this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023

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It's weird that there isn't a US-specific Lemmy instance (self.fediverse)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by WhoRoger to c/fediverse

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A ton of countries have a decently active Lemmy instance, including the English-speaking ones (UK, AUS, NZ, ZA).

The closest to a US one that I know of is midwest.social, which looks pretty lively from what I can tell.

Anyway, so lemmy.world is becoming quite populated with all kinds of US-specific stuff, like communities for sports teams, sometimes with generic names that could be used for other things ( [email protected] ), states/cities like [email protected] or even [email protected] (while [email protected] also exists), with other instances also having duplicate comms.

I'm expecting Lemmy to have, at some point, and hopefully soon, an option to block entire instances so that we don't have to see posts especially that are country-specific. But I'll need to block all the baseball teams one by one if I want to browse all and try to find new things.

And I'm sure it would also be more convenient to have it all under one roof, just like everything about Germany is under feddit.de, and people from elsewhere can still visit if they like.

So, please someone make one? Or navigate people to the right one? Thank yooou

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is no rule that everything about Germany is hosted on feddit.de and everything what is hosted on feddit.de is about Germany. I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de.

TBH, I do not know what is the best way to handle these. As far as I understand, the idea of fediverse is that instance as such must not be important. And there are many instances which have no "self-vision" or it is based on other logic than geography.

[–] woelkchen 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de.

Literally the first sentence in their sidebar says "Deutschsprachige Lemmy Community" (= German-language Lemmy Community). So you're right that feddit.de is not about Germany but German is spoken in several European countries, so you do disrespect the intend of feddit.de by hosting an English community there.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They also write in their rules that it's okay to create English speaking communities. So no harm done.

[–] woelkchen -1 points 1 year ago

They also write in their rules that it’s okay to create English speaking communities.

I did not write that you broke a rule because there is no such rule but the intend of feddit.de is spelled out in the first sentence. Just as Lemmy.WORLD intends to be a worldwide community ("Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use."), there is no rule that forbids /c/politics not being about US politics only.

[–] WhoRoger 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You know what I mean. Instances may be based on anything, but some are based on geography, and so it makes sense for communities also based on those aspects to be based on such instances.

Yesterday I came across a post "what's your favourite book based in Melbourne?", which was on a community on an Australian server. I'd assume communities about Australian rugby (or what's it called) would also be there.

Geography-based instances also partially solve the problem of duplicate names, so you can have c/Manchester on different country instances.

I have a english language GalaxyWatch community located on feddit.de

Well the problem also is that instances don't let you make a community if you come from elsewhere, and one can't set their community to not appear under /All.

I wonder what comes first, if these features or instance-blocking.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d assume communities about Australian rugby (or what’s it called) would also be there.

Or may be they should be in a "sport instance", so people who are not interested in sport can block whole sport instance? This makes a lot of sense for people who are not interested in given topic (for example sport, politics, cats, anime) - whatever geography or language is.

I see what where you can from, but I do not think that instance blocking and a strong geographical separation is a good solution. This, btw, will also enforce "US by default" pattern even stronger.

[–] WhoRoger 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Or may be they should be in a “sport instance”, so people who are not interested in sport can block whole sport instance?

Or that, yes. In fact, there is one: https://fanaticus.social/ and it also annoys everyone with its bots posting about every match, so I need to block every darn community manually.

I don't see a problem with blocking an entire instance, if it's focused on something I don't care about. People are constantly asking about blocking lemmynsfw, and things like burgit are just defederated by almost everyone outright.

General instances are great, but for many things specific ones make more sense. There are instances focused on books, movies, sciences, or countries, so that people who care about those things can visit, and those who don't, don't need to keep seeing oddball posts about something from the other side of the world. (Or they can, if they want to.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi, I'm an admin at fanaticus.social. Sorry for the inconvenience! Game bots are an important way for us sports fans to interact with one another during games but I understand how annoying they can be if you don't care about the sport.

Here's a list of the communities that currently have a game bots running:

If you're comfortable with coding, there's an API endpoint to block a community. I threw together a little python script that would block all the above (I think 🙂).

from plemmy import LemmyHttp

# must include protocol e.g. https://lemmy.world
pl = LemmyHttp("INSTANCE_NAME_HERE")

username = "USERNAME_HERE"
password = "PASSWORD_HERE"
pl.login(username, password)

fanaticus_communities = [
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
    "[email protected]",
]

for comm in fanaticus_communities:
    print("Getting community: ", comm)
    commRes = pl.get_community(name=comm).json()
    if commRes and commRes['community_view']:
        commId = commRes['community_view']['community']['id']
        print("Blocking community: ", comm, " communityId: ", commId)
        pl.block_community(True, commId)
        print("Successfully blocked community: ", comm)
    else:
        print("Failed to find community: ", comm)

In the future, we are planning on adding the game bots for the other major sports as well (they're not in season now) but hopefully that will be a nice jumping off point for you.

[–] WhoRoger 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All good, I don't begrudge you, since I saw that the instance has regular discussions and not just bots. I'm just hoping for instance blocking functionality from Lemmy itself. There's no difference between posts from your bots and other instances that I don't personally care for.

Maybe you can convince people that run US sports communities on general instances to move to your instance? 😁

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Maybe you can convince people that run US sports communities on general instances to move to your instance? 😁

I'm sure trying! Content is king though so that's what we're focusing on with the game bots.