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...

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[–] cheers_queers@lemmy.zip 5 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

...thats literally what they did tho?

[–] Bluescluestoothpaste@sh.itjust.works 3 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah but making a post about it is stupid, we're all blocking instances and users we don't like, it's like posting "tie your shoes if tripping on your laces feels tirening". Like what is this? a post for primary schoolers?

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 0 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

we’re all blocking instances and users we don’t like

People commonly think that everybody else sort of thinks and acts the same way that they do. Sometimes it's that way, but a lot of the time it isn't. I didn't block a single instance until I think last week. (It was lemmy.ml, not too coincidentally.) That includes my six months on piefed, as well as the several years before that on lemmy.world. I had considered blocking them in the past, but it was only recently that several accounts from there started behaving super-aggressively to me.

I'm just reluctant to block entire instances because I feel like I'll miss out on something. But at this point, I think if you're still on lemmy.ml, then you're probably not somebody who I want to interact with. But that's because it's just famous for being tankies.

[–] jjj@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Blocking an instance just hides posts to communities from there. I have ml blocked but still see posts and comments by their users. I don't know whether this is somehow magically different for everyone else since every discussion I've seen on the matter has at least one person claiming otherwise.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 0 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

I am sure it depends on what interface you're using for the content. Like, what app or web UI, and even what are the settings for that UI. For example, I use Voyager on mobile, and there was one build where I blocked a person and could still see and reply to all of their comments. Obviously that was a bug, but it shows that blocking behavior depends on the UI.

At any rate, I double-checked. I used a private window and went to lemmy.ml to find a post there where the OP for that post had also commented, and when I went to that post through piefed's interface, I was still able to see the post, but it had a message at the top about me blocking the instance, but I was not able to see the comment from the OP under their own post. (Edit: But I could see the other comments, even the one that the OP had responded to.)

So, I can say that, from what I can see, at least in that situation, piefed.social was blocking comments from a person who I didn't specifically block as an individual, but was a member of an instance that I had blocked.

[–] jjj@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

To start, I'm not trying to have an argument about this.

So, I can say that, from what I can see, at least in that situation, piefed.social was blocking comments from a person who I didn’t specifically block as an individual, but was a member of an instance that I had blocked.

Your description doesn't specify much about the origins of OP or the post. Was the community an "@lemmy.ml" community? If so I would expect it to be blocked. Was their account an "@lemmy.ml" account? If so I wouldn't expect that to change anything.

I see a lot of content from ml users, but no posts to their communities, and I use the default Lemmy UI. I haven't made a Piefed account before but ActivityPub (the federation protocol) is responsible for deciding what is and isn't blocked based on your lists AFAIK so I wouldn't expect any differences. That is to say, the included blocking features prevent the UI from receiving blocked posts, the UI shouldn't be responsible for hiding them.

[–] BillyClark@piefed.social 1 points 34 minutes ago

It was a lemmy.ml community. I could only see anything because I specifically looked up the user who posted it.

You can try it yourself. If you don't like the way Lemmy acts, then try making an account on a Piefed instance and see how it's different. I had heard Piefed was better, so I tried out an account, and decided I liked it better.

When you mentioned this behavior, I actually expected that Piefed would probably handle it in a way that I'd prefer.

And besides, the original Lemmy devs are the ones who run lemmy.ml.

[–] cheers_queers@lemmy.zip -5 points 5 hours ago

you know whats really annoying? u

[–] daychilde@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I suspect they're complaining about this thread where OP is griping about it, not the fact that OP blocked the instance.

:shrug:

People are people and we all hate drama but we all participate in drama, so y'know... heh