Why was lemmygrad blocked?

Did the admins poll the community about it? Why was such measure so needed? If the tankie content is so annoying why not let users decide what they want to see or not and what they want to block?

I don't like that the admins want to censor the content I can view or not. You guys are not protecting us nor doing us a favor, you're imposing your views over everyone else by limiting the information we are able to receive.

I don't support the devs views or the views in lemmygrad, but this is a dangerous precedent.

I've read several of the "arguments" for blocking the instance and all I can see is a bunch of people talking about politics and arguing about "floods in the frontpage". Well, let the user block communities if that's the case, same way I'm already blocking communities I'm not interested.

I think the admins want to feel like Facebook moderation. I'd be OK with it if any instance repeatedly generated spam, security, doxxing or any other concern that couldn't be solved by banning individuals, otherwise it's just plain censorship.

I just don't want the admins to use their power to decide what I can see or not. If this is going to be like this, I'll leave for a better instance because I can see where this is going to.

15 comments

Hey icy,

The decision to block the Lemmygrad instance was less a question of censorship, and more an issue of personal conviction. As a volunteer dedicating my personal resources and time to facilitating a space for users to create, discover, and discuss - not just on this instance, but across the Fediverse - I admit that this choice was made alone, selfishly, without the consent or thoroughly considering the collective opinion of the community. With the above said, sh.itjust.works has had the lemmygrad instance blocked from its first day.

I'd like to also point out that the lemmygrad instance has far more blocked instances than what is currently blocked here. Maybe you can create a post on that instance to see what that's all about and report back?

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- Honestly, owning up to it being a selfish decision deserves some respect. I'm a big proponent of free expression and avoiding censorship, but I took a gander at the kinda stuff they got over there and...
  
  It's not even the views they hold that's my main problem. It's really that they're just so needlessly rude and aggressive, and as you pointed out, they seem to be a lot more censorship happy than here anyway. I would be more sympathetic to them if they were less censorship happy themselves, and if they were less mean.
  
  I do want to stress that I hope you keep the number of blocked instances to a minimum, since I feel that it would be better if the Lemmy software had better tools for users to control what they block for themselves better, and also maybe just having "default" blocklists that users can disable, to keep the new-user experience nice, but yeah for that particular instance, I can't be too mad about it.
  
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- It’s not like you could have polled users that hadn’t joined yet anyways. Maybe the blocked list could be made more visible so people could be informed early on before they get too invested in their account?
  
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  I plan on making a post sharing some considerations people should take before registering to an instance. In it I’ll definitely bring this subject up.
  
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If you want absolute control over what instances you’re federated with, start your own instance. Otherwise, find one that’s more closely aligned to your views.

As others have said, this is one of the main points of federated networks, if you don’t like how an instance is run, you can take your ball and go play somewhere else.

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- Literally. People forget that these instances are privately run (just as Reddit is). There is no obligation to the “public good”.
  
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- So tldr "stfu and gtfo"? I can get outta here and, been saying it from the beginning, I probably will, but I won't be silent about it.
  
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  You’re way too aggressive about this. You can join any other instance and access the same content, or start your own. Nobody is “silencing” you.
  
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Here's the god's honest truth: Instances are not, as a rule, democracies. They are more like benevolent dictatorships. You can make your complaints heard, for sure, but the name of the game is really "Don't like it? Take your business elsewhere or build something better". As it always should be, imo.

There's nothing really stopping you from spinning up your own single user instance and using that to interact with Lemmy and the wider fediverse however you please. If you're the only user you can pretty much run it off a toaster (or at least I'm led to believe this). If you don't want to do that, then you choose to play by the rules of whatever instance you call home.

And this isn't necessarily a dig at you - if you're worried about admins engaging in censorship, I sincerely recommend looking into selfhosting. It's the only real way to ensure you're the one at the helm at all times.

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Just make another account on an instance that federates with them. It's really not a big deal. It's not like reddit where you don't have anywhere else to go.

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- Yes I surely know it's not "a big deal" and I already said I will leave on my post.
  
  But I won't be silent about it. This is about the culture of the platform itself.
  
  This instance has been receiving a lot of newcomers like me, and to me this is not OK. It is not OK to let the admins decide the content you'll receive.
  
  If instances keep defederating from each other, you're fostering a culture of censorship and isolation where admins decide over users.
  
  Enjoy your echo chamber / tyranny as any other subreddit where mods did what they wanted with you.
  
  Culture is more important than software.
  
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  Defederation is an inevitable fact of life for a federated ecosystem and it won't always be for things where everyone agrees (just look at the fediblock tag on mastodon). The important thing is that instance owners have clear criteria for how they defederate from other instances and transparency about their reasons for having done so, so that their users and other instances have the correct expectations for their future behavior.
  
  It's early days for a lot of instances and probably many of us will end up migrating to other instances as it becomes clear which ones make decisions that suit our values.
  
  What I do worry about is the fact that folks are setting up communities wherever they first land and Lemmy doesn't yet have tools for migrating a community between instances (correct me if I'm wrong about that). That seems like a ticking time bomb in some ways.
  
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