I came here a few weeks ago after many years of reddit. Altogether I find discussions I enjoy, however, the posts and comments noticeably lean, well, tankie (I didn’t know that term before I came here). It’s not that I am looking for an echo chamber, but I also don’t want to spend my time reading propaganda. I’m really curious about a lot of things outside politics, as well as the opinions and arguments of reasonable people across the political spectrum, but I don’t want to listen to the boring canned lies of fascists and tankies. I realized that people celebrating communist dictators trigger me, and this is something I didn’t have to deal with before I started reading lemmy, I didn’t even know this type existed.
I also notice that accounts created just a few hours in advance come from other instances to brigade political posts. Because of how lemmy works, I can block individual users or communities, but not individual instances. Is there an instance that could be a “safe space” from this kind of brigading and tankie spam? Or a way to use the internet to read interesting things now that blogs died and then Reddit became whatever it became?
Edit: Thanks everyone for the helpful and wholesome comments. Of course, some trolls/wackos showed up as well to say hi.
but not individual instances.
You can. If you’re using a Lemmy home instance, as you are currently (lemmy.world), in the Web UI, go to your user menu in the upper-right corner, click “Settings”, click the “Blocks” tab, and then you can choose instances to block in a panel there.
If what you want is “I don’t want auth-left stuff”, avoiding hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and lemmy.ml can help. You aren’t going to get some kind of ironclad avoidance, but that’ll avoid the great bulk of it. Your home instance is lemmy.world. lemmy.world is defederated with lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net for exactly the reason you mention (in fact, I see people who don’t like lemmy.world because they consider it liberal, which they don’t like) so you already won’t be seeing stuff from the first two instances.
I don’t think I’ve personally seen fascist material on the Threadiverse (though there are some people with quite broad definitions of the term), though there are or were some far-right instances out there, based on defederation lists. Most of what little I’ve seen on the Fediverse seems to me to be on Pleroma, though I haven’t spent much time on non-Threadiverse Fediverse stuff.
moderate conservative
The home instance that I use, lemmy.today, has one user (@DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today) that posts a bunch of Trump stuff and a conservative community, !conservative@lemmy.today. I don’t know if your definition of conservative and his match up, but maybe you’d find it to your taste; it’s probably the closest to mainstream US, Republican material that I’ve seen with much activity on the Threadiverse. The instance isn’t going to be just moderate conservative and moderate liberal users though. But, if that’s the kind of community that you might be participating in, I’d imagine that he’d like to have more users.
EDIT: My own personal take is that the long term solution to having people with disparate positions on what content they want to see, above-and-beyond use of moderated communities and admin activity on instances, is to have “curator lists”, where people can basically “share” lists of blocks/subscribes/votes or something like that, and other users can subscribe to them. Then you have a list that — for example — excludes or includes content on various grounds without requiring effort on a per-user-who-wants-curated-content basis. I think that Usenet pretty much established that killfiles don’t really scale well in combating spam and stuff like that, because there was never a mechanism to share killfiles among users. Anyway, today, there isn’t support for something like that on the Threadiverse. I understand that BlueSky has something along those lines.
I enjoy that you gave a serious and helpful answer.
Posts like that are the ones that keep me here. There are some really dope people here who want to help and inform other people.
What’s sad is often content like this gets labeled as ‘evil’ and then brigaded by users who perceive it as a threat to furthering their political agenda, because anyone who isn’t on their side, or is remotely nice to anyone on the ‘other’ sides, is evil.
By lemmy.ml logic, if I help my elderly Trump-voting neighbor take out his trash, I’m also a Trump supporter. Apparently I’m if I was a ‘good person’ who was really anit-Trump, I’d beat him or slash his tires or something.
It would be important for people to understand that what separates good people from bad people is decency and basic human kindness, not political ideology. In reality, the good people are in the center, and the bad people are on the extremes. Yet, due to the polarization of public discourse, a left leaning person may be convinced that the good people are to the left, and the bad people are to the right from them. If they keep drifting towards the extreme, and keep thinking that everyone to the right is a bad person, eventually they will hate all the decent people in the center, while everyone still to the left from them is an actual monster. Needless to say, the same goes for people who start right leaning and keep drifting to the right. I wish more people realized that the enemies are the crazies on either side, not the moderates on the other side.
People don’t believe that anymore. They believe your goodness derives from your politics first and foremost, and everything else is secondary. And if you aren’t on their side you are the enemy and violence is justified against you. It’s also a great way for shitty people to manipulate others and get their abusive jollies in.
I’ve dealt with this in real life too. Where I live if you aren’t a far leftist on some issues, people basically threaten you to your face or will socially exclude and character assassinate you. Because if you aren’t ‘with them’ you are the enemy.
And by the replies and attitudes in the rest of this thread as of today, you’re correct.
Wow, thanks, such a helpful response! I’ll try the web interface for instance blocking. Another sus instance I saw today was blahaj.zone. To clarify, I also didn’t see fascist stuff, I just mentioned it because I felt it important to point out that I also don’t want to see that kind of content. I guess I saw one too many “so you are not a fan of Stalin, you must be fascist” comment today.
Can do it through apps too.
ML is definitely everyone’s first and fav instance to block, and it sounds like it’s time for you too. A lot of the dumb shit will cut down very quickly just by getting rid of that one.
It’s so funny that the first instance Lemmy users ban is the one of the Lemmy developers lol
the lemmy devs are very clear about their political views.
anytime you are clear about your political views, you are going to invite others to ban/hate/dismiss you on princple, because most people do not believe in a plurality of viewpoints in 2026. Increasingly folks just want to silence and other perspective than their own and create their own instances where they can fully police the views of others and have that instance be specifically for their political persuasions only.
.world is the answer as long as you remove the reasonable part.
There are lots of us around. You just won’t see a ton of the content they post or comment because the tankies and other extremists will downvote and report it to try and get it removed.
It sucks. I once was on a thread about trans issues months ago, that was so wonderfully empathetic and nuanced and graceful… I went back and forth and felt so much was shared and learned. But then it was brigaded by a LGBT instance’s users, who reported everything as bigotry and hate speech, and then the mods removed all the posts and all that was left two days later was just a ton of short asinine posts that reduce everything into a binary stance of ‘support lgbt always and forever or you are an evil person’ nonsense.
Which is to say, moderate speech that considers a plurality of views on an issue, or the real world complexities of an issue, typically doesn’t last very long on lemmy, due to the population of extremists who regard it as ‘hate speech’. Because they want to reduce every discussion to name-calling and bumper sticker slogans and false binary choices of being ‘for/against’ things, and a bizarre paranoia about everything being nazi or facist.
Yeah, people believe in human rights, brother. You must’ve missed like the last 30 years of public schooling or something. human rights really have no gray areas to discuss. Would you care to be more specific about the exact topic and how it was being portrayed??
You can block individual instances, I have a long list of instances that I have blocked.
What I first did is to limit my home feed to ‘subscribed’ only. Doing so, I don’t see anything from communities I’m not already subscribed to. And since I’ve made a rather… careful selection of those communities (from various instances), I seldom have have to deal with low quality content/noise. Making it a lot quicker to remove the occasional nuisance that passes through.
I’m a big fan of the subscribed only home feed. I see so much less hateful things since I started doing that.
goes on communist website
built by communists that got kicked out of reddit
i like this, but what about all those communists???
I’m still gonna pick on you communist but that’s after we’re done with the Nazis.
Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization. At first, this happens sporadically for the duration of a modern war, but then when the period of unlimited wars begins it progresses toward its inevitable consequences. Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that means the conscious active struggle of the international proletariat against imperialism and its method of war. This is a dilemma of world history, an either/or; the scales are wavering before the decision of the class-conscious proletariat. The future of civilization and humanity depends on whether or not the proletariat resolves manfully to throw its revolutionary broadsword into the scales. In this war imperialism has won. Its bloody sword of genocide has brutally tilted the scale toward the abyss of misery. The only compensation for all the misery and all the shame would be if we learn from the war how the proletariat can seize mastery of its own destiny and escape the role of the lackey to the ruling classes.
This was Rosa Luxemburg in 1915. The regression into barbarism was brutal. Lets not lose sight of “the only compensation for the misery and all the shame”
It appears our bourgeois have decided barbarism is the way. Good Quote.
No, you got the wrong message
“Bourgeois society” is a society that has the “proletarian <-> bourgeois” contradiction, not “the society of the bourgeoisie”.
The bourgeoisie don’t have the option to decide. They have to go with barbarism or there won’t be a bourgeoisie anymore. They cannot choose socialism ever, it’s scientifically impossible. They’d have to become class traitors first. Commit class suicide. Only then, when they are no longer bourgeoisie can they choose. Here is great excerpt of “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” by Engels that talks about Robert Owen who experienced this first hand (and who eventually committed class suicide very much to his credit) https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/o/w.htm#owen
Thank you for the explanation. I hadn’t had my first coffee yet. I catch your drift now.
oh not at all, it’s an easy mistake to make when someone isn’t versed in communist terminology.
I might have skipped the majority of communist theory except a few excerpts here and there. But I’m here to learn.
I largely use Lemmy because it doesn’t tolerate conservatives.
It’s 2026. There is no such thing as a moderate conservative. They don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. They don’t deserve yet another platform to argue in bad faith on. They’ve gone too far. Every platform they touch turns into a cesspool of bigotry and garbage opinions they think should be taken seriously or they play victim.
I don’t want them on Lemmy.
Refusing to even talk to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum just makes you another perpetuator of the massive political divide. Do you actually think anyone’s had their vote swayed by someone who refused to even talk to them. You’re not going to bring anyone to the left by demonising the right.
Maybe a loose fit, but not that loose.
Political divide is things like budget, use of public lands, roads & infrastructure. We’re split on morality, ethics, bigotry, and child rape. A good number of us don’t even bother talking to family members anymore, why would I waste my time trying to converse with the dude who lives up the street from me that has a t-shirt of Donnie surrounded by bikini clad girls and “Chillin’ like a felon”?
Trump is the poster child of chauvinism, bigotry, bravado, greed, deceit, swindle, and zero self-control. His ability to get away with it has emboldened his supports to embrace their worst inclinations and treat their neighbors like Trump does. Granted, they are not Trump, so the average thief, wife beater, or kid diddler still gets arrested, but a lot have figured out they can be blatantly racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or a plain old dick in public and love that there’s no consequences anymore.
I have no interest in winning over people who have no shame, no remorse, and no empathy. Some will come crawling over when the suffering trickles down and finally affects them, but without any self-reflection or moral awakening, they’ll go right back to their old ways as soon as the burden is lifted. Fuck ‘em.
Refusing to even talk to people on the opposite end of the political spectrum just makes you another perpetuator of the massive political divide.
Extremely bold of you to assume I haven’t spent the majority of my life talking to them and trying to understand their extremist views.
I finally stopped because, as I said, they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt due to their own words and actions.
How long would you entertain the opinions and actions of Nazis in the name of getting along?
Also, if you think conservatives are going to start voting liberal if we play nice with them, well, you’re either very young or really haven’t been paying attention.
I don’t want them on Lemmy.
Lemmy is open to anyone though. Excluding someone based on what they believe, slides into the very fascism that many on Lemmy proclaim to be against. Intolerance is never a good thing, regardless of what your political outlook is.
You are certainly to welcome block people you don’t want to associate with, but trying to exclude a group of people because you don’t believe them is nothing to brag about.
There is no such thing as a moderate conservative. They don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
I can assure you that there plenty of moderate conservatives. Your refusal to admit this, is the exact sort of extremism that OP is trying to stay away from.
Again, you are free to believe that and act accordingly, but excluding someone from a platform, purely based on their beliefs, is what you are supposed to be fighting against.
Many on Lemmy think conservatives exclude people based on their beliefs, and are close-minded. Now look at your words and switch use the words “liberal” instead of “conservative.”
If you read a conservative saying the exact same thing you said, but using “liberal” instead of “conservative,” you’d be pretty angry. You are doing the exact thing that you accuse them of doing.
Nah fuck conservatives.
Fuck all of that. Conservatism is a cancer. Every one of them can go to hell.
Cool. You are the exact extremism that OP is talking about trying to avoid. Congrats.
I’m not interested. You don’t compromise on this. You don’t tolerate it. It’s a cancer. If his preference is to help it metastasize, he is the one to be avoided.
Ok, well good luck and hope ya do better in the next election than you did in the last one.
Wait, I thought you weren’t a conservative? Who’d you vote for then?
I’m not conservative. I support third party voting. Democrats suck as much as the Republicans.
Lemmy is open to anyone though.
Sure is. Doesn’t mean I want bigots/fascists here, fucking up yet another platform.
Excluding someone based on what they believe
How long would you be willing to entertain Nazis? Would you say the same thing about them? That we should just listen to them and give them a chance? That we should tolerate them? Now, American conservatives aren’t Nazis, because Naziism was a specific fascist movement in Germany a century ago. But American conservatives are fascists because they match the definition.
Now, I’m not sure if you possess eyes or ears, but fascism is now here, in America, due to conservatives. I’m done giving them the benefit of the doubt. They do not deserve it. They do not care to argue in good faith.
but trying to exclude a group of people because you don’t believe them is nothing to brag about.
Words placed into my mouth. I’m not making some concerted effort to exclude conservatives from Lemmy. Never said I was. I said I don’t want them here. That’s my personal opinion. You seem to really care about people, even fascists, getting to have their opinions, so let me have mine.
Now look at your words and switch use the words “liberal” instead of “conservative.”
Ah. I see. You are a “bOtH sIdEz” advocate. One of those that believe everything is equal. Well, I’m here to promise you that is false. Both sides do no want the same thing and do not go about getting what they want in the same manner. Not even close. Your entire argument is based on all things being equal. That simply isn’t true, so your argument is weak.
The right side of the aisle uses violence and intimidation to get what they want FAR, FAR more often than the left side does. And that is a fact supported by a shit ton of data. So why should we give a side that uses those tactics regularly the same benefit of the doubt that we’d give a side that doesn’t? That’s nonsense.
NOT. THE. SAME.
You’ll still be singing Kumbaya while you’re being gassed.
You are a “bOtH sIdEz” advocate.
Yep. Both sides have their share of idiots and extremists.
You clarified and said that conservatives should in theory be allowed here, and that’s exactly the point I was making. So we’re good.
They should be allowed, even when we disagree with them. I don’t buy the line that all conservatives are fascists, the way so many on Lemmy love to claim.
I’m really glad the real US isn’t anything like the nightmare version most of Lemmy seems convinced it is. lol
The difference between a Lenny communist is: no one takes them seriously, they do not control the entire government, they are not using the government to shoot dissenters in the streets.
Some of those crazy bastards probably would if you gave them control of the government, but that’s beside the point because no one has done that yet. But when they do, I am going to support whatever they decide to do to the Nazis.
I agree with your broader point but the bit about supporting auth-left fighting Nazis is a risky bet. I don’t think we’re close to having a marxist-leninist vanguard party overthrow the regime here in the US, but historically when they have been empowered to enact violence against fascists they end up taking the state monopoly on violence for themselves and turning it on anarchists and other socialists with slight disagreements.
But Iike you said, they’re not the ones controlling the state at the moment. It’s just something to keep in mind for the future in case an ML vanguard party leading a revolution in the US actually ends up being on the table. Depending on how bad things get a lot of people might consider it worth the risk.
When trump started his shenanigans I was a little fearful of the auth left rising as a reaction. The French blood flows strong through me, and I long for a tale of two cities end to the story.
I’ll take my chances with the authoritarian left at this point.
Paradox of Tolerance my dude
Life and people aren’t nearly as awful as Lemmy constantly paints them to be. Too many users here just doomscroll and get a kick out of pretending the world’s already doomed and deserves it.
I refuse to live like that. My life is about finding joy, helping people, knowing my neighbors, and genuinely loving others. Because of that, the so-called “paradox of tolerance” doesn’t apply to me. I’m not tolerating intolerance; I’m just choosing not to build my world around hate or fear or negativity.
Good for you, must be nice living in a fantasy land like the pyro from TF2.
It’s fucking delusional it’s what it is, and you can’t just choose to ignore the paradox of tolerance, unless you want to turn your favourite bar into a nazi bar
How is it a fantasy world?
Do you realize that the US isn’t a war zone, and that most people just go along their daily lives of dropping kids off at school, hiking, mowing their lawns, going to work, going to the park, going on dates with their significant other, watching netflix, etc?
Most non-Lemmy people don’t make their politics their identity, nor do they talk about politics every single day, nor do they call every single person that disagrees with them a Nazi or a Fascist daily.
Most just don’t care about politics. As we saw in the election.
How is that a fantasy world? Normal society isn’t even close to what the Lemmy-verse is…lol
Lemmy has the worst cases of doomscrolling and negativity that I have ever seen.
A: you assume I’m American. I’m not. That’s an insult where I’m from.
B: it’s not open to everyone, don’t be stupid. It’s a walled and managed garden like every social media, just the walls are guarded by volunteers instead of staff. And instead of single source of moderation, it’s literally hundreds of teams working together (Federation)
C: Right, let’s say that someone says something shitty and bigoted, you saying I should let them stay, in the interest of “balance”? Just answer that
I’m saying that not every conservative is shitty and bigoted. Lemmy doesn’t want to admit that though. That’s my point.
Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That’s less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million. Not even close to representing how the general US population feels about things.
A: you assume I’m American. I’m not.
Then you don’t know how America really is and have no room to talk with any authority about it. All you know is what you have read on news and Lemmy. That’s only accurate for extreme stuff. The vast majority of the US is quiet and boring. Which is awesome.
Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That’s less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million.
I don’t know I had a dude wake me up at 5 AM every morning for 18 months so he could parade his loud truck and his Maga flag down the street. For me, the paradox of tolerance was broken when the police wouldn’t stop him from breaking the law every day.
You guys let your extremist run wild and terrorize society for the last six years. You have no moderate views you have no moderate inclinations. You have no conservative values. It hits pure regressive politics and hate mongering. The only thing you conserve is hierarchy and perverse incentives.
Please explain “you guys.”
I’m not republican. I didn’t “let” anyone run anything. The US voted, and Trump won. And next election people have the option to vote someone else in.
Are you assuming I’m republican just because I said not all republicans are bad?! Dude, come on…think about that. Fucking Lemmy, man… lol
If January 6th wasn’t enough to rethink your party members, then you chose a side, and you’re with the traitors and oath breakers.
I’m not republican or conservative tho. So that has nothing to do with me.
The paradox of tolerance is real, it has been broken. They wanted to genocide me after Charlie Kirk died because I made meme. Millions of people used their voices to call for violence against the left. Like left of hitler basically.
So yes you have chosen a side. You turn a blind eye to the horrors unfolding across your country and pretend like people are innocent actors. Keep ignoring the calls for violence, I suppose if you don’t feel included in them, then they can’t hurt you 🤣
They wanted to genocide me after Charlie Kirk died because I made meme.
No they didn’t. Also, how about not make a joke of someone being murdered. Never cool. Never funny.
Keep ignoring the calls for violence, I suppose if you don’t feel included in them, then they can’t hurt you
I see much more calls for violence on Lemmy than anywhere else. I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding.
I said it before:
I do not want conservatives prohibited from joining Lemmy, but I do want conservatives to feel unwelcome joining Lemmy.
Not dominance through authority, but through culture.
And what if so many came on, that they started to work on making liberals feel unwelcome here? And they would post in threads laughing about it much they wand liberal people to feel unwelcome. How would you feel then? Because look at what you guys are doing here…
How about different opinions can co-exist as long as there is no hate involved? You are an example of the very extremist divider that OP and some others are talking about.
I’m sure that’s what will happen because that’s what always happens. The left makes a cool space and conservatives slime their way in and ruin it. I don’t give a fuck if you call me an extremist, I want you and yours to feel unwelcome.
I’m sure that’s what will happen because that’s what always happens.
But your ok if it happens for your side, right? Because that’s what people are trying to do. Same ole hypocritical Lemmy as always I guess…
I want you and yours to feel unwelcome.
What?! I’m not republican or conservative. Because I say that not every conservative is a bad person, you think I’m conservative?! Say wat mate?! Feel free to go thru my posts and comments and feel free to point out anything you think is republican.
I refuse to give in to the negativity and extremism of Lemmy. I choose to fill my life with love, laughter, friends, and understanding. But hey, you do you. Nothing you do or say affects my real life in any way whatsoever.
