OpenStars

I mean, tbf they aren’t actually “leftist”, most people agree, just play pretending to be such without seeming to really understand what that even means.

Also I probably went way overboard with the explanation bc the mere fact that the girl in the comic immediately reciprocates tells all the backstory needed that she did actually want it - she was merely surprised at first, not shocked and horrified as a triggering event would have been.

Anyway, good luck getting this admin removed - they are more entrenched on lemmy.ml than an admin would be at Reddit. Although similarly, we don’t have to remain associated with the likes of Reddit lemmy.ml and can move on to better things.

Sort of, except that the mod tools on Lemmy reportedly suck, especially over instance barriers. The admins seem to not be prioritizing that, which btw I am 100% in support of the fact that that is their right to do so - we are using their codebase after all (well, you are, on PieFed I’m not:-), and if we want better, it would be up to us to build it, either by contributing to Lemmy or one of its alternatives like PieFed or Mbin (although Sublinks seems dead maybe?).

Haha, but I do note some problems with that approach. For one, it helps only you, leaving new users to have to repeat your success one by one. New users mostly in my experience won’t stick around long enough to even want to do so, and rather 100% of the people I’ve told have turned away from Lemmy in disgust.

For another, they’ll simply swap accounts and be back at it again. They proudly mention such inside the safety of their home instances - one person on lemmygrad.ml even mentioned that they will be building an app specifically for the purpose of using alts to avoid such blocks and defederations. No really means yes to them.

If anyone is curious, see e.g. the people from the Lemmy.ml instance talking in https://sh.itjust.works/post/26892196. I for one found it hilarious when they kept saying to hit up their DMs (bc their arguments could not stand the light of public inquiry and they knew it?:-P), then when I pointed that out, claimed that they had never done so and asked for proof - like I couldn’t read it happening within the very same post. But I get it, many people won’t bother to read or investigate anything at all, so those tricks really would work on a lazy reader i.e. an average Redditor. Case in point, the recent USA election thinking that Trump’s tariffs will somehow boost the economy, rather than tank it as happened during COVID where supply lines were so dramatically affected (which tbf would have happened anyway, but still the response was pretty lackluster and could have mitigated much of that if even minimal efforts had been expended).

Yeah that took months to accomplish for me, but also for example someone (let’s call them “Cowbee” for… reasons) could reply to my very comment here, in a post in a community that is not on Lemmy.ml.

I noticed that 90% of the time when I would receive the most batshit insane replies, whenever they were not coming from hexbear.net or lemmygrad.ml (my first instance after Kbin went defunct was StarTrek.website that had defederated from neither at the time) they were coming from lemmy.ml, thus now that I’ve finally managed to block them, my experience on the Fediverse has improved >99%.

I would have left the Fediverse entirely if need be - I don’t need that kind of toxicity in my life. Instead, I only left Lemmy (moving to PieFed) and am enjoying it here immensely now.:-) Other solutions include the Sync or Connect apps that likewise allow you to block all users from any instance you choose without needing admin support, or Lemmy.cafe or Tesseract on dubvee.org that have already defederated from the big 3.

Yup. Fwiw, PieFed.social has actually defederated from hexbear.net and lemmygrad.ml, so the approach I mentioned is more for overall instances like Lemmy.ml.

Although instance blocking does very little - only muting communities from that instance, but the users can still reply to you, generating notifications when they do, and they can vote and thereby influence the visibility of your content (especially impactful when it is first starting out in a larger community and even 1-2 downvotes can prevent it from being seen by many).

PieFed, along with the Lemmy apps Sync and Connect, and the Lemmy instances lemmy.cafe and Tesseract on dubvee.org allow for true blocking of all users from lemmy.ml (the latter two requiring admin support but they have chosen to defederate from all of the big 3, and they are the only instances to have done so, thus earned quite the distinction).

100% of the people that I’ve recommended Lemmy to have admonished me for even so much as having mentioned it, citing the extremist rhetoric that calls for violent upheaval of all capitalist systems in the Western world.

If I do a Google search (yuck I know), Lemmy.ml is the 4th hit, and the top hit for an actual instance. On it, the default view shows only Local posts so… yup, that’s what a day-1 noob would see, is that instance making fun of capitalism especially the USA.

From the actual top instance, Lemmy.World, those posts make up a significantly smaller percentage of the feed, but how would people know that? And they aren’t nothing either.

Also, blocking an instance from Lemmy does very little to curb the onslaught of toxicity from it: that merely mutes the communities hosted there, whereas the users are still free to harass you, triggering notifications, vote to influence the visibility of your content, etc. I was browsing All and made the mistake of replying to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net one day, and then did that again in lemmygrad.ml, and each time received replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards. I almost quit the fediverse entirely:-(. Browsing from All, how was I supposed to know what those communities, or instances, were all about - was that truly “my” fault for being ignorant? Either way, I almost left, so I understand why none of the irl people I mention Lemmy to will stay either.

The people arguing against defederation are ignoring how users can be harassed here against their consent, and since no other alternatives are being made available on Lemmy to deal with the situation, defederation remains as the only option left.

(Side-note: PieFed does offer several intriguing alternatives, including showing the sidebar text below every post so that someone knows what the community standards are, even arriving at the post from All rather than going through the community page first, and labelling certain instances with special text, e.g. for Beehaw it says:

This post is hosted on beehaw.org which has higher standards of behaviour than most places. Be nice.

with that link to the exact text offered by the instance admins describing their alternative and unusual moderation practices in their own words; and another is in labelling users to allow democratization of moderation rather than a binary remove/retain decision - although while all of these experimental features are awesome, PieFed’s UI is quite a bit behind Lemmy’s so not quite ready for the masses.)

How do I block users from an instance of my choice?

My sympathies - I had to do that on Reddit and it was an enormous relief when I finally stepped down and was able to block a particularly onerous troll (who was mostly fairly helpful to the community itself, just singling me out as the only mod to receive his ire - I had offered to make him one but he turned it down). I hope you are able to preserve your sanity, b/c your mental health is important too, as well as all those that you protect from people’s toxicity (from whatever instance it may derive from). :-)

It’s really not - all the instance blocking does it mute those communities, but the users can still harass you, triggering notifications, vote on your content, etc. I made the mistake of replying to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net and received replies for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, then did it again on lemmygrad.ml and again received replies for WEEKS and WEEKS - my consent mattered not at all. I found both of those posts by browsing “All” btw, so I had no chance to see the sidebar and had no clue what I was getting myself into, either with regard to the communities or the instances they were on.

I almost left Lemmy entirely because of that, and so I don’t blame others like the 100% of irl people that I’ve mentioned Lemmy to, who then give me dirty looks for having suggested it, b/c of what they see when they visit with a day-1 account. Probably some website somewhere accessible by a straight-up Google search specifically directs them to Lemmy.ml as the flagship instance - which it was at some point even if no longer - whereupon the default search is Local so… yeah, they would absolutely see all the political extremist rhetoric.

It is possible to block users from lemmy.ml, but it’s not so easily accomplished: https://piefed.social/post/307636.

Ways to block Lemmy.ml:

1. on base Lemmy, you basically cannot - for whatever reason, the devs do not seem to consider this a “priority”?:-P
2. the Sync or Connect apps let you do this though
3. PieFed allows you to block all the users from any instance that you choose, without needing admin support; PieFed also has fantastic features such as hashtags and categories of communities, though notably its base UI is significantly less advanced than Lemmy’s, e.g. it lacks user tagging (e.g. @openstars@piefed.social does nothing)
4. the only instances that have defederated from the big 3 are lemmy.cafe and dubvee.org (also quokk.au but that has a single admin and people report not being able to join it)

More details in this post.

Tbf, many of the users already had accounts on both, but yeah since “no means yes” to them, when HB got defederated from they simply switched to whatever would allow them to continue their harassment campaigns. Lemmygrad.ml users say the same as well.

So if ML ever were to be defederated with, from let’s say LW (Lemmy.World), they would continue forward with LW accounts rather than take the strong “suggestion” that they not.

That’s why I prefer the approach that PieFed is testing out: not outright blocking it but placing an icon next to users that e.g. are brand-new accounts, or a different icon for those who have more downvotes than upvotes.

It do be facts tho:-D

That would only work if we labelled them so that new users are aware.

It’s like handing your kid a chainsaw but forgetting to empty it of gasoline first.

I prefer the analogy of porn though: I am not advocating that it not exist, just that it be properly labelled so that it is fully consensual for someone to receive it - b/c otherwise their only alternative to avoid that (e.g. while at work) is to leave Lemmy altogether.

Fwiw all the links work fine for me from both PieFed and Lemmy.World base web UI even without an account. So it must be an app issue, and all the “standard” methods of access work.

Lemmygrad.ml is 5 years old, and hexbear.net is 4 years old.

I believe this comment is the original, in which case I misremembered the situation slightly: the admin wasn’t telling the OP to kill themselves, but rather stating that they (the admin) wanted to kill the OP directly. They also doubled down on that further down, and tripled down still further, e.g. stating “I hope you die soon” (all while claiming that people with PTSD could have been triggered by a fictional depiction of an unannounced kiss among friends, yet ignoring how a mod stating irl that they wish to shoot a poster would also be a much worse trigger, for violence).

A short synopsis is that a comic, written by a Latin American woman fwiw (Latin American people are more prone to touch each other, especially in relationships), about a game scenario wherein a girl kisses a guy friend, is removed and the admin tells the OP that they want to kill them (specifically, shoot them). All of this seems predicated on the misunderstanding that in the game you need to reach 10 hearts prior to being able to kiss someone, whereas that is actually at 8 hearts and by 10 hearts you can already safely ask for their hand in marriage… or something like that. Anyway the (fictious) guy in this comic about the game has already asked the girl out on a date at the level 8 marker, offering her a bouquet of flowers, which she accepts, and then the scenario in question occurs at the level 10 marker. This is by no means a “sexual assault” - they are in an established relationship, which took effort to build up, requiring back and forth signals from both sides, each acquiescing and signaling a readiness to not only continue it but to escalate it further. But the admin did not research the game, and instead went off unhinged with this wish for OP to die by their own hand.

There is an ENORMOUS amount of additional backstory details in https://lemm.ee/post/45248880 if you want to read more. Ignore Lvxferre and I’s tangent on moderation practices in hexbear but definitely pay attention to Lvxferre’s top-voted explanation of the context and below that a direct discussion with the actual admin in question, or at least the beginnings of one though the admin immediately ceased responding upon the first pushback of their practices. Also here’s an extremely relevant & helpful comment: https://lemm.ee/post/45248880/15580086, and below that an additional conversation between the admin and the OP, wherein despite how vehemently the admin goes hard against OP for “sexual assault”, in describing his own comment advocating for murder of the OP he says simply “It’s just a comment bro” (the irony there is palpable!).

Some of the original is now impossible to follow properly bc despite the admin continuing to get triggered by OP’s words in defense of their actions, we can now see only the admin’s side of the story, as OP’s have all been forcibly removed. However, that’s enough imho, bc no matter what the defense was seems irrelevant given that level of rhetoric levied against OP, describing their murder at the hands of the admin. And all for a (comic about a game about a) kiss that was reciprocated hence consensual to begin with, and among people who have already begun to become romantically involved, that the admin decided must be described as none other than sexual assault.

Don’t get lost in all the details and miss the main point though: even if the admin had been correct about the kiss, how would that justify their own actions to say how they wanted to murder OP and hopes that they die soon?

People continually report being disappointed by the moderation practices going on at lemmy.ml, hence moving communities off of it is a self-protective measure to try to keep Lemmy alive rather than allow such to send people away, possibly back to Reddit.

I get what you are saying: shittiness that happens daily is a more consistent pattern than something that happens ONCE.

On the other hand, an admin telling someone to literally kill themselves is such an extreme event that it might be grounds for their removal as an admin?

It’s an age-old philosophy problem: which is worse, stealing daily vs. actually killing someone once?

Or is that a trick question, since both are kinda shitty, no?

In any case, what happens when someone does BOTH of them?

The answer is ofc literally nothing, when said person is protected by the instance admins who are also the developers of this codebase. I wonder what would have happened though if Huffman was caught saying something similar to the users of Reddit? Yeah, nothing, that’s right - it’s not like we would leave Reddit or anything:-P. (Except I did, and now I’ve left Lemmy too, hello from PieFed!:-D)

If anyone wants to go further and actually block the instance, it’s really quite difficult to impossible from base Lemmy but it can be accomplished, as described further in this post.

The problem with such a “block”, applied by the base Lemmy web UI or an app like Voyager that merely applies the same, is that it only mutes communities - which is basically the same as unsubscribing from each one individually (except it does save you some time, and affects newly created ones, and also visibility while browsing the All feed).

The actual users from those instances can still harass you, making comments, triggering notifications, voting on your content, etc. I made the mistake of replying to a comment in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net and another one somewhere in Lemmygrad.ml and each time I received notifications for WEEKS and WEEKS afterwards, long after I stopped responding.

I almost quit the Fediverse entirely as a result. That is not what I signed up for. Btw browsing by All doesn’t show the sidebar of ChapoTrapHouse, nor of hexbear.net. How was I supposed to know!? What I did see was the sidebar of such places as Lemmy.World and Discuss.Online which is… well, more than a little different focus (remember the human and all of that).

Like porn, I think such content as is in ChapoTrapHouse@hexbear.net should be properly labeled so that people aren’t taken by surprise, going in there unawares. THEY can do whatever they want, but why are WE federating that content to the entire world - without such a label having been applied?

Tbf that doesn’t actually do much at all in terms of blocking an instance, hence is horribly misnamed imho. All it does is mute communities located on that instance. The users from that instance can still harass you in posts in other communities, triggering notifications, vote on your content, etc.

The Sync and Connect can do true user-level blocking of any instance you choose without needing admin support, and the Lemmy alternative PieFed, or e.g. Lemmy.cafe or dubvee org have blocked all of the big 3 tankie instances.

Tbf, that admin telling someone to kill themselves wasn’t exactly a high mark for their ethics imho.

What if they were to admin their own instance? It’d be a lot of work though.