being more geographically-focused than the topic-focused or mindset-focused like most of the instances you’ve listed, they don’t as easily fit into one box (other than the obvious france/germany/finland boxes).

Here on jlai.lu, we had a bit of a spat with hexbear a while back because we’re too reactionary for their tastes, but even that feels mostly irrelevant nowadays.

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- NulAndVoid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah my main is actually on sopuli. I mentioned regional instances that seem fine to me tbh but I feel like being in them immediately makes some people act weirdly hostile - which makes me think that ok, maybe there’s some drama I’m not aware of (followed by feeling very old and tired).
  
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  - Jayjader@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    The only drama I’m aware of (beyond the small spat with hexbear I mentioned) is how feddit.org’s admins were extra cautious regarding discourse on Israel/Palestine in the wake of October 7th. Given the the servers are physically located in Germany (and as such apparently the admins can go to jail over their content) it was disappointing but understandable to me, and pissed off a lot of the more audibly anti-genocide and anti-imperialism users.
    
    I think, sadly, this kind of tribalism is part of the growing pains for federated online communities, especially the more “Western” ones. Instances behave like villages or city-states towards each other, while in physical space we’ve all grown up and been socialized inside (comparatively) huge nation-states.
    
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Auster@thebrainbin.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Been noticing that for quite a while now, each platform has their own cultures, even when there can be exchange between two or more. If an instance blocks another, I'd imagine it's due to differences in such cultures.

As an user for some 2 years now, I get an idea of the communities I'd rather avoid, but other than the most extreme examples, haven't seen much openly discussed about specific instances.

Now, I wouldn't worry about what people from instances x, y or z think if I were you. If you like how your chosen instance is, and people from other instances organize to hunt you down, seek your instance's support if needed, or simply block each and every one pestering you.

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SunSunFuego@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
pretty much. yea

-“tankie”

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sundray@lemmus.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
… and?

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