Following the other thread (550 upvotes and 366 comments at the moment: https://lemmy.world/post/16211417), one of the complaints that people had what that some communities only exist on lemmy.ml and don’t have alternatives on other instances.

Let’s discuss this and see if we can organize together.

I suggest to have one topic per comment so that is is easier to discuss.

  • @[email protected]English
    62•6 months ago

    That said, I would like to say that despite the issues with the ML administration, I feel the centralization of communities on WORLD is a far greater and thus more urgent issue for me.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      10•6 months ago

      I feel the centralization of communities on WORLD is a far greater and thus more urgent issue for me.

      Is it? Is there any level of power tripping similar to lemmy.ml?

      Also

      I suggest to have one topic per comment so that is is easier to discuss.

      • @[email protected]English
        43•6 months ago

        It’s not about power tripping, it’s about philosophy. When I left mainstream social media and decided upon the Fediverse, decentralization was very much at the top of the list. I was happy to be part of a world where one corporation wasn’t in control of our lives. I’m just uncomfortable with the way that people are so eager to foster that in world. We shouldn’t have to see them misbehave before we apply what we learned from previous mistakes.

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          11•6 months ago

          I’m just uncomfortable with the way that people are so eager to foster that in world. We shouldn’t have to see them misbehave before we apply what we learned from previous mistakes.

          You’re preaching to the choir, but “for now” it’s acceptable to me.

          We are always able to move communities to other instances should they misbehave, and that’s good enough to me.

          Could be improved, of course, but not critical.

      • maegul (he/they)English
        6•6 months ago

        I’m a little late on this thread/issue, but I agree with @[email protected] .

        I’m also inclined to push back on the anti-lemmy.ml stance being pushed here. And to be clear, While I’m on lemmy.ml, I joined before “the migration” when it made sense to join the “main” instance as it then was and I have no particular affiliation with them or their politics.

        Inline with what sabre is saying, I think there’s a certain degree of political entitlement and “defederation-fever” creeping into this general sentiment. I think the communists/tankies should be allowed to do their thing without it being an issue, just like any other niche interest/viewpoint that can build a space here.

        I suspect there’s some dangerously presumptive politics at play here … where moderation action is presumed to be “power tripping” mainly because the moderator’s politics is presumed to be completely wrong. How about, “yea, that’s their thing, it’s unlikely something productive will come out of speaking flatly critically about china on lemmy.ml … their moderation can go overboard sometimes, but their defensive about all of that … if you want to do that, you’ll need to go to a more western instance/community”

        Building different spaces with different rules, vibes and beliefs, while simultaneously committing to inter-connectivity as much as possible … is basically the idea of the fediverse. It allows us to talk to each other without being stuck in one group’s (or corporation’s) policies and world-view … and more idealistically, allows us to see different world-views more clearly as we contrast the different spaces we can be connected to. If everything were on lemmy.world, it’d be hard to see the world-view (ha) that the mods/admins and even majority there impose on the rest.

        That’s the idealism, and I think it’s very real.

        But the pointy end of the stick is disagreements which lead to downvotes and moderation. That’s what enables the creation of a particular space, and needs to just kinda be accepted a bit more.

        That’s the part not stated enough IMO … at some point, if you’re going to be committed to the inter-connectivity part, you need to be respectful of the fact that another space exists and can be antagonistic to some of your views. That’s fine. On reddit, we’d just steer clear of a particular sub-reddit and maybe disparage them elsewhere. De-federation or targeting an instance as plain bad or wrong is a useful tool that the fediverse provides but which, IME, can easily become over zealously embraced in a sort of dog-pile behaviour. A more useful behaviour, IMO, is to try to work out ways that the fediverse can persist with such antagonism and disagreements.

        Not being surprised that communists are hard on criticism of communist countries seems like a start to me (where, TBF, such criticism is pretty wide spread in the west to the point that I don’t blame them for being cranky about it). Being open to the idea that you can get along with same communists on just about any other issue is a good next step. It’d be the same with criticising tech workers on programming.dev or trans/gender/queer issues on blahaj.zone or criticising western imperialism and capitalism on lemmy.world. Though I suspect the lemmy.ml admins could do a better job at sign-posting their politics/policies here.

        These are spaces with particular sensitivities. Antagonising them indifferently is kinda rude at some point. Demanding that they not have their sensitivities is kinda against the fediverse at some point. Interestingly, the admin of lemmy.ml, dessalines, basically said the same thing recently.

        Now, to be fair, I haven’t looked into the moderation stuff that seems to have precipitated this conversation and I’m certainly open to the idea that the lemmy.ml mods overstepped (mods tend to do that IME). But my general view is that, as communists living in the west, they’ve probably come against a good amount superficial criticism and frankly prejudice that us general westerners wouldn’t really notice, and so have pretty sharply guarded boundaries around that sort of dialogue. So they’ve built their own space (well platform actually), that is generally geared toward FOSS and privacy about which many of us have shared interests … but they also have some pretty clear policies around communism that are clearly very personal to the admins that are better respected than exiled or antagonised.

        Also, none of this is to say everything should be on lemmy.ml. Quite the opposite. Diversify! That’s part of my point. But away from lemmy.world too, and with the understanding that part of diversification is enabling niche spaces that can cause friction and said friction isn’t, in itself, a problem. Instead, IMO, we tend to get a bit feverish whenever these sorts of things spark up. Anyway … rant over!

        • @[email protected]English
          4•6 months ago

          This is a tremendous post and I’m saddened by the fact that it’s buried in this thread where many won’t see it. I agree with it wholeheartedly.

          I find the term tankies to be egregious. It feels like it targets minorities and is incredibly dismissive. I’m not authoritarian in the slightest and so I will have certain friction in my thought processes with authoritarians, but my views are incredibly left leaning,. I’ve spent my life learning from my experience and reaching and the only thing I can say for sure is that the right wing elite that rule over us, don’t give a fuck about us.

          We all saw how communists were villainised around the second world war and that the confirmation bias as a result, lead to what we have now, which is again the right wing elite that rule over us, don’t give a fuck about us.

          While I definitely want the administration of Lemmy.ML to be better in the way they conduct themselves, I feel that we need their presence for the greatest Fediverse we can create. It’s because of that, I feel someone from that team should’ve come forward and spoken on what happened in an official capacity. If an any time administration take action, send a message and be vocal and open about it. If you don’t have the time to do that, I question whether you have the time to making administrative actions.

          That said, there’s a bunch of communities being created and I’m grateful for that. I want to see all communities move away from the bigger instances and I’ll say it again, moving communities away from LW is far more urgent and important. We need different flavours and different ideas and implementations. The best isn’t always the biggest.

          • maegul (he/they)English
            6•6 months ago

            Cheers for the response! Interesting to see that we generally align pretty accurately over this. I wasn’t clear we would and half expected you to come in and say “fuck that, I just don’t like lemmy world”.

            I did think of making a separate post of my rant, but figured it’d just get downvoted and there wouldn’t be any point. After this, I’d be happy to put it up.

            Also, I’ve just posted in the meta community about this, generally poking around the issue and what happened and how better administration might be possible.

            • @[email protected]English
              6•6 months ago

              Ha, no. All the dealings I’ve had with the LW admins have been overwhelmingly positive. The members, not always so positive but that’s more about the thoughtfulness of the people I’ve come across on smaller instances. It would appear the people that don’t just join the biggest instance are more measured in their approach to things and are generally just less entitled acting. It makes them a joy to interact with and the conversations are more thought provoking, which is always a joy.

            • @[email protected]English
              0•6 months ago

              You absolutely nailed it with that comment, 5/7, perfect score.

              Honestly it probably would get downvoted if you made it as a separate post, but that’s just because kvetching about lemmy.ml is the flavor of the week and most people are sheep.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝English
      8•6 months ago

      I feel the centralization of communities on WORLD is a far greater and thus more urgent issue for me.

      It’s definitely a big issue too and why it is a good idea to suggest people start alternatives somewhere other than l.w, as is being done in this discussion.

  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    30•6 months ago

    Linux: [email protected]

    [email protected] seems quite active, I guess if any people move to it it will become even more active.

    [email protected] could probably be a nice one too if people want to avoid hypercentralization on LW

    If you know any other, comment below and we can see which one we decide to select as “the one” to avoid fragmentation.

      • @[email protected]OPEnglish
        1•6 months ago

        It’s not that active (for such a generalist topic) and I always thought because it was on lemmy.ml.

        But as I said, personal finance communities probably gain to be on countries instances to be relevant to their audiences

  • @[email protected]English
    18•6 months ago

    Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I wanted to say that I see you going to such great efforts to help people all across the entire Fediverse, and to say thank you - we appreciate you!:-)

    • threelonmusketeersEnglish
      3•6 months ago

      Yeah, Blaze definitely deserves some kind of “threadiverse citizen’s volunteer of the year” award or something.

      • @[email protected]English
        3•6 months ago

        They are always on r/RedditAlternatives steering people towards the Fediverse too, along with a few others. Unfortunately most people there are resistant, and the heavily leftist-leaning nature of the content here turns a lot of people away (many instances including reddthat.com do not block either hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml by default for new users, so all those posts promoting literal violence against e.g. landlords show up immediately in their All feeds), but it is still awesome to see them trying!:-)

        Personally I think the technology will need to be improved first - e.g. adding content labels such as Mastodon already has (and everything else these days except Lemmy) - before we will see wider acceptance, especially since there are a lot of centrists who nonetheless contribute niche content that otherwise will not feel comfortable here and thus remain on Reddit, or a lot of people simply swear off social media altogether. But damn, if we do succeed it will in no small part be due to their constant efforts!:-) 🥰

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          3•5 months ago

          They are always on r/RedditAlternatives steering people towards the Fediverse too, along with a few others. Unfortunately most people there are resistant, and the heavily leftist-leaning nature of the content here turns a lot of people away (many instances including reddthat.com do not block either hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml by default for new users, so all those posts promoting literal violence against e.g. landlords show up immediately in their All feeds), but it is still awesome to see them trying!:-)

          Yeah, some people there have the worst bad faith I’ve ever seen. Anyway, at least some other people can read the comments and learn about Lemmy.

          • @[email protected]English
            1•5 months ago

            There could literally be some Reddit shills there, or “useful” people who somehow are still holding on tooth & nail to the Reddit name - some people are just like that - and actually I am glad that those have not migrated over to here, even purely to do trolling:-).

            But there are a lot of centrist, middle-of-the-road people, as well as right-leaning people too, who could add their voices here and contribute to the ongoing conversation - b/c not everything is about politics (even if so many people try to turn the conversation towards that here, and I am guilty of that as well; yet gardening, woodworking, knitting, etc. - not everything needs to bring it up consistently).

            There is so much that we could do to make this place more “welcoming” for others. And I see you doing that tirelessly, so thanks!:-)

        • threelonmusketeersEnglish
          1•5 months ago

          Thanks! It seems like a bunch of us have our cake days around this time… what an interesting coincidence! :)

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      16•6 months ago

      Might be worth to check with the team if they would mind moving to another instance.

      I guess they didn’t really check which instance their community was hosted on

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝English
    14•6 months ago

    Yes, I just posted over there that:

    So if there’s an issue with lemmy.ml, boycott it - unsubscribe, give the other communities on more agreeable instances your time and they will grow and prosper. If there isn’t a relevant alternative start one.

    And this is a key step - identify where there aren’t alternatives and start them. It might also be worth compiling a list of the alternatives so people can make the switch.

    It’s also worth bearing in mind that Lemmy isn’t like Reddit in that you could just passively consume content all day. If there’s a problem, we all need to roll our sleeves up and pitch in.

    Worth also mentioning that [email protected] is a good place to discuss topics on how we can help Lemmy grow and thrive.

  • DefederateLemmyMlEnglish
    7•6 months ago

    I think the problem is not so much that “communities don’t exist”, but that they are far less popular and active than the lemmy.ml ones, and when presented with a choice new users will typically choose the community that is more active and has the most subs. You can’t simply solve that by creating another community on another instance. A concerted effort would be needed to get people to move and to get them to pick the alternative community over the lemmy.ml one. Raising awareness and defederation by bigger instances (like lemmy.world) would help immensely.

    For me the big ones are [email protected] and [email protected] btw, which do exist elsewhere but the alternatives are stale.

  • @[email protected]English
    6•6 months ago

    I’m on .ml and have been considering making an account on another instance, but it seems like most major instances require an email. .ml did not require an email.