Just blocked lemmy.ml from my Lemmy account, and I swear to god it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done on this platform. My homepage feels actually clean now.
For the past few months I’d been seeing a lot of tankie posting and pretty much far-left propaganda on my feed. It got tiring enough that I finally checked my blocked-user list, and realized pretty much everyone I’d blocked was from lemmy.ml. So I just blocked the whole instance instead.
Saying this as someone who considers themselves a leftist: I used to think Lemmy itself was an echo chamber. Turns out lemmy.ml was the problem the entire time. Probably the reason I tolerated it for so long is that I agreed with a lot of what they posted, but like an oversaturated meme, I’d had enough. Browsing the platform was starting to feel way too tiring instead of fun, which defeats the point of being here in the first place.
The breaking point was seeing some dude post a “meme” implying North Korea and China are basically communist utopias and that the West sucks. I mean, the West does suck, but come on - you’re saying North Korea is the ideal the West should strive for? What the hell…
PieFed allows for this already, though iirc the flagship instance PieFed.social chooses to put nothing for Lemmy.ml.
I always enjoy content on Beehaw. This is the note that appears on every single post in a community on that instance:
Notice how the link goes to Beehaw itself for additional details, to explain their policies in their own words.
I always found Lemmy.ml’s own choice of words to describe themselves quite disingenuous though - as if it were merely FOSS or something being discussed, and as if nothing whatsoever related to politics exists, certainly nothing that might, oh I dunno, differ from their very narrow, highly specific viewpoint (which distinctly clashes with actual facts, e.g. video evidence of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, which tankies declare variously that it did not happen, or if it did happen then that there were no fatalities).
Hexbear at least is extremely open about how they exist for nothing more than the sake of arguments - that’s arguably fine even, so long as it remains constrained inside the communities designated for such - where the members actually want it, i.e. consent should matter - rather than spilling out into every single other fucking community all across the Fediverse.