Try joining us on lemm.ee!
this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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Asklemmy
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I chose lemm.ee mostly by chance, but I think that it's worked out okay for me.
My impression is that it's a mostly neutral instance which doesn't really have a strong agenda, and federates with most other instances. This is definitely what I want, because it gives me access to the most content.
If there are communities or users I find I have issues with, I can block them myself.
I wasn't aware of much defederation from .ml. I came here from .world because .world was defederating from too many other instances. I think what we really need is a new client that connects to multiple instances and does its own tracking of read articles and stuff like that. The Lemmy federation model was well intended, but I would say it has failed. Even at the popular instances, the fediverse is fragmented, which wasn't supposed to happen.
There's too much instance tribalism around here, which isn't great. I totally get defederating from stuff that's harmful, but sometimes it's down to political stances. People hate China, Russia and communism so they hate ML. Engaging in other communities as an ML user you will invariable just see people say "oh here comes the tankie" even though you said nothing tankie-ish.
I'm not as extreme left as a lot of users in ML but i like to listen and i find common ground with people here in many issues. I feel that disagreeing politically is just not a good enough reason to block or defederate. At this point we'll end up with echo chambers that lack any semblance of political plurality of opinions. Ignoring people who lean differently doesn't make them disappear at the voting tables, it just hides one's head under the sand.
I'm going to try to be respectful and reasonable here. If I fail at that, I'm truly sorry, I'm really trying.
I think you and I want different things from the fediverse. I like that my instance (Hexbear) is widely defederated. It's a lovely little refuge from the reactionary political opinions I can't help but hear in my day to day life living in America.
I also can't agree with you that political disagreements aren't reason for defederation. To go for an extreme example first, being an avowed neo-nazi is a political choice, and I'd kick an avowed neo-nazi out of any space I had the power to kick them out of.
For other examples, we can look at things that have already happened in the fediverse, such as feddit .uk deciding that posting transphobia is actually fine and dandy, because the laws in the UK are such that transphobic speech is very much allowed, or we can look at the recent kerfuffle surrounding feddit .org, wherein feddit .org decided that due to laws in Germany, criticism of Israel can't be as full-throated as it really should be. These examples are both cases where local politics affect how things are moderated, or, at least, local politics are being used as an excuse for moderation decisions. And I think these moderation decisions (allowing transphobia in the first case, censoring criticism of Israel in the second) are worth defederating over. If transphobia doesn't get banned and removed on sight, then how can trans people feel safe and included in a space? And similarly, if Israel's horrific genocide is downplayed in a space, that space becomes less friendly for Palestinians and other Arab and Muslim people.
I don't need or want political plurality in this online space, I want a brief refuge from the terrible politics surrounding me. This isn't me sticking my head in the sand to ignore the awful shit happening around me, I see all that, I talk to people who believe in the American status quo because believe it or not, most Americans aren't communists. I love that here on this corner of Lemmy I can be openly communist and talk to other open communists about all kinds of things. It's really nice, actually, and that would be lost if we were federated with the anti-communist shitholes like .world. Not to mention the transphobia. Holy shit, every time I accidentally end up outside my lovely little Lemmy bubble it's just transphobia as far as the eye can see. So I'm glad we at Hexbear are widely defederated, I really don't need to see the liberal nonsense and transphobia that are so inescapable in my real life.
Very well written! I personally want a very similar experience to what you described from my instance, so thank you for being so articulate with your reply
I did defederate from hexbear for a while a year or so ago. Just because at the time their users were generally just actively trolling for reactions in pretty much every community, and it just got too the point I defederated. I've since removed them from the defed list.
Generally I agree. But ML seems to have become a bit more clearly biased in their moderation. To me it's not a reason to defed, but a reason to view the content they do allow in their hosted communities with that bias in mind.
By selfhosting my instance I avoid the issue and manage my own data. I guess the federation model works pretty well IMHO
lemm.ee federates with nearly everyone!
Summit does that, I think
lemm.ee is the best for federating with almost everyone.
lemm.ee mostly leaves it up to the user to block communities and instances, so you get wider initial reach. The admin is cool too and keeps the instance maintained regularly.
I self hosted my instance to avoid the issue once and for all
I saw a lot of suggestions for that but at the moment i just don't have the real estate to have a server running. I'm assuming you'd need one for that ?
I'm guessing i might end up looking for an instance like that, a low user, low manned instance that flies under the radar and no one really cares enough about it to block it.
You have a few low cost options.
Some run solo instances on single board computers like Raspberry Pi.
In reality what you need for a Lemmy instance is a 24/7 machine, a domain, and preferably a static IP from your ISP. But you can get around the last one by using something like CloudFlare Tunnels.
I self host it at home. Very low resources and bandwidth. I have exactly one user, myself.
You can pay for a VPS online.
SDF still has a zero blocked/blocked by.
You're welcome to check the sidebar on crazypeople.online to see if it's a good fit for you. The same goes for anyone else who's interested.
Try: lemmy.ca
Here at sopuli.xyz the admin seems pretty light on defederalising.