Ikr? I'm honestly tempted to go back to reddit, but the privacy concerns ick me out

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.

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

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

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.

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.

It's normal and actually kind of cool by design - the 'fediverse' is basically a bunch of different servers (instances) that can all connect to each other. I'm on Lemmy.world, my other account is on midwest.social, but when I'm looking at posts from all communities on either of those I see more or less the same stuff from all the other communities across the other instances.

But some instances have a theme, like Midwest.social is kind of intended for people from the midwest, but anyone can join. Lemmy.ml is kind of a communist hangout. Solarpunk(spelling) is a lot more eco-conscious than other instances.

You can join any instance you want, sometimes after you join an instance you notice a theme that doesn't really vibe with you, but you can join a more 'vanilla' instance, stay on your current instance, or look around for some instance that's really into whatever you're into.

But at the end of the day your credentials on an instance are basically a passport for all the other instances, and it's mostly gonna be a legit good passport.

That said, if an instance goes to crap from bad moderation or from horrible viewpoints or culture, other instances can basically block it, and if you're on an instance that becomes defederated your basically cut off from all the other instances, so you better go find a better instance, but that doesn't happen all too often

lol wut

TL:DR; ml is for Marxist-Leninist, but each server has their own philosophy and rules, so just comment and post on other servers if you want nothing to do with this. On censorship, modlogs are public so there's no hiding stupid admin actions unlike Reddit.

Hello and welcome to Lemmy! Enjoy your stay, even if it can be a little chaotic the discussion and vibes are generally in a good place for real people to talk, and I think the Fediverse is where the future of our internet should be, open and people-first instead of corporations.

To give you context, the lead developers of Lemmy and maintainers of the lemmy.ml, are Marxist-Leninists, and that's why it's .ml and that's related to the signup process. Esoteric signup processes (most other servers are just describe why you want to join) are there to help prove you're not a bot or troll or are aligned with that server's values. Lemmy.ml is a general topic instance but their moderation has a pro-Russian, pro-China slant, and have been known to ban comments and users speaking against that on controversial (e.g. Ukraine, Gaza, US politics) threads. That's the reality, there is a lot of valid criticism of that from within and outside Lemmy, but that's also their perogative. (That sounds not great, but stay with me here.)

However, being part of the Fediverse, this software extends beyond the developers' own political whims. So, you aren't subject to their philosophy if you don't post on .ml and aren't registered with them. Other servers have different policies, some more laissez-faire like db0 or ee, some very protective like beehaw.

I hope you can understand that even if admins sometimes have power trips, they don't have the power of Spez to kick you off the whole platform or enforce awful rules. If we compare Reddit to a kingdom where you can be expelled at any moderator or admins whim, Lemmy is more like a fiefdom where you can only be expelled from the duchy. If you're an extremely unlikable troll, every server will reject you.

Because these relationships between servers are organic, it's not all sunshine and rainbows and there are a lot of topics people can and will disagree on. Please just try to be reasonable with your fellow user and moderator, try not to get upset if your post is removed (double check the rules of the community AND server you post to) if you get 20 downvotes on something unpopular (though it's avoided on lemm.ee since downvotes are disabled). Modlogs are open so if you think a ban/removal is unfair/unjust, appeal to your mods/admins first, if you think it's still unreasonable or part of a power trip rampage you can have a discussion about it on !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com, !fediverselore@lemmy.ca, !modabuse@lemmy.sdf.org, and mention your old user handle for people to judge whether it was justified or not. Unpopular stuff often doesn't get censored unless it breaks rules, or is just plain mean, trolling, flaming or unproductive.

Think of Lemmy instances like a Discord server. You are joining a community. You are not joining up to a centralized corporate website. There are many lemmy instances. Shop around. lemmy.ml are Marxist-Leninist. It's what the .ml stands for. If that's not for you, find another instance.

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.