this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2024
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Asklemmy

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Hey everyone, I'm new to Lemmy and just starting to figure this site out. I mainly moved here because of the censorship on Reddit where they didn't publish posts that included the slightest word not allowed by their filter and they removed/blocked lots of content. I wonder if it will be somewhat better here (on the official site it says "Censorship resistant - By hosting your own server, you can be in full control of your content.").

The weird thing I saw with Lemmy was when I wanted to sign-up on the "lemmy.ml" server instance that according to the official Lemmy Servers listing page is a "A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers".

So I thought I try that one when it's from Lemmy's own developers. When I wanted to sign-up it required an application that you needed to fill out with one of the requirements being having to copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called "The Principles of Communism" which I thought was very odd for a site to do. I've never seen a site like this promoting some ideology that directly where it's part of the sign-up process to almost pledge to some political or religious ideology.

This seemed very sketchy to me. Does anyone know something about this?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Filters out conservatives pretty well and stops bots because it requires the user to read.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This seemed very sketchy to me.

👻 A spectre is haunting @[email protected]

Some of Ayn Rand’s earliest works are out of copyright now. Would that have made you more comfortable?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

That depends on the instance you are in.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The issue you've faced varies instance to instance. If you want complete freedom and censorship resistance, you have to run your own server.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

The .ml admins are, to put it mildly, far left. That's why it's great to have other instances like lemmy.world, feddit.org etc. If you don't agree with how the admins run an instance you can make an account somewhere else without missing out on content.

[–] Zak 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It's quite resistant to any single entity's censorship, but if you share things most server admins consider unacceptable, other servers will block your server.

lemmy.ml... copy a sentence from the link provided which links to some article called “The Principles of Communism”

At least one of the Lemmy developers is a hardcore communist, and some people see lemmy.ml as a little sketchy for that reason. I see you found another server, which is exactly how federation is meant to work. While the overall culture tends to be left-leaning, most server admins are not hardcore communists and don't censor political positions that aren't advocating violence or discrimination.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

theres more than just the lemmy platform to access the fediverse also. i use an mbin-based instance that can access all the same content as lemmy, and then some. https://moist.catsweat.com

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Thank you for posting, OP.

I was thinking about making an account here. Saw this and made one here, to see how the instance would feel like.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It seems like most have this covered, but it is my limited understanding that which instance you pick can defederate from others of their own choosing. This means you can't see their content AFAIK.

[–] TropicalDingdong 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Main Lemmy devs are communist and aren't shy to enforce their views, which gets reflected in their instance, lemmy.ml, which is considered to be fairly tankie.

However, as Lemmy is federated, you can join any other instance and view whatever interests you without having to recite political literature to sign up.

In fact, the most popular instance is actually lemmy.world, which is not politically affiliated; although it defederated from certain instances, which might make you feel limited. I found lemmy.today as a way to be connected with anything and everything, from Hexbear to Beehaw, to, well, Lemmy.world

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The level of censorship is going to be different depending on your instance and where you are posting to. A lot of instances are managed by individuals or small teams out of passion. They can do as they please and don't have to pander to everyone for commercial appeal like Reddit or Tumblr. If someone doesn't like what they're doing they can join a different instance or create their own.

Instances can defederate from each other over these differences. A lot are defederated from the instance Exploding Heads because of their alt right content for example. From what I understand you can also report content to the administrators of your instance if it goes against their rules and I think they can remove it from appearing on your instance (or block the user that posted it). This isn't going to stop it from appearing elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

I also wouldn't say it's sketchy. It's just the overall political leaning of a lot of Lemmy is relatively left leaning and having those measures in place kind of demonstrates the vibe the instance is trying to create.

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